lloydslensphotographyllc

The Tiny Explorer

Hello friends! Tonight’s feature image is titled “Tiny Spider On Thistle”. All of the photos are my original work and are available for purchase by following the instructions at the bottom of the article.

Sometimes I wonder if God gave thistle it’s spines because He knew that we’d have black and white photography. I have become intrigued by the way the texture of thistle is brought out in monochrome. On this particular day I did a lot of from the hip photos. Something would catch my eye and I would quickly snap several photos and move on to the next opportunity.

As I was doing the bulk selections of which thistle images to keep and which ones to delete I noticed a speck on the bulb. Anything that breaks the pattern gets my attention. I zoomed in to find a teeny tiny spider hiding in the spines

With spiders the males are typically much smaller than the females. So I’m guessing that this is a little guy.

I regret not paying close enough attention to the thistle while I was on site or I might have switched to a macro lens and picked up more detail of the spider himself. But, as it is I began to zoom in and discovered that he’s got the whole lower half of the flower bud wrapped in his web. He is well on his way to conquering his entire world. I began to see the little spider as the soul inhabitant of a flower sized planet and the surrounding buds as his solar system with the two smaller buds as twin moons.

Guessing by the overall body shape I’m thinking that he’s a roving spider. Eventually he’ll move to the other two buds and beyond spreading his web as he goes. One day he’ll decide that it’s time to explore his tiny universe and he’ll literally reach for the stars. Believe it or not, spiders can fly. Especially when they’re this small. Scientists call it ballooning but it’s really more like the flight of a kite. He’ll climb up to the highest place he can find and let his web into the wind. When enough wind catches the web the spider will sail through the air like a dandelion seed. A tiny explorer who goes wherever the wind takes him.

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Fly Away

Color Photography

I was walking around the ridge across from Yeager Airport as I often do when the sound of the Cicadas was drowned out by roar of twin engines. The ridge line is close to the runway and the planes are often very low as they take off and land. Everything from passenger jets and C-130s to little Cessnas buzz about the mountains here.

Now, I’ll need to be honest that I’m not as familiar with the makes and models of small aircraft as I would like to be. I know it’s a small one and that’s about it. But it looked to me like that pilot was truly enjoying his job. Ever since the plane flew over the soundtrack in my head has been stuck on Lenny Kravitz signing the chorus to “Fly Away”.

“Oh I want to get away.

I want to fly away

Yeah Yeah Yeah”

According to Songfacts Fly Away was kinda an afterthought. It was supposed to be on the B side of the album. That’s right. The song that won the artist a Grammy was the one they thought wasn’t good enough to feature. A fact I didn’t know until I began to read up on it for this article. In fact it’s only because a friend advised him to halt production and restructure the album that the song was featured.

I started the article with the thoughts of pure joy and freedom that escaping from gravity would bring. The icon of the aircraft fully in it’s element and silhouetted against the cloudbank spoke to my soul and the deep desire to be unfettered. This is the same feelings invoked by the song and the two just go hand in hand. But what I learned was that sometimes it’s what we thought was failed effort can turn out to be the winning move if we’re willing to take a risk.

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On The Sunny Side Of The Mountain

Color Photography

A warm breeze cascading down Panther Mountain brings the sweet scent of Appalachian wildflowers as I rolled down the window of the big blue truck. I’m on a little bit of a scouting mission but I’m taking time to visually explore everything on the edge of the road. The road over Panther Mountain is a public road but there’s places where it’s a road in name only.

Road up Panther Mountain — The road over Panther Mountain as seen through the dirty windshield of the big blue truck.

Most people use ATVs to travel this road and I only take my truck part of the way up. I have never been the entire length of the road.

As I watch the left edge of the road the Tiger Swallowtail in tonight’s feature image was the first thing that caught my eye. It paid no more attention to the truck than it would a large rock in the middle of the road. It’s whole world was just sunshine and nectar. I paused for several minutes and watched it feed. Then I noticed another and another and then a fourth one. The road was lined with butterflies. None of them seemed care about the giant idling his way up the mountain. They only seemed to care about what was actually in their control.

I have come to understand that the secret to peace of mind is not expending mental and emotional energy on things that are beyond our control. I’m not really suggesting that we should be unprepared but that we don’t dwell on the negative. If we have the things that are actually in our control in order then if the unforseen happens we’ll be in better shape to deal with it.

I raised the lens and snapped a picture to help remind me of the lesson the Tiger Swallowtail had for me and continued to ease on the gravel road towards my goal.

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Forage Friday #22 Virginia Pine

Color Photography, Forage Friday

Hello friends! Tonight’s feature image is titled “Virginia Pine 43019”. Tonight’s image was taken specifically for this article. All of the photos found on this blog are my original work and are available as prints by following the instructions at the bottom of the article.

Somewhere in the echoes of my mind is the voice of Euell Gibbons asking if you have “ever eaten a pine tree?” I was a very small child and the old breakfast cereal commercial produced the mental image of a giant munching down on a tree as if was a celery stick. Euell was a master foraging expert but I was a kid and saw the whole world as one big cartoon. Such is youth.

By the time I truly interested in being able to live off the land I still had that cartoon picture of what would be like to eat a tree. I finally got curious about the concept and began to read up on it. In my reading I came across a story about settlers suffering from scurvy. They looked to the native guides for advice and the scouts would point to the sky. The settlers would pray for healing. After this happened a few times one of scouts finally decided to intervene and brought the settlers pine needles. It was then that the settlers realized that the natives weren’t pointing to the sky but to the pine trees to cure scurvy.

While the story was probably made up ( I’ve forgotten where I read it. ) it does contain an element of truth. Scurvy is caused by the lack of vitamin C and pine needles contain an average of a whopping eight times the amount of vitamin C as an orange. ( ounce per ounce). This much is common knowledge among survivalists and foragers. The young light green needles make the best tea and the older needles have a stronger pine flavor.

Here’s where I have to admit that edible doesn’t always mean tastes awesome. And when you avoid sweetener like I do you might have to adjust your expectations a bit or mix the pine needles with something that will help cover the flavor. The tea is something that I only tried once just to say that I’ve done it. Maybe I messed up with preparation or maybe I just couldn’t get over the idea that it would taste like pine scented cleaning products but I wasn’t really a fan.

The uses below are from Peterson’s Field Guide and after the tea I opted to not bother with them but here they are.

In the feature image you can see young male cones which are considered to be an emergency food when boiled until tender.

The shoots are stripped clean and peeled to make a cooked green.

The inner bark is put through a process of being pounded under water and the resulting pulp is washed and dried into flower.

Aside from the scurvy treatment the resin was used by primitive culture as an antiseptic for minor skin injuries and is a folk treatment for poison ivy rash.

Normally when we talk about foraging we’re talking about food and medicine but sometimes you have a need for something more utilitarian. The resins do make a good glue. The process is to collect the crystallized resin from wounds and melt them under low heat. ( ⚠️too much heat and it can burst into flames!⚠️) once it’s liquid its mixed with charcoal and herbivore dung and sets into a waterproof glue. This is mixture that Native Americans used to seal birch bark canoes.

I have noticed a tendency for people to look at all evergreen trees as a “pine”. Mistakes happen and can be deadly if you mistakenly collect an ornamental yew instead of a white pine. The long twisted needles of Virginia Pine is a pretty good indicator that you’ve got the ID but if you’re not sure consult a good guide book like Peterson’s Field Guide.

On a final note, please remember that my Forage Friday posts are just a starting point for those who are interested in foraging. It’s recommend that you do further research before trying any wild edible plants the first time.

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Are The Monarchs Returning?

Color Photography

Hello friends! Tonight’s feature image is titled “Monarch Butterfly On Milkweed 810191105” and is available for purchase by following the instructions at the bottom of the article.

I can’t really think of any better example of contentment than a monarch butterfly on milkweed. The butterfly pollinates the plant and the plant will host the catipiller. Their fates are forever entwined.

The field where I took the picture was once reserved for hay production. Milkweed is poisonous to cattle and therefore we took steps to keep it out of pastures. It was also rare to see a monarch butterfly in those days. Now the back part of this field is full of milkweed and monarch butterflies. I have seen more of the monarchs this summer than I have in thirty years.

A lot of blogs will point out that monarch butterflies pollinate more than just weeds and serve in an important environmental roll. All of this is true. But value in the world is more than just functionality. Value is beauty and wonder which is something that the monarch butterflies provide in abundance.

While I’m sure that there’s still plenty of work to do a quick Google search and found that the Monarch butterfly population has increased 144% in the Eastern United States. It would appear that the world is growing more and more beautiful every day.

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