Looking for Rain in My Crystal Ball

Crystal Ball - Through the Screen Porch

Looking through the Screen Porch © 2012 Bo Mackison

I never saw a discontented tree.  They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.  They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!  ~John Muir

Perhaps John Muir never saw a discontented tree, and he certainly had a long-term love affair with them, but I’m seeing many sad, very dry trees in southern Wisconsin.

While I was experimenting with a crystal ball and my camera, I took this photo of my one of my favorite trees, the red maple that we planted in our back yard in 2001. This maple is doing well since we are watering it weekly. The rest of the yard doesn’t look too perky. In fact, it looks downright parched, except for an area of green around our perennial/vegetable garden.

The weatherman I listened to this morning somehow knows — looking through HIS crystal ball — that we will get rain tomorrow evening, perhaps a quarter of an inch or so. I do hope he has some special connections and his forecast proves true. My green Midwest is no longer lush and green. It is brown and crispy.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that we were not watering the grass, only the trees. A reader informs me that most grass will survive without any moisture for about 60 days. Our last significant rainfall was in early June, so I am watching the calendar. Another two weeks of this, and we may have to add the grass to our watering schedule.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is experimenting with crystal ball photography while assessing the crispness of the grass.

Crystal Ball Photography – Trees in a Drought

Crystal Ball Photography - Red Maple

Crystal Ball Photography – Red Maple © 2012 Bo Mackison

It is difficult to realize how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our own life is associated with trees.  ~Wilson Flagg

The drought in the Midwest – the one I know the most about  – just may turn into a ravaging killer. Farmers I’ve talked to say they have maybe a week or ten days to save their crops, but only IF they get a few inches of soil soaking rain. In my area, Madison Wisconsin, nearly every one has allowed their grass to go dormant. A good thing. Grass will recover and happily green when the rains come.

Advice, straight from the website of the County Extension Service is “forget the grass, but please water your trees.”

In my neighborhood I’ve already seen four trees, all 10 to 15-year-olds, succumb to heat stress. Their leaves browned several weeks ago and now the leaves have dropped, giving several yards an eerie look of autumn.

Other trees in the neighborhood show other signs of stress –  leaf curling, especially in the highest branches, and a scattering of yellowing leaves. These trees need water. Now. If you use a watering schedule and water at night, your water bills will certainly reflect the watering of your trees, but I guarantee it is more cost-effective to water now rather than remove and replace a dead tree next spring. Just saying.

A few gardening basics will give our trees and plants the best chance to survive these difficult conditions:

1. Water your trees. Don’t wait until your trees show signs of stress. Make sure each tree receives a long soaking – duration of at least several hours – at least once a week. The most effective and easiest way to water is to use a hose on trickle. We’ll set one up at the base of a tree in the late evening, and then turn it off in the early morning. This gives adequate water and time for the roots to fully benefit from the watering. We have eight trees in our yard that we have identified as needing a weekly watering. I set up a schedule, and water a tree every night. Eight trees, seven days. It’s close enough.

2. Mulch your trees. If your trees don’t have at least a 12 inch circle of mulch around them – more if the tree is large – you are missing an opportunity to use less when watering. A heavy layer of mulch not only helps protect the roots of young trees, it also holds on to the moisture from watering for all ages of trees. This makes watering more cost-effective.

3. Grass doesn’t need watering,  unless you are establishing a new lawn. You can save your money and not feel badly. Once it begins to rain again, the grass will return to its summer green in a few weeks or months.

4. Do water the plants most important to you. I water my small perennial garden using an irrigation trickler for an hour each night. These flowers give me great pleasure and I do not want to take a chance on their health. Plus, I have several tomato and pepper plants interspersed in the flowers, and I do love to pick and eat fresh veggies from the garden.

So, think about your yard’s and garden’s priorities, and then water where needed.

Meanwhile, I’ll return to my rain dance!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is experimenting with crystal ball photography. More on that tomorrow. Today she is more concerned about the trees in her neighborhood!

Sunday Series – A Walk Through Monet’s Garden

Monet's Bridge at NYBG Exhibit

Monet’s Bridge © 2012 Bo Mackison

I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me.  ~Robert Brault

Conservatory Flowers at NYBG

Monet’s Flower Garden © 2012 Bo Mackison

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment.  My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams.  The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.  ~Abram L. Urban

Monet's Garden at NYBG

Monet’s Garden in Orange © 2012 Bo Mackison

How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.  ~Benjamin Disraeli

Monet's Garden at NYBG

Bright Flowers in Monet’s Garden © 2012 Bo Mackison

In the garden I tend to drop my thoughts here and there.  To the flowers I whisper the secrets I keep and the hopes I breathe.  I know they are there to eavesdrop for the angels.  ~Dodinsky

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  On Sundays, Bo shares a series of photographs and quotes she finds meaningful.  Sunday is a good days to enjoy a few of the colorful flower photographs I photographed earlier this summer at the New York Botanical Garden at the Monet’s Garden Exhibit.

Abandoned, Like an Empty House

Abandoned

Abandoned © 2012 Bo Mackison

Someone, and no matter who, inhabits my head like it’s an empty house, he enters, he leaves, he bangs each door behind him, powerless I put up with this ruckus.
Someone, and maybe it’s me, palms my most private thoughts, he crumples them, returns them to dust.
Someone, and it’s much later now, slowly walks across the room and, not seeing me, stops to contemplate the havoc.
Someone, and no matter where, collects the pieces of my shadow.

~ Claude Estaban, translated from the French by Joanie Mackowski

I am not in a minority when it comes to photographers, and perhaps other 2D artists as well, who have an affinity and passion for capturing doors as the main subject in some of their art. Doors are a popular subject, their metaphorical power captures our imagination and sense of discovery, too.

“What is behind that door? Why was it abandoned? Is it locked?” So many questions starts the imagination engines churning in the mind.

And the symbolism. I think in almost every culture, there is meaning in doors. As a transition, as a passage, entering from light into dark, or the opposite, leaving by way of a door, and entering into light from a dark interior. The bride once was carried across the threshold of her new home by her new husband. There are doors guarded by fierce creatures – temples come to mind, but I have seen many a library graced with twin, growling lions, or even scarier creatures.

I found this door on an abandoned farmstead in eastern Pennsylvania a few years ago. I catalogued and labeled it, but only recently pulled it out for a serious look. I immediately feel in love with the greens and reds, with the combination of the parallel slats and the vertical panels on the door. And I liked the way nature is gradually taking over the man-made structure, and adding to its abandoned feeling. Even in a color-coordinated way!

Do you photograph doors, or notice doors, or use doors in your art? Do you focus on other passages or transition architecture — gates, windows, tunnels, stairs?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She loves photographing doors, windows, stairways, gates, and other places that lead to other spaces.

Wisconsin River Sand Bars

Lake Wisconsin Sand Bars, Driftless Area, Southwest Wisconsin

Wisconsin River Sand Bars © 2012 Bo Mackison

When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and
the first of what is still to come.”  Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo has a way with words. And I love the visual that comes to me when I read his words. “Put your hand in a flowing stream.” It needs to be a river or a stream, even a creek if there’s been rain. An ocean won’t do. Nor a sea. It needs to be a fast-moving stream, flowing past, the current pushing your hand in the direction of the flow.

Have you ever hung out with a river, maybe sprawled on a boat dock that sticks its edge into the river’s middle, sprawled on your belly, head cradled in one arm, your other arm stretching out, stretching down into the flowing river. Even in a the hot summer, even in the middle of a record-breaking heat scorcher, the river water still runs cool.

Just the thought of submerging my arm into the river makes me feel cooler.

As for the quote, I love this way of saying “stay in the present.” Once the moment has passed, it has passed. And you can’t rush the future – the flowing water will reach you at the very moment of the present, whether you want it to hurry up or slow down.

Hmm, two thoughts to consider from a single quote. Leonardo was one versatile guy!

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The river scene was photographed a few miles before we crossed the Wisconsin River on the bridge at Blue River, Wisconsin when we were on our way to the Mississippi River. I never knew there was a Blue River, Wisconsin. Even sounds like the place to test “your hand in the flowing stream!”

Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is rambling on a bit, just like the rambling river waters…oh, she wants to know if you spotted all the teeny birds on the telephone wires in the photo. They are hard to see in this tiny size, but their antics are amusing and clear in the bigger photographs.