Several weeks ago, John Blase posed the question to his facebook readers: Where are you from?
My answer was a poetic meme that could have been answered with just this one photo. I'm a native, born and raised, Floridian, also known as a Florida Cracker. Where I'm from and where I live are pretty much the same.
As I describe in my about page, the name of my blog comes from the name of the creek that borders our property where we have lived for over twenty-five years---where we've raised and homeschooled children, washed the feet of the saints, dressed for the weddings of all three boys, and delight today in the gift of eight beautiful grandchildren. It's the only home our twenty-something daughter has ever known.
Our five good acres on Pollywog Creek has a modest house, a pond and a creek, a dog and two cats, and my favorite backyard swing. It's not the house and property I wanted to buy when we moved here years ago. But as I look back on how God has used our humble place over the years in ways I could not have imagined twenty-five years ago, I can say with much gratitude that God has been abundantly good to us here and it's been exactly what we {I} needed and so much more.
{Fox Squirrels, Muscovy Duck, Gopher Turtle}
Over ten years ago, a grad student from the University of Central Florida took blood and tissue samples from fox squirrels on our property for research and installed nearly a dozen breeding boxes in trees throughout, but I've never seen a fox squirrel use one of them---only bees, raccoon and owl.
{Hognose and Southern Black Racer - two of the many nonvenomous snakes in Florida}
Before I fell in love with photography, I wouldn't get within ten feet of a snake {or insect}, but there's something about a camera that makes me brave.
Of all the things to photograph, the weeds I choose to call wildflowers are some of my favorites. In fact, it was a macro I accidentally captured of a common tassel flower that God used to capture my attention---to reveal the beauty in the small things I often overlooked.
"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them."
Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
All the photos in this post {my contribution to The High Calling photographers blog circle---see more information below}, including a challenge from Tim Miller to photograph from a different angle, were taken this summer on our property. I chose to take 3 photos looking up in the shade under live oaks, scrub oaks and palm trees around the circular drive on our property. I added a photo taken under the sweet gum trees in our back yard. I can't imagine living in our subtropical climate without the shade of trees.
The blog circle theme for August is Where I Live. Please visit the blogs I've linked below and come back here throughout the day or week for more links to the posts of other photographers in the circle.
