Gratia Léger
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gratialeger.bsky.social
Gratia Léger
@gratialeger.bsky.social
280 followers 520 following 2.9K posts
Reader. Writer. Dog lover. Historian. Tea lover. Walker. Knitter. Vegetable whisperer. Lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan.
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gratialeger.bsky.social
From the morning walk. Ornamental grasses don’t generally wow me, but overnight soaking rain made this planting shine.

#beautyinwinter
#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
Large clump of reddish brown ornamental grass. Argyll’s head and shoulders appear at lower left. Trees in the upper background, grass in the middle, and various bright green weeds populate the ground at the lower edge. Detail of the same clump of grass with the seed heads more visibleo.
November 26, 2025 at 10:37 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
From the morning walk. Turn the sound up and listen to the birds. The Merlin app ID'd cedar waxwing along with the tufted titmouse, cardinal, and robin that I could pick out.

#beautyinwinter
#beautyasresistance
#beautyisresistance
November 25, 2025 at 5:59 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
Winter color

#beautyinwinter
#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
Vivid orange sunset. A single tree is silhouetted by the color on the left side, and some branches on a tree reach in from the upper right edge. The color fades into periwinkle toward the top.
November 23, 2025 at 10:12 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
Winter colors have arrived.
From our walk last Wednesday afternoon. (I like walking in the early morning, but on cold & windy mornings I wait till it warms up a bit.)

#beautyinwinter
#beautyasresistance
#beautyisresistance
An early winter landscape: cloudy sky in blue, grey, and white, with hints of purple. A line of dark brown and deep grey bare trees extends through the middle of the shot. Tan grasses and standing dried field corn take up the middle, just below and to the right of the trees. And in the lower left, the surprisingly bright green of grass that doesn't die back in winter. Lower left corner has some kind of reddish brown which seems to be a pile of leaves that have collected in a dip in the ground.
November 18, 2025 at 12:31 AM
gratialeger.bsky.social
No photos from the morning walk because it was COLD and overcast. Argyll & I kept our heads down. But the sun flirted with us in the afternoon, so we walked more.

Somehow this vista makes me think of undergraduate walks to the east of Grand Rapids MI.

#beautyasresistance
#beautiyisresistance
Paved walking trail bifurcates the shot. A whole field of dried field corn on the right. A row of trees just to the left of the paved path--nearer ones are short and scrubby, and there's a magnificent sycamore shortly before the trail reaches the vanishing point. To the left of this line of trees, another field of dried corn. Blue sky with patchy clouds.
November 12, 2025 at 11:43 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
The sycamore’s glory is its winter bark.

#beautyasresistance
#beautyisresistance
A large sycamore. The bark peels in late summer & early fall, leaving many of its limbs with smooth white skin that reflects the sun. It’s doing that here. There is cloud cover behind its upper half, and blue sky across the middle, then streaky clouds lower down. Beneath the last large limb on the right side of the tree is a line of more distant trees with bare branches.
November 12, 2025 at 8:30 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
Yesterday Argyll & I used a trail converted from a RR line.

I call these “The Watchers by the Way”, and have observed them over many years. Currently bearded by vines & sometimes defaced by graffiti, they stand and watch no matter what.

#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
A pole with 3 old RR signal lights. The top 2 are round; the bottom one is oval and has vines hanging from it. Behind them is an overpass for a major local road.
November 11, 2025 at 12:36 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
No walk today because a dear friend I've not seen in a dozen years was in town. Here's a photo from 2021 of acorns from a chestnut oak. I adore chestnut oaks for their alligator-like bark and these dark, dark acorns.

#beautyasresistance
#beautyisresistance
Three very dark brown, nearly black acorns from a chestnut oak. The one on the left still has the hull on the stem end. The background is textured because IIRC I found the acorns on a section of cement sidewalk.
November 7, 2025 at 11:47 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
I had an early morning thing, so Argyll & I walked at noon, on this trail, converted from an old RR line.
These are the kinds of things gvts do that build community.

Community= beauty, and
#beautyisresistance
#beautyasrestance
#communityislife
Autumn gold leaves on the trees lining a rails-to-trails walking path. Ahead (in the center just above the midline of the photo) is an underpass under a major local roadway. There’s a board fence in the right foreground, and the grey gravel/grit down the center is the trail surface.
November 5, 2025 at 9:52 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
O gracious light,
pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven,
O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the vesper light,
we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
A flame orange tree, with a wooden bench and the corner of an outdoor labyrinth in the lower part. Behind the tree, with the carillon tower just visible above the tree, is my church. To the right the ground slopes downward, and the sky is striped with clouds turning pink with setting sun.
November 3, 2025 at 10:47 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
I love this oak tree root from my church's grounds. Like a growing gargoyle, eying the labyrinth. Photo is from last Thursday, after the deluge but before the wind.

#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
Lichen covered tree root. Tree trunk is at the left of the shot, and thre root emerges to the right, ending in a large knot that resemble the bulge of eyebrows on a mythical creature. There are mauve oak leaves covering the ground, and some green grass showing through. A scrim of trees in the back edge of the field of view are half denuded of their leaves. Another view of the same tree root, this time a few feet away from its end, looking up its length. The root has a sort of snub "nose" to go with its prominent "eyebrows". The ground makes a small hillock around the base of the trunk, which rises in the middle of the shot. The ground is thick with fallen oak leaves, in shades of pink and purple
November 3, 2025 at 8:47 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
No walk this morning owing to a coastal low bringing sideways rain. When it began to clear, we happened to be at my church, so wandered the grounds.

The trees have dressed up to match the building.

#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
Tall oak tree on the left turning a color halfway between maroon and chocolate. A macadam walk leads straight ahead, then branches to the left in front of the oak, while the main part goes straight for a bit then bends left around the church carillon tower. The tower is visible in the center of the photo, behind the branches of the oak tree. To the right of the tower the peaked roof of the main church is visible, and below and to the right of that is the choir room, partly hidden by the leaves and branches of another oak.
October 30, 2025 at 10:00 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
Yesterday's walk.

Deep roots.

Deep roots persist, even when they break and fail.
Even as they decay, they support other life.

Persist.
#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
A fallen tree's roots, seen from the bottom. Not sure what kind of tree--the stand is mostly oak and beech. The lighter wedge at roughly the 5 o'clock position is embedded stone. It's a very rocky area.
October 29, 2025 at 11:15 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
Found this on today's walk, just past the edge of the current camping area in my local state park. Handle says "The F. E. Myers & Bro Co". Well-designed machinery--humans working together with nature to improve life--is its own beauty

#beautyasresistance
#beautyisresistance
Old hand operated water pump in the woods. Closeup of the handle: "The F.E. Myers & Bro. Co."
October 29, 2025 at 12:05 AM
gratialeger.bsky.social
Today was a very short walk, thanks to a car crash blocking the tiny (±130 yr old) RR underpass on the road I needed. So here's a view from Saturday.
It was visioning day at my church. Beauty is here for those who seek. So is clarity.

#beautyasresistance
#beautyisresistance
Autumn scene. The grass has turned golden brown, partly because of the light of the newly risen sun. There's a large tree on the horizon that is orange gold at the top, and still green at the bottom. To its left & right are smaller trees that are already gold, and a few trunks without leaves. The ground slopes substantially from the left to the right. there was frost, and I think it's visible on the grass in the shadow at the foreground.
October 27, 2025 at 11:11 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
Ours are getting there too. We're expecting a coastal low in a couple of days, so a lot of these will blow away then.
Park bench under an oak tree in early morning light. There's a row of trees turning orange, red, and gold that runs across the horizon in the middle of the view.
October 27, 2025 at 10:51 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
On the way to the morning walk, 20 min after sunrise, and about 90 seconds after the sun cleared the tips of the trees on the ridge behind me.

Finding beauty is a combo of looking and luck.

#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
The first beams of morning sun catch a row of trees in autumn orange and red
October 26, 2025 at 12:10 AM
gratialeger.bsky.social
From the morning walk. Rock is everywhere in my state, and I never tire of looking at it. I love this formation--visible because it lies along what was once a RR line--for its tree-bark-like texture.

We stand on rock.

#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
Weathered rock exposed by an old RR cut. There are small bits of disintegrating rock caught in pockets, a few leaves lying on the surface, some moss growing diagonally in the center right. The folds of rock run from upper left toward lower right.
October 24, 2025 at 7:03 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
The morning walk. It’s that beautiful season when the shadows get long.

#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
Argyll to the left, with her ears up and back, listening. And her shadow cast by the morning sun.
October 23, 2025 at 10:25 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
I'm pretty sure this is a native dogwood. Natives are under stress because of disease, so lots of people plant Kousa, but they aren't what evolved to live here.

Which makes me think about how America evolved to live in democracy.

#Beautyasresistance
#Beautyisresistance
Striking red of a dogwood tree with a bigger, different and still green (tinged a little with gold) behind it.
October 22, 2025 at 11:52 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
From the morning walk. I love black gum trees' waxy leaves and bright red Octobers. Somehow I'd never noticed the blueberry like fruit before. I plead the fact that I usually saw them in marshes or on t'other side of the bayou.

Shine bright where you are.

#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
Bright red leaves on a black gum tree. If I expand the image I can see clusters of blue fruits amid the red. The tree trunk angles in from the right edge of the photo toward the far right of the photo's top
October 21, 2025 at 9:55 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
From yesterday morning's walk, because today was blustery and overcast.

I adore New England aster. This one was more than 5' tall, and leaning over the fence to say hello. Amazing, for a plant that dies back each winter.

Keep growing where we are.

#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance.
Cascading flowers of a 5' tall New England aster.
October 20, 2025 at 9:57 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
Argyll lasted 45 min., then we had to leave. Too much commotion.

No Kings!

Hatboro PA
Argyll, facing the passing cars, with a parking meter next to her left shoulder. Also, the tip of my flag
October 18, 2025 at 8:37 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
From the morning walk. Beeches wear their experience in plain sight, which is one of the many reasons I love them so much.

Endurance.
History.

#beautyisresistance
#beautiyasresistance
The base of a beech tree. There are scars near the leaves next to the roots, fallen leaves on the ground. Behind the beech are some green leaves from other brush and trees, beginning to go a little gold with fall.
October 17, 2025 at 11:48 PM
gratialeger.bsky.social
From the morning walk. I love looking at tree bark and tree roots.
Endurance!

Moss on the north east side reminds me of the Underground railroad.
#beautyisresistance
#beautyasresistance
Moss covered base of a tree.
October 16, 2025 at 10:36 PM