For the time being …

I am saying au revoir.

I’ve enjoyed Daily Photo for the hundred-and-some posts I’ve done, but when something you got into for fun starts being an obligation, it’s time to rethink the whole thing. So I am signing off, at least for the time being. At the end of next week I am leaving for Europe for a couple of weeks, and when I return, I want to move on and pursue some different photographic and writing projects.

I may be back a bit later. But in the meantime, I hope you’ll visit my other blog, Passante’s World, on which I post pictures and commentaries relating to my life in Washington, DC and farther afield—which will include Naples, Pompeii, and the Amalfi Coast after October 22.

I appreciate your support.

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Photograph © 2006, Jaco du Plessis.
Used with the permission of the photographer, whose work can be seen at Airliners.net.

But does he have a license?

Seen in the parking lot of my local supermarket a couple of days ago.

Advance planning

It’s not even October, but some people have had Halloween decorations outside their houses for over a week now.

Beware of the … bleagle

Marie McC posted a closeup of this strange creature last week on Alexandria Daily Photo. Since we both shot pictures of him at the same time, I’m sure she won’t mind if I post one too. Here he is on a column, guarding his owners’ house.

He’s a chimera—a mythical beast made up of parts of several animals. This one seems to have bat’s wings, a lion’s head and body, and eagle‘s talons. I guess that makes him a bleagle. I’m glad he’s on a sturdy leash.

The original Chimaera was a fire-breathing monster, part lion, part goat, and part serpent. Bellerophon killed it, mounted on the winged horse Pegasus, which he tamed for the purpose. There’s a famous statue: The Chimaera of Arezzo. Photographs of a replica of the statue can be found here.

Studious gentleman

This shot is for Elisabeth, who likes statues she can interact with. If Elisabeth finds that Kermit isn’t the greatest conversationalist, maybe she’d prefer to sit next to this colonial gentleman (whoever he is). But unless she’s friends with the owners of this private house in Alexandria, She’ll have to content herself with looking at him through the railings, as I did.

Autumn colors

The leaves haven’t started to turn yet in the Washington area (or at least, the ones I see from my balcony haven’t), but these hand-made bags on sale at the Alexandria market, give a foretaste of Fall colors.

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight*

I was sitting outside a service station on Friday, on the only bit of curb that wasn’t oilstained, waiting for my car to go through Virginia state inspection and idly watching a cop pulling over hapless speeders, when the sun came out and lit up this tree.

*”Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.”
T.S. Eliot The Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

Studious frog

One of the facilities at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md., is a reference library of around 4,000 volumes on horticulture for adults and children, If you visit, you’ll have to share the bench in the visitor center with this fellow. He’s very absorbed in his book. I wonder if it’s The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher.

Georgetown

I deliberately shot this gateway, which is in the Georgetown area of the District of Columbia, in spring before the wisteria came into leaf or flower because this way you see the lantern. Once the wisteria starts growing, the lantern is hidden.

Upside down umbrellas

Upside-down umbrellas add a colorful note under the canopy of this flower shop.