Hosting often overlooked wonders with photography and writing
Hollyhock – 19 June 2021
Layton, Utah in the mid twentieth century was a small Mormon farming town. An odd place for a little Italian Catholic boy like me, but I loved it. The Mormon pioneers and their descendants farmed, raised livestock, and grew vegetable and flower gardens. As a child I did not think much about the cultivation around me except for my father’s. He was a dedicated gardener who grew a minimum of four dozen tomato plants plus other garden vegetables. He also specialized in four o’clocks, zinnias, marigolds, and gladioli. But as my friends and I rode our bicycles around around the Layton countryside those summer days decades ago, one flower stood out for me: Hollyhocks. Even by the 1950’s hollyhocks were old-fashioned, and many had escaped cultivation to grow along the country roads.
In 2021 I still encounter occasional hollyhocks on the streetsides and in the vacant lots of Salt Lake City and Millcreek. A few weeks ago I noticed some escaped hollyhocks and other flowers in a vacant lot just a five-minute walk from my house. I postponed visiting the place until sunrise just before the June solstice.
The hollyhock above was a fortunate find. The sun had cleared the official horizon but not the crest of the Wasatch Range. Although the flower was in mountain’s shadow, the dawn sky provided backlighting.
Cultivated Allium Gone to Seed – 19 June 2021
In the same vacant lot and dawn solstice light as the hollyhock above. Further note: Just today on 1 July as Carol and I took our usual pre-lunch walk past this vacant lot, I noticed all the seeds had dropped out of their little pods.
Dawn a Day before the June Solstice – 19 June 2021
As I alluded to above, living close the mountains means a 30 to 60-minute lag between official sunrise and direct sunshine. As I walked home from the vacant lot, this backlit sky show presented itself. Van Gogh made us notice active skies contrasting with serene landscapes, and occasionally the reverse. Notice the two landmarks that often find themselves in my photographs: Mt. Olympus with its fraternal(?) twin peaks, at least from this angle, and the historic Brickyard smoke stack. (Declaration: I did use post-processing to eliminate the barrel distortion that had the smokestack leaning into the scene.)
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Michael DeCaria