Blog Archives
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.
lamp/light
This? Oh just a fascinating shadow that I saw on the corner of Pickney and W. Cedar Streets. I’m going to pretend that I just knew the name of the intersection off the top of my head, but if you think it actually took me a few minutes just now on Google street view to figure it out, you would not be wrong.
Beacon Hill
Boston, Massachusetts
photographed 10.31.2023
shutter
The other day, someone asked me if having an architectural degree influenced my photography. (Because that degree hasn’t exactly influenced my bank account in any noticeable degree.) Anyway, I guess it did, because otherwise I would have passed right by this shutter without making a photo. You know, the way a normal person would have.
But I bet my architecture professors are real proud.
Beacon Hill
Boston, Massachusetts
photographed 10.31.2023
seeing double
I really like how the best things you see when you’re walking around are things you probably would have never even thought about until you saw them. This little collection of stuff on the sidewalk in Beacon Hill was quite interesting, even if the people giving me the side-eye while I made somewhere between 5 and 42 photographs didn’t think so. I know I’m right and I know they’re…not.
Beacon Hill
Boston, Massachusetts
photographed 10.31.2023
One Day | One Image 