One never knows do one?

Doing a hasty map recon of Arkansas Highway 293 north of the junction of Arkansas 277, I found a county road which led to Pickens, Arkansas. Rolling the dice, I turned on to the road and before long ran into a small roadside colony of sunflowers. I suspect they are the remnants of a commercial crop from years back. I did not see the airborne bee until I opened the picture in my computer. Some days you just get lucky.

You never know what you’ll find down a country road

The immortal Fats Waller (1904-1943), among other quotes and tunes, once said “One never knows do one?,” a quip which has become one of my favorite fallback choices with which to ruminate upon an unexpected materialization or thought. The quip also describes to a tee what the results will be on a random shooting trip through LA. Such was the case on June 28, 2014.

Click on the old house to see pictures and a story

I re-shot an old friend, the now-closed store at the junction of Arkansas Highways 293 and 277 then proceeded north on 293 where I found a winding county road which connected eastward to Pickens, Arkansas. I figured I would find ample publication fodder on the road.

I was right. I found an old farm house in a cotton patch. See our discovery of the old farm house on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer dot-com. What could be more Delta? We’ll wait here while you look.

Before happening across the house, I found sunflowers and noticed that each plant was like its own little community, with the residents twisting and turning to have better access to the sun. There were flowers on both sides of the road so some were front lit and some were back lit.

This is a wider view of the plant which is home to the large flower above. It is front lit (the sun over my back) which gives it a yellowish tint. It looks like the bee that was entering the picture above had made a bee-line to the other side, but don’t you believe it. I shot the pictures several minutes apart.

This is the family across the road. It has strong back lighting (light source facing the camera) which yields the light green look.

 

Proceeding eastward to Pickens, I drove through a nice bean field which showed an interloper in the otherwise exclusive neighborhood, to wit: corn. The corn was no doubt the leave-behind of a previous corn crop on the same field.

 

The corn was rampant in the bean field which substantiates our suspicion that mother nature’s forces are far fiercer than ours. The seeds from which these cornstalks emanated were cut, bludgeoned to smithereens, slung asunder, smashed by a monstrous machine, and plowed under. But guess what, to a determined seed, no sweat!

Remember the backlit sunflower? Here it is in the windy aftermath of a big thunderstorm. Once I arrived at Pickens, I headed to Dumas to grab a big ol’ Coke float at Sonic. During the process, a humongous thunderstorm ripped through the area. As I backtracked to Highway 293 to pick up where I left off, I passed the back lit sunflower in a stiff breeze under stormy skies. The bug on the big flower was still there. I guess it has the same tenaciousness as the corn seed.

The day before, Friday June 27, Year-of-our-Lord 2014, back in town, in the courtyard of Grace Episcopal Church, Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Anyone who happened along about 6:00 p.m., and just happened to have a camera in his or her grubby little hands could have snapped this cool back lit bed of flowers.

Back lit is always cool. Well, almost always.

Thanks for dropping by,

Joe Dempsey
Weekly Grist for the Eyes and Mind

http://www.joedempseyphoto.com/
http://www.joedempseycommunications.com/
http://www.corndancer.com/joephoto/photohome.html

 

 

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