Swamp thing! A dead tree retains grandeur as a spring storm gathers.
Frog Bog in Legacy Park: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 3 May 2025.
The vibrant yellow and green foliage of a native Rising Sun redbud tree, in spring.
Trailhead Community Park of the East Decatur Greenway: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 7 May 2025.
Cercis canadensis —commonly known as the eastern redbud tree— is a large deciduous shrub or small tree in the legume family (Fabaceae), native to eastern North America.— Missouri Botanical Garden.
The Rising Sun™ cultivar —Cercis canadensis (JN2)— was discovered in a Belvidere, Tennessee nursery in 2006. Of unknown parentage, it had been planted from collected seed and was growing in a row of nursery seedlings. Unlike a 'standard' Eastern Redbud tree, the Rising Sun grows only 8 to 12 feet tall (2½ - 3½ m) but is drought and heat-tolerant.
Rising Sun's abundant pea-like, rosy pink flowers appear in early spring before the foliage. Its heart-shaped foliage emerges deep golden orange and matures through shades of orange, gold, and yellow to a speckled lime green. New leaves appear throughout the summer, resulting in a continual mix of colors. The fall foliage is yellow and orange.
— Wikipedia.
A native blue flag iris wildflower blooms creekside in spring.
Trailhead Community Park of the East Decatur Greenway in the City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 7 May 2025.
The large blue flag iris (Iris versicolor) —also known as Harlequin Blueflag, Large Blue Iris, Northern Blue Flag— is a perennial in the Iridaceae (iris) family native to Canada and the United States, spanning south from Nova Scotia into the middle and northeastern United States to Virginia. The specific epithet, 'versicolor,' is derived from this plant's ability to produce many-colored blooms while the common name, 'flag,' comes from an old English word (flagge) for reeds and refers to its natural preference to wetlands. In fact, it prefers to grow in rich, moist soils and thrives in full sun.— North Carolina Cooperative Extension
The sword shaped blue-green clumping leaves reach 2 to 2½ feet tall topped with a mass of blue lavender to white blooms. The blooms are formed of three upright inner standards and three distinctly marked sepals. The leaves are narrow and strap-like 1 inch wide and up to 24 inches long crossing at the base to be fan-like.
Brilliant red poppies (Papaver rhoeas) bloom in an urban wildflower meadow planted along a CSX railroad track.
Stone Mountain Trail: City of Clarkston, Georgia, USA. 13 May 2025.
A mallard hen (Anas platyrhynchos) was swimming in a bog, right in front of me, just below the camera's angle. She noticed me and, not pleased, let out a stream of loud, agitated quacks. Her six ducklings, alerted to danger, quickly scattered for safety. I couldn't help but apologize to them all as I exited...but not before capturing a photo!
Frog Bog in Legacy Park: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 24 April 2025.
Pens down! In a 'sketch-off,' participants had only a short time to draw a portrait of the person sitting across from them.
Atlanta Dogwood Festival in Piedmont Park: Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 13 April 2025.
The residents of a beaver lodge have been busy building a dam on Cecilia Creek.
Seminary Wood in Legacy Park: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 15 March 2025.
A municipal golf course, as seen from the Stone Mountain Trail in Candler Park of the city of Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 21 March 2025.
The trees were blooming on Beaver Pond.
Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 2 April 2025.
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As I was framing the shot, a bird photographer (aka 'birder') was standing nearby, wielding a 'bazooka-sized' lens. Unbeknownst to me, he had sidled very close.
"What did you spot?" he asked, catching me off guard. "A tree!" I replied. He smirked, saying, "There are many of those," and strolled off. Of course, that was the point.
A native yellow wildflower —celandine poppy— blooms in an early-spring woodland.
Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA.
2 April 2025.
— WikipediaStylophorum diphyllum —commonly called the celandine poppy or wood poppy— is an herbaceous plant in the poppy family (Papaveraceae), native to the eastern United States and Ontario in Canada. Its typical natural habitat is moist forests over calcareous rock, particularly in ravines.
In spring, the deep yellow flowers of the celandine poppy appear as a brilliant display on the forest floor. The flowers have 4 yellow petals, two soon falling sepals, many yellow orange stamens, and a single knobby stigma. They appear singly or in umbels of two to four flowers from early spring to early summer. The flowers issue from between a pair of leaves at the top of the flowering stems. They produce pollen but no nectar.
After fertilization, a bristly blue-green pod hangs below the leaves. Seeds with white elaiosomes ripen in midsummer and the pod opens by four flaps.
A peripatetic ruby-crowned kinglet (Corthylio calendula) momentarily stops to sing in a forsythia bush, its red crown shining in winter morning light.
Ruby-crowned kinglets typically inhabit northern North America. I spotted this male, however, much farther south (in DeKalb County, Georgia, USA), where it was probably preparing for its imminent migration back north.
26 February 2025.
A copse of Callery pear trees (Pyrus calleryana) is limned by low-angle late-afternoon late-winter sun on the shores of Postal Pond.
Although beautiful when blooming, Callery pear trees —also known as Bradford pears— are considered invasive in the eastern and midwest United States. Plus, they stink!
Decatur Legacy Park: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 7 March 2025.
Native to China, a flowering quince shrub (Chaenomeles speciosa) blooms in winter, far from home.
Briarlake Forest Park: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 25 February 2025.
DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 1 March 2025.
Mural and cityscape, up high.
As seen through the windows of the Skyway —connecting the Anne Cox Chambers Wing and Wieland Pavilion— of the High Museum of Art: Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 9 February 2025.
A warehouse dock during golden hour.
As seen from the Stone Mountain Trail —a 19-mile urban pedestrian trail— in DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 13 January 2025.
The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. (1926)
Displayed during Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks”, an art exhibition at the High Museum of Art: Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 9 February 2025.
This blazing canvas, which captures a fleeting juxtaposition of the natural and the human-built environments, was inspired by O’Keeffe’s perception of nature’s power even in an urban setting. She later recalled, 'I went out one morning to look at [the Shelton Hotel] and there was the optical illusion of a bite out of one side of the tower made by the sun, with sunspots against the building and against the sky.' The painting boldly exemplifies O’Keeffe’s response to the novel structure of the skyscraper, a subject almost exclusively represented by male artists.— museum plaque
***************— museum plaque“I had never lived up so high before and was so excited that I began talking about trying to paint New York,” recalled Georgia O’Keeffe late in life. In 1924 the artist and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, moved into the Shelton Hotel, then the world’s tallest residential skyscraper. The hotel’s stunning views inspired O’Keeffe to explore midtown Manhattan’s soaring geometries: she experimented across media and scale and with various subjects, forms, and perspectives during an energetic five-year period beginning in 1925. Through these works, which she called 'my New Yorks,' she investigated the dynamic potential of the cityscape, often depicting it in dialogue with nature to represent her personal perceptions of the built environment.
This exhibition is the first to critically examine O’Keeffe’s paintings, drawings, and pastels of urban landscapes while situating them in the diverse context of her other compositions of the 1920s and early 1930s. The exhibition establishes these works not as outliers or as anomalous to her practice but rather as entirely integral to her modernist investigation in the 1920s—abstractions and still lifes made at Lake George in upstate New York and beyond and works made in the Southwest beginning in 1929. O’Keeffe’s 'New Yorks' are essential to understanding how she became the artist we know today.
Elfen 'waterfall' of Glenn Creek, on a frigid winter's morning.
Decatur Cemetery: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 25 January 2025.
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There were no logging roads or mountains in the parkland of this cemetery...but there were a creek and a culvert, hilly inclines, winter woods, a crossing of paths...and, considering the solemnity of the surroundings, places, like this, where one could quietly contemplate the feel of the earth underfoot.
Decatur Cemetery: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 25 January 2025.
Winter afternoon sun dappled the wetlands of Burnt Fork Creek.
Photographed from a boardwalk along the South Peachtree Creek Trail: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 20 January 2025.
Flickr is a website for uploaded images. Since 2006, I have been posting most of photographs there (@Cizauskas).
Each day during the year,
During 2024, Flickr selected seventeen of my images for Explore.
***************— Big Huge Labs.Explore is a Flickr feature with the intent of showing you 'some of the most awesome photos on Flickr.' Photos are automatically selected by computer according to a secret algorithm called Interestingness. The top 500 photos ranked by Interestingness are shown in Explore.
Flickr has stated that many factors go into calculating Interestingness: a photo's tags, how many groups the photo is in, views, favorites, where click-throughs are coming from, who comments on a photo and when, and more. The velocity of any of those components is a key factor. For example, getting 20 comments in an hour counts much higher than getting 20 comments in a week.
Is Explore a showcase for the top Flickr photographers? No. It's for photo viewers, not the photographers. It exists so that, at any moment, anyone who wants to view interesting photos can go to Explore and have a reasonable chance of seeing something interesting.
Does that imply that photographs not in Explore are uninteresting? Of course not. Many wonderful photos are uploaded to Flickr each day not selected for Explore. But, to serve its purpose, Explore only includes a small sampling of all of the photos on Flickr, showing photos from many different people to create a diverse selection.
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Pines trees under a winter morning sun (with a bit of snow, to boot).
Hawthorne Nature Trail: DeKalb County (Northlake), Georgia, USA. 12 January 2025.
Seminary Wood in Legacy Park: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 22 December 2024.
Since joining Flickr in 2006, I have uploaded 25,417 photographs and images. I've used the website as a cloud backup, a journal of 'good fermentables,' and, more recently, as a photography portfolio. Since 2009, I have culled through those images every week and selected one as Pic(k) of the Week: fifty-two, of course, for each year.
Here's a retrospective of the images I selected for 2024. Clicking on the thumbnail will take you to the full-sized image.
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As to so-called 'social media,' I last posted to Facebook on 16 May 2022, and to Twitter (aka 'X') on 17 December 2023. On the other hand, I have maintained my Instagram account (@tcizauskas) and I have added Threads (@tcizauskas) and, most recently, Bluesky (@tcizauskas.bsky.social)...after a short, now ended, dabble on Vero. Whether I continue to do so, I have yet to decide.
To conclude, I thank of all of you who continue to patronize my blog and I wish you health, safety, and fulfillment in 2025. Sveiks!
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Since 1997, Cask Marque has been ensuring that the cask ale you drink in pubs in the U.K. has been in perfect condition. Qualified ass...
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