Backlit Iris

I’ve been asked several times already if the photos on Butter Side Down are ones that I took.

Yes, so far they are, with the exception of this one, which was snapped by Michael back when I was a sidesaddle rider in the “Great Circus Parade.” I’ve always liked that photo, perhaps because it reminds me of a Norman Rockwell painting. It’s the sort of “slice of now by-gone American life” that Rockwell captured so wonderfully, in this case freezing a moment in which the horses and riders are responding to activities going on around them that the onlooker can’t see.

My photos are mostly of little critters, flowers, various and sundry bugs and spiders that catch my eye. There’s something about the incredible complexity and beauty within these ordinary miracles that fascinates me, and a camera’s lenses captures some of it for me to study–and marvel at–in leisure.

How does something as delicate as an iris’ bloom - so delicate that it becomes translucent in sunshine - survive and thrive? How does the corm that it grows from keep from freezing during the winter in our below zero weather? I take it for granted that it will - but how? Where do spiders go during hail storms? Why, when I am surrounded by millions of birds, is the discovery of a dead bird such a rare event?

I am surrounded by mysteries.