So as not to have a pictureless day

Click for greater clarity.

As I did last year on this date, I’m following up this morning’s pictureless post about search strings with a post that does have a picture in it. In my archives I found this view from New Year’s Day in 2007, when the sky was clear blue (as opposed to the gray one in Austin that has been parsimoniously letting a few drops of rain fall on us since yesterday). The scene shown here is a pond in a little creek on the Blackland Prairie in far northeast Austin. The trees at the water’s edge are most likely Salix nigra, known as black willow, which appeared not long ago in these pages in the guise of a spiraling leaf.

The lower two-thirds of this image looks to me like it’s been run through one of those Photoshop filters that’s intended to mimic the look of a painting (you’ll probably have to click to enlarge and see that), but this is a straightforward photograph, with the effect entirely due to the light broken up by the wind-driven ripplets on the surface of the water. It’s another case of art imitating life.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman

Another year’s fun with search criteria

I don’t know if one occurrence counts as a tradition, but let’s assume that it does: following in the “tradition” of the fun post from New Year’s Day 2012, here are some things that people typed into their search engines during the past year that ended up bringing them to this blog. Sometimes the search engine did a great job of figuring out what the person wanted, but other times it misled the searcher.

—>  Comments of mine appear indented under the search strings.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

garlic fowers

Thank you, search engine, for understanding that the person meant flowers. This search engine knew how to go with the fow.

preaky pear

Just like last year, we meet people who think prickly pear is preaky pear. Do they also think someone in poor health is seaky?

meaning of preakly pears in a dream

It means that you should study spelling.

think steve pear pad

I guess my personality can be preaky at times. Or is this a dream telling me to buy an iPad?

hanging bubble cactus

Wouldn’t the spines of the cactus pop the bubbles?

flowers in preria
perari flowers

Anyone for prairie?

if i had wings like a morning dove

Make that a mourning dove, named for its sad-sounding call.

how can i edit my portraits to have sharp eyes but soft skin

I have sharp eyes for portraits of wildflowers, but nothing is gonna make some of those plants have soft skin.

prairie verbena informatshon

My blog is a great source of informatshion about prairie verbena and many other plants in this part of the natshion.

ludwigia beethoven

That’s Ludwig von Beethoven, famous composer. I assure you that when I photographed a wildflower in the genus Ludwigia last year it wasn’t humming the Fifth Symphony or the Ode to Joy. My post was whimsically titled Not Named for Beethoven.

speaking flowers

Not only don’t flowers hum or sing, they don’t speak, either.

texas thistle is it a wildflower

Can’t say that I find many thistles being cultivated in nurseries, so I guess it’s a wildflower.

20 foot tall weed bush

Have you ever heard of a weed bush? I haven’t. Especially not one that’s 20 feet tall.

leaves with real names

You mean like John Leaf, Sarah Leaf, Freddy Leaf?

whats the weed names

I just told you.

cool lizards names

No idea what post this brought someone to. I tried the search myself and was surprised to find a bunch of websites offering lists of suggested names for various types of pets, including lizards. Some of the suggested lizard names (including their meanings) on one site are Bodizara (divine), Radoslava (glorious and happy), and Frantiska (free woman). I think I’d want my pet lizard to be glorious and happy.

ontario see

The person may have wanted to see Ontario but ended up seeing a picture in which the clouds over my neighborhood in Austin reminded me of the way the north shore of Lake Ontario looks on a map.

shape of lake ontario

This person really did want to know the shape of Lake Ontario but must have been surprised to find it—or half of it—in the clouds over Austin.

tony creek ontario map

The place in Austin where I looked up and saw the northern outline of Lake Ontario was alongside a tributary of Bull Creek. Maybe the search engine thinks that’s a tony neighborhood.

overhead pond

If the pond were overhead, wouldn’t the water spill down onto us poor folks below?

red fruit in sky

Look, up in the sky: it’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s… a red fruit!

all plant life of blackland prairie

That’s a pretty tall order, don’t you think? How could you expect to get information about all of the hundreds of plant species found on the Blackland Prairie?

all kinds of plants or leaves with names

Man, you must’ve gotten a lot of hits!

leaf

Man, you must’ve gotten a lot of hits!!

flowers of world

Like I said, you must’ve gotten a lot of hits!!!!

flower picture side view

Well, at least that’s a little more specific. You must have gotten only half a zillion hits instead of the full zillion.

look up a flower

Yes, do look one up. There are many to choose from.

violet colors awesome pictures

All my pictures are awesome, no matter what colors are in them.

yesterday flowers

Yesterday, flowers. Today, flowers. Flowers forever!

compare yesterday

To what?

matter similar in color

Similar to what?

similar flowers

Similar to what?

comments about is water different

My comment is that water is definitely different. It’s different from wood, from metal, from porcupines, from adjectives, from hardware and software, from overweening pride. This is going to be a daring leap, but let me generalize: water is different from everything that’s not water.

caterpillar succulent

The person probably wanted a picture of a caterpillar on a succulent but ended up being taken to a very succulent caterpillar.

the turtle is staring at me

I had just the picture for this person.

how much spanish moss in shoes for blood pressure

And don’t forget to wear garlic around your neck to ward off vampires.

teksas planine

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain
In Teksas, which used to be a colony of Spain.

yexas mountain laurel

If I ever decide to leave where I am, Yexas would be my first choice for a state to move to. Yex indeed.

bunga lili kuning.

I have no idea why that Indonesian phrase, apparently referring to a kind of lily they have over there, would have led to a blog about native plants in Texas.

bunga kaktus

None in Teksas. Kowabonga, all you [ancient] Howdy Doody fans.

pohon rotan

Boca Raton, anyone?

strange plant that grows in texas

There are lots of strange plants that grow in Texas. Lots of strange people, too.

prehat cindy

You mean Cindy before she put her hat on?

blooming hats
texan hat brim
brimmed hats for men

These searches apparently brought people to a picture of a Mexican hat.

mexican top hat plant

A Mexican hat is one thing and a top hat is another; a Mexican top hat would be one strange piece of headware, dude, and a plant that looked like that hat would be even stranger.

mexican guys on tumblr rare

The ones wearing Mexican hats are probably even rarer.

how many people use hats in mexico

37,491,258.

rusty looking plant- 2 words

Someone seems to have been doing a crossword puzzle. What the person got taken to is rusty blackhaw, which probably wasn’t right for the puzzle, given that the word rusty was already in the clue.

yellow glow surrounding text

And I haven’t got a clue about which post of mine this person could have been taken to.

curls on green pictures

If you leave green pictures out in the sun they probably will curl up.

cover a piece of a leaf and it turns yellow

I wonder if that would happen to my skin if I covered a piece of it.

what is one theme of “what if a much of a which of a wind?

Sorry, student trying to get help on an assignment about that poem for an English class, but you found only a poverty of answers to your question in my post about poverty weed blowing in the wind.

undone

Months have passed. Are you done now?

insects picturesbredyfly

A bird can fly but a fly can’t bird.

websterswildshots

schwartzmanswildshotsarebetter.

crownofthornsplants

iveshowngreenbrierthornsandpaloverdethornsbutnocrownofthorns.

blue bud dwaft

This apparently led to a post about a dwarf—not dwaft—dandelion, which doesn’t have blue buds. Whether the searcher felt a dwaft at the time, I don’t know.

orange flowers you can draw

I wonder what makes some orange flowers drawable and others not.

men in flowers

I don’t know about men, but this one man has been in enough flowers that the search engine went ahead and counted me as a plural.

i’ve seen the same butterfly numerous times. what does it mean

It means that that kind of butterfly is common in your area.

mean butterfly

What did the mean butterfly do, bite you?

okay wolf

Okay, I did a post about a wolf spider.

spines on beetles

Which on which doesn’t seem to matter to the search engine, so how about a picture of a beetle on a spine?

common name of bindwee,purple

The common name of purple bindweed is purple bindweed.

sesbania herbacea scientific name

The scientific name of Sesbania herbacea is Sesbania herbacea.

a close look at flowers

You came to the right place!

where in texas are pretty wildflowers as of april 1 2012

On my blog, naturally!

where can i get black and white photos colorized in houston

Not on my blog in Austin, but that’s where the search engine brought you.

14 turkey’s eggs

How about two turkey vulture eggs?

white snail rain

Is that a lesser amount of rain than when it’s raining cats and dogs?

dağ çiçekleri

This Turkish phrase means ‘mountain flowers.’ I imagine it took the searcher to a post about snow-on-the-mountain.

фото семян клематиса

That translates as “Photo seed of Clematis.” Whether someone writing in Russian wanted to see seeds of a Clematis that’s native in Texas I don’t know, but that’s what the search engine led to.

flower glitter

My bright wildflowers got me
A place among the glitterati.

a weed that has a brown stem and have fluffies on them

Aw, those fluffies are so cute, who cares if they’re on a weed?

fluffy dee smith

Is she really fluffy? I hope she’s not a weed.

how to include human element in cemetery photos

You might try dying.

voyeur cam galore

Yep, there’s lots of nekkid female flowers on this blog.

. pretty and paid

Hmmm….

wonderful lady and wonderful flower

Now that’s more respectable.

tiny 18

Tiny perhaps, but of legal age.

photo model sex mania
www sex mania com
sexmania
sex mania
photo sex mania
sex mania mexico [twice]

I did a post about Zexmenia entitled Sex Mania. I can only imagine the letdown those seven searchers felt when they got taken to a picture of a wildflower.

grape infouresence

That’s the quintessence of a misspelling.

prairie aganilis

The search engine figured out that the person meant prairie agalinis.

plant that was hole for seeds

Can a plant be a hole, for seeds or otherwise?

what kind of flower grows up

Any kind of flower that doesn’t grow down.

champagne bubbles clip art

This apparently led to my photograph of algae bubbles in a local creek. Drinking that water, even on New Year’s Eve, is strongly discouraged.

techniques in order not to get

This led to a post entitled “In order not to have a pictureless day.”

resin drops with ants free people

I did a post about ants trapped in a drop of sunflower resin, but I have no idea what the searcher meant by adding “free people” to the query.

sycamore feeling

Wasn’t there a song about “Here comes that old sycamore feeling again”?

richly colored blue brown red photography

Do you have any idea how many photographs there are out there that are richly colored in blue, brown, and red?

wildflower ma gracia

What? Was your ma named Gracia?

yellow wildflower central texas

There’s only about a gazillion yellow wildflowers here, so good luck finding the one you’re after.

insects on plants by digital camera

Were the plants with the insects on them growing alongside a digital camera?

costco

It’s almost certainly not what the searcher wanted, but I posted several pictures of plants growing in the parking lot of the Costco in north Austin.

lakeline mall austin

This would-be shopper got to see a dense late-spring display of wildflowers that happened to be on the fringe of that shopping mall—and no sales tax was charged on the view.

how look camphorweed?picture

I have a feeling this was not from a native speaker of English.

thorny plant that shoots his seeds

Don’t you love the his rather than its?

seeds look like a mop thorn

I pity any plant whose seeds look like a mop thorn.

show me a picture of a bulrush!

Did the person who wrote this think that putting the exclamation mark at the end would get a faster response?

magical properties of deer horn.

My picture of a deer antler was magical indeed.

sky sun good

me photographer good

views from bellow

I hope it hasn’t sounded like I’ve been bellowing.

flower of clarity

The caption under many of my photographs says to click for greater clarity.

good two flowers

This apparently led to my photograph of two crossed purple and white anemones. I’m glad the search engine found it to be a good picture.

focused flower

Yes, most of my pictures of flowers are in focus.

full clarity flower images

And they have clarity, too (especially if you click on them to undo some of WordPress’s crunching of images).

natural flowers and which is very rare found in india

There are people from India who live in my part of town, but that’s not so rare anymore. I don’t know if they have natural flowers.

great hills of nature

I often mention that I live in the Great Hills section of Austin and have taken many pictures in Great Hills Park. For me this part of town could indeed be thought of as great hills of nature.

flower, trees, skys, nature

Lucy in the skys with diamonds.

clear cover resin

Somehow I think this came from a person interested in handicrafts, not rosinweed.

resin eyes

But rosinweed flowers do have a sort of eye.

violins and flowers images

Maybe the violinists could’ve used the resin on their bows.

so, now since you are here, let’s replace violet with blue

So, now since you are here, let’s assume the query led to one of my comments about a flower with blue in its name (bluebell, bluebonnet, mealy blue sage) looking more purple than blue.

willow leaf tattoo

I never thought of it, but this willow leaf could become a good tattoo.

celtic willow tree leaves

Turns out that that willow leaf really was similar to one of three spirals in a Celtic goddess tattoo that a commenter mentioned having.

vine posts

Somehow I don’t think a blog post is the kind of post the person had in mind.

portriat of long beards

Maybe you can use a lariat to lasso those long beards.

harmonious portraits

Harmonious portraits I’ve got, but somehow I doubt the seeker was happy with the kinds of subjects in them.

i m always happy

I’m not.

richard van hessel

No idea who he is or how that search brought someone to my blog.

“suzanne elrod” “sculpture”

No idea who she is or how that search brought someone to my blog.

schwartzman flower

How nice to have a flower named after me.

louie schwartzman and ladybird johnson

Louie, schmooie: it’s Steve.

steven schwartzman children

I guess the search engine thinks of all these pictures as my children.

artists who have carried out work on flowers

Oh, the search engine recognized me as an artist! I’m the Michelangelo of milkweed, the Goya of goldeneye, the Rembrandt of rosinweed, the Miró of Mirabilis, the Titian of Tinantia, the Gauguin of Gaillardia, the Dalí of Datura, and the Monet of Monarda. You, too, can play the game and add other alliterative titles that link a famous artist to a native plant.

portraits of wildflowers steve
wildflowers steve
“portrait photography of wildflowers”

Yay, me! When I tried that third search myself in Google on November 14, this blog was first in the list of hits. I’m number one!

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman