I’ve been remiss in not linking to Jason Hogle’s wonderful Festival of the Trees #43: The Celebration Tree Grove. It manages to be everything that the previous edition of the FOTT, hosted here at Via Negativa, was not: elegant, concise, thoughtfully composed. Nor did Jason neglect to include a conservation message:
The grove stretches out before me, stone trails and wooden benches leading me through the birth of a place where loved ones are honored, remembered and celebrated. Not remembered through statues and not honored with memorials. A more important kind of dedication celebrates lives lost: the planting of trees. The grove represents the very spirit of 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity.
Go visit and enjoy a feast of links.
Today was the last day of deer season in Pennsylvania. These three does, which often hang around the houses, weren’t quite out of the woods yet when I photographed them from my front porch today around 11:30. Today was the sunniest day we’ve had in quite a while, and I had been intending to capture the long shadows and sharp contrasts when the deer showed up. Thank you for making the forest more photogenic, even as you do your best to ensure that it has no future by eating as many shrubs and seedlings as you can.
Feasting on the limbs and saplings felled by October’s freak snowstorm is O.K., though, I suppose.
If you’d like to be included in next month’s festival at the U.K.-based treeblog, here’s the call for submissions.
I love the top pic in particular: the trees look as though they’re trying to escape from their shadows!
Oh, I didn’t see that — so right you are!
Looks like it’s going to be another sunny day today — we haven’t had too many in the last few weeks — and I’m hoping to make time for some more shutterbugging.