Hollyhock in Two Perspectives

Hollyhock in Two Perspectives

Hollyhock in Two Perspectives © 2012 Bo Mackison

What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order. ~ Katherine Paterson

Every weekday I walk around Strickers Pond in the early morning, but I do not bring a camera. On the weekend, I walk the same path, camera in hand. Those two kinds of very different walking experiences give me two perspectives.

I walk with a friend on weekdays and I don’t carry my camera. It would be too tempting to either constantly stop for photo ops, or to not stop and carry the feelings of what “might have been” along on our walk. Plus our plan is to walk at a speed designed to give our bodies a bit of a work-out. I have yet learned how to combine the two terms – brisk walk and taking photographs – successfully.

I balance my photo urges on my weekday walks by bringing my camera along on my weekend walks with Sherpa. He is now an expert at the walking-with-camera-poised for-action routine, he barely notices my frequent, abrupt halts. In fact, he has become so good, he now calls my attention to scenes I miss, in case I want some photographs. (Sherpa does his serious walking at the gym where there are no interruptions of the spouse + camera variety.)

I think the compromise is working well. Five days a week, I see the pond from the perspective of a moving body. On the weekend, I return and see the same pond from the view of a photographer – always on the look out for a soaring egret, a bit of interesting texture or shadow, a new wildflower that has opened for the first time this season.

Last Friday we passed a dozen hollyhock plants in bloom – whites, pinks, creams. My walking partner and I did pause to take in the deep colors, then we continued our walk.

And what was so special about seeing those blossoms? It wasn’t that they were a wonderful subject for a future photo session.

No.

It was listening to the memories that the flowers evoked. I listened as my friend told me about the hollyhocks her father grew in the gardens of her childhood, how a relative had shown her how to make a dolly from the flower – one blossom as the skirt and another as the doll’s bonnet. I remembered making the the same Hollyhock dollies with my great-grandmother.

It was a lovely experience, reminiscing about vintage gardens and old-fashioned flowers, about grandparents and parents who shared not only their love, but the love of their gardens. I couldn’t have taken that special conversation with my camera, but I will remember it.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is enjoying the early morning walks in Wisconsin – camera with AND camera without.

Parting Gifts from the Desert

Macro Torch Cactus

Torch Cactus © 2012 Bo Mackison

My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth. ~ Lady Bird Johnson

I am on the home stretch — literally. In 36 hours, I will point my car towards the east, and then north, to begin the long drive home. Happily, Sherpa is flying in tomorrow, so no one has to drive alone for three and a half days.

I had today and tomorrow scheduled with packing, returning library books, changing addresses, saying good byes with neighbors and arranging for the many things that need arranging before a long trip.

And then I received an email from the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. They were sending a short note to all their members  to let us now that the dazzling “Fireworks Cacti” were now in full bloom, and would be for only a few days.

So instead of following my original plans, I made room in my schedule for a three-hour photo shoot of some of the most unusual cactus flowers I have ever seen.  The flowers are in all the warm colors one associates with desert and heat — yellows, hot pinks, oranges, reds. Once I saw the cacti all in bloom, I had a very difficult time leaving. (I finally left after I’d taken over 600 photos, but only because I had filled my 16 gig memory card — and that’s a huge card!)

So — the cactus are called Torch Cactus, and they bloom for only a few days each year. They are not a native plant to the Sonoran desert, but they thrive here, and have become a landscape favorite because of their hardiness and beautiful color displays.

I promise. There are many more amazing photographs of these very photogenic flowers to come.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She traveled to Arizona to live and photograph the desert’s beauty for one hundred days. Getting ready for a drive.

Scallops of Pink Lupine

Scallops of Pink

Scallops of Pink © 2008 Bo Mackison

Does anyone remember reading the book Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney? It is a children’s book written in the early 1980s, popular when my children were little. Miss Rumphius was a woman who wanted to do three things in her life – travel the world, live by the sea when she grew older, and make the world a better place. She easily accomplished the first two, but was a little stumped on how to accomplish her third goal until she hit upon the idea of scattering lupine seeds wherever she went. Wow! She must have made her part of the world really beautiful. Certainly a better place, too.

I think these flowers are pretty spectacular, standing about 3 feet high. This is an eastern Lupine, grows east of the Mississippi River. There are about 200 lupines in the family, and many of them are strictly West Coast plants. Many more are native only to California. This sweetie blooms from now until early June, though if the plant is dead-headed it will send up a second, though less spectacular, blossom.