Dried and gone to seed
Terri Webster Schrandt

Sunday Stills: Kinda #Dry

If you haven’t guessed it, this week’s Sunday Stills theme is DRY. I’m using the literal version of dry, as in lack of water, to share my version of dry.

This post marks my first entry to Becky B’s October Kinda Squares Photo Challenge. Many of my photos today are square, some are not.

Last week’s images featuring water droplets displayed my yearning for cool temperatures, less heat, and an end to smokey skies caused by wildfires. This time of year in Northern California is very dry, usually through mid-November. Most people’s lawns are dry, a choice many make to save water.

In this image below, taken during our drought in 2015, even the public parks were rarely watered. Parks crews did make sure that trees got some water due to the need to maintain the Sacramento area’s urban forest.

Dry Park during droubt

The surrounding mountain ranges including the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada Range are also notoriously dry in summer and Fall. The excessive dry underbrush acts as dry tinder to fuel wildfires.

In the mountain and foothill areas, the wildfires tend to spark due to dry lightning from stray thunderstorms that form from monsoon moisture coming from the south and southwest.

Now that you have had a dry lecture on geography and weather, let’s get started with my images depicting our dry area.

Many of the plants in my backyard have withered in their natural cycle. My once glorious sunflowers have gone to seed from this stunner…

Macro view of sunflower

…to this withering bloom…

Drying sunflower

…to this bounty of seeds…

Sunflower gone to Seed

…and finally, to this…completely dry, but starkly beautiful.

Dried and gone to seed

The birds love those sunflower seeds. I harvested loads of seeds to be used for planting next year and to send some to my daughter for her garden.

Speaking of birds, Lisa’s bird weekly challenge is macro or close-up birds. This close-up of one of my loyal backyard hummingbirds is seen perched on a dry twig of our California Redwoods.

Closeup view of Hummingbird
Hummingbird close-up

In another close-up, this fella seems to be yearning for liquid refreshment in the dry bird feeder. Oops!

Hummingbird and Dry Feeder

As I said, Northern California is dry everywhere. The last of these dry grapes in nearby Apple Hill will not yield any wine. Raisins, anyone?

dried wine grapes
Dried grapes AKA raisins

Further south in Mammoth Lakes located in the Eastern Sierra Nevadas, the desert shows its dry heart along the shores of salty Mono Lake.

Dry desert around Mono Lake

With dry weather, comes dust! We quickly raised our car windows when we slowed down for a sheep migration on highway 395 returning from the Mammoth Lakes area.

Sheep Crossing Dusty Highway

This week’ images are inspired and submitted for the following blog photo challenges:
Cee’s Flower of the Day
Lisa’s Weekly Bird Challenge
Becky B’s October Kinda Squares

Is it dry where you live? Share your dry images and other creative ideas or your dry sense of humor with us at Sunday Stills this week. Remember, you can link all week.

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76 comments

  1. No, not dry at all at the moment. Fall is here and so is the rain. Unusually warm though for October, last year I was dealing with the frost every morning! Now the temperature is 10-17 C.

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  4. Excellent proof that dry can be beautiful too Terri. Loved your hummingbird on the dry branch. How on earth did you find one that sat still?!?! And your sheep-induced dust storm image is fabulous!!

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    • Thanks, Tina! My hummers seem to like to perch amidst the mini pine forest in my backyard. We were driving and saw the huge cloud of dust a half mile down the highway and thought there was a fire. I couldn’t believe how well that pic worked out!

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  9. Terri,
    Love the pictures, especially the herd of sheep. It’s always a treat to see animals like this in the wild.
    Speaking of dry…last year we visited White Sands, NM on one of our western RV trips. Here’s a picture from that visit.

    I look forward to the comments from your readers each week. They’re a very creative group. Stay safe out there. It’s dry for sure. Joe

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    • Aww, White Sands…in my backyard!! Haven’t been there in a few years. Would love to take the grandbabies.

      Love your photo of the sheep, Terri. We have a goat in our mountains that was just abandoned or dropped off when he was young. I love for him every time I cross the mountains to go from northeast El Paso to west El Paso. We have named him Ernest. Because I am always ‘earnestly looking’ for him.

      Even the dry sunflowers have a rugged, simple beauty. Goes to show everything is beautiful in its own way.

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      • A goat named Ernest? Lol! That’s my hubby’s twin brother’s name. It was interesting getting the macro of the sunflower seeds, just to see them up close, Leslie. That White Sands area looks amazing.

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  10. Great hummingbird pics! I pray that you get some relief of the wildfires and the dryness you are dealing with. I will do my blog in a bit. Since it’s not dry in Florida, I will share a part of my honeymoon from 3 years ago.

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    • Thanks, Lisa, I have to stalk the hummers these days. The bottom hummer shot was taken at my dad’s in the dry Sierra foothills. They have 4 feeders which dry up quickly due to the flocks of hummers vying for the sugar water. Looking forward to your post!

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  12. Some very dry-looking photos here. I like the sunflower cycle and the indignant hummer. The sheep are great, too. All that dust shows how dry the land is and that also means it’s easily eroded. When it rains a lot of that dirt gets washed away and here it ends up in the ocean. I tried taking photos of the dry and dusty earth here, but they didn’t really show what I was looking for so I’ve gone with this: https://grahamsisland.com/2020/10/04/brush-fire-aftermath/.

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  16. Hi Terri, you’ve really captured dry here with your selection of photos. I found the sunflower drying out photos especially poignant. You live in a very dry environment, as do we at times, but currently we have lots of spring rain and green is the colour of the day.

    I too went literal with this one and took us back to an Aussie Outback Adventure from a few years ago, reliving the dry river beds and old trees that still manage to flourish. It was dry but also beautiful. https://debs-world.com/2020/10/05/not-every-paradise-is-tropical-a-dry-run/

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  27. It’s been pretty dry here too. I hope you get the rain that has been forecasted… then send it south to us 🙂

    Your pictures for the prompt were great. Funny how we can often overlook the interest and beauty of a subject after it had faded. I love the closeup of the sunflower seeds.

    Now… go fill the hummers’ feeder!

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  29. There is a certain aspect of beauty in all these dry images – lovely. The beauty stands in stark contrast with the negative effects of dryness: the wildfires and lack of life. We’ve often driven through dry areas out west and in the Midwest, but here, on the east coast, the color green still dominates. Apart from the turning leaves, one of which have become really dry and fun to walk through. 🙂

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  30. Living in the wettest city in the UK, it was hard to come up with anything for this week’s theme, Terri. We’ve just had a months worth of rain in the last 3 days, so I wanted to find something a little different for you. Anyway, I think I’ve gone totally out of the box with one.

    This bunch of grapes produces a DRY white wine all grown in some vineyards in Wales. We don’t produce much wine (because of the climate), but these grapes produce a lovely refreshing dry wine suitable for drinking on warm, summer evenings in the garden. Unfortunately, I had no bottles to show you because we drunk the lot during the summer.

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  35. Hi Terri, I had fun with dry today. Cindy and I went on a photo shoot at the rose garden where dry was everywhere. The trick was finding the beauty in it as you have done so well. I’m not sure I could even pick a favorite, the the dusty sheep migration is pretty amazing. BTW, we have 4 offers, so I’ve heard. I haven’t seen them yet. Prescott is seeming somewhat more real.

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