my own Everglades

[asakiyume]

Two days ago, Writer's Almanac quoted Marjory Stoneman Douglas, eulogizer of the Everglades, who said of them,

Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness . . . the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the blue heights of space . . . the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose . . . it is a river of grass.

(vast glittering openness
sweet massive winds
blue heights of space
a river of grass)

One day I'll see them. For now, here is my own Everglades, waiting to be reborn.



Nearby a male turkey was displaying for an only moderately interested crowd.



One more picture, this from yesterday--the turbulent sky ocean

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

What spectacular photos!

Is the top picture a creek? (I ask because it doesn't look to be flowing in that particular pool.)

I love the turkeys. I don't think I've ever seen wild turkeys.

Did you have a storm? The clouds are wonderful!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It is flowing! In a very languid way--it's flowing away from us. That whole area is marsh; you can bounce on the tussocks of grass.

It did rain! But at that point the sky was just lowering and fuming without actually letting loose with waterworks.

[bondo-ba.livejournal.com]

Living in a large city, I often forget just how beautiful late winter / early spring can be when you have some countryside nearby!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And it looks so different depending on the light--it can go all intense golden when the sun comes out.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for sharing these.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

♥
my pleasure!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, those are so very lovely.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked them. I love my little Everglades.

[pinkroo.livejournal.com]

I am sad that I grew up in Florida and never visited the Everglades.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Florida's a big state! I lived for close to 20 years in New York State and never saw Niagara Falls--same thing.

[duccio.livejournal.com]

I lived in Minnesota for a while as a kid. The terrain is largely made up of glacial moraines with peat bogs in between them, or in many cases lakes and chains of lakes. Just like your marsh, when one walks on the peat bogs, it's like walking on a trampoline or a bed - all squishy and maybe your feet get wet if they push down too heavily on the peat. Once a crane dredged out a peat area nearby our house, and there were mountains of the brown peat around the open water area they cleared, maybe the size of two story houses with attics in height. I used to take bags and a handsaw, and cut out blocks out of the peat 'mountains' to bring home to shred-up and use in our garden.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That bounciness! I love it. And the trickiness of it. I was walking in the marsh this morning. One step, and my foot went surprisingly deep into water. Oops!

How handy to have had such a great gardening supply right by you.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I guess the "crowd" has seen it all before...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

"Come back when you can show us some blues and green's like that peacock chappie who came visiting," they're saying. And boy is Tom Turkey fuming. The peacock is *such* a dandy.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

The Everglades have always struck me as a magical sort of place, the name included.

yes--so beautiful!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes the name! I love the name!

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

There are a numbers of places where "Scenic Drive" signs make me laugh. As if one hadn't been driving through fascinating, beautiful scenery before.

The looks of one's own place are-- or should be-- dear whether they're given signs or not.

I've long thought that my lifelong myopia has been an advantage in the enjoyment of not-so-grand scenic sights and sites.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's so true--people call out wide vistas for special treatment as scenic views, but intimate scenes have their own beauty. And I really like your take on the positive side of myopia.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

(I also like correction for myopia. And I like my astigmatism and correction for it-- astigmatism is really quite strange.)

I have nothing positive to say about presbyopia, I'm afraid. :D

[c-maxx.livejournal.com]

Those men! Always on display even when no one's paying attention...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you're just too gorgeous not to share it with the world--whether the world cares or not :D