Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2013 - 9

specific garden flowers and vegetables:
squash, peppers, day lilies, marigolds.
For awhile I just dumped every photo
into the files bearing their names. Then,
when I could see that a file could be
slimmed down – did I really need 350
photos of Esme and Fiona? – I opened it
and dumped dozens of remarkably similar photos in the trash. It was easy to
eliminate 100 photos a day. I sometimes
did 200 or 300.
As expected, it felt good to toss those
extra photos out. But as I plowed
through the files, I discovered unanticipated dividends hard to quantify. Tucked
away in the welter of photographs were
experiences whose emotional content
I’d lost. Accumulating in the Cats folder,
for example, were photographs of two
strays who were briefly part of my life.
Of course I remembered PK (short for
Porch Kitty) and her boyfriend Tom T.
(after Tom. T. Shiftlet, a character in a
Flannery O’Connor short story). But here
was their story from the moment I

started feeding them on the porch
through PK’s death and Tom. T’s disappearance and probable death. Clicking
through the photos, I found myself
laughing aloud at their antics, which had
been too painful, in the wake of their disappearance from my life, to think about.
Two years have now elapsed; looking at
the photographs brought my love for and
delight in them back.
Moving photos into properly labeled
files brought home other things. If you
asked me which flowers I liked best, I
might have named any of a dozen. The
photo files said otherwise. I must have
had 100 shots of the gloriosa daisies that
used to grow in my side yard but have
now died out. I made a mental note (and
need to make an actual one) to get them
started again next year, since I love them
– and the deer that plague my yard and
garden don’t.
New Englander that I am, I had prized
the two consecutive snowy winters
(2010-’11 and 2011-’12) sandwiched

between all the nearly snowless ones.
Here were hundreds of photographs of
snow falling in my back yard, snow-laden
branches, birds feeding on sunflower
seeds atop a foot of new snow on my
deck. Photos of the snow-covered hills
across the river, of shadows falling across
snow, of bird and possum tracks. I tossed
lots of them, and will toss lots more. But
this winter I will be able to remember
how it felt to have snow all around me by
revisiting the organized virtual world on
my computer if actual snowfall again
disappoints.
My photo files were full of photos of
trees, dead and alive: bare branches
against clear winter skies; bark; vines
crawling up trunks; holes drilled by pileated woodpeckers; naturally occurring
holes in trunks; places where new bark
had closed old wounds. Trees bathed in
fall color or in mist. Multitudes of photographs showed butterflies, bees, spiders,
caterpillars and cocoons. There was a
series of photos of a barred owl I’d happened to notice perched in a tree above
the parkway as I drove home at the end
of a winter day of hiking near
Grandfather Mountain. There were dozens of photos of my back yard bathed in
late afternoon light, closeups of hostas’
furrowed leaves and massed ferns.
Opening files, moving and discarding
photos, the living-ness of those days
flooded back. I found myself looking
closely, even at unexceptional photos
about to be tossed. What had made me
press the shutter? What had I seen? Pay
attention, I told myself. These photos are
a road map to your life. They show you
what’s beautiful to your eyes and heart.
Taking the photographs, I understood,
was offering and acknowledgment, a
bow to the wonder of it all. Throw away
all the photos you want, I reassured
myself. Take more. But keep snow and
spring mornings, squash and swallowtails
lodged in your life’s heart. They make you
who you are.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 | 9
Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country - November/December 2013
