Pic(k) of the Week: Vernal celandine poppy

A native yellow wildflower —celandine poppy— blooms in an early-spring woodland.

Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA.
2 April 2025.

Stylophorum diphyllum —commonly called the celandine poppy or wood poppy— is an herbaceous plant in the poppy family (Papaveraceae), native to the eastern United States and Ontario in Canada. Its typical natural habitat is moist forests over calcareous rock, particularly in ravines.

In spring, the deep yellow flowers of the celandine poppy appear as a brilliant display on the forest floor. The flowers have 4 yellow petals, two soon falling sepals, many yellow orange stamens, and a single knobby stigma. They appear singly or in umbels of two to four flowers from early spring to early summer. The flowers issue from between a pair of leaves at the top of the flowering stems. They produce pollen but no nectar.

After fertilization, a bristly blue-green pod hangs below the leaves. Seeds with white elaiosomes ripen in midsummer and the pod opens by four flaps.

— Wikipedia

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Maurice Ravel: Mother Goose Suite (The Fairy Garden)

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Pic(k) of the Week: Morning bird in winter forsythia

And smale foweles maken melodye

A peripatetic ruby-crowned kinglet (Corthylio calendula) momentarily stops to sing in a forsythia bush, its red crown shining in winter morning light.

This species of small kinglets typically inhabits northern North America. This male was spotted much further south (in DeKalb County, Georgia, USA), probably preparing for its imminent journey back north.

26 February 2025.

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Ralph Vaughan-Williams: The Lark Ascending

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Pic(k) of the Week: Vespers for Callery

A copse of Callery pear trees (Pyrus calleryana) is limned by low-angle late-afternoon late-winter sun on the shores of Postal Pond.

Although beautiful when blooming, Callery pear trees —also known as Bradford pears— are considered invasive in the eastern and midwest United States. Plus, they stink!

Decatur Legacy Park: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 7 March 2025.

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Frank Morgan: A Flower is a Lovesome Thing
(Album: A Lovesome Thing, 1991)

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Pic(k) of the Week: Flowering Quince, flowering in winter

Native to China, a flowering quince shrub (Chaenomeles speciosa) blooms in winter, far from home.

Briarlake Forest Park: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 25 February 2025.

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Scott Joplin: Solace (Joshua Rifkin, piano)

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Pic(k) of the Week: Pink gnome #7

Pink gnome no. 7,

Whimsy on a front stoop.

Diagonally, I'm hip.

DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 1 March 2025.

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Blossom Dearie: I'm Hip

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Pic(k) of the Week: High Alley

Mural and cityscape, up high.

As seen through the windows of the Skyway —connecting the Anne Cox Chambers Wing and Wieland Pavilion— of the High Museum of Art: Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 9 February 2025.

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Bill Evans: Some Other Time (Everybody Digs Bill Evans, 1959)

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Pic(k) of the Week: Follow yellow line

A warehouse dock during golden hour.

As seen from the Stone Mountain Trail —a 19-mile urban pedestrian trail— in DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 13 January 2025.

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Benny Carter: Crazy Rhythm (Further Definitions, 1962)

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Pic(k) of the Week: Studying "The Shelton with Sunspots"

“One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.”

— Georgia O'Keeffe

The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. (1926)
oil on canvas
— Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887-1986)
— on loan from The Art Institute of Chicago.

Displayed during Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks”, an art exhibition at the High Museum of Art: Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 9 February 2025.

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About the painting

This blazing canvas, which captures a fleeting juxtaposition of the natural and the human-built environments, was inspired by O’Keeffe’s perception of nature’s power even in an urban setting. She later recalled, 'I went out one morning to look at [the Shelton Hotel] and there was the optical illusion of a bite out of one side of the tower made by the sun, with sunspots against the building and against the sky.' The painting boldly exemplifies O’Keeffe’s response to the novel structure of the skyscraper, a subject almost exclusively represented by male artists.

— museum plaque

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About the exhibition
(October 25, 2024 – February 16, 2025)

“I had never lived up so high before and was so excited that I began talking about trying to paint New York,” recalled Georgia O’Keeffe late in life. In 1924 the artist and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, moved into the Shelton Hotel, then the world’s tallest residential skyscraper. The hotel’s stunning views inspired O’Keeffe to explore midtown Manhattan’s soaring geometries: she experimented across media and scale and with various subjects, forms, and perspectives during an energetic five-year period beginning in 1925. Through these works, which she called 'my New Yorks,' she investigated the dynamic potential of the cityscape, often depicting it in dialogue with nature to represent her personal perceptions of the built environment.

This exhibition is the first to critically examine O’Keeffe’s paintings, drawings, and pastels of urban landscapes while situating them in the diverse context of her other compositions of the 1920s and early 1930s. The exhibition establishes these works not as outliers or as anomalous to her practice but rather as entirely integral to her modernist investigation in the 1920s—abstractions and still lifes made at Lake George in upstate New York and beyond and works made in the Southwest beginning in 1929. O’Keeffe’s 'New Yorks' are essential to understanding how she became the artist we know today.

— museum plaque

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David Grisman: Minor Swing

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Pic(k) of the Week: Elfen Glenn

Elfen 'waterfall' of Glenn Creek, on a frigid winter's morning.

Decatur Cemetery: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 25 January 2025.

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Harold Mabern Trio: To Wane

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Pic(k)of the Week: Underfoot

Every time I walk down

into the hollow

through the winter woods

or up the mountain again,

I stop right here.

Standing on the packed earth

at an old logging road

where the creek slips quietly

through its rusty culvert

underfoot,

I'm not so much listening as feeling

a kind of tickling caress

through the soles of my shoes

and I recognize

a crossing of paths, a choice,

a way back,

if I could only turn

and follow.

— Underfoot

Stephen Wing (Atlanta, Georgia)

There were no logging roads or mountains in the parkland of this cemetery...but there were a creek and a culvert, hilly inclines, winter woods, a crossing of paths...and, considering the solemnity of the surroundings, places, like this, where one could quietly contemplate the feel of the earth underfoot.

Decatur Cemetery: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 25 January 2025.

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Teddy Wilson: Sweet Lorraine

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Pic(k) of the Week: Wetlands, illuminated

Winter afternoon sun dappled the wetlands of Burnt Fork Creek.

Photographed from a boardwalk along the South Peachtree Creek Trail: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 20 January 2025.

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Gunther Schuller: Variant I on a Theme of Thelonious Monk (Criss Cross)

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YFGF gets 'Explored'

Flickr is a website for uploaded images. Since 2006, I have been posting most of photographs there (@Cizauskas).

Each day during the year, Flickr employs a 'secret' algorithm to select five hundred images for a daily-posted Explore page —all exemplifying some sort of 'interestingness.'

During 2024, Flickr selected seventeen of my images for Explore.

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● ROW 1

• Tree falls into winter (12 December 2024)
  ☞ 8,534 views; 266 'faves'; 78th chosen of 500 selected that day.
  ☞ This image achieved the highest Explore position of any of my seventeen images.
• Woodland at Glenn Creek (22 November 2024)
  ☞ 8,766 views; 217 'faves'; 102nd/500.
• Purple aster (13 October 2024)
  ☞ 8,992 views; 232 'faves'; 150th/500.
• Bird of paradise, against blue wall (13 September 2024)
  ☞ 6,177 views; 188 'faves; 313th/500.
• Paddleboard morningtide (28 August 2024)
  ☞ 6,632 views; 128 'faves'; 479th/500.
• Strasburg pitches (04) (28 August 2024)
  ☞ 6453; 73 'faves'; 186th/500.
• Umbrella in the foliage (12 August 2024)
  ☞ 9,728 views; 171 'faves'; 92nd/500.
• Moving Keys (24 July 2024)
  ☞ 7,379 views; 103 'faves'; 351st/500.

● ROW 2

• Gnomes' back beat on parade (26 June 2024)
  ☞ 8,358 views; 120 'faves'; 216th/500.
• Dancing to the tunes (02) (26 June 2024)
  ☞ 8,514 views; 118 'faves'; 157th/500.
• Geese, too? (19 June 2024)
  ☞ 6,882 views; 162 'faves'; 269th/500.
• Percussionist in the green (3 June 2024)
  ☞ 10,310 views; 119 'faves'; 85th/500.
  ☞ The most viewed of my 2024 images, 'Explored' or not.
• Lanceleaf coreopsis (sepals & petals) (10 May 2024)
  ☞ 9,497 views; 282 'faves'; 98th/500.
  ☞ The most 'faved' of my 2024 images, 'Explored' or not.
• Arabia Lake (in early spring) (24 April 2024)
  ☞ 7,658 views; 215 'faves'; 230/500.
• Arabia Mountain spring landscape (03) (5 April 2024)
  ☞ 8,822 views; 217 'faves'; 104th/500.
• Holy hellebore (5 February 2024)
  ☞ 6,921 views; 207 'faves'; 474th/500.

● ROW 3

• Winter beech woodland (12 January 2024)
  ☞ 7,873 views; 210 'faves'; 474th/500.

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WHAT IS EXPLORE?

Explore is a Flickr feature with the intent of showing you 'some of the most awesome photos on Flickr.' Photos are automatically selected by computer according to a secret algorithm called Interestingness. The top 500 photos ranked by Interestingness are shown in Explore.

Flickr has stated that many factors go into calculating Interestingness: a photo's tags, how many groups the photo is in, views, favorites, where click-throughs are coming from, who comments on a photo and when, and more. The velocity of any of those components is a key factor. For example, getting 20 comments in an hour counts much higher than getting 20 comments in a week.

Is Explore a showcase for the top Flickr photographers? No. It's for photo viewers, not the photographers. It exists so that, at any moment, anyone who wants to view interesting photos can go to Explore and have a reasonable chance of seeing something interesting.

Does that imply that photographs not in Explore are uninteresting? Of course not. Many wonderful photos are uploaded to Flickr each day not selected for Explore. But, to serve its purpose, Explore only includes a small sampling of all of the photos on Flickr, showing photos from many different people to create a diverse selection.

— Big Huge Labs.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Winter morning pines

"Pine trees, son. I said, pine trees!" the Georgia distiller's father once remonstrated, perplexed by my Yankee question.

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Pines trees under a winter morning sun (with a bit of snow, to boot). Hawthorne Nature Trail: DeKalb County (Northlake), Georgia, USA. 12 January 2025.

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Johannes Brahms: "String Sextet no. 2"

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Pic(k) of the Week: The roots

Roots and tendrils and boughs, oh my.

Seminary Wood in Legacy Park: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 22 December 2024.

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Joanne Brackeen: "Haiti B"

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Pic(k) of the Week retrospective for 2024.

Since joining Flickr in 2006, I have uploaded 25,417 photographs and images. I've used the website as a cloud backup, a journal of 'good fermentables,' and, more recently, as a photography portfolio. Since 2009, I have culled through those images every week and selected one as Pic(k) of the Week: fifty-two, of course, for each year.

Here's a retrospective of the images I selected for 2024. Clicking on the thumbnail will take you to the full-sized image.

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

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DATA

Of my fifty-two selections in 2024:

• 18 images (35 %) were landscapes: intimate, grand, or tangentially (including trees and woodlands)
  vs. 21 (40 %) in 2023.
• 16 (31 %) were of flowers, blossoms, plants, or fungi
  vs. 15 (28 %) in 2023.
• 4 (7 %) were of birds or other animals
  vs. 9 (17 %) in 2023.
• 7 (13 %) were neotopographical: structures, objects, vehicles, or signs (excluding breweries, wineries, distilleries).
  vs. 7 (13 %) in 2023.
• 8 (15 %) were street-photography or human portraits, primarily or tangentially. (This and neotopographical can intersect).
  vs. 7 (13 %) in 2023.
• 4 (7 %) were images of the sky or astronomy-related.
  vs. 5 (9 %) in 2023.
• 3 (6 %) were fermentable or comestible related.
  vs. 6 (11 %) in 2023.
• 4 (7 %) were of art, music, or culture in one form or another.
  vs. 2 (3 %) in 2023.
• 1 image (2 %) was processed as black-and-white.
  vs. 0 in 2023.
(The percentage total is greater than 100 %, as categories overlap and percentages were rounded up.)

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PREVIOUS RETROSPECTIVES

I began the Pic(k) of the Week feature in 2009; I began collating image retrospectives in 2014.

• 2023
• 2022
• 2021 retrospective (n/a)
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 2014

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CHANGE OF EMPHASIS & CONCLUSION

I began my Yours For Good Fermentables blog in 2002, as a vehicle for examining beer (and other fermentables). Since 2020 or so, it and my photos have moved on to explorations of intimate landscapes, nature, and 'new topographics.' A beer may sneak in now and again, but I now refer to the blog simply as YFGF (even though I have yet to change the masthead.)

As to so-called 'social media,' I last posted to Facebook on 16 May 2022, and to Twitter (aka 'X') on 17 December 2023. On the other hand, I have maintained my Instagram account (@tcizauskas) and I have added Threads (@tcizauskas) and, most recently, Bluesky (@tcizauskas.bsky.social)...after a short, now ended, dabble on Vero. Whether I continue to do so, I have yet to decide.

To conclude, I thank of all of you who continue to patronize my blog and I wish you health, safety, and fulfillment in 2025. Sveiks!

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