Auld Lang Syne

Click for more detail and much larger size.

Readers of this column know from repeated comments I’ve made that 2011 has brought one of the worst droughts ever recorded in Texas. With that in mind, I thought I’d take a few days to show you how lush things were here only a year ago. That lushness was especially evident last spring, when I photographed this dense colony of coreopsis (perhaps Coreopsis tinctoria) at Brushy Creek Lake in Cedar Park, a suburb just north of Austin. One common name for this wildflower and closely related species is goldenwave. You may imagine from looking at this photograph, and I’ll confirm from having been there, that the wind really can blow a dense colony of these flowers into golden waves.

(For those interested in the craft of photography, point 8 in About My Techniques is relevant here.)

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman