The punctuation of antelope-horns with wispy clouds
Click for greater clarity.
In this view it’s not the antelope-horns milkweed, Asclepias asperula, that’s wispy, but the clouds. Seeing that we had a sky like that on the afternoon of April 12, 2011, I went over to Loop 360 at the south end of my Great Hills neighborhood and followed a path that took me up onto a cliff overlooking the busy highway—the adjacent intersecting street is even named Bluffstone—but I wasn’t interested in the cars below. At one point I got down on the ground and looked upward at perhaps 45° in such a way that wisps of cloud framed this globe of milkweed flowers between an opening angle bracket and a closing parenthesis.
(And speaking of parentheses, a pair of which this last little paragraph is conveniently nestled inside of, how could I not be reminded of a certain poem by e.e. cummings? I’d say more about punctuation, but you already get the point.)
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
How clever to frame the flower and plant in an outline of wispy cloud. Very nice shot, Steve.
victoriaaphotography
May 28, 2012 at 6:41 AM
Thank you. The wonderful clouds that afternoon begged to be used as a backdrop and I couldn’t refuse them.
Steve Schwartzman
May 28, 2012 at 6:52 AM
Fabulous photo!
Cathy
May 28, 2012 at 6:55 AM
Thanks, Cathy. The sky in Austin this morning is hardly so pretty: it’s a dull grey, although the forecast is for some sunshine by afternoon.
Steve Schwartzman
May 28, 2012 at 7:15 AM
Reaching to hug the sky, and the sky hugs back.
Spider Joe
May 28, 2012 at 7:28 AM
That’s an imaginative way to put it, Spider Joe. At the same time, I remember that I had to be one ground-hugging photographer to get low enough to look up and make the picture.
Steve Schwartzman
May 28, 2012 at 7:42 AM
Wow, really nice and could easily be “Homage to Antelope horn Milkweed” The clouds are perfect.
Nancy
May 28, 2012 at 12:44 PM
I’m glad you find this a homage to a native plant. I feel that way about many of my pictures.
Steve Schwartzman
May 28, 2012 at 2:52 PM
Great photo!
montucky
May 29, 2012 at 10:54 PM
It’s been over a year, but I clearly remember that encounter with the milkweed atop the cliff.
Steve Schwartzman
May 30, 2012 at 7:19 AM
I looked and looked at this photo, and then wandered off to read the poem and forgot to tell you how much I liked both. I’d forgotten that poem – thanks for including it.
The setting for the milkweek is perfect – although I can’t keep from seeing an angelfish in the clouds.
shoreacres
May 30, 2012 at 6:57 AM
You’re welcome and you’re welcome. I hadn’t read the poem for decades, but the punctuation of the clouds quickly reminded me and I went in search of it. Clouds probably remind a lot more people of angels than of punctuation, but I saw neither angels nor angelfish. (However, in the realm of animals I have recently seen a question mark butterfly.)
Steve Schwartzman
May 30, 2012 at 7:24 AM
Wow, the flower is beautifully framed! Genius.
Finn Holding
June 2, 2012 at 9:09 AM
Thank you. Those clouds begged to be used, so I obliged.
Steve Schwartzman
June 2, 2012 at 9:12 AM
Great spotting on those clouds, a perfect, ethereal frame for the antelope-horns milkweed.
Susan Scheid
June 3, 2012 at 7:46 AM
I like your phrase ethereal frame. It makes me want to run out—excuse the flippancy—and open a business called the Ethereal Frame Company. Less flippantly, I can imagine a photographic series entitled Ethereal Frames.
Steve Schwartzman
June 3, 2012 at 8:27 AM
By the way, one reason I used to use infrared film so much was that I considered the effect it created ethereal. Here’s one example:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/cedar/
Steve Schwartzman
June 3, 2012 at 8:42 AM