Either/Or

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“You can volunteer to take life seriously but it is gonna get you, they are going to win over you, it is harsh, but you can either break down and  complain about how   miserable your life is or have a go of it and survive. I think that is the basis of it all”

– Billy Connolly, ‘Made In Scotland’ (documentary), 2018

Win Ugly , Survive

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This is the last pic from my 2017 sojourn to Georgia and South Carolina for the  moment: a group of large horseshoe crabs at the edge of the tide near Tybee Island.I was really taken with the primordial creatures, which are sort of scary and a little ugly, never seen anything quite like them! Real survivors of time and environment, inedible and armed with spiky tails. Sometimes we have to win ugly, just survive, but that is enough. Also, they band together and seem to need each other  – there is probably some sort of message there too…

Mercer House, Savannah

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See the last post….where the mayhem went down.

“Mercer House…..stood at the west end of   Monterey Square, the most elegant of Savannah’s many tree-shaded  squares. It was an Italianite mansion of red brick with tall arched windows set off by ornate ironwork balconies. It sat back from the street , aloof behind its apron of lawn and its cast iron fence, not so much looking out on the square as presiding over it”

‘Midnight  In The Garden Of  Good And Evil’, John Berendt.

Spanish Moss (Ghostly Drapery)

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These epiphytic ,dangling specimens were photographed in the centre of Savannah, GA. One of the reasons I wanted to visit there was John Berendt’s terrific non-fiction novel of  murder(and so much more),‘Midnight in The Garden of Good And Evil’. set there. In one spooky scene (set in a graveyard where voodoo rites are to be enacted) ,he wrote:

“A solid wall of trees rose before us on the opposite shore. It was a forbidding black mass without a single light visible……..Slowly, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I became aware of dense shrubbery around us and of the ghostly drapery of Spanish moss.”

Tree Beards(Gothic)

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This ,and the preceding photos, depict the aerial roots of the NZ Pohutukawa tree. They are thick, matted groupings, some well over a metre in length. The beautiful crimson flowers of the tree are stunning  in summer but the aerial roots are way more fascinating to me. I am reminded of Spanish moss hanging from trees in the southern US, also very cool. As I went up to Georgia and South Carolina last year and loved the moss in the trees,have more appreciated our own dangling wonders. Will dig around  for a photo shot of the Spanish moss and post.