Shovel Over Shoulder

On Sunday I was posed and photographed by a photographer for the NY Times. After a week or more of cloudy, garden-photography perfect days, they had to come on the sunniest of all mornings.

I know these problems all too well, the extreme contrast, blown-out highlights on the tops of leaves, the dull colors. And me, having casually refused to link my face to my blog, is being posed as a gardener-type, complete with shovel over shoulder. My trusty shovel, now a prop.

The sun was hard to look into, but the camera required it so that I wouldn't have neanderthalish brow over deep-pocketed eyes. There was the moment he asked me to put my hands under broccoli leaves, an offering. I had to laugh and figure the irony of being asked to mimic that very same gesture I mocked not long ago. When the newspaper comes to town, there's a feeling of things leaving my hands, things out of my control. What will it say, how will it re-present me, what is the story it will tell.