Tag Archives: spring

Flowers of Spring Have Finally Arrived

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Iris in Bloom in Auburn

Iris in Bloom in Auburn

I took a break from my blog for a while, which always seems to be the case during the cold dark months of the year. Now that Spring is in full bloom here in Auburn things look so full of life and so colorful it just brings new inspiration to everything. Even though I took a few months off from my blog I still kept writing throughout the winter, but for some reason it always seems to be a little different. I wish I could find a way to better merge my offline writing with my writing here, but it would probably change how I write offline. Anyway, hope everyone is enjoying their springtime colors as much as we are down here in the south.

Auburn Tigers Football A-Day Game Photos For 2012

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Auburn Tigers Aday Game 2012

Today was the annual crazy-day game where we play ourselves, called the Auburn A-Day Game. Of course just about every school has a spring game where the offense plays the defense, it just seems to get bigger and bigger as the years go by. Today we had over 43,427 people at this game where we played ourselves, a game in which Coach Chizik said “numerical values meant little — if not nothing.” Makes me wonder (every single year)… why… but, it’s Auburn football, and there are very few chances to get into Jordan-Hare Stadium and take photos of crazy people (myself included since obviously I was at this “game”). I feel sort of obligated to go now since I have 4 years of A-Day Game posts on my blog, and I wouldn’t want to cull a blog mini-series of mine like the A-Day Game.

As Ryan Wood wrote for the Opelika-Auburn News on the game, “I wouldn’t look and pay attention to any of the stats today,” said Chizik, who barely glanced at the sheet in front of him for the 10 minutes he spent with the media. “It was different guys in there with different personnel groupings, and mix and match players. I wouldn’t read into any stats that you may see, good or bad.” But, that just means that keep stats for this game? Seriously? OK, I guess we keep stats on everything these days, and why not, the number of data points that we can capture at any given event now is bordering on the incomprehensible.

One interesting thing that did take place yesterday was the unavailing of three statues of Auburn’s Heisman Trophy winners, Pat Sullivan, Bo Jackson, and Cam Newton. I have photos of the new statues, but I think I am going to post them in a separate blog post, after all, they did win the Heisman, they probably deserve their own post. I do find it kind of interesting that after something like 100 years of football we have now joined Alabama in memorializing our gladiators in the form of gigantic bronze statues that would make the Greek gods proud. I guess I can no longer make fun of Bama’s statue of Bear Bryant or Nick Saban and the like, oh well.

Auburn Tigers Aday Game 2012

Auburn Tigers Aday Game 2012

Auburn Tigers Aday Game 2012

Auburn Tigers Aday Game 2012 Marching Band Drums

Auburn Tigers Aday Game 2012 Marching Band Trumpets

Auburn Tigers Aday Game 2012

Related articles and Previous A-Day Game Posts on ScottFillmer.com

Most Beautiful Dogwood Blooms of any Recent Spring in Auburn

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Dogwood Flower Bloom in Spring

OK, so this will probably be the last post of the Spring showing our Dogwood bloom or our Wisteria, but I just love the colors so today it’s my Photo of the Day and my P365 :2012 photo [Day 114]. I don’t know if it’s all the rain we got over the winter or that I’m just another year older, but this Spring has been the most beautiful I can remember in a long time. The Dogwood blooms around Auburn were, and still are spectacular this year. The one pictured above is from our yard and is just screaming of the beauty of creation.

This photo was taken handheld, and is seen basically straight out of my Nikon D7000 camera body, with a little added saturation processing from Adobe Lightroom. You can see the full exif data from over on my Flickr site. The background blur comes from the lens I was using, a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 G version (a very fast and inexpensive prime lens), shot almost wide open (i.e. f/1.4) so the depth of field was very shallow. The purple and green, two incredible contrasting colors for a white flower, come from our purple Wisteria blooms and the trees in the background. This wouldn’t necessarily be considered macro photography (see my previous examples here), but it was shot at the lens’ minimum focal distance.

Hope you have been able to get out and smell the roses this Spring, even if they are in the form of Wisteria and Dogwood blooms.

The Spring Equinox Today with Spring is Coming to Zion :: Poem

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Dogwood Flower Bloom in Spring

Today is the first day of Spring (the Spring Equinox)! For some reason, a day I look more forward to each year, but this year, I wanted to commemorate the day with a poem. I make no claims whatsoever to be any kind of a decent poet (see prior attempts), but I do make attempts from time to time. This is one I started in the middle of winter, when it was dark and dreary, and all I wanted was to see some sun and a little bit of warmth in the air. I was writing in anticipation when I would be able to shoot this image above, which I took on Sunday of our Dogwood tree.

I was told off and on in photography that if you have to explain a photo it isn’t very good. I’m not so sure that counts for some forms of writing, since many genres I need plenty of explanation to understand. The first half of the poem is very very loosely formed in an iambic tetrameter as my others have been, in counter rhyming verse, going back and forth between nature and scripture. The back and forth is supposed to be between our current here and now, and the second coming. Looking forward to the time of the new heaven and the new earth, a time when Christ will come back like a Spring, waiting to arrive. I think of that time much like I do Spring after a long winter, the anticipation of Christ’s Second Coming after a long cold winter.

I really wanted to “finished” poem and post it on the first day of Spring, but as with life, so many things got in the way. It still feels unfinished to me, a rough start to something that needs much more work. Kind of like life. So for what it’s worth, here it is:

Spring is Coming to Zion

Spring is coming, ‘or the daffodils say it’s true
Spring is coming, where the frost gives way to the dew
No one knows that day and hour
Still light moves on in full power
The bluebirds fill their boxes full
Where legends of the dogwoods rule

Spring is coming, where the winter must resume it’s queue
Spring is coming, for darkness is a light with you
We are pure at it’s arrival
At once we see him in his all
The seam of light begins the prize
And the meadow grass now gives rise

Spring is coming, where the night is bright as the day
Spring is coming, the very stones cry out and pray
The time as yet to have appeared
His glory is joy and revered
When pure beauty colors our eyes
We know summer is set to rise

Spring is coming, so stay awake and do not snooze
Spring is coming, rejoice in knowing the Good News
Where the city of our God shines
He will establish in the pines
A beauty that has no ending
And winter that has no beggining

Spring is coming now.
In the city of God
There is a river
Where streams are made glad
Though the earth gives way
And the mountains tremble

Spring is coming now
And is to be praised.
Let creation rejoice
to the ends of earth
that this is our God

Spring is coming now
So be still and know
Our God is with us
He won’t forsake us
Let Zion be glad

Spring is coming, where the frost gives way to the dew
Spring is coming, just for you.

If you have some favorite Spring poems I would love to read them, send them on over or leave a comment below.

Spring Forward with Faces Ready for Some Warm Weather

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Today is that day, finally, where we get some light back in the day. You rarely hear so many people complain collectively about one thing as you do Daylight Savings Time. I’ve yet to run into someone who loves going back and forth each fall and spring, most would rather just stay on DST to give us a little more light in the day. So why do we continue to go back and forth, messing up everyone’s sleep patterns in the process? I am sure the general population doesn’t think about this, but every time we change, the Church body is the one who takes the brunt of the change on Sunday morning (I’ll forgo a long conversation about that). So why can’t we just do what Phoenix and Indianapolis does; just ignore the change, that would be awesome.

DST is another marker in the year though that reminds us all that Spring is on the way. Today, my photo of the day is my wonderfully photogenic niece, Martha, who makes me forget it is still cold outside right now. If you forgot to change your clock or just slept in today forgoing church, don’t worry, we will hold your spot for next week.

Indian Pink Perennial or Red and Yellow Wildflower :: Photos

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The Photo of the Day today is a very small red and yellow wildflower found in the southeast, usually in the spring to early summer in the shade, called an Indian Pink or Maryland pinkroot, and woodland pinkroot. Better known by its Latin sir name Spigelia marilandica this little guy was blooming over at Chewacla State Park all over the place once we took a look around. Shot with a D7000 and a Nikkor 35mm 1.8 (EXIF details can be found over here) if you are like me and so inclined to read that sort of stuff. I have some shots of the waterfalls but haven’t gotten around to post-processing on those yet. This has already been a crazy busy week and it’s only going to increase as the week goes on unfortunately. It’s not really unfortunate, it’s just the way the week is this week.

Auburn Tigers Football A-Day Game Photos for 2011

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Today was once again the annual spring football classic at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn Alabama. Much like the previous two years (see A-Day 2009 and A-Day 2010), it was a beautiful sunny spring day in the south, mid-80′s no clouds with a nice breeze, oh and with 50,000 or so fans sitting there watching us play… ourselves. Every year I asked myself the same question. Why am I here, and why are we all watching our own team play ourselves. Of course this was also the day that the Alabama Crimson Tide play themselves, and the Tennessee Volunteers play themselves, etc. etc., so I guess it was fate. This year I really didn’t hang around much other than to take some photos, my favorite being the Auburn cops behind bars (at the bottom). Actually my favorite shot doesn’t appear here because my wife said she would disown me if I posted a photo of the men’s room, so cops behind bars will have to do. It was wonderful to get outside today and not have to worry about cutting the grass or anything else, just a relaxing time people watching (there should be a social networking game for that with points scored for… maybe not).

Over the last year especially, every single time I go to an Auburn game I have to question my own motives, and can’t help but watch all the craziness that goes along with what is an Auburn football game, even if we are playing ourselves. We are about to start a new series called Counterfeit Gods right after Easter, which loosely correlates to the book by Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters, and I for one am glad (but in a way not) that we are doing this series in the spring and not during football season. The counterfeit gods of football are quite alive all over the south and for some reason the A-Day game always reminds me how important football is down here. Hard not to notice that when you can get over 100,000 people in two stadiums within two hours driving distance from each other. Still, it was an enjoyable afternoon in the tradition that is Auburn football that won’t be back again for about five months. War Eagle!

Purple Iris Blooms and Double Knockout Roses Today :: Friday Feet

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Today is Friday again, can’t believe how fast these weeks are going by. Today the Friday Feet post comes from my garden just about 50 feet from where I am typing out this blog post. The cool thing about a flower garden is having plants that bloom at different times all throughout the year, and as Spring moves on, the next in line is the Iris. They just started blooming in these magnificent purple blooms (although they come in a huge variety of colors). These flowers below were shot using my wife’s Nikon D90 and basically this is how they came right out of the camera. I did very little post processing editing with these particular flowers, they really didn’t need it, the colors were incredible.

This week has been, thankfully, a week of getting back to the routine of things, a week without a doctors appointments, which we were both thankful for immensely, and a week that flew by in a blink of an eye. I had so many blog posts I either started or wanted to get started this week and just never got back to them. I do have several book reviews that I want to get out but they will just have to wait for another day. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.