The Autumn Crocus ...

“Child of the pensive autumn woods!

So lovely, though thou dwell obscure and lone …

Where shall I ever find

So rare a grace? In what shy solitudes? …”

            ~ “The Autumn Crocus”

              ~ Robert Laurence Binyon

             ~ English poet, dramatist & art scholar

                 ~ 1869 ~ 1943

Afternoon sunlight softly dances around an Autumn Crocus that emerges as a beacon of hope amidst the fading colors of fall on a beautiful early September day on the cusp of autumn at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Colchicum autumnale, commonly known as autumn crocus, meadow saffron, naked boys or naked ladies, is a toxic autumn-blooming flowering plant that resembles the true crocuses, but is a member of the plant family Colchicaceae, unlike the true crocuses, which belong to the Iris family. It is called “naked boys/ladies” because the flowers emerge from the ground long before the leaves appear. Despite the vernacular name of “meadow saffron,” this plant is not the source of saffron, which is obtained from the saffron crocus, Crocus savitus ~ and that plant, too, is sometimes called “autumn crocus.”

 

The Searchers ...

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

          ~ William Shakespeare

             ~ 1564 ~ 1616

My favorite yearling ~ Buttons, as I call him ~ shows off his velvet as the eight point buck and his mama doe search for an apple I tossed them on beautiful summer evening in late July at Trexler Memorial Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

I began photographing Buttons as a precious white-spotted fawn, then a sweet button buck and then a beautiful yearling, until he migrated away in January 2020. Along the way I tossed him many apples, which he loved eating. It’s a true joy and blessing to me personally and as a photographer to have watched this white-tailed deer grow.

Mirrored ...

“Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.”

               ~ Rabindranath Tagore

                  ~ 1861 ~ 1941

 

Perched on the banks of the Coplay Creek, a beautiful male North American Cardinal gazes upon his reflection on an April evening along the Ironton Rail Trail, which loops more than nine miles through Whitehall Township, the Borough of Coplay and North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania.

The Ironton Railroad was a shortline railroad in Lehigh County. Originally built in 1861 to haul iron ore and limestone to blast furnaces along the Lehigh River, traffic later shifted to carrying Portland Cement when local iron mining declined in the early 20^th century. Much of the railroad had already been abandoned when it became part of Conrail in 1976, and the last of its trackage was removed in 1984.

 

In 1996, Whitehall Township purchased 9.2 miles of the right-of-way from Conrail, transforming it into the Ironton Rail Trail.