Oh

That was my reaction.

The days have been very dark lately, as is often the case in these last days of autumn when night comes early. But fog and heavy overcast have left the days nearly monochromatic, or in the gray and sepia duotone I find so familiar in conditions like these. I took a walk to the post office and bank in the late afternoon, within an hour of sunset, but even with the light fog, overcast and depending day, I knew I’d find the beauty in the day, emerging from the mist, washed in delicate highlights, familiar things looking completely foreign, taken out of their own context.

This is a cluster of milkweed pods. They look like something that came from outer space in the best of times, but especially against the muted background their slightly rough and ridged surface, elongated shape and smooth opening where the seeds are still escaping they truly look like alien constructions. Put a bunch of them together at the end of a long and curving stem and we know the aliens have landed, and possibly one of their birds has come to light on a stem, or a group have clustered together to survey this strange new world.

These grow on the sloping bank along Chartiers Creek. I was actually under the bridge with four lanes of traffic overhead, using my telephoto lens to capture them growing from the rip rap, or the covering of large stones and pieces of broken concrete that hold the creek bank in place during high water events, and could not get closer than five feet away. I walked in a semi-circle to get the best angle of this alien object and this was my favorite.

I hope to have the time to share some of the others of these photos of the milkweed pods, and I’ll also be sharing some of the other treasures from my walk today, one-quarter mile down and one-quarter mile back, and less than an hour of completely enthralling creative study of various grasses, curled and dry queen anne’s lace, empty evening primrose seed pods, a bird’s nest, textures and patterns, the water of the creek. But the day was so dark that I had to have my camera set on 800ISO and used many manual settings, and even then I have to adjust the shots to appear as they did to my eye but they are all a little grainy and delicate. But I only came home because it got dark.

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