The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

A national best seller and yet another Michael Pollan book that has won me over. Pollan focuses on four main plants that owe their current abundance to the cultivation of humans. In turn we owe a lot of our current abundance to them as well. I enjoyed how beautiful the writing was throughout the book, and especially enjoyed the idea of today's gardener being somewhat of a modern alchemist, turning dusty plants into ripe gold. For anyone that has an interest in botany, genetics, and gardening, this book was a fun and fairly quick read.

Tilt Shift

I gave fake tilt shift photography a try...the first 3 photos I did not take...just tried the tilt shift technique on them...The last I took from an airplane coming home from Hawaii. I think it worked the best. I'm not sure if it's my technique or my source photos or both...but I'm not all that happy with the results yet. Perhaps there's not enough blur. Anyway let me know what you think. If your wondering what tilt shift photography is google it for some good examples.

Photo Highlights

My camera is broken (shutter mechanism is not working). So I thought I'd post some of my favorite photos in it's memory. Some of the source photos were taken on Mom's or Matthew's camera though.

I've been experimenting with HDR photography and High Key photos. Let me know what you think.

Persimmons HDR 01

(Matthew has made an HDR with this crop that I like better)

Persimmons HDR 02

Persimmons HDR 03

Pomegranates and Ashes 01

Pomegranates and Ashes 02

Umpqua Hot Springs HDR 01

Tunnel Falls HDR 01

Chemical Warfare

It jumps out of grasp

It’s getting dark. In a flash, I notice it.  It’s tall.  It’s beckoning me.  My pulse races, yet I continue.  Just as I think I will reach it, it jumps out of grasp.  No matter how fast I run, it gets away.   Unless…good, the next street light is burnt out.

V

Do you guys remember "V"?  Anyway ABC is giving the series a refresh and the premiere is tonight.  I remember watching it as a kid but not much more.  Here's a preview.

The End - The Beginning

Eventually they were told about the comet.  "Get supplies... inside...anything."  Too late.  Food, water, gone, procured for Project Second Genesis...  our progenitors.  Humanity's survival left no alternative.  Now, just west of dawn, the seemingly endless night ending, we prepare to return, and fear, could anything survive above? Cold, dark, desolate.  Are they waiting?

Legend tells of those who fled deep into the earth, leaving us destitute, leaving us to die.  Someday they'll crawl from their culvert, after centuries of endless winter nights, to claim our world.  Remember their machinations, their forked tongues.  When dawn returns we'll be waiting, to redirect the comet's fury.

Despite training

San Quinten Prison

It's too hot

Billy Cowered

They'd searched for years.

Low Tide

Stream

Dad's Story

My computer became self aware

Overslept

Hawaiian bird

Hawaiian bird, eyes bigger than mouth,  watching fish.  Quietly, slowly, he slinks down the lava rock like a cat ready to pounce. SPLASH!  Fish is too big for mouth.  Day after day he repeats his attempted meal.  Failure after failure bird grows thinner and thinner.    Jump! SPLASH!   Fish eats bird.

They'd searched for years

They'd searched for years.  Investors, like their hair, thinned over time.  Finally they gazed upon it, transfixed.   More beautiful than imagined, more precious than the gold that comprised it.  They stared at it, then each other with greed in their eyes, malice in their hearts.  None lived to claim it.

They attacked time after time

They attacked time after time, destroying our fortifications as fast as we could rebuild them.  Our battle was hopeless, our enemy relentless and indomitable, ever advancing, full of mindless destruction. Still we battle on.  They will never cease, neither will we, well, at least not until the tide goes out.