Fighting the approach of winter

It's clear that fighting the change of seasons is a losing battle, unless you want to count the victories of artificial interior climate. Sometimes, though, it seems as if parts of nature work at resisting the inevitable. I had that thought when I spotted some daisies blooming amid a carpet of dead leaves. They weren't quite up to the level of the phrase "fresh as a daisy", but still pretty impressive. Blooming now? Really? With a hard freeze on the way and all the deciduous trees ridding themselves of the burden of photosynthesis factories that can't operate efficiently during the short days with sun low in the sky?

This sight greeted me after I voted today, so I grabbed a camera to record it. This hasn't been an autumn of grand colors and perfect leaf specimens, but it seems to me that there's beauty to be found in imperfections, stages of life, and evolution. A kind of grandeur in the challenging search for a new look. I also like the discipline of creating when I'm close to home, not surrounded by exotic vistas.

After playing with the daisy, I took a careful look upward to see if I could find anything interesting. Insects have done quite a number on the leaves this year.

Next, a horizontal view accentuates the layers of shrubbery. Quite heavy egg laying and feasting must have occurred in this wing of the insect housing complex.

One lonely, withered brown hanger-on, surrounded by a bit of diffuse color.

And finally, a slightly different view of the same scene yields a completely different background.

I haven't really seen or created anything qualitatively different from what countless other people have seen and rendered, yet I feel a certain satisfaction simply in having looked for myself and tried to observe a little more than I managed the last time. I may be in the autumn of my own life, but I'd rather try to bloom like that daisy than fall to the ground like the oak leaves.

Permalink: http://jilcp.blogspot.com/2012/11/fighting-approach-of-winter.html

www.jilcp.com