Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: bark

(+13 insets!) *sheepish grin* Sorry, I got a little carried away but I think you'll like them! :D (please view large for all the neato details!) It rained and it rained and it rained, rained, rained! On and off all day yesterday and then into the evening. And as I fell asleep last night, I was lulled into dreams by the pattering of droplets on the windows. Before opening my eyes this morning I was gently guided into wakefulness with the tap of rain on the panes of glass. Will it ever end? Walking down to the gate this morning to open the gate for Steve's drive in a little while, I surveyed the damage to our road repairs. Enough rain has come down that our work to fix the road has been reversed in some places. I fixed the worst spot and was pleased to see the water flowing off the road again. There were many other places that needed attention though. Hmm. Steve will need to do some touch-ups at some point. The next week promises to continue the ongoing series of spring storms and waiting on ruts in the road is never a good thing. Steve left early to take the RV trailer into a professional shop today! He rescheduled once due to the rain but decided to go ahead today, rain and mud be damned! We hooked up the truck yesterday and today he drove carefully and confidently down our driveway and on to Medford. I got a cheerful call from him to let me know that everything had gone great and they'd have the trailer's maintenance completed by mid-week. Hooray! This is a crucial step before we go on our first camping trip. We need to know that the undercarriage is ship-shape. They will be repacking the bearings and doing a variety of other work which we'd like seasoned eyes to carry out. Steve's extremely handy but all of this is new to him and we both agreed that it should be looked at by a pro who knows what they are doing. (As it turned out, all of the brake pads were worn almost down to the plates--it was a good thing we had everything checked!) Did you happen to notice that it's Macro Monday?! YES!! This week's theme is "bark" and bark is what you'll get! When I was up on the top of our ridgeline yesterday at one point I noticed the time and told Steve I'd be right down, "10 minutes max!" Silly wabbit, I had a camera in my hand! I need to remember that if I have my camera I need to add more time to my estimation! Heh. As I headed back along the ridge to the trail down to the house, I took lots of pictures of different bark that I saw. Is it my fault there were so many interesting bark pictures to take?! Ponderosa pine and oak bark on healthy trees, charred bark on dead trees, burned bark on the ground, and the insides of bark too! I even found some bark that has termite trails on it and a woodpecker hole! It was twenty minutes before I scurried in the door with a bashful expression on my face...heh. :D Along with my main picture--which shows charred oak bark and a bit of bare trunk--I'm sharing an embarrassing number of insets! I hope you enjoy the show! Pam, I thought it would be fun to look in your photo stream for "bark" and I found one that would work for Macro Monday! Your ice-covered Redbud bark is wonderful and so interesting to look at with its fine, glossy coat! Many kinds of lichen are visible too, so pretty in all their many colors! I hope your day is going well and your house isn't floating away in the rain! :D *BIG HUGS* Explored on 4/9/19, highest placement, #2.

(please view large!) (+8 insets!) What is your favorite kind of picture to take? Are you drawn to landscapes or street photography? Do you enjoy nature photography of all types or do you prefer city-based themes? Are you a "Jack of all trades" because any type of photography is interesting to you? For me It's always been macro. Ever since I was a little kid in San Francisco, I've loved discovering tiny things. I used to love walking up our neighborhood street and turning over bricks to see what was underneath. Salamanders, ants, spiders, bugs, slugs and snails, and sometimes even centipedes. Lots of mushrooms, weird fungus and molds, it was all interesting to me. I loved finding the smallest flowers in the cracks of the sidewalk and I would collect a miniature bouquet to present to my mother with an ecstatic, "Mom, I brought you a mouse bouquet!" She loved them and put her tiny flowers into a shot glass and placed it on the kitchen table for all to see. Climbing around Mt. Davidson, which was our backyard, I spent hours exploring the different areas and learning about the countless things that grew there. Three of the things I love are tiny details, textures and abstracts. As a kid, I would hold a leaf up to my nose and just stare. The wonderful details, textures and abstracts I saw were so beautiful and fascinating to me, but it's hard to tell someone about these things. You have to show them. And still, people could rarely see what I did...that was pretty frustrating. Discovering macro photography changed everything. For the first time I could finally show everyone exactly what I was looking at! I could zero in on tiny creatures or flowers or I could show the textures of a subject. Abstracts were finally something I could photograph and allow the viewer to ponder and question. And by learning how to use a specialized macro lens, the magic of bokeh can be added into the mix for a magical touch I'd never considered as a child. A new way to explore the world...how cool is that? What adventure! What freedom! Macro photography opens the door to a universe of endless possibilities on a very small scale. That is why it's my favorite kind of photography. Today's picture is another "caught" leaf, but I think it's pretty special because it requires looking closer. It's also both a texture picture and an abstract because at first it's hard to see what it is. A few weeks ago, I was wandering around in our lower forest. At one point I looked up and noticed an Oak leaf stuck on the trunk of a Ponderosa pine tree. Did you know that pine trees can have different looking bark? That never occurred to me until I took a good look at our pine trees. Ponderosa pine bark looks like jigsaw puzzle pieces! I know you don't believe me, so please take a look at the insets so I can show you! The leaf in today's picture got stuck on one of the "puzzle pieces"! Pam, I hope that all is well with you today and that you are happy and comfortable. Give your dogs some pats from me and tell them that they're doing a great job being a good friend to you. I hope they give you lots of good energy and put a smile on your face! I am thinking of you all the time! :) Explored on 12/27/18, highest placement, #6.

(2 Insets above!) Brrrr...it's really starting to get cold around here! I got up several times during the night to turn up my floor heater which was being very stubborn. It didn't want to budge from 64°F/18°C. I'd turn up the heater with the aim of warming up to about 68°F/20°C. The next time I woke up I'd check the temperature and it would only be one degree warmer, ARGH! Personally I don't mind. In fact, there are few things more wonderful than burrowing under a luxurious pile of blankets. But I do worry about Pumpkin getting chilly. Her cage, which hangs from the ceiling, is covered with towels at night to keep the heat in, and she sleeps in her fleece-lined Happy Hut, AND she's covered with extremely warm down feathers, but I still worry about her feeling the least bit cold. So the heater and I waged war all night long and when my darling little peeper woke me up at 5 till 7am, it was FINALLY sitting at 68°F/20°C. MEH! It was raining this morning but nothing about it was inviting today. Looking out at the murky, steel-grey sky, I made sure to bundle up extra warmly before I went out. The thermometer read 34°F/1°C but it sure felt a lot colder to me. I stretched inside, grabbed my umbrella and went out for my walk. I was pleasantly surprised to find that is was wonderful outside, with autumn smells and a nice pattering of rain on my umbrella. Enjoying my walk up and down our road, I kept track of my laps by moving white pebbles from one rock slab to the other. I couldn't help thinking about yesterday morning's visitor. Guess who stopped by to leave another outrageously RUDE calling card? ON ONE OF MY ROCK SLABS, no less! I stood goggling at what I saw, totally aghast. Just imagine if people did that to one another to establish territory...totally unacceptable! I couldn't stop laughing and as I sent the fox poos flying off into the grass in all directions. "You're a BAD FOX! You're a VERY BAD FOX! And now I'm going to send you into the CORN FIELD!" (I love that episode of the classic Twilight Zone with Billy Mummy and use that quote whenever I can! ) Off I go down the road...and then...why..."IT'S SNOWING!!! IT'S SNOWING!!!!" I began to sing the words and laughed out loud, "IT'S SNOWING! IT'S SNOWING!!!" It was not possible to keep my inner child from giggling, singing and bouncing up and down as we looked out at the world around us. The world had grown quiet now, as the rain turned to snow and fell in fat blobs to melt instantly upon touching the ground. What a wondrous thing to see this remarkable change before my eyes. The temperature was just not cold enough to keep forming snow though. But for a few magical moments, the snow drifted down, changing back and forth from rain to snow and back again. Such a joy. This experience will never get old to me because I was born and raised in San Francisco. For about 40 years of my life I lived in the City and around the Bay Area, where the weather is so consistently...BORING. San Francisco rarely gets very hot or very cold, so I wanted dearly to live in a place with actual seasons. As I felt the rain drops again patter on my umbrella, I smiled with gratefully because I loved experiencing this so much. Today's picture is a lovely flake of manzanita bark glowing in the afternoon sun. I saw this as I was heading back down the Upper Table Rock trail a few weeks back. Have you ever seen manzanita trees before? They have the most wonderful, silky smooth bark, and every year they shed the last year's layer to expose the new layer. The skin flakes off in beautiful curls and fun shapes that are wonderful to see and hold in your hand. (I will include some insets for you to get a better view!) Pam, does manzanita grow where you live? I imagine you hugging your resident trees like I do, sitting in branches from time to time and appreciating their beauty. I bet you would have fun discovering the little clumps of moss that form at the bases sometimes or in the divots that form here and there. These lovely trees would surely put a smile on your face. I hope you are doing well today and I am sending my love and healing energy to you! Explored on 12/2/18, highest placement, #3.

12 more pictures in notes above! :) I was planning on taking the dogs on a walk around the lower forest today, but I ended up only about 100 feet from the house when I saw a mossy stump and wanted to investigate more closely. No mushrooms. Then I noticed some pine cones and thought they would make a very nice subject. After I spent some time taking pictures, I saw that the bark on the pine tree was very interesting and took a closer look. What a surprise! Did you know that pine trees can have all kinds of different bark? I completely forgot that I'd seen trees with bark like this before, but even then, I didn't look very closely. Ponderosa Pine trees have bark like layered jigsaw puzzle pieces!! To prove the point, see the inset images or the next two pictures (with their insets). Totally fascinated, I studied the bark carefully, gently removing a piece or two, and discovering that many pieces can be removed and then replaced on the tree! I spent time trying to show how much the layers resemble shale (a type of fine-grained sedimentary rock). Very interesting, isn't it?! The bark is fun to look at too, with beautiful textures and colors. I chose the picture above for my Picture of the Day because it's such an picturesque abstract and looks like a pterodactyl to me! :) From Wiki: Pinus ponderosa, commonly known as the ponderosa pine, bull pine, blackjack pine, or western yellow pine, is a very large pine tree of variable habit native to western North America, but widespread throughout the temperate world. It was first described by David Douglas in 1826, from eastern Washington near present-day Spokane. It is the official state tree of the State of Montana. The Ponderosa Pine is a large coniferous evergreen tree. The bark helps to distinguish it from other species. Mature individuals have cinnamon-red bark with black crevices. Younger trees have black to reddish-brown bark. The tree can often be identified by its characteristic long needles that grow in tufts of two to four (or five) depending on subspecies. Deepak Chopra (born October 22, 1947) is an Indian-American physician, a holistic health/New Age guru, and alternative medicine practitioner. Chopra has taught at the medical schools of Tufts University, Boston University and Harvard University. He became Chief of Staff at the New England Memorial Hospital (NEMH) in Massachusetts, before establishing a private practice. In 1985, Chopra met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who invited him to study Ayurveda. Chopra left his position at the NEMH and became the founding president of the American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine, and was later named medical director of the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center. Wikipedia: Deepak Chopra

There are gorgeous textures everywhere, including palm trees! Even though this is a fairly plain-looking image, the texture is very interesting to me, so craggy and cracked! This image was taken during my trip to San Francisco during September 12-15, 2011.

This image was taken during the MeetUp hike to Crater Lake: Wizard Island

This image was taken on the MeetUp hike to Crater Lake: Wizard Island

This image was taken during the MeetUp Mountain Lake Hike on August 21, 2011.

This image was taken during the MeetUp hike around one edge of Howard Prairie Lake on August 7, 2011.

I had fun playing with a colorizing filter when I was processing a few of my images. This image was taken during the MeetUp hike to Howard Prairie Lake on August 11, 2011

I had fun playing with a colorizing filter when I was processing a few of my images. This image was taken during the MeetUp hike to Howard Prairie Lake on August 11, 2011

Winner of FlickrDuel contest: +10 Wins: Natural Monochrome This image was taken during the MeetUp hike to Howard Prairie Lake on August 11, 2011

This image was taken during the MeetUp hike to Howard Prairie Lake on August 11, 2011

Photographed on the Rogue Gorge Trail, near Union Creek, Southern Oregon