Yearly Archives: 2015

The misnamed sago palm is actually a cycad. Cycads date back to the time of dinosaurs and their living relatives trace back to some of the earliest plants so they are sometimes known as living fossils. Unlike palms they grow in a flush of new leaf growth. This is supposed […]

These lavender flowers were in a field dotted with a few other summer blooms. I shot this with a shallow depth of field to emphasize a single foreground flower and throw the others into a bokeh of color and vague shapes.

This mountain trail is edged on one side by a huge series of rock ledges overgrown by vines and on the other by a steep cliff. On the right side of this photo is the ledge and to the left and ahead are laurels and rhododendrons. Their branches are bent […]

  This is a steep hiking trail leading through a tall deciduous forest on slanting slopes through a narrow valley or cove as they are locally known. The trees seem to form an archway as I walk below, enhanced here by using a wide angle lens.

This is a small waterfall and its muted reflection in a forest pool. A spray of water arcs off the point where the falls hits the water. The nearby rocks are etched with brilliant green moss, colorful from an endless mist. This was taken with a long exposure to catch […]

Right now there is something special about gardens. Big showy flowers dominate and this one almost glowed in the dark light of an approaching summer thunderstorm.

Rosebay rhododendron grows from Canada south to Georgia and Alabama, but reaches its peak in the mountains and especially along streams in the southern Appalachians. Although flowering has finished for the season in most parts of the North Carolina mountains, the cool shade and endless water of this creek has […]

The praying mantis is named for its posture of apparent prayer with its forelegs as seen in this photo. I imagine this one may be praying for me to stop taking its picture and leave it alone

When living in the Pacific Northwest, I fell in love with this distant hydrangea relative, Deinanthe caerulea, at a local nursery. It never bloomed for me but I potted it up and brought it with me when I moved back east, planting it in my NC garden. Now several years […]