solstice

a little bit of winter frost, and a fat little bud at each joint. an apt image for winter solstice. see you tomorrow, on a day of poise, before we start getting a couple more minutes of sunshine each day.

knotweed in early winter

scale

i tried every way i knew how to show how big these sunflower seed heads were, without actually resorting to sticking my hand into the photo. for what it’s worth, those stems are the thickness of tennis racket grips, the thickness of pool cues, the thickness of grain scoop handles. the heads are smaller than garbage can lids and manholes, but larger than dinner plates, frisbees, and record turntables. they are pretty close to the diameter and circumference of the steering wheel of my toyota prius. there. that’s the best i can do, without sticking my hand into the shot.

sunflower seedheads in winter

overstim

i couldn’t tell what to absorb today, when i brought these giant sunflower heads home from a roadside colony that i tracked all summer long. do i try to put their monstrous size in perspective? do i draw attention to the way that the folded head looks like a hillside? do i pull in close and show the mind-blowing geometry of the ranks of seeds and the empty sockets where the seeds have fallen? in the end i felt like a toddler trying to figure out which present to open, santa’s, mom and dad’s, or grandma and grandpa’s. so i just turned in circles, stamping my feet, and clenching and unclenching my hands.

sunflower seed-head

tis the season

i spent the day running my son to get a christmas tree because he wanted one, and running my daughter to see her grandma because she hasn’t seen her since she got home, and running my dog around in the car because he seemed lonely, and wrapping some christmas presents because it’s getting to be that time, and now i feel like these tulips.

adorable pest

we see occasional hedgehogs in france, trotting with their little hopping gaits along roadsides or into the impenetrable scrub alongside walking trails and vineyards. they are considered pests in other parts of the world where they eat the eggs of wading birds. in theory i hate hedgehogs for this–destroying one of my favorite things (eggs) from one of my favorite animals (shorebirds). But if you look at a live hedgehog, hating it is like trying to get mad at a toddler in diapers walking with muddy feet across your newly mopped floors to show you a leaf she found in the garden: “oh, my floors!” you want to say, but what comes out is, “hey cutie, show me what you’ve got there.”

european hedgehog spines