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bois d’arc series #2: not mutant tennis balls
From the highway, the fallen fruit looked a bit like mutant tennis balls…
The fruit, the largest of any species native to North America, is hard and carries an unpleasant odor (although the day I made these images, the wind was pretty strong and I guess the stink blew away before I noticed it.) With the exception of squirrels, no native animal will eat them.
The trees and the fruit both ooze a sticky white sap. So probably these trees aren’t a good landscaping choice.
Hockley County, Texas
photographed 1.13.2024
bois d’arc series #1: “welcome”
I’m sort of right in the middle of an inadvertent series of botanical images. Somethings things just line up on their own…
Anyway, out on the highway between Levelland* and Whiteface* there’s a picnic area with a mile-long row of bois d’arc trees behind it. As far as I know, these are the only bois d’arc trees I’ve ever seen, but I’d read about them in the book PrairyErth: a deep map (William Least Heat-Moon) and recognized them from the description stored in my head.
Prior to the introduction of barbed wire, bois d’arcs were in common use along fencerows. As barbed wire become more common, this particular use of the tree declined. The Dust Bowl caused a resurgence in their use: beginning in 1934, the Works Progress Administration planted over 200 million trees on farmland to serve as windbreaks to prevent soil loss. My guess is that this particular row of trees was planted during that era.
The (inedible) fruit from these trees has several names, including Osage orange, horse apple, and hedge apple. The vernacular pronunciation is “bodark.”
Hockley County, Texas
photographed 1.13.2024
*Actual town names.
fall at the falls
January 1, 2009: that was a fateful day. But like many fateful days, I didn’t recognize it as such for quite a long time after.
January 1, 2009, was the day I decided to start a photo-a-day blog. I thought I try to do it for one year and see how it went. It was a stunning* success: at the end of that first year, I did have a total of five (5!) followers, placing me well into the single digits. For some reason, that dismal record didn’t deter me. I thought I’d give it another year, and then one more, and anyway, this year starts my 15th year of posting a photo every day.
Posting all those photos (~5,000 in total) turned me into a photographer. But the main thing that happened – and it’s one I never saw coming – is that I made friends this way. Good friends; some of my favorite friends are other photographers. It’s been an amazing journey, with a lot of good things happening along the way. So thanks to all my photographer friends, the ones I know and the ones I haven’t met yet. Y’all have helped make what was, frankly, a snap decision to post photos into a passion that means more to me than I can even say.
And I hope I’m still doing this in 15 more years….
Dochart Falls – near Killin, Scotland
11.18.2023
*Depending on how sarcastic you want to be with the word “stunning.”
death lends a hand
…and so this ends another year of posting daily images. This image is from a graveyard in Scotland; I was attracted to that hand reaching out from the face of the marker holding tight to…something.
And, on another note, today is 18 years since my beloved mom died, after a fall at her house. I usually don’t plan out my posts – they just land where they land – but this year I saved this image from Scotland to post today. It seemed fitting. (Here’s something I wrote ten years ago about my mom and her death. I still stand by every word of it.)
near Duart Castle, Isle of Mull, Scotland
photographed 11.9.2023
One Day | One Image 