The forest in the coastal area about five or six kilometers from the village of Shishan is dense, dark, and for the most part evergreen, but without the conifers. The backbone of the ecosystem is made of evergreen oaks (Quercus ilex) and bay laurel (Laurus nobilis).
The small trees on the seaside edge of the forest are beautifully twisted and very interesting to photograph. Probably that's why on the 17th of September 2006, on my way along the coast, I felt inspired to take this photograph that ended up opening today's post.
At one point, my attention on that occasion got caught by a small dry plant that grew among the herbaceous vegetation under the trees. In this photograph, you can see the lovely, pot-like seed pod of the Silene latifolia plant.
Late last night, I spent some time sitting in my blue armchair in front of the PC monitor and thinking about something short & sweet to publish the next day.
I have fourteen yellow folders on my desktop. Fourteen little digital bags filled with photographs for future posts, all selected and edited to fit the title of the post which is also the title of the folder. The text of the post is always created "on the spot." It gets kinda improvised while uploading the photographs that drive the narrative. But all that stuff was created for elaborate posts that require more time & effort than I'm ready to put in my today's Hive activity. I published a couple of fairly long posts in the last few days, so today, I decided to go for something simple that maybe borders with shitposting but it never reaches that low.
Despite the suffocating hot weather, I squeezed a bit of inspiration out of my tired brain and soul, to create a short forest fantasy through the amazing power of Photoshop. So, what's this alleged fantasy about? Well, I took the crown-like detail from the top of the Silene latifolia seed pod, duplicate it, or more precisely - triplicate it, and then mounted it on three of the trees shown in the opening photograph. And that's it. The final result is displayed in the last shot of this post. The trees became giant flowers adding a bit of surrealism to the ordinary woods.