Monahans after the rain
When we drove into the town of Monahans in west Texas on June 14th it was too late in the afternoon for us to continue the short distance to the attraction that had brought us there: Monahans Sandhills State Park. We could see that it had rained in the area that afternoon, and what effect that had had on the dunes became clear only the next morning. How differently textured the sand was then from the way we’d seen it in 2014 when we’d visited on the afternoon of April 12th and the morning of April 13th.
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
New Zealand: panache
How could I not record the panache of toetoe (pronounced in Māori tó-eh-tó-eh, placed in botany in the genus Austroderia) at the Orokonui Ecosanctuary northeast of Dunedin on February 27th?
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
Like a green snake in the water
The sinuous algae you see here looked to me on July 25th, and still today, like a green snake in the water of Bull Creek. Notice the tiny aquatic insects. The leaf may be from a cedar elm tree (Ulmus crassifolia).
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
New Zealand: the mountain steams, the water steams
Frying Pan Lake in the Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley on New Zealand’s North Island is “deadly scalding and one of the largest hot springs in the world.” We visited it on March 5th. Below is a closer view of the shallows along one edge of the lake.
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
New Zealand: weaving
Do a search for Māori weaving and you’ll turn up plenty. What you see in today’s picture, though, is nature’s own weaving in New Zealand in the form of some dry fronds hanging from a tree fern that caught my attention at the Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley on March 5th.
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
Crazy Horse
When we visited the far-from-ever-being-completed memorial to Crazy Horse in South Dakota’s Black Hills on June 2nd, the dramatic clouds caught my attention as much as anything else, and probably even more. The “opening quotation mark” above the blue hole in the clouds is curious, isn’t it?
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
New Zealand: Flax reflected
Just because I stopped showing pictures of New Zealand after returning from the big South Dakota trip doesn’t mean you couldn’t have been regaled with more of them. Here, for example, is a view from February 22 showing flax plants reflected in one of the South Island’s Mirror Lakes. No upside-down sign needed.
© 2017 Steven Schwartzman
