Ferns

Hi everyone! We are finally home from our 3-week RV trip to four of Central Oregon's lovely state parks: LaPine, The Cove Palisades, L.L. Stub Stewart and Diamond Lake.What an amazing trip it was! There were so many beautiful places, so many wonderful adventures, and so many "firsts" too! It was also a trip which taught me a few things, but most of all I had to wave goodbye to an internet connection and just forget about it. I also realized that it was just impossible to keep up with a proper journal. It's always a struggle: do you LIVE the adventure or do you DOCUMENT it? It's all a balancing act and part of that balance is just throwing your hands in the air and enjoying the show without taking a single picture or writing a word about it. We were blessed to lose our truck's transmission in a place where we were safe. If asked, "Where would you like to be stuck if you were stranded in your RV for a week while your truck was being repaired?", we'd both say "L.L. Stubb State Park!" Honestly, there were many wonderful parks we would happily hole up in but we sure loved staying at L.L. Stubb with its endless hiking and mountain bike trails, comfortable weather, and gorgeous local. Deep, rich, beautiful forests are not the worst surroundings and in the end we got our truck back in premier condition and ready for years of adventures in the future! I've missed everyone here so very much. Even when there was an internet connection, I rarely had the time to visit which was too bad but what are you going to do, right?! :) I sure do hope that everyone has been doing ok and I look forward to visiting between the ebb and flow of chores around here! Today's picture is a one of a favorite subject: a fern frond! You may know how much I adore them--In fact, I'm infatuated by these lovely plants! When we were in L.L. Stubb State Park, we stayed at two sites. The first five days we stayed at their upper campground, the next five days we stayed at their lower campground. Next to our site was a steep hillside which of course I was soon crawling around on with my camera and macro lens. Why? Well, remember the Foxgloves I shared last? The white ones were waving at me and I couldn't resist. Once I was down there I found bunches of other lovely subjects to photograph. I saw some ferns too but they weren't in great condition. In fact, many fronds were in the process of yellowing and dying back. Then I noticed how colorful they were and took a closer look. HOLY COW, THEY WERE BEAUTIFUL!!! I was totally enchanted, and so today I wanted to share this picture with you so you can see how incredible a dying fern frond can be! :) Pam, you've been on my mind every day too. I hope you are well. I've been thinking a lot about Marie-Claire too and wishing for positive news--if anyone reading this knows how she is doing, I sure would like to know! Sending my biggest *HUGGZ* to everyone this evening!! Explored on 7/6/19; highest placement, #1.

(+2 insets) (view large for the best detail!) It was so pretty this morning with the sun shining brightly and so lovely to be outside as the world was waking up around me. Well, ok--to be honest, when I begin my walk at an early time like today it's 7:30am and the sunrise ship has already sailed away two hours before! But I'm sorry, 5:30am is officially "0-dark-hundred" and that is no time for a sane person to be getting up! At least, not in my mind, anyway! Heh...I'd consider myself a "morning person" now but that only goes so far! Steve and I have been so busy working on the property and prepping for our trip that I've had to neglect my pictures from our last trip. However, today things were much more relaxed so I took the opportunity to get some images finished from our lovely visit to Stout Grove, in Jedediah Smith State Park. This lovely park is nestled in a huge forest of old-growth redwood trees. These magnificent trees include the largest and tallest trees in the world! They only live along a narrow strip in northern California to southern Oregon and are quite the magnificent sight. (I'll be sharing pictures of the redwoods in another post) :) The forest here was also brimming with fern species and I went totally hog-wild with my photography the moment we got out of the car. You may know that I'm a hopeless junkie for ferns, especially when the fronds are unfurling...they are so unbelievably cool to me. :) And so, today's presentation is all about some of the lovely ferns I photographed! The main picture is a close-up of an unfurling Sword Fern and the insets show two other pictures of this super cool species, including their "elephantine" unfurling fronds and a fun shallow dof art shot! I hope you enjoy the show! Explored on 6/5/19; highest placement, #4.

(+5 insets!) (please view large!) :) I've just returned from a chilly but bright and sunny morning walk and my body is ticking with energy coursing through my veins. How vitalizing it is to get some invigorating exercise at the beginning of the day. It really makes me feel motivated and ambitious. After all, I've done something so good for my health and well-being at the very start. What better way to set yourself up for a series of wins, progress, achievements and successes?! Besides all of that, getting outside when the world is waking up around you is a wondrous experience with the twittering of birds and their songs and calls heard from near and far. It is a joy I missed out on for so many years. How lovely to get up early enough to be immersed in this daily marvel. Sitting down at my computer, I hop onto ipernity and check out the Explore section. Who is showcasing today?! Gazing at the selection of 27 pictures on the front page, I sit in wonder. So much talent. Such a vast variety of photography. The creativity boggles the mind. Pictures from literally all over the world, in all types of formats, from a dizzying variety of cameras. Exquisite images from seasoned professionals and from budding talent as well. Some have such a wonderful, recognizable style that you can tell who took the picture without glancing at the name. Others are unique and exciting and beg for a click so you can see what other pictures they've taken. Inspiration drips from the page. How grand to be part of it all. The community at ipernity is incredible. Wonderful, warm, intelligent folk who, like the pictures on Explore, cover a vast range of personalities and interests. Photographers can be very quirky and plenty of us spurn society for a gamut of reasons. But here on ipernity we can reach out and make friends. Isn't that wonderful. In my "real" life, the "in-person" friends I have fit onto one hand, perhaps two if I include family. But online, my friends and acquaintances number much closer to 100 or more! What a difference! In "real life" I am shy and very wary of people, but online I am extremely friendly and gregarious. Isn't it all so very interesting? I am extremely grateful to have the chance to be friends with people from all over the world, all walks of life, and who allow me the chance to know them. It is an honor and a true gift and I thank you all for allowing me to be part of this fine platform! *BIG HUGS TO ALL OF YOU!* Today happens to be St. Patrick's Day so I'm posting a picture that's very green! This fern was photographed in San Francisco a couple of years ago. Steve and I walked through part of Golden Gate Park to get to the Conservatory of Flowers' dahlia exhibit and on the way we stopped to take pictures of some of the fabulous plants found there. Ferns of many kinds grow everywhere and this one did not miss my gaze. (I'm also including some other green images for you to enjoy!) Pam, isn't it wonderful to be a part of this amazing group of people?! We are so lucky. And because of ipernity, we got the chance to meet…how cool is that?! :) Anyhow, I thought it would be fun to find a nice green picture on your stream and decided on a wonderful picture of a Ruby Throated Hummingbird sitting in a vibrant green oak tree. What a beautiful bird with her iridescent green feathers! It really is fun doing searches in your photo stream--it shows me how few I've actually seen and then I get the prize of appreciating them! Thank you for your lovely comment about my flower pictures! I'm so happy to read that you have been able to see a few of the flowers that are blooming for you now. I hope you can find great joy in these pretty spring sightings…one day at a time my dear! *BIG HUGS* Explored on 3/18/19, highest placement, #6.

(+4 insets!) Steve and I have had the chance to stay at Nathalie and Brian's home in San Anselmo on several occasions but this visit was the first time I'd brought my camera. I was really excited because I knew what was in store for me. It seems like anywhere inside or out, there are super cool things to take pictures of. One of the first places I attacked was Nathalie's amazing patio. She's got all sorts of potted plants and bushes and on the walls are moss and lichen. It's a bit dizzying to decide where to start but I made a beeline for her tree fern, what I call a "dinosaur fern", and these plants are among my very favorite. Because of the low light I was using my macro flash and as I clicked away, I became aware that Nathalie and Steve were talking in the kitchen just a few feet from me inside. Nathalie was wondering what the odd flash of light was, and then Steve noticed. I couldn't help grinning to myself as Steve realized it was my flash and explained to Nathalie. "Ohhhh!!!" I heard her say, as Steve went on to tell her how versatile our flash is. (By the way, if you are looking for a similar flash at a fraction of the price, I'd recommend this one !) She stepped out to see what I was doing and found me literally crawling around under the fronds of her fern. I giggled and told her that I am often splayed on the ground in very strange positions when I'm taking pictures, and have been asked on a number of occasions if I was ok and not, perhaps, dead! :D The biggest problem that I had with this fern was that the unfurling balls of leaves that I love to photograph are quite dark and indistinct and so they aren't as dramatic as others I've photographed in the past. However I think I managed to get some nice pictures and I've included four insets in addition to my main image. I played with some textures on a couple of them because I thought the bland background could use a bit of dressing up. I will definitely try some different ideas the next time I get the chance to take more pictures of Nathalie's awesome tree fern! Pam, I was surprised that you have no fern pictures in your photo stream! I'm going to guess that they don't grow on your property? I thought we didn’t have any on our property but one day I just about fell over when I discovered one by a seasonal stream. Another time I found one on our hillside. They aren't big but they are still super cool! I hope you have had a nice day…you are always in my thoughts! Explored on 1/11/19, highest placement, #5.

Steve and I were invited to visit our friend's beautiful garden a few years ago and upon entering, I was transported into photographic bliss! Not only did she have countless flowers in immaculate condition, there were lovely ornamental greenery plants as well. This is a magnificent frond from one of her gorgeous ferns.

Gardens are such a photographic wonderland. You get the chance to take pictures of countless subjects that don't grow locally. Steve and I spent a few hours at my friend's garden in May 2013, and along with a dizzying variety of flowers there were decorative plants as well. Including ferns, which is a huge favorite to me. The magnificence of an unfurling fern has few equals in my book, and here is an example of nature's perfection.

1 more picture in a note above! :) Today I took a walk into part of our lower forest with a plan in mind. I was hoping to find the one fern plant which I know of there, and it grows on the side of the seasonal stream bed. Our lower forest looks very different than it once did, because I spent months clearing buck brush and dead trees out, piling them up into habitats for animals. Now, instead of being an impenetrable, ugly mess, the lower forest is open and beautiful, filled with Oak, Manzanita and Madrone trees. So when I found a very large, mossy tree on the ground, I was quite surprised. Following my eye down the trunk, I saw that it had broken off the base of the tree about three feet up and looked as if it had been dead for a while. I walked up to the trunk and peered inside. At first I didn't see anything but a leaf, but moving my head, the light reflected on droplets below, and straining my eyes in the dim light, I could see the droplets suspended on an invisible web! If I could get my camera to focus on the droplets, my flash would light up the scene and I thought it might just be awesome! It took me a bit of time to find focus, but eventually I was successful, and got a bunch of different apertures to choose from. I hoped that the 2.8 images would be clear because the illusion of droplets floating in the air would be just that much more cool. And...they worked out!! HOORAY!! As it turned out, I have done almost nothing to this image except cropping and adding a very slight vignette! Saul Bellow (10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990. Wiki: Saul Bellow Explored on December 31, 2013. Highest placement, page 6.

This fern plant isn't large, with each frond being only a few inches long, so I thought it would be fun to try getting some close-ups of the undersides, which are so fascinating to me. What you are looking at are spores, which is how ferns reproduce. Ferns are one of the world's oldest plants, and they do not reproduce by flower pollination like most other plants. The next time you are admiring a fern, take a look at the underside, and you'll be surprised how interesting the spores look! In fact, the spore vary drastically from one species to another, and I find them quite beautiful! :) If you would like to know more about spore reproduction in plants, Wiki has a very nice page here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporogenesis

I found this beautiful fern growing at my friend's garden and had a wonderful time trying to capture the graceful shapes of these unfurling leaves.

I've shown a couple of pictures now of unfurling ferns, and mentioned that I should take a picture of an opened fern so you can all see what these look like! Below are the two pictures I took of the tiny, unfurling ferns. This open fern is about 2.5" in diameter. If you can believe it, I had to desaturate this because it's so brilliantly green that it looks unnatural! LOL!

Yesterday I went back to see the tiny uncurling fern that I showed a while back and was delighted to this tiny pair glowing in the afternoon sun! Like the previous fern, these two were surrounded by lots of vegetation, so I carefully separated them from the background and integrated a texture to help them stand out. Thanks to Asja for the texture! (By the way, if you look at the texture, you'll be amazed because it looks nothing like what you see here...it was just a starting point because I changed the color, darkness, and added bokeh to help create an effect of dark, dappled forest)

Steve and I were very excited to go on one of the MeetUp hikes in our area, but last night we discovered the hike would be on Sunday, so we decided to go on the hike today. YAY! It turned out to be about a month early for flowers but I was able to find some wonderful subjects, including one of my favorites, FERNS! :D I was so happy to find some to take pictures of them, they are so wonderful to me! Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño usually referred as Pedro Calderón de la Barca (17 January 1600 – 25 May 1681), was a dramatist, poet and writer of the Spanish Golden Age. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest. Born when the Spanish Golden Age theatre was being defined by Lope de Vega, he developed it further, his work being regarded as the culmination of the Spanish Baroque theatre. As such, he is regarded as one of Spain's foremost dramatists and one of the finest playwrights of world literature. Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Can you believe what you're seeing?!! I saw this and my jaw hit the floor...it seems impossible, but here is a very heavy droplet of sap, suspended in a web! INCREDIBLE!!! Even more incredible, the size of this droplet is at least 1/2" in diameter, it's HUGE! I think what happened is that tiny droplets of sap fell one by one onto this web, and as you can see, it's just about to fall through, but not before I got this picture! One of the most amazing things I've ever seen!! I would have made this my 365 pick but I think it needs to be explained before you can understand what you're looking at, so I decided to put the fern as my pick.

Today I walked over to our seasonal stream on the way to a sprout I found the other day...but I never got there! I stopped to take a closer look along the edge and to my surprise, I found a tiny fern! How I adore these plants, and most especially, I love to see the ones which are unfurling. I looked very carefully until, with a squeak of delight, my eyes alit upon this incredibly tiny frond which was pushing its way up just 1" off the ground, its tiny head a mere 1/4" in diameter! When I looked at my pictures, I decided that the image was a bit on the bland side, so I turned it into a texture piece and found a pretty poem to go with it! I hope you like it! :) Thanks to Brenda Starr for the lovely texture, and as always, another nod to my dear Flickr sister, Stephanie Calhoun for her inspiration to use textures in some of my images! *high five* Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of his generation, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Wikipedia: Robert Frost Egal Bohen: "My poems are my thoughts, dreams and memories, scribbled down primarily for myself as part of a lifetimes search to find out exactly what I am, who I am, where I am, and what the hell I'm here for - but I hope also you might find something in them too, for yourself, somewhere, if you find yourself asking yourself similar questions, which I am certain you do." Egal Bohen

Last year I was amazed to find ferns growing on our property, as I was convinced they didn't grow here. I decided to see if I could find them today, and I was successful! Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (French pronunciation: ​[maʁsɛl pʁust]; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). It was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. Wikipedia: Marcel Proust

[best appreciated at full size against black] It seems to me that if you like macro photography, you automatically love ferns. I don't know anyone that doesn't love these beautiful, elegant plants, and it seems that we all want to see close-up detail of these lovely fronds. With my new camera and macro lens, I am able to take the kinds of pictures I've always dreamed of. I've got a lot to learn about taking good pictures with a macro lens, so you'll probably notice the focus is off by a hair on the right, but I thought it was crisp enough to share with all of you! :) This image was taken in February, 2012.

[best appreciated at full size against black] I finally got to go on my first "real" photo hike with my new camera!! Steve and I went with the local hiking club to to a place called Buck Rock, and I had a fantastic time taking pictures! I was concerned whether I would be able to deal with a tripod AND hiking, but it turns out that I didn't need to worry at all! Just as Steve told me, a tripod doesn't have to be an annoyance. They are totally necessary if you want to take macro shots, and it turned out to be no big deal! Here is an image of the tip of a colorful fern! This image was taken in February, 2012.