On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
JanieM
Albatrossity said of Dagaetch’s 10/28 set: “I’m glad I got to go first; this would be a very hard act to follow!” I have to say that ten times over; I don’t belong in the same company as photographers like Dagaetch, Albatrossity, and others who post here. But I do have fun taking pictures, so I’m going to keep going for it anyhow.
This set tracks the seasons. I thought of doing one on winter only, and in fact on the ice storm of Christmas Eve Eve 2013 only, but in the end I decided it would be more fun to track the whole year.
The fields near my house are now mowed, but for many years they were left alone to be raggedy and beautiful with wildflowers. Buttercups in the early summer, then black-eyed Susans, daisies, thistle, Queen Anne’s lace, milkweed, wild asters, clover, and lots of others I don’t know the names of. Queen Anne’s lace always reminds me of my grandma, who lived in rural Ohio. She taught me the names of a few wildflowers and showed me how, if you put Queen Anne’s lace in some water with food coloring in it, the flower will turn from white to that color.
Before the field was bush-hogged and mowed, it was a riot of goldenrod in late July and August. As shown.
This was taken from “the ford,” an old structure on which you can drive across the river if the water level isn’t too high. We used to love to go “down the gulf” (through which the river runs) when I was a kid. I never wanted to leave the woods and go back to town. I sort of accomplished that in the end by living in rural Maine.
Just another maple tree.
The actual storm was on the 12/23/13. The sun came out the next day, Christmas Eve. The whole world sparkled.
From the grand to the particular. This a highbush blueberry branch, iced in.
The field near my house.
When I was a kid, autumn was my favorite season. Now it’s spring. As beautiful as autumn is, there’s a sadness to it, and a bit of apprehension at the thought of what’s to follow: four months of short days, extreme cold, and difficult footing, which matters ever more as I get older. Not that I would ever consider leaving Maine, hard winters or not. But spring is the reward for getting through it.
Spring in Maine isn’t a big showy thing, it’s quieter than in a lot of places, and simpler: spring peepers awake at the end of March, ice off the lake in late March or early April, grass greening up in mid-April, trees leafing out in mid-May, then lilacs. The colors of the foliage are almost as varied as in the fall, but over less of a range, and more subtle.
“I sit beside the fire and think / of how the world will be, / when winter comes without a spring / that I shall ever see.” (Bilbo in Lord of the Rings)
Every spring I’m grateful for having seen another one.
Mid-morning of a day in my favorite week of the year. I prefer a day before the first lawn-mowing, but the day after is close enough.
The back forty, metaphorically speaking.
jl
Thanks for beautiful bucolic nature pix.
Some gorgeous landscaping involved, but this is a respite thread, so I’ll leave it that.
Edit: the ancient farm implements left parked in the fields, like abandoned monuments, brings back memories of the California farm.
Sab
Always surprised by how much NE Ohio looks like New England (or from my perspective in NE Ohio, how much New England looks like NE Ohio.)
Bill Arnold
Spring is the re-emergence of life, from seeds, buds, hibernation, torpor. Long my favorite season, too.
A little Madness in the Spring (Emily Dickinson)
JanieM
@Sab: Totally agree, a big difference of course being the flatness of the one and the rolling/hilly land of the other. Big topic, which I’ll try not to dig into right now, but my ancestors on my mother’s side came from Connecticut to the “Western Reserve” when it was, to quote one of their gravestones, “unbroken wilderness.” There’s a lot of Yankee heritage floating around in NE Ohio. Also a lot of maple trees. ;-)
randy khan
One of the good things about the Current Situation is that I’ve been walking around my neighborhood a lot, and seeing the wildflowers popping up along the way. They’re little bits of joy all around us.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
I know someone who grew up in Hawaii and left to live in the northeast. I assumed it as for her career and asked her if the weather was a big adjustment. To my surprise, she said yes but it was worth it. I asked her what about the weather in the northeast was worth leaving Hawaii and she said, “Spring.”
Sab
@JanieM: My dad’s people also came to the Western Reserve from Connecticut, Massachusetts and upstate New York about early 1800s. My younger sister married a Massachusetts guy in Massachusetts who somehow went to high school in Nebraska. He was surprised how much more our part of Ohio looks like New England than the ( great plains) Midwest he had known
NE Ohio isn’t flat at all. Foothills of Appalachia. The eastern most counties ARE Appalachia. It gets really flat a bit farther west.
Jerry
Beautiful landscapes
stinger
Oh, these are lovely. Thank you!
Madeleine
Thank you. These are beautiful. They take me back to western New York State where I grew up.
JanieM
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: That’s a great story. I’m glad to have company.
Sometimes it’s surprising what people like and miss from home. During the ice storm of 1998, eating meals at the nearest school/shelter, I made friends with a visiting French teacher. He was from Abidjan and he spoke six languages. I asked him what he missed most from home besides his family, expecting him to say something about the weather, or the difference between a city of several million and a backwoods village of about 2,000. He said: the food. Then for a while I had a doc who was from Guadeloupe. What she found hardest was that there wasn’t enough sunshine. Neither of them mentioned the brutally cold weather, even during one of the worst ice storms in the history of the region!
JanieM
@Sab: I grew up in NE Ohio. It looks pretty darned flat to me after almost fifty years in New England.
Auntie Anne
Oh, the shot of the Queen Anne’s lace makes me happy! I always try to gather some during the summer – they are THE summer wildflower for me.
Aleta
These are so good.
Queen Anne’s lace … yes.
Yutsano
Wow. I’ve only been to Maine once. It was in the summer. Some friends of my parents invited us up for a lobster feast. That’s where I first fell in love with the sea bugs.
For some reason your ice storm pictures made me think of the Christmas truce of 1914.
Dan B
@JanieM: SE Ohio and Akron area has hills. But near Lake Erie and the Western half of the state is about as flat as anywhere on earth. Kansas is hilly’er than Columbus to the Mississippi.
JanieM
@Yutsano: Funny you should mention the Christmas truce, I just ran across this clip yesterday when surfing around YouTube for music that fit with Veteran’s Day.
CaseyL
Oh, those photos! They take me back to my extreme youth, when I lived on the East Coast. Not only do they look like the countryside I remember, those were the images (in photos, in history books) that informed my mental map of the world way back then.
IOW: Nostalgia, triggered.
Sab
@Dan B: We have a rental property in Wadsworth (tenants dear friends since high school) and it is so so flat.
” How can you live there.” ” It’s home. Wife loves it.”
Sab
@JanieM: Just in Akron city limits we have 800 foot variances in altitude. It’s not Colorado, but it isn’t Florida either. We had to re-route our marathon because runners complained that the altitude/climbing ruined their times for bigger races.
Dagaetch
A good photo, a good piece of art of any kind, is one that makes the viewer/listener/whatever feel something. Your photos make me feel something, thus I deem them good. Especially the first spring shot, really beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
Regine Touchon
These are so lovely. Thanks. As for which season suits me best, when I lived on Long Island it was Spring into the whole Summer. And now in Alabama it’s the Fall.
JanieM
@Sab: What are you trying to prove? I made a casual generalizing comment about NE Ohio vs New England, and I stand by it. Would you have been happier if I had said “relative flatness”? Fine, consider it done.
Where I grew up (Ashtabula County) it’s mile after flat mile of cornfields. There’s nothing anywhere in NE Ohio like oh, let’s say Mount Katahdin, or Old Speck, or the White Mountains, or even the Berkshires. Someone else tried to tell me recently that those aren’t really much in the way of mountains, since the Rockies are higher.
Sigh.
JanieM
@Dagaetch: Thanks. :-)
susanna
Enjoyed viewing this relaxing, lovely group of pictures, since most remembered ones are usually of the coast and ocean, also picturesque. But these speak volumes of the rewards of Maine living in your area, enhanced by the affection of your wording. Thank you. I hope there will be more.
As for Ohio, I knew a woman who always wanted to visit the mounds, and I keep forgetting to look up their history, their story.
Dan B
@Sab: We lived on the SW side of Wadsworth. The Match factory was in the backyard and the ruins of Morton Salt on the edge of the little valley to the north. The Erie Lackawanna tracks ran in the valley. As the trains came uphill their light shone in my parents’ bedroom as did the horn, channeled by the valley. We moved south of town to 5 acres with a year round stream in a valley. It was quieter except in mosquito, June Bug, and 17 year Locust season. My father commuted to Barberton. It was not fun when blizzards pushed up 15 foot drifts.
KSinMA
Ah, these are lovely.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Today’s OTR-After Dark was brought to you by the fine folks at Four Seasons Total Landscaping*.
*Free ‘Rona infection included at NO ADDITONAL COST!
(Sorry, when I saw “Four Seasons”, I couldn’t resist.)
Nice photos, nice set!
Sab
@JanieM: Jeez. Not trying to fight. Akron isn’t flat. My only point. Sorry you had to invent a fight.
Dan B
@JanieM: Maine does have mountains which Ohio lacks. But I can get in trouble by bragging about Washington’s mountains. I’m here because I saw a National Geographic article about the North Cascades and knew that was part of what was missing in the Midwest. We have seasons here – best described as early Spring and late Spring, although summers (late Spring) have gotten hotter. We’ve had weeks of upper 80’s and 90’s with higher humidity than before 2010.
Dan B
@susanna: We visited the mounds when I was 8 or 9. You couldn’t get an overall view so it was like looking at some smooth sided hill. It would be great to see them from a balloon or a 3D drone.
Michael
@Aleta: In case anyone didn’t know, Queen Anne’s Lace is a wild carrot and as you might guess from its name, not native. But it sticks mostly to disturbed places like roadsides, so I guess it was never really invasive.
Another fun fact you probably also know: those tumbleweeds that are such an integral part of western landscapes – also non-native. Commies actually.
Michael
@CaseyL: The trees are the right height.
Dan B
@JanieM: Ashtabula is flat! The route the Turnpike takes is flat! We drove to Chicago or the dunes on the east of Lake Michigan every year. 6 hours of boring, and the horror of Gary and Hammond. One year we tried to find the river. We finally realized the cinder covered areas were the river. We crossed it six times like you can with the Maumee river at Flat! Toledo burbs.
JanieM
@Dan B: The North Cascades are beautiful. The longest single day of hiking I ever did was there, and not one inch of it was flat. Up and down, up and down.
@Dan B: That drive through Gary — yech. I did it a bunch of times when I lived in Milwaukee, but not recently. I can’t imagine it has gotten any pleasanter.
Albatrossity
Yes, I am grateful for every spring, and every fall! I am also grateful to you, for this set of images of your part of the world and the descriptions. Thank you!
WaterGirl
I went to bed early last night, but these are so wonderful to wake up to. So much beauty. I’m not sure why my eyes are leaking, but they are.
JanieM
For the record, the verse “I sit beside the fire and think…” is from one of Bilbo’s poems in LOTR. I figured most people here would recognize it, but in the light of the morning after I wish I had given the cite in situ.
way2blue
Your photos are glorious. Thank you for sharing.