Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: decomposition

2 more pictures above ! :) The day began with a thick blanket of fog that hung around until noon, accompanied by light rain on and off. Every time I got ready to go out for pictures, it would begin to rain again. As the afternoon crept along, I noticed that it was only drizzling, so I went out with my macro flash attached and made a bee-line for the woods. I wasn't looking hard for mushrooms today since I posted them several days in a row, but of course I did find some and took pictures anyway! :D (I'll save those for another day! :) Instead, I looked for something else to catch my attention...it didn't take long! On our property we have a plant called Oregon Grape, and I used to think it was Holly because the leaves look so similar. However, I learned that they are only distantly related. Like Holly, Oregon Grape is an evergreen plant, but while I was wandering around, I discovered that some leaves were dying in a most spectacularly beautiful fashion! Splashes of brilliant yellow and red, along with (fungal?) spots of black and brown, and edges eaten away by insects, I was captivated by their beauty! After looking at all of my pictures, I'm sharing my two favorites tonight. Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American writer. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms, developing a new sort of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association and mysticism, always distinctly about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), Tropic of Capricorn (1939) and The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (1949–59), all of which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris, and all of which were banned in the United States until 1961. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors. Wikipedia: Henry Miller

4 pictures above in notes! If you're anything like me, you probably thought that all plants with spikey leaves like this are Holly! It just never occurred to me that totally unrelated plants could develop the same sort of defense mechanism, but this is just one example of identical leaves on totally different plants. You may also wonder how Oregon Grape got its name, since it's obviously not a true grape, which grows on vines. This plant got its name because after its beautiful flowers are pollinated, the fruit it produces are blue berries which look just like grapes! I don't have any of my own pictures to show you because the deer and wildlife wolf them down even before they ripen, but I did find one picture from another person on ipernity! ( Garry Kinney's Oregon Grapes) If you would like to know more about Oregon Grape, Wiki has a fine page here: Wikipedia: Oregon Grape