Thicket Morning (Digital)

Mollie woke me up in her irresistible manner earlier than usual this morning at 5:20 am. Her ‘scribble-scrabbles’ on my side of the mattress woke me. The squeaky yawn and then her excited enthusiasm when she knows I am wake. The morning bedside ritual of mutual greeting, a lick on my nose, lots of pats and tail wags before I get out of bed and dress for our walk.

I brought my camera along this morning. There were some cottonwoods I saw yesterday I thought I would like to photograph. When we got to the turn where we normally go to the Thicket meadow and I wanted to proceed to the cottonwoods, Mollie stopped, gives me a look and a look in the other direction towards the Thicket. So, it would be the Thicket first. Mollie expresses such joy that it really is difficult to not please her.

This would be alright. The sky was brightening and the sun was not up above the horizon yet; the light would get better in half an hour. The morning air was suffused with a light mist from a rain that had just let off as we went out the door. There may be other images to be found.

At the bottom of the meadow is a view to the east down the length of that meadow towards the nearest town with a church steeple. Yesterday the scene had some lovely colors. I was pleased to see a similar view this morning. Just before I took this photo a deer bounded down the meadow with Mollie giving chase.

Behind me the clouds were being lit by the morning sun.

This oak is always a feature of the meadows and is nicely silhouetted against the soft pastel sky.

An apple tree embedded in the hedge was putting on a nice spring show with colors to complement the early morning sky.

Finally, we make out way to the cottonwood trees and I got a couple of nice compositions. The colors look like fall but these are immature and emerging leaves in the middle of spring. The meadows around here have a wonderful subtle palette in spring as the leaves push free from their tight buds.

Each species which will later be the same anonymous green in spring show remarkable individual shades. Bright light greens from willow, deep reds of sycamore maples, new green of hawthorn, and this mustard yellow of cottonwoods.

Finally an interesting view of some pines…

A lovely peaceful morning.

These photos were taken with my Fuji GFX 50s ii using an Olympus adapter and a Tamron f4 70-210mm zoom lens. Most of these images were taken at f 4 or f5.6 due to the low light.