Thursday, October 6, 2011

Plane As Day*



I allowed two hours Tuesday for my walk and used a route I know will take about that much time to cover. I stopped by the creek to look for turtles; there were none, possibly because the creek was too shallow. I crossed another portion of the Coke Lot to check out the old mulberry tree in yesterday's post, then went to look at the trees surrounding another of the parking lots.

The trees don't seem to show as much bright color as they did a year ago, but in many spots they are beautiful, nonetheless. I enjoy the way the sunlight accents the color of the yellow leaves and the tiny bits of red, but I think I enjoy the way the trees' trunks undulate and define the positive and negative space of the picture even more.

 

The sycamore tree seems to be holding onto summer. It's leaves are still green and standing under the tree was like entering a good watercolor; clear and liquid with defined edges, a master of the technique bringing the viewer into the warmth and smell of the sycamore "plane as day".

*With a small bow to Small Glass Planet  which introduced me to an alternative name for the sycamore tree.

4 comments:

dive said...

Undulate is a great word to read at this time of the morning, Speedway.
And yes, that's definitely a Western (American) Plane doing it's barky thang in the bottom photograph, the same as planes do in the rest of the world. True sycamores (pseudoplatanus - fake planes) don't do that; they just have plane-like leaves.

Speedway said...

Who'da thunk it, Dive? "Undulate" a casual part of my vocabulary and "thang" a part of yours! Ha! I have to admit, I kept recalling the sycamore as "plank" tree and had to remember it with little jets as fruits to get it right.

dive said...

Your mind is a strange and wonderful place, Speedway.
As for "thang" … That's just too many years of blogging with Americans.

Speedway said...

Ah, I bet you say that to all your ladies.