The Buttonball Tree, Again...

OK so this is SO cool!  I knew I had this photograph and I just had to find it!  I showed you the drawing of the family farmhouse in Guilford in my Buttonball post two days ago, and there are two Buttonball trees in the drawing.  We are standing on the remains of the tree to the right!  What an unbelievable photograph this is!  Everyone in their Sunday best, who came out for a photograph of all of us standing on the remains of the giant Buttonball that had just been cut down!  And then there are the cars in the driveway as well.  My mom took this photograph and it is perfect!  And then she carefully wrote everyone's names at the bottom of the print.  Buttonball farm, indeed!  This is an extra large image so please click on it.

 

If It's Spring..

Every Spring I look forward to the first signs of crocus coming up out of the ground in our garden next to the house.  I think that seeing them today was such a surprise because these shoots are only about one inch tall!  I don't think I have ever seen them this short!  It may be because we really cleaned out the garden carefully last fall.   When the garden wasn't completely cleaned out, then the very short shoots would be covered with leaves and we wouldn't see the shoots until long after they got much taller.  So it is pretty much same old, same old, but actually, Spring never gets old!

 

What is This?

Anyone know what this is?  I didn't know what it is when I first saw it.  I was walking along the harbor on my usual route and I noticed next to the sidewalk hundreds of little round broken balls of soft stuff all over the grass.  I did find two of these that were still hard and still together.  I couldn't believe how many of these there were.  I have never noticed anything like this before on my walks all the years I have lived here. And then it hit me!  These beautiful trees all in a line that I have photographed before are Sycamore trees!  And Sycamore trees are called "Buttonball" trees!  This is a buttonball!  I was stunned.  I have heard this name for these trees all my life!  You know why?  Because of my sister's and me and our grandparents.  The family farm in Guilford, Connecticut is called "Buttonball Farm."  We have known of this all our lives and I bet none of us have ever seen a buttonball.

In 1939 an artist in Guilford named Charles D. Hubbard published a book called "Old Guilford" filled with stunning pen and ink drawings of important buildings and places in Guilford.  Not only did he do the drawings, but he did all the hand lettering as well!  Read the text above in the page I copied and learn about our family farm.  Sadly it was sold years ago and is no longer ours and the surrounding lands and fields are gone as well.  But in this illustration are two giant Buttonball trees for which the farm is named.

 

Similar Scene, New View

On my walk the other day, I spoke of the sun being higher and so photographing out over the harbor directly into the sun didn't seem to offer any photographs at all.  So I was looking where I was walking instead, and suddenly I saw this tree, bent at the top.  All the other trees stick up straight.  And I was fascinated that I had never noticed this bent tree before.  It was so bent that I thought it would make a photograph, somehow.  So this is that image and you will recognize in the background a group of trees that I have photographed so many times before but usually as a horizontal photograph.  I decided that the colors in the image were distracting, and so converted this image to black and white.  Black and white is better at showing the form of things, because of there not being color as a distraction.  

 

A House and Shadows

I went for my walk this afternoon, but I went much earlier so the sun was higher in the sky.  When I looked at the harbor, I didn't see anything that I liked, so I started looking at things on the other side of the street.  So you will laugh at this story.  I saw the dark shadows of trees on the side of thehouse and thought there might be "something" there.  So I moved a little to the left of where I had been standing and lifted the camera to my eye and was stunned!  I had not seen the dark black shadow of the tree I was next to, going across the road!  Completely missed it with my eyes, but it leaped out at me in the camera's viewfinder.  So I find this interesting because it seems as if something, or some force is creeping up to the house.  I am guessing you can feel this, and I am not that good with words when talking about my photographs.  Hope you find this interesting.

 

The Leica Lens

Not a great photograph, actually, but beautiful in its way and interesting because it is a bit soft in it's sharpness, and the edges of the image are out of focus.  This is that old lens from my old Leica that I adapted with a couple of lens adapters to my modern SONY a7 III.  The last time you saw that lens on the camera, it was fastened with gaffer tape!  The adapter is more professional looking now.  So the above photo is interesting but not great.  I will continue to photograph with it and will only show you photographs where the soft focus lens really adds something to the image.

So here are two photographs of the Leica lens on my SONY.  These images show a more professional job of temporarily adapting this old lens to the new camera.  I am proud of the job I did putting this all together so it looks professional.

 

"A Drop of Ink in a Glass of Water..."

As many of you know, I am a die hard fountain pen user.  I am also a huge fan of the band "The National."  So often times I have the music and lyrics going through my head, because that's what music does to me.  To save money by not buying ink cartridges for my pens, I refill them with ink from bottles.  I have a special blunt ended syringe, and I suction the ink out of a bottle and then inject through the opening in the cartridge.  I do this a lot because I write a lot.  So the other day I was cleaning my syringe after filling some cartridges.  I am using purple ink in two of my fountain pens.  And then the lyric came to me from the National's song "Green Gloves."  So I took my syringe and dropped some ink into a glass of water.  Here is the result.  The lyric “like a drop of ink in a glass of water” is associated with the song “Green Gloves” by The National, from their 2007 album Boxer. The image is a phrase often used to describe how the music or feeling of the track spreads and deepens. The metaphor fits the band’s style: emotions slowly spreading and darkening the mood, like ink diffusing through water.