Ithaca Garden Network

The "Living Light" show at the Tompkins County Public Library is still going, until March 26th. It is definitely worth the visit. Compliments to the Finger Lakes Native Plant Society for coordinating the exhibit, and to the 52 artists who contributed their artwork. I want to call them photos, but one of most of the photos are better labeled art.

This photograph is the best my Sony Cybershot could do with Lang Elliott's "Reaching Out," of the wild columbine (aquilegia canadensis ). This shot is but a hint of the beauty of the original, which you can see in the library now. I was struck by the start contrast of the colorful and detailed foreground and the blurred green background. It captures the nature of columbine in the wild, where I tend to see it clinging to some gorge rock and sending its "space capsule" flowers out over the gorge. Its intricate form and warm color palette first drew me to native plants a few years ago when I was designing the website for the Plantsmen Nursery , where I wove Dan Segal's photo of a columbine with a tiarella, a buckhaw, and a skunk cabbage.