Scene taken along a rural, two-lane highway in south-central Tennessee. I loved the way the vines had climbed up and nearly taken over this structure, adding an element of wildness to an otherwise industrial scene.

An abandoned and since overgrown pickup truck whose usefulness had long passed, photographed at the wooded edge of a pasture on an Olympic peninsula dairy farm in western Washington state.

A photograph of an immense silage storage area on a dairy farm on a frosty morning. The farmer kept the silage feed for his dairy herd covered with giant tarps and kept those tarps held down against winter storms with several hundred worn out automobile and truck tires. At dawn, I found this scene both telling of the state of waste within our culture and somehow surreally beautiful.

There is a time within every vegetable garden when the days shorten and those plants that were once young and vibrant turn toward their altered states of lethargy and decay.

The first light frost of autumn in my garden took out many of the principal photosynthetic players on my patty pan squash plant, its leaves, but left the architectural structure of this complex living factory partially intact.

Rainbow chard is one of those easy to grow, easy on the eyes vegetable garden plants that will often make it through the entire winter in the Seattle area. This was the scene in late November after a hard frost. The outer leaves had been frozen and were turning to mush as they thawed, but there, rising somehow from their destruction, were vibrant new leaves to carry on.

In mid-December, the inner secrets of a tomatillo are revealed in my winter garden after the papery husk has been reduced to its lace-like structural ribbing.

Deep within the compost pile in late November, earthworms are busy breaking down autumn’s leaves and stems, unfazed by temperatures beyond.

Wandering along a gravel road in the rolling Palouse farmlands of Eastern Washington. At the base of a steep hillside, walnut trees and elderberry bushes. The dusty blue glows from a distance and mingled in with the smell of road dust, a strong hit of elderberries. This is October.

An A-frame cabin at the edge of a lake near the top of a ridge about ten miles from Salmon. The lichens were doing their best to help the cabin blend in with its surroundings. A masterful effort.

In the world of feathered creatures, some birds are workers and some are savers. Here, woodpeckers have explored this tree, harvesting insects in a visually methodical pattern. And some other creature has come along since, seeing all of those mined holes and deciding to use them as safe-deposit boxes, storing seeds and treasures for an uncertain future.

Late December along the banks of the Washougal River in southernmost Washington state: dry, cold temperatures have guided the decay of this spawned out salmon toward something of a sculptural desiccation. The nutrients within this and hundreds of other decaying carcasses will help keep the river healthy, help keep the cycle of life moving — death bringing new life, entropy giving birth to order.