March 'Photo(s) of the Month'

This post includes three additional photos for your enjoyment. Thank you for subscribing to The Neighborly Florida!

The green saturation was turned up a bit in this image of an areca palm just a few minutes from my home.

Each month I send out a ‘Photo of the Month’ to upgraded subscribers but this email post is going out to everyone in my subscriber list in celebration of Spring and new beginnings. Nature has this spectacular way to show us each year how to renew and rejuvenate and how to see with our own eyes the cycle of transformation.

Yet the season of Spring is not only a time of actual happenings on the planet, it is also a symbol for hope. Now, there’s a few different definitions of hope, from a secular view to a more faith-based perspective, but each definition emphasizes the feeling or knowing of expectation — that something can and will happen to change a current situation. Going further, hope is the opposite of hopelessness and despair.

Because nature seems to lack the type of consciousness experienced by humans (but who can really know for certain), there is no feeling of expectation. There is only expectation. All year, through every season, nature is quite busy cycling through each new phase of its existence because of the innate expectation of renewal within each plant, animal and ecosystem. Even in it’s so-called ‘final’ phases of death, it really is just another new beginning.

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These two images here are derived from one photograph of a palm frond outside my home. When creating art photography based on nature elements, I like to emphasize color and texture against a black background.

The life cycle of a palm tree is quite impressive— living anywhere from 70 to 100 years or even more in warm tropical environments, and depending on the species. Though stable and resilient, palm trees do experience seasonal changes such as losing fronds, growing and losing fruit and fighting (or succumbing to) disease. With each falling frond, there is a new one in its place. With each loss of fruit, another is getting ready to grow. When a palm tree dies, a new seed takes its first step towards creating the embryonic root. It’s all cyclical. One particular phase cannot happen in the absence of the other.

Again, this is an image created from one palm frond. These three are actually one, placed in opposing directions, giving the feeling of movement and dance.

Because palm trees are so resilient, they are often symbols of hope and of victory. For Christians throughout the world, the palm tree and frond are both physical and spiritual elements of Palm Sunday—the first day of the Holy Week leading up to Good Friday and celebration of the Resurrection.

Here in Florida, palm trees are a seemingly everlasting symbol for the warm, tropical Sunshine State. Found on Florida-themed merchandise, Florida logos, and on the property of most any Central and South Florida piece of real estate, palm trees are synonymous with our lovely hope-filled peninsula.

Because, even through all the storms, the Flori-duh criticisms, and the unusual people who seem to live here (myself included), Florida is a symbol of hope, renewal and rebirth.

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Once again, thank you for being a subscriber. If you are interested in a free high resolution file of each on of these palm images, please email laracchapman@gmail.com and I can send it to you as an attachment. For more information about my work, visit my recently updated website https://www.laracchapman.com/.

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