misnomer or not?

when i look at this phot0–that i made today–i see angry energy, maybe the end of a relationship , or stolen dreams, or broken promises. it’s ironic this photo came out of me, because i feel neither angry nor energetic. it’s mid-march, there is still snow on the ground, the skies have been gray for days. i feel…well…generally blasé. not angry. although come to think of it, i am pretty sick of this particular winter with it’s roller-coaster temps and icy sidewalks. i never have liked daylight savings time either, and the older i get the more it irks me. and there are still four full weeks of tax season and it already feels like it has been going on forever. oh, and did i mention menopause? or hot flashes? or sleepless nights?  okay, so maybe these calla lilies were trying to say something.

dried and crushed calla lilies

oh, by the way…happy vernal equinox to each and every one of you!

hello sunshine!

hello longtime friends and new arrivals! about six months ago, an intrepid and talented video storyteller named maribeth romslo approached me at my creative mornings talk and told me about a project she was working on, making short video profiles of creative women in the upper midwest. the project was sponsored by reese witherspoon’s “hello sunshine” media company, and i thought to myself, well this is really flattering and of course i’m willing to play along, but they will certainly find more famous and influential creative women to profile than mary jo hoffman and her daily nature blog. for a number of delightful reasons, i was dead wrong. and today my profile appears on the hello sunshine website, maribeth romslo is now a friend and collaborator, and reese witherspoon just introduced me on her facebook page. please go check it out, and i guess let’s all stop underestimating ourselves, shall we? much love and deep thanks to all of you. xoxoxo mary jo.

not spring yet

once, in our twenties, my husband and i spent three months of winter in french polynesia, from mid-december through mid-march. we planned to come back in march because, hey, march is sort of like spring, right? we arrived at msp airport tanned and thin and beautiful, and then we stepped outside to get a cab and looked around ourselves in disbelief. i actually think we might have been wearing tank tops. there were snowdrifts everywhere, it was below freezing, and the air was so dry it was as if we could see our skin retracting, cracking and splitting, like desert floor over the course of a prolonged drought. march, we concluded, as we drove home under gray skies, past highway embankments piled with gray snow, is not spring. march, in minnesota, is still winter.

morning frost on prairie grass

lol

this is an inside joke. my husband is headed downstairs this morning for his second sunday in a row of tax work, after two straight weeks of seven appointments a day. in such a state, a whimsical exhortation to “play,” like most pop culture affirmations, will drive him slightly mad, in a kind of adorable way. don’t worry, i’ll have a fire in the fireplace and a glass of rose waiting for him at the end of his 14th straight day of fully-booked schedule. he’ll be a lamb by bedtime.

twig typography

setup. reinforcement. payoff.

six years into still blog and you can’t really talk anymore about the spare and simple elegance of the prairie grass stem. you need to find a new frame of reference. i’m choosing the classic structure of a three-part joke. setup. reinforcement. payoff. wile e. coyote buys the acme dynamite kit. wile e. coyote waits for the roadrunner and presses the TNT plunger at just the right time. nothing happens, the roadrunner speeds off, and wile. e. coyote goes to investigate the dynamite, which explodes in his face. it’s just exactly like a split stem of winter prairie grass.

prairie tall grass in late winter