Hiley Creative Photography

is worth so much more than two in the bush! Today I had the most awesome experience… there was a thud at the front window and I looked out to see a little bird laying belly-up in the pine straw. I also saw three of our cats honing in on him. I was able to get to him in time and I took him in my hand. His little heart was beating so fast – he closed his eyes. I took him to sit in the sun and he opened his eyes again. We walked around the yard, I talked to him, and he looked at me. Finally I decided that I was going to have to try to get my camera because no one was going to believe that I actually carried a wild bird around for half an hour. We went inside…he stayed in my hand and I grabbed a camera and a memory card. He even accepted my left hand to sit in when I decided that no pictures were going to be made if I had to use my left. And, he posed for me. He turned his little fuzzy head, and he even chirped at me a few times. When I was herding the chickens back to the yard, he darted up into a big cedar tree, and I never saw him again. How I enjoyed our time together…it was wild.

always the geeky biology teacher…Yes, I have an obsession with decomposers. It’s true, and I don’t deny it. Every year about this time I scour our little property for the spore-bearing heterotrophs, and every year they are there waiting on me in all their fungal glory. A trip just down the driveway yielded a bumper crop this Christmas. My camera had been feeling neglected, so we decided to make a natural connection. I was so pleased with what I found that I started asking myself if it would be weird to hang a fine art bright white photo rag print of a mushroom in my living room?  Maybe it’s the hippie in me that resurfaces this time each year too – if you need me, I’ll be hunting Sugar Magnolia in the woods.