winter wildflowers

our culture celebrates youth, freshness, and color, but i’ve always been attracted to endurance and a graceful acceptance of the indignities that time brings about. i will happily spend most of my years looking a little  bit brittle and gray, if you’ll give me a lot of years, and if i get to spend them mostly vertical and mostly looking up at the sun.

wild sunflower stems in winter

remains of the day

february and march are the two busiest months of the year for our household. my husband is a tax preparer, and in these two months he will see nearly 400 clients in our home office. it’s a crazy way to earn an income. but it affords us some pretty significant free time for the remainder of the year. time we both get to spend on our respective creative loves; writing for steve and of course STILL for me. it’s a trade-off we made consciously several years ago, and we don’t regret it most of the time. it is winter in minnesota after all. and by the time these icicles on our eaves are done melting, tax season will be over. and we will come out of the house and blink into the sun, like bears, thinking about honey, and rubbing ourselves on trees.

dripping icicles

enduring inspiration

you have probably seen something like this before. i was asked to recreate some of my former work as part of a recent video shoot for a short film that you will be hearing more about soon. the process was as familiar as muscle memory. but the colors and the the shapes of these feathers were like falling in love for the first time with someone you’ve known forever.

found feather collection

still standing

by this point in our northern winters, very few slender stems from last summer’s wildflowers are still standing. wind, or weight of snow, has usually laid them flat by now. these wild aster stems are an exception. in early winter they are hard to pick out from among all the other prairie stems. but in late february, they are among the few still upright. they must have an inner strength, a small but mighty ability to resist. i could have used that mightiness today when our return flight from NYC to MSP was cancelled due to mechanical problems and, with acid stomachs and crippling fatigue, we were asked to deplane after half an hour on the tarmac, in order to wait for a new aircraft to take us home. all i could think of was how much i wanted to be lying flat, under a thick blanket.

wild aster stems in winter

wabi sabi winter garden

if you have been following me for a while, you will not be surpised that i am big fan of the japanese aesthetic called wabi sabi. it is often oversimplified as “imperfect beauty”, while in practice it is a highly nuanced and refined set of principles. if you are new to wabi sabi, do yourself a favor and spend a few hours with a book by leonard koren called “wabi sabi for artists, designers, poets, and philosophers.” i promise you it will be time well spent.

wildflowers in winter