STILL

low maintenance friends

Mary Jo Hoffman — Sat, 25 May 2013 05:00:38 +0000

everyone needs friends who are always there when you need them, and who don’t ask for much. no drama, no neediness. a low maintenance presence thriving over there in the shade. everyone, in other words, needs a little hosta. i love my hostas, which, in addition to all of the above, almost never invite me to join facebook, or forward me links to cat videos.

variegated hosta

saint paul, minnesota

small flower big scent

Mary Jo Hoffman — Fri, 24 May 2013 05:00:01 +0000

i love how protective this leaf is of its delicate charge.

lily of the valley

saint paul, minnesota

a leafy snack

Mary Jo Hoffman — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:30:28 +0000

under the mature maple tree that grows beside our deck there are a dozen of these hopeful sprouts. every spring they shoot up. none of them makes it. i assume they lose the battle for sunlight and water with the parent tree. but it could as easily be that those tender leaves are perfect late afternoon deer snacks. the whitetail equivalent of the loose handful of chocolate covered almonds i snuck earlier today.

sugar maple sapling

saint paul, minnesota

nestled

Mary Jo Hoffman — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:00:59 +0000

i love the way this little nest sits so snugly in the tangle of this witch’s broom, and i love the random shapeliness of the wispy branches. this was obviously a bird with a sense of place.

rice creek regional trail

saint paul, minnesota

profusion

Mary Jo Hoffman — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:00:37 +0000

minnesota is a little too far north for most cherry trees. i get jealous every spring when i see cherry blossoms arrive in places like washington dc and nashville before we even have ice-out on our lakes. we have our own flowering fruit trees, similarly abundant and colorful, with the difference that neither the fruit nor the word–crab apple–evokes anything like the sweetness of cherries.

crab apple blossoms

saint paul, minneota

waking up

Mary Jo Hoffman — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:00:59 +0000

after two days of heavy rain, the fiddleheads have burst from the ground with added exuberance this year (despite this one’s slightly doleful hanging head), and are now almost 18 inches high.

fiddlehead fern frond in may

saint paul, minnesota

a chameleon among frogs

Mary Jo Hoffman — Sun, 19 May 2013 05:00:44 +0000

it is may, and the gray tree frogs trill all evening and into the night, like troubadours singing for their lady loves. we sit on the deck and listen as darkness falls, and remember what it was like to sing all night for no good reason but love.

we found this courtly gentleman hiding between two weathered gray cedar planks of our dock this afternoon. he leaped down into the marsh grass and disappeared, and is probably one of the singers we can hear right now out our open patio door. he is most likely fern green, blending beautifully into his new marshy surroundings, and he is trying to sound, with all his might, like the gray tree frog equivalent of Cary Grant.

gray tree frog

turtle lake, saint paul, minnesota

a platter of pollen

Mary Jo Hoffman — Sat, 18 May 2013 05:00:03 +0000

we are adopting a colony of honey bees from the bee-squad at the university of minnesota. the hive was dropped off today. our entomologist becky explained that dandelions and willow blossoms are an important source of early pollen for northern bees. we have plenty of both. so we should have some pretty happy bees.

dandelion blossoms

saint paul, minnesota

pond love

Mary Jo Hoffman — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:00:16 +0000

we have been repairing our dock all week. it’s very long. thus a whole week. but it also means we have spent lots of time ankle deep at the water’s edge. we’ve gotten to witness some memorable sights: a bald eagle plucking a live northern pike from the water, and a whole flock of arctic terns recklessly dive bombing minnows in the shallows. the most spectacular sight however came today in a shallow pool hidden in the reeds where hundreds of american toads were singing and mating. the males sang with their throats inflated like balloons, the ladies responded, some chasing ensued, and soon enough they were locked in an underwater embrace. the male appears to squeeze a ribbon of eggs out of the female, and i assume fertilizes them on the way out. eventually the pool is filled with these polka-dotted ribbons floating in the water. some of them several feet long.

american toad egg skein

turtle lake, minnesota

palest pink

Mary Jo Hoffman — Thu, 16 May 2013 05:00:19 +0000

usually my eye wanders to STILL blog subjects that make a graphic statement. sometimes it is color that catches my eye. on occasion texture. and every once in a while pattern. but today it was none of those. it was simply beauty.

may (crabapple?) blossoms

saint paul, minnesota