Summer Softness

Life is soft and smooth when lived gently.

- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

About the image: Taken 09-24-11 - Gateway Trail - Blacksburg, Virginia

Posting a bit of summer on a cold winter's day

Bare Trees - Reflections

This is actually the "upside down shot"

Trees reflected in the pond.

Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using your senses, your intellect, and your emotions. It means encountering your subject matter with your whole being. It means looking beyond the labels of things and discovering the remarkable world around you.

~ Freeman Patterson

About the image: Taken 12-03-11 Izaak Walton Park - Christiansburg. Virginia

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Play with life, laugh with life,

dance lightly with life, and

smile at the riddles of life,

knowing that life's only true lessons

are writ small in the margin.

- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

About the image: Taken on a foggy morning 09-25-11 - Gateway Trail - Blacksburg, Virginia

I believe this is a Female Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Not a bird a see very often so it was a thrill to see this one!

Brown Creeper Excitement

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

~David Attenboroughv

About the Image: Taken 11-03-11 as I walked along Deerfield Trail - Blacksburg, VA. It was only my 4th ever sighting of a Brown Creeper - which made it a VERY exciting day for me. They blend in so well with the trees and normally stay on the shady side that I usually have to ID by silhouette. Such neat little birds!

A Natural Explosion

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough to pay attention to the story.

~Linda Hogan

Tree Lined Path in Autumn

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege.

Use it. Dwell in possibility.

~Oprah Winfrey

Carolina Wren in the Autumn Forest

Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes - every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man.

~ Orison Swett Marden

I always hear these little wrens before I see them. They have such a beautiful voice.

Click HERE to hear it.

Bunny Rabbit - Listen

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, then you will have betrayed yourself.

-Dr. Rollo May

Tree Swallows - "Feed Me!" - Friday Feathers

The living moment is everything. ~D.H. Lawrence

White Butterfly - Wednesday Wings

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

~Soren Kierkegaard
I think this is a Cabbage White Butterfly (please correct me if I am wrong). Seen during my walk -Izaak Walton Park - Christiansburg, VA - 07-02-11

Mantis - After the Molt

As I was taking shots of the Mantis Exoskeleton I found the newly emerged Mantis.

Nature often holds up a mirror so we can see more clearly the ongoing processes of growth, renewal, and transformation in our lives.

~ Mary Ann Brussat