Capitol at Dusk

Capitol at Dusk

Capitol at Dusk ©2008 Bo Mackison

Walked around the Capitol Square on Monday evening. It wasn’t your typical mid-June stroll – I had on jeans and a heavy sweatshirt – but it was a pleasant night, a tad windy. I dragged my tripod and camera around for a couple of hours. Shot the sunset over Lake Mendota, the flooding in the Tenney Locks area, and finally wandered around the Capitol.

Set this up at dusk just as the Capitol Building’s lights turned on, and managed this shot while positioned in the middle of Washington Avenue. The drivers of the passing cars were kind enough to avoid hitting me and my tripod, though “my Sherpa” was keeping watch.. No editing this time.

Wildflowers Blooming in the Prairies

Spiderwort

Spiderwort ©2008 Bo Mackison

Spiderwort is a common plant throughout Wisconsin, blooms from now until September. If you want to enjoy this flower, you have to visit before mid-day and each flower only lasts one day. It becomes droopy in the afternoon, and shrivels and disappears into a sticky, liquified mass by nightfall.

Bitsy Yellow Hearts All 'Round

Bitsy Yellow Hearts All ‘Round ©2008 Bo Mackison

The Prairie Rose is another frequent Wisconsin flower, blooms from late May through late July. I love it under a macro lens – lots of bitsy yellow hearts spring out of its center.  In late summer, the flower heads transform into rose hips which are small, edible fruits. They stay on the plant through the winter and provide food  for birds and small mammals during the snowy months.

Native Americans collected the hips and used them medicinally, often as a treatment for headaches or stomach problems. The Native Americans and early pioneers used the wild rose for food, and a “health food” at that. Rose hips have 24 times more Vitamin C per unit than orange juice.  People still collect the hips for vitamin supplements, the rose petals for rose petal soup and rose petal jam is also made using a combination of the petals and lemon.

White Wild Indigo

White Wild Indigo ©2008 Bo Mackison

This is the White Wild Indigo plant. It rises 3 to 6 feet from the prairie floor and is currently waving its long flower covered spires across the prairie landscape.  The sap of the wild indigo has a blue dye and was often used as a substitute for the true indigo plant. It was also used as a treatment for lung diseases by Native Americans in the northcentral United States, though in larger quantities it is poisonous.

Columbines in the Garden

Red Columbine

Red Columbine ©2008 Bo Mackison

I have collected seed from these columbine plants and grown them every year since I have had a home of my own. The original plants were cultivated by my grandfather in Illinois. I gathered seeds from his plants beginning in 1979 and have grown them in several gardens in Milwaukee and Madison.

Wild Columbine

Wild Columbine © 2008 Bo Mackison

They bloom from late May through early July and are a favorite with long-tongued bees and the hummingbirds.

Red Columbine

Columbine © 2008 Bo Mackison

Even the bumblebees get in the act to get the nectar, though they cheat. Since they can’t reach the nectar because of the columbine’s long slender tubes, they bite holes in the ends of the spurs to get some of the sweet stuff. More than one way to beat Mother Nature . . .

Blue Star

Blue Star and Shadow Bike

Blue Star and Shadow Bike © 2008 Bo Mackison

Another shadow photo. Love the abstract quality of the lines. Madison is a big biking town with well maintained bike paths and routes nearly anywhere you may want to go. In this day of the $4 a gallon gas, there are even more bikes on the streets than ever before. There are even those hardy souls who bike year round, – yes, even with an annual snowfall of over 100 inches – but I prefer to think of myself as saner and wimpier, and my bike stays indoors when the snow flies.

Me and My Sherpa

Today is one of those milestone days, the special ones people celebrate because so many years ago on this certain date, a special event happened.

Today is a special day for my Sherpa and me.

My Sherpa is the guy who hangs around with me and lugs my camera gear when we go on our weekend photo shoots. I’m the one that gets to ooh and aah and click the shutter, and my Sherpa is the one that cheers me on. He’s also the one that usually pulls out the checkbook at the camera supply store and signs the receipt. He’s the one that says, “Go for it!” when I get crazy ideas.

Sherpa and Me

Sherpa and Me © 2008 Bo Mackison

Sometimes we get tired and feel rather down on the ground and spend days searching for the best way to climb all those stairs that make our knees ache. But together we climb to the top, and it’s doable because we don’t have to go it alone. We struggle upwards together.

Me and My Sherpa

Shadow Play, Me and My Sherpa © 2008 Bo Mackison

Other times we’ve made it to the top and we stand together and cheer. Cheer for the really good parts of life and cheer because we are lucky to share our lives this time around. Cheer because we’ve fought the hard parts and survived – and survived to smile again.

32 years ago today, it was 90 degrees in central Illinois and together we stood in a packed church and while I sobbed and he cracked jokes, we both managed to say “I do” at the right time. We both made a promise to do our best, to live our lives together, to be there for each other – good times, bad times, sickness, health. So far we’ve done just that.

And so today we celebrate . . . because life is good. Together.