Back in January of this year, Karma (Karma’s When I Feel Like It Blog) suggested a four seasons photo hunt. I decided to include four more “seasons,” taking photos on Groundhog Day, May Day, Lammas Day and Halloween, which fall between the solstices and equinoxes. I will come back and add the final picture to this post when we get to the winter solstice.
Courtyard Gardens
North Carolina Botanical Garden
This post is my contribution to Karma’s Signs of Spring Photo Hunt. I don’t have a prime lens, but the photos, except for the birds, were taken at about the same focal length with my zoom lens. (There was a lot of squatting involved to get the pictures.) Visit Karma’s post here if you’d like to participate.
It was spring break at UNC and we learned that we could easily find a parking space on campus when the students are out of town. And that meant we could finally visit the lovely Coker Arboretum, 5 wooded acres in the middle of a college campus. I came home with more than 300 photographs! What follows is a small sample of the birds and blooms we saw. Some of the plants were from other parts of the world.
I was especially attracted to the tiny South American spring starflowers which carpeted some of the garden plots. Something about those little purple lines on the petals. And the European spring snowflakes captivated me. They were a little bigger than our snowdrops. When I got home I learned they were native to southern Europe, all the way east to Ukraine, so I wondered if any of my ancestors had them in their gardens to welcome spring over there.
I noticed how similar the shape of a cicada wing was to the shape of a maple seed. In this sculpture I decided to merge the two.
~ Sam Spiczka
(“Cicada Maple Seed” sculpture)
This is my selection for Karma’s Before & After Photo Hunt. The sculpture was taken down shortly after the second picture, much to my disappointment, as I thought it would be great for a four season series. But it will do well enough for this before-and-after autumn. Most of the leaves on this beautiful southern sugar maple have stayed on the tree for the winter, a good example of marcescence. It’s become my favorite tree in the North Carolina Botanical Garden.