Scenic Wildflower Antelope Flats Road Grand Teton National Park

 

The scenic drives of Teton National Park includes meadows of wildflowers.  The photos are across the road from each other at Antelope Flats Road.

Morning Greetings Grand Teton National Park

 

This was the mountain greetings when we arrived in Jackson Wyoming for a four day vacation.

Georgian Country Flowers

 

Each year, I like to post pictures of Mary's flowers.  She is now 87 years old and still tries to nurture and care for flowers that were past down to her from her mother Eloise McArthur.  Some of these plants are over 100 years old.  I love the country charm of the old wooden fence and flowers growing out of concrete blocks.  The bottom picture will someday be a oil painting hanging on my bedroom wall.

St. Marks National Refuge Roadside Gallery

We could not stay long enough to hike the trails and there are many.  These photos are from the roadside.  My roadside gallery includes pictures I really want to paint.  The camera lenses does not bring out the brilliance of colors.  Contrary to what people think, camera's are not an artist eye and does not bring out the depth and dimensional levels of nature. 

St. Marks Lighthouse

Views of the marsh from St. Marks Lighthouse.

St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge

We visited the Wakulla unit of St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.  It was a beautiful park and very few tourist for Memorial Day.  The refuge was established in 1931 to provide wintering habitat for migratory birds. They offer a photographers club to support the Refuge and I would love to join except it is a 4 hour drive from where I live.  To attend a monthly meeting would be expensive in mileage and accommodations.  One day, one day I may still join.

John Beasley Park Magazine Beach Perfect

Bird Sand Art

 

During my morning walk on Okaloosa Island, I notice different patterns of bird prints on the sand.  The sand is very soft and very light weigh birds sink into the sand when they are walking.   I was impress with the swirls of prints.

Matanzas Beach vs Okaloosa Beaches

 

Even though the beaches at Okaloosa are gorgeous, they are not my favorite for walking.  There were no seashells, no high or low tides, no wildflowers, turtles, brown rabbits and other wildlife along the coastline.  There was too much missing of nature for my morning walks.  Atlantic ocean colors are gray mixed with various shades of blue and not the gorgeous green as the Gulf.  I prefer seeing seashells and wet sand from the tide.  I am not the type who enjoys sunbathing and laying on the beach.  I love a rocky terrine with waves splashing against the rocks and the wind blowing the tall grasses. 

Emerald Waters of Okaloosa Island

I am very grateful to my Brother-In-Law Ralph and Barbara for inviting the family to attend their 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration.  We stayed in a gorgeous condo with this view of the emerald coastline and white sandy beaches. I took these photos over several days and the water glisten with different shades of green.  I understand why the beaches of Okaloosa Island are called the Miracle Strip of the Panhandle.

Okaloosa Fishing Pier

 

The Fishing pier at Okaloosa Island.  The beaches at Okaloosa Island have been voted as the best and most beautiful beaches in the country by Southern Living readers for several years.

Euharlee Covered Bridge

The bridge is located West of Cartersville in Euharlee. This landmark recalls the days of buggies and "horseless carriages." Known as a landmark on Georgia's Covered Bridge Trail, the Euharlee Covered Bridge was built in 1886 by Washington W. King, a black contractor. There was nothing unusual about the history of the bridge except it is the state's oldest remaining covered bridge, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Palatka Country

The focal point for me is the magnitude of the cloud formation over the small farm house in the first photo.  The clouds were traveling fast, crossed the highway, separated and formed a circular pattern that could have swallowed the entire farm and surrounding fields. 

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds    

Inspirational Sunrise

 

Through Artist Eyes Opunake Surf

 

 

 

I loved the long stretch of the Opunake Beach.  The bottom is a photo I took while in New Zealand.  I painted the scene from my memory and the photo.  This landscape is the southern part of the coast line.  In the west, the sky was heavy and dark with a storm approaching.  The colors in the photo looks serene and peaceful but the photo did not capture the intensity of the approaching weather.

Deep Into the Woods Amicalola Falls

 

 

Under The Waterfall

 

'Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.
Hence the only prime
And real love-rhyme
That I know by heart,
And that leaves no smart,
Is the purl of a little valley fall
About three spans wide and two spans tall 
Over a table of solid rock,
And into a scoop of the self-same block;
The purl of a runlet that never ceases
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
With a hollow boiling voice it speaks 
And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.'

'And why gives this the only prime
Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?
And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?'

'Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
Though precisely where none ever has known,
Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
And by now with its smoothness opalized,
Is a grinking glass:
For, down that pass
My lover and I
Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,
In the burn of August, to paint the scene, 
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet's rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
Where it slipped, and it sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I thrust my arm below
Cold water in a basin or bowl, a throe
From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass we used, and the cascade's rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.

'By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours, 
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turns therefrom sipped lovers' wine.'

By Thomas Hardy

Opunake Surf Shades of Blue

The coast line of Opunake is vastly different from the white sandy beaches of Florida.  Rocky shoreline with many varieties of tall grass.  The backdrop of many shades of blue is a painter's canvas.