Month: July 2011

Early Dahlias

If you’ve been visiting for awhile you know that my favorite flowers are dahlias, so it will come as no surprise that I was thrilled to see that four five of the many dahlias were already in bloom yesterday. And though I focused on the roses because they seemed to be at their peak, I couldn’t resist also shooting some shots of the early dahlias.

This one was so bright that you’d almost think it was a bright, sunny day

Yellow Dahlia

if it weren’t for the rain soaked petals, of course.

The fire-engine red dahlia

Red Dahlia

with it’s contrasting yellow stamen seemed equally brilliant.

My favorite, though, was this

Orange Dahlia

much more subdued orange dahlia with it triangular-shaped petals. I may love this flower almost as much as the bees do.

Pt. Defiance Rose Garden

When I looked at the calendar yesterday, I suddenly realized it’s already the middle of July and I hadn’t seen a single rose at the Pt Defiance Rose Garden yet. So, between rain showers, I made a quick trip down there.

Wow, the garden was in full bloom, with nearly all the roses in bloom now. I almost imagined that they were even more beautiful because of the raindrops lingering on them:

Rose with Raindrops

Although some of the roses looked like they’d been battered by recent rain, there were enough just unfolding

Yellow Rose Unfolding

to ensure they will continue to delight visitors for weeks to come.

If you looked hard enough, you could even find whole bouquets of roses in prime condition.

Bouquet of Roses

The roses deserve to be seen in their full beauty, but I have a few pictures of other flowers I liked that I’ll publish in the next day or two.

Phyllis Baker’s There Are No Rivers

One of the books I picked up at The University of Washington Bookstore Saturday was There Are No Rivers by Phyllis Baker. Since I had a doctor’s appointment and it was the shortest of the books, consisting of 51 short poems, I decided that I would tackle that one first. As usual, I got to the doctor’s office early and had plenty of time to read, and even got time between tests to read some more. To make a short story short, I managed to finish it in a single day.

Although I certainly enjoyed reading the poems more than I would have enjoyed reading anything I found in the doctor’s office, I was rather disappointed by the book. I bought the book because I was attracted by short poems like this one in the first section of the book:

LEAVING IN HIGH MORNING

I made the bed
and folded up all hope
as neatly as the blankets,
pushed my fears into bags
and fed them to the car.

In the cold and hunger
I forgot to straighten
the life I left.

As some of you may have noticed, I am particularly drawn to works that share my love of the Pacific Northwest, not least because they often help me to see it more clearly than I have seen it before I read the book. Phyllis Baker has apparently lived many of the same places I have, like in the section entitled Grays Harbor 1994-2004. And she certainly touches on my memory of the area in poems like “Strong Rain,” “The Habit of Moss,” and “The Presence of Water” since I quickly decided that the area was too wet for me even though I’d grown up in Seattle where it sometimes seems to rain continually for nine months of the year. Unfortunately, a poem that describes a raging, flooding river that ends

6
Morning .
Soft blowy rain
can’t hurt us now.
Why won’t it stop?

neither moves me nor allows me to see Grays Harbor in a new way.

Perhaps it says more about my own taste in poetry than it does Baker’s poetry, but even though her lines are short and precise too many of the poems lack the concrete imagery that I increasingly demand in a poem. It’s the moment that I want to see captured; not the thought about that moment.

A Visit to Magnuson Park

When I read an article in the Seattle Times saying that Magnuson Park was one of the best places to find dragonflies, I immediately knew that I would have to go there on a warm summer day. As it turned out, Saturday was that day.

I like shooting dragonflies because it’s challenging, and this Saturday proved no different than usual. Dragonflies seldom stay in one spot, and their flight is unpredictable. They’re so small that the camera, more often than not, will choose to autofocus on anything but the dragonfly, particularly when it’s in flight.

I didn’t manage to get a single shot of a dragonfly in flight, but I did see a lot of them and I did manage to get some shots of them sitting on bent-over reeds,

Dragonfly

on leaves,

Dragonfly

and on logs.

Dragonfly

There were several bonuses on the trail, too, like this wild flower, with delicate stamen,

Purple Wildflower

and hardy daisies, rising above the tall grasses.

Wild Daisies

And though there didn’t appear to be any of the migrating birds the plaque said the ponds supported, there were lots of pairs of goldfinches

female American Goldfinch

that seemed to claim this as home.

male American Goldfinch

It was a beautiful day capped by a visit to a visit to a favorite Greek restaurant in the UW District and a stop at the UW Bookstore for nearly a $100 in local poetry books.