The Badlands

 

 

 

  "The Bad Lands grade all the way from those that are almost rolling in character to those that are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth."  

Theodore Roosevelt

Wind Canyon

In the Badlands, the wind carves rock into spectacular shapes.

Hoodoos

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorm you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Little Missouri River

"There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm."

Theodore Roosevelt

Rocks

Photography Challenge Week 29: Bright
I find rocks fascinating.  I find the subtle shadings of colour so interesting.  The badlands leave me feeling overwhelmed.  Where to start! 
Bright sunshine does not offer good conditions for photography.  However, I wanted to capture the warmth of the midday sun on the rocks in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.  These are a few of my attempts.

These are canonball concretions that appear out of the rock.  (They remind me of the Moraki Boulders in New Zealand)

This formation looked like a train when I snapped it.  After uploading it, I think it looks like a dog.

Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow. /  Plutarch

Poppy bud

That beautiful season the summer!

Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;

and the landscape

Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.

                         Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dandelions

A very photogenic flower.






 

"The miracles of nature do not seem miracles because they are so common.  If no one had ever seen a flower, even a dandelion would seem the most startling event in the world."

Henry Ward Beecher

Water Lilies

Photography Challenge Week 28: Water
These water lilies grow in a pond near where I work.  It is a challenge to photograph them because they are surrounded by reeds and I didn't want to step on them.  (Also, I would have needed rubber boots to get any closer).  They grow in a quiet corner and taking photos was both relaxing and exhilerating.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side
'The curse is upon me',
cried the Lady of Shalott.
            Tennyson

Datura

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.  To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body but the soul.

Alfred Austin

Canola Fields

Photography Challenge Week 27:  Trio

I think the colour trio of canola fields, trees and sky, is a photographic gift of early summer.

Why do farmers farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming?  And always the answer is: "Love. They must do it for love."  Farmers farm for the love of farming.  They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants.

Wendell Berry

Evening skies

The sky is the daily bread of our lives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Goodbye to a special person

This week a special teacher passed away who touched the lives of her students for many years.  She was also a passionate gardener. 

Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden.

anonymous

Violas

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.

Walt Whitman

Zinnia

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

Buddha

Water

Photography Challenge week 26: Artificial











This artificial "lake" is the result of 5 days of rain.  These are flooded fields.



 

The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn't still be a farmer.

Will Rogers

Happy Canada Day

The Maple Leaf Forever is a very old song. It has a great tune, and rousing, patriotic lyrics.  I like it much more than O Canada.

I particularly like the third verse:

 
Our fair Dominion now extends
From Cape Race to Nootka Sound.
May peace forever be our lot
And plenty a store abound.
And may those ties of love be ours
Which discord cannot sever,
And flourish green for freedom's home
The maple leaf forever.