pine tree
I had been out in our back yard shooting photos of things covered in thick frost, when I encountered this jumble of pine needles growing out of a small, bushy tree. There was something about the exuberant randomness of the needles that caught my attention.Of course the crystals of frost and the way pine needles develop and grow are probably anything but chaotic. But to my photographic eye they seem to be and I like it.
It looks like I'm in to looking up trees' trunks given this and yesterday's post. And I guess I am. . .This is a tree that our family named "Big Boy" over three decades ago. It lives on our cabin's property line in the Black Hills. It was old all those years ago so it is now Old + 30, I guess.Recently, Deb and I made the pilgrimage up the hill to see this venerable giant, in part to see if there is any evidence that Big Boy had fallen victim to the tree beetles that are killing trees all over the Black Hills right now. His boughs are green and he stands tall, though there was sap leaking out a hole a few feet up his trunk.We walked down the hill hoping that this huge pine tree wouldn't let a few small bugs bring him down.
Purple and green go well together,V as this photo of a pine cone blooms evidences. On a short break from a technology conference in Sioux Falls, SD, we wandered over to the Japanese Gardens on Covell Lake. It is a photogenic spot but my eye was caught by these bright purple flowers. I don't know how the pine tree reproductive process works, but once again, we see Nature in a lurid attempt to keep the life force going. Well done! (Incidentally, I was tempted to Photoshop the spider webbing from between two of the blooms but I decided that that's part of Nature, too.)