Thursday, November 5, 2009

November 5th…

As the nature of my job would have it…it was 2pm before I managed to get out of Ottawa yesterday and head to LT’s…which meant I spent a portion of the drive in the dusk and the dark…and, it being hunting season, the deer seem to be on the move…a pick up in front of me at some point west of Bancroft narrowly missed hitting the second of 2 does running across the road and then later on, just east of Sebright, I had to brake hard as a big buck charged his way across the road in front of me…close calls like that always make me want to slow right down and just creep the rest of the way…

On both my drive yesterday and my return trip today, I kept seeing herds of burly men in florescent orange coats and groups of pick up trucks parked by paths leading into the woods…hunting season…

The weather doesn’t seem to be cooperating with me lately…it seems that the times that I have to spend inside working are the sunny times and my drives back and forth across central Ontario are the rainy ones…so my drive yesterday didn’t yield any photo ops…

On my return trip to Ottawa today I drove in and out of periods of wet snow which left a beautiful white frosting on the fall coloured landscape…all shades of browns, tans and rusts interspersed with the various coniferous greens…the wild reds, oranges and yellows now a couple weeks gone…even the stubborn oaks have given up almost all of their beautiful burnt orangey-brown coloured leaves…the black lacy skeletons of the tamaracks have only a few golden orange needles left clinging to their branches…

Here is one of the stubborn oaks...














Tamarack and evergreens...


















I met Jake just west of Norland…I found him standing in the middle of the road a few miles before the town…looking lost...I was worried he'd been dumped on the lonely back road… what could I do but stop and see what was up… he had no collar…he barked at me when I got out of the van…but then came over wagging his tail and looking silly…I opened the sliding door and he hopped up in…our van smells like dogs even to people…so dogs must be able to smell us coming…he jumped right up onto the front seat beside me and looked at me with his clear brown eyes…a beautiful young male black lab…we need another dog like we need multiple holes in our heads so I drove around to the farms and homes in the area and thank goodness the last place I tried was his home…silly puppy…but it was a fun diversion for a little while…

I regret, now, that I was so worried about finding Jake’s home, that I didn’t take a single picture of him…

In-between the bouts of snow I took pictures of tree silhouettes…and thought about how beautiful they were and how I might try to capture some of that beauty in my full moon paintings…

Here are some of the more picturesque ones…most are just reference shots...and the power lines get in the way…

This majestic lone birch stands before a backdrop of pines…















This is a very odd shaped tree...mostly hollow...I wonder if it will survive this coming winter's storms...


















This tree skeleton is so graceful looking...I wish that i could get a better picture of it...but it is in a swamp and I can't get closer to it...


















Various tree silhouettes...














































Snow and getting dark...













2 comments:

Oma said...

You produce beautiful photos for a woman without photo-ops! I love the swirl tree.

I was kind of hoping to meet Jake ... and wondering how Kenya would like him.

marianne said...

lkove the bare trees/sky photos!