Tuesday, May 24, 2016

A Certain Shade of Blue

Every year I look forward to tiny blue blossoms that burst up from forest floor and lake shore. 
And every year I photograph them. 

I don't know why. 
I've seen them before. 
I've admired them before. 
I've made good pictures of them before. 

To be honest, it's a compulsion. 
Not entirely unknown thing for me, 
having once spent hours among daffodils, every day they were in bloom (and this as a child); 
now spending hours photographing the same kinds of dragonflies and damselflies over and over and over again, as if the act of taking pictures would help me see their beauty more clearly
(and it does). 

Today was no exception. 

Despite watching a snapping turtle, splayed out on grass with her business end over her newly dug earth-scoop, strain to release a single egg; 
despite having discovered a new path through woods I thought impassable; 
despite finding a dead watersnake, its tail-end smashed and buzzing with flies and oozy innards;
despite rescuing a Banded Pennant from a spider web and pulling off as much spider string as I could,

despite all this -- 

it's the tiny blue flowers I memorialize here.

(And of course I can't post just one snap.)


Ironically, the Sewanee Herbarium featured this same blossom (among others) in a post I read after writing this.

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