Pic(k) of the Week: It's a hazy, hazy sunrise.

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

Looking southeast from the summit of monadnock Arabia Mountain, one could see a noticeable (yet lovely) haze just after sunrise, produced by a combination of high humidity, 50% cloud cover, and air rife with pollen.

DeKalb County, Georgia, USA.
3 April 2026 (8:06 am EDT).

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Ella Fitzgerald: I'm Beginning to See the Light

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Pic(k) of the Week: Spring comes to Beaver Pond

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.

Quam stulti isti mortales sunt. 

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Shirley Horn: A Lazy Afternoon

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Pic(k) of the Week: Arabia Mountain 'daisy'

"We call them yellow daisies."
— Arabia Mountain park ranger

A native 'Porter's sunflower' wildflower —one among thousands blooming in early autumn on Arabia Mountain— in DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 25 September 2023.

Every year in September, an explosion of yellow flowers covers granite outcrops such as Arabia and Panola Mountains. These are yellow daisies (Helianthus porteri). Related to sunflowers, they are one of the fall wonders within the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area. Found in only 4 states —Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina— the flowers are most common on the granite outcrops of the Georgia Piedmont region, thriving in fragile solution pits —often dry, sandy vernal pools— found on bare rock faces.

— Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance.

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Literally growing from the granite outcrops of Arabia Mountain, the blossoms are a riot of yellow, a marker of autumn's arrival in Georgia. But...are they true daisies?

Helianthus porteri is a species of sunflower (Helianthus) —commonly known as Porter's sunflower, Stone Mountain daisy, and Confederate daisy— native to the southeastern United States, particularly Georgia and Alabama.

Helianthus porteri grows on thin soils on and around flat rock granite and gneiss outcrops. It grows up to 40 inches tall (100 cm). One plant usually produces 5 or more small flower heads, each containing 7 or 8 yellow ray florets surrounding a central disk of 30 or more yellow florets. A summer annual that blooms in the fall, Helianthus porteri drops seeds that grow the following year.

The term 'daisy' is imprecise because the species is a sunflower rather than a daisy (Bellis and related genera). Likewise, although the plant grows on Stone Mountain, in Georgia, its range extends beyond. The connection to the Confederacy is through Stone Mountain which contains a confederate monument, although the connection is tenuous as the species was named before the Civil War, in 1849, in honor of Thomas Conrad Porter, a Pennsylvanian minister and botanist who collected the plant in Georgia.

— Wikipedia.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Hazy sunrise over Arabia Mountain, Georgia

Haze from the rampant Canadian wildfires has reached northern Georgia, where a 'Code Orange' air pollution alert has been issued (if nowhere as severe as in the US northeast and mid-Atlantic).

Sunrise over the summit of Arabia Mountain, in Stonecrest, Georgia, USA, at 6:40 am EDT, on 8 June 2023.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Ephemeral rapids

Arabia Mountain is a monadnock —"an isolated small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain"— located just over 20 miles southeast of Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Primarily composed of granite-like migmatite rock, the 'mountain' is 955 feet (290 m) above sea level, rising 172 feet (52 m) above the surrounding countryside.

Here, ephemeral pools, recently overfilled by rain, empty down its exposed rock face. The hillcrest in the image is some distance from the summit.

Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area: Stonecrest, Georgia, USA. 26 January 2023.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe: a fresh-water glacial lake divided politically between the states of Nevada and California. At a surface elevation of 6,225 feet, it is the largest high-elevation lake in North America.

At 1,645 feet, Lake Tahoe is the second-deepest lake in North America, and, at 122,160,280 acre-feet, the the 27th largest lake, by volume, in the world. ^*

Water color of cobalt-blue and aquamarine. Clarity pristine, in the face of development. Lake rimmed by the mountains and cliffs of the Sierra Nevada range. Words fail, at least here at YFGF, to describe Tahoe's beauty.

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