july moon

There are no tripods in heaven.

Perfection is overrated anyway.

a flower's dream

I wish I had a buck for every photograph ever taken of a night-blooming cereus. Who could resist trying to show the slow-motion yet visible unfolding of that exquisite flower at least once? Millions of pictures are taken of the process, as if to prove the unbelievable. A camera cannot, however, record that fragrance. It remains imaginable only to initiates. I won't go on. Assuming there have been an infinite number of images made, I'm sure there have been even more inadequate attempts to describe it in words.

This is more about demonstrating one of the few things I can do with my new iPhone. No one told me it would require an advanced degree to run the damn thing, but its camera seems to be very user-friendly. So I let it have a go at the cereus:

Hmmm... not bad for incandescent lighting.

Then I found the flash.

The vain gardenia tried to compete.

At that moment, an amazing thing happened.

I don't know if it was the iPhone or the cereus,

or maybe it's just my imagination,

but, to me, this looks like a picture of a flower dreaming.

What do you think?

erosion

Looking northeast from Rabbit Mountain,

the shape on the left is not a caldera.

It's an eroded vestige of the bottom of the tropical inland sea

which once ebbed along the Rocky Mountains' eastern slope.

Like the rest of the Front Range, it's littered with sea shells.

The mountains themselves are eroding geologic upthrusts.

Looking west from Rabbit Mountain, the river carves out the little lost canyon.

The mountains make the weather;

the land and the sky are inseparable.

There is nothing subtle about this place.

dawn at the ditch

If I ever had a subtle bone in my body,

I obviously broke it, too.

rockets

impossibly blue

These are this week's wildflowers.

Upland larkspurs.

There's been a lot of rain, so they're everywhere.

They match the impossibly blue sky.

hobbyhorses

These guys are my "hobby"horses.

They know they're props

and show up whenever they see the camera.

I don't own them, but we've got a deal;

they eat the grass while I photograph them.

Two of them are good saddle horses,

and the sway-back is a rescue.

I think they do a really good job

of completing the scene up here on Rabbit Mountain.

That strip of sunlight out on the plains

is almost 100 miles away.

landing lights

This is the door mat at the ranch.

It appears to have landing lights on it.

If that's what these are, they're the closest thing up here to social networking.

We're in a valley, behind a mountain and out of range. Of anything. No internet, no cell phone (except from the top of Rabbit Mountain) and the land line runs under the river. (There's so much irony in that last phrase, it would be funny, except for that weird buzzing sound.)

If it weren't for the satellite, we'd be on Mars.

Maybe we are.

lawn ornaments

We're off to the ranch

where the cows and the lawn turkeys roam.

The fluff ball between the two big girls is a wee goblet

eyeballing some yummo grub in the grass.

discretion

Discretion is the better part of valor?

It's definitely not the better part of color.

confession of a color junkie

'Tis what it is.

cooler inside

I think the heat's getting to me.

dog days

Good news! It's the dog days of summer!! Yow!!!

wires

I could knock myself out trying to avoid

photographing the wires.

Why?...

I kinda like these.

shade

optimism

Two days ago, I was sure I smelled a gardenia.

I was sitting in traffic at the time, so it was obviously an aromatic hallucination.

Tail pipes notwithstanding, I was possessed by the fragrance.

Though the climate here will surely kill it,

I bought a gardenia plant today.

It's like chocolate; sometimes, you just gotta have it.

studio dogs

There are a lot of dogs in my studio.

One of them thought a group shot would be nice.

may moon

This was the full moon rising last Thursday night.

I think the photo looks a little like one of Loriann Signori's beautiful pastels. It's this blurry because it was taken hand-held, and I'd had one glass of wine (cheap date).

I don't know what Loriann's excuse is.

I don't think she needs one.

head in the clouds

deva

They say every plant has a deva,

a life force.

Some are more obvious than others.

mammatocumulus

What's stranger?

The cloud or the name?

Life could be worse.

You could be one of my toes.

I jammed the big one on an uneven sidewalk;

I should sue the city.

I dropped a bottle on the middle one;

I should sue Pellegrino.

I should watch my step.

in the trees

witch's pot

The day before yesterday, a single, magnificent storm rolled up against the mountains. Before spawning tornadoes east of here, it boiled and brewed overhead like a witch's pot. I stepped out the door with my camera and started shooting. I tried, but there's no way I can choose only one of these pictures for this post. More would be too much to believe, so for now, here's just the first one.

Okay, one more. But I'm saving the rest for later.

fearless art

The best art is done while traveling fearlessly in and out of perfection.

Actually, I wouldn't know, but I suspect it's true. Besides, it sounded so wicked good when I made a similar comment today to Casey Klahn about his fearless pastels, I thought I'd get some additional mileage out of it here. Feel free to quote me; it's worth what you paid for it. Bargain at the price.

By the way, I think Casey is fearless when he slaps Turpenoid on Sennelier La Carte paper as a way to reclaim the tender stuff, but yikes! I'm still too chicken to try it.