Pic(k) of the Week: Echo Lake arcadia

Click on the image for a larger, hi-res version (on Flickr).

A wooden fence and woodland suggest a picturesque rural location. Appearances can be deceiving. They're actually within the front yard of a house in a densely populated suburb of Metro Atlanta.

DeKalb County (Oak Grove), Georgia, USA.
24 August 2026.

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Geographical/historical note

Unseen in the image, there's a small, unnamed creek just beyond the fence. To left of frame, it flows under a suburban street into Echo Lake, an 18-acre private residential impoundment lake.

Echo Lake was built in 1938 by the Soil Conservation Service, now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service (part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture). Congress passed a law establishing the SCS in 1935 stating, “the wastage of soil and moisture resources on farm, grazing, and forest lands is a menace to the national welfare.” It was a massive national effort with most of the work done by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Five lakes were built with earthen dams to control flooding and prevent soil erosion in tributaries of North Fork Peachtree Creek. At the time, this was a rural area of forests and farms. Today, only Echo Lake and a smaller remain.

— EchoLakeGa.org (accessed 2021).

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Art Pepper: Goodbye, Again.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Passion on the blossom

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A summer treat: a passion butterfly sips sweet nectar from a Texas lantana flower.

Avondale Estates, Georgia, USA.
9 August 2026.

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🐤 Fauna:

Dione vanillae (synonym: Agraulis vanillae) — commonly known as Gulf fritillary or passion butterfly — is a bright orange butterfly in the subfamily Heliconiinae of the family Nymphalidae. The Heliconiinae are 'longwing butterflies,' with longer, narrower wings than those of other butterflies.

Gulf fritillaries are found primarily in the southern parts of the contiguous United States, from Florida and Georgia to Texas and California, in open habitats near open grasslands, parks, and woodlands.

In its adult form, the gulf fritillary is a medium-sized butterfly with extended forewings and a wingspan of 2½ to 3¾ inches (6½ to 9½ cm). The underside of the wings is brown and speckled with silvery white dots. In contrast, the top surface layer of the wings is deep orange, with black streaks running across.

— Wikipedia.

❀ Flora:

Lantana urticoides — commonly known as Texas lantana or calico bush — is a three- to five-foot (0.9 to 1.5 m) perennial flowering shrub within the verbena family (Verbenaceae), that grows in Mexico and the southeastern U.S. states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, especially along the Gulf coast.

Flowers are colorful red, orange, and yellow small tubes with four flared lobes; in dense, rounded clusters with a leafy bract [specialized leaf, associated with a reproductive structure] subtending each flower, at the ends of peduncles [long paired stems] usually extending beyond the leaves, appearing from April to October.

— Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
— Wikipedia.

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Cannonball Adderly: Poor Butterfly

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Pic(k) of the Week: Woodland summer verdant

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If you hold my hand and sit real still,

You can hear the grass as it grows.

It's a lazy afternoon,

And I know a place that's quiet.

Some landscape photographers dislike summer, if only because of all of its greenery. I embrace it.

Here, there's a flowing creek hidden under dense summer foliage.

Seminary Wood in Decatur Legacy Park
City of Decatur, Georgia, USA.
2 July 2026.

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Grant Green: Idle Moments

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Pic(k) of the Week: Dogwood riverside

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Its teal-hued drupes fruiting, a small, native silky dogwood shrub (Cornus amomum) grows on a rocky bank of the Ocoee River.

Ocoee Whitewater Center in the Cherokee National Forest.
Ducktown, Tennessee, USA.
1 August 2026.

Cornus amomum — commonly known as silky dogwood — is a deciduous shrub in the dogwood family, native to central and the eastern part of the United States and parts of Canada. It is typically found in swamp borders and wetlands, and near streams and ponds.

Silky dogwood may grow 6 to 12 feet tall (1.8 to 3.6 m). The leaves and twigs have silky hairs. A distinctive feature of this shrub is the dark brown pith in 1- to 2-year-old stems and the dark reddish twigs. Clusters of creamy white flowers bloom in the spring followed by small, 1-inch (2.5cm) blue drupes [stone fruits] that ripen in late summer.

— North Carolina Cooperative Extension.

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Duke Ellington: Suite from The River (The Giggling Rapids)

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Pic(k) of the Week: Orange, then green

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A native, wild trumpet creeper vine blooms in mid-summer, as seen from a vantage along the South Peachtree Creek Trail, on an elevated boardwalk over the wetlands of Burnt Fork Creek.

Mason Mill Park: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA.
21 July 2026.

Campsis radicans — commonly known as cow-itch, cow vine, devil's shoestring, foxglove vine, hellvine, hummingbird vine, trumpet creeper, trumpet vine — is a dense, vigorous, woody, deciduous, perennial vine in the trumpetvine family (Bignoniacea) that attaches itself to structures and climbs by aerial rootlets. It is native to the central and eastern United States, inhabiting woodlands and riverbanks (and growing on roadside telephone poles).

The trumpet creeper has clusters (terminal cymes) of orange to reddish-orange trumpet-shaped flowers, 3 inches long (8 cm), with a yellowish throat and 5 shallow lobes bending backward. They appear throughout the summer (June to September), and are very attractive to hummingbirds.

— North Carolina Cooperative Extension.
— Wikipedia.

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Freddie Hubbard: Open Sesame.

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