Alien or Predator?

I have more than enough trouble trying to keep up my yard, so I don’t readily volunteer to take care of anyone else’s yard, but since I had to take care of Dawn and Rich’s yard, I thought I’d take some pictures while I was watering.

I don’t know what this flower is, but I’m strangely fond of it — though I’m not exactly sure what that might reveal about me and my personality.

9 thoughts on “Alien or Predator?”

  1. Couldn’t have said it better myself Jonathan. What is it someone said about there always beauty always having some strangeness in the proportion… Wilde wasn’t it?

  2. Well I’m not really an educated man, I’m not sure if it was Wilde or not, but I do have a quote of my own, it’s a little cliché:

    “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”

    Henry Miller said that, he was a little strange too.

  3. Thanks, jonathan, I didn’t say exactly that but suggested roughly the same thing last year in a blog entry called the Zen of Canon.

    In essence, I use my camera as a tool to make me really look at my world, especially to look at the parts of it that are beautiful.

  4. I love your photos. They’ve rekindled my love for photography.

    My main problem is that often times, my photos never seem to look like what I saw in the view finder when I took them. It’s not just that they didn’t turn out, it’s that they came out boring. I’m not sure how to explain it, except that the photos themselves seemed sterile.

  5. One of the best things about a digital camera is that it frees me to take lots and lots of pictures, most of which end up in that great digital trash can in the sky.

    For every twenty to thirty photos I take I’m lucky if I find one that I post here on my site. Part of the problem, of course, is that when we’re taking the picture we only see what we are looking at, while the camera sees everything that is in front of the lens.

    Practice and more practice seems to be the answer for me, that plus try to vary the distance from your subject.

  6. This flower is called Bee balm (Monarda didyma). It provides great structure in the garden, being about 3 -4′ tall, supposedly enhances growth and flavor of other plants in the garden and when you rub the leaves has, at least in my opinion, a fabulous scent. I think you can even use the leaves to brew a tea. It’s only drawback in the Pacific Northwest is it’s tendency to get powdery mildew.

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