same, same, but different

same, same, but different

i have a local television crew at my house today, filming a short (3 minute) feature of me doing my STILL thing–foraging, arranging, photographing. so, i am keeping it easy on myself, and posting yesterday’s milkweed in a different composition. not particularly beautiful. but definitely interesting. remember my STILL mantra? “make it beautiful, or interesting, unless you can do both.”

milkweed flowerheads

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flowers in three phases

flowers in three phases

milkweed flowers in three states of maturity. large leaves typically obscure milkweed flowers, so i had never realized before today that the pink flowers turn a kind of dull yellow as they age. you can see the latex dot where i removed a leaf so we could appreciate the flowers better. there is milkweed blooming everywhere right now, but everyone is telling me that they are not seeing many butterflies this year. it has got me concerned. life without butterflies would be more than this naturalist could handle.

milkweed flowers (Asclepias syriaca)

  • Susan L. says:

    I don’t believe I’ve seen any monarchs yet this year, in midcoast Maine. We’ve been having an unusually dismal, wet season, which I imagine has something to do with it. Very discouraging.

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a beautiful mess

a beautiful mess

the delphiniums i posted almost two weeks ago dropped the last of their petals onto my kitchen floor this weekend. and what a beautiful mess they left behind. more and more, i love the spent debris of flowers, after they have started to die back, more than the peak form of the flowers themselves. the swirls of purples and blues in this photo have me captivated in a way similar to how a Monet painting can. i am enthralled.

spent delphinium flowers

  • Susan L. says:

    Like a word or thought on the tip of the tongue, this photograph almost brings something to mind. A memory? I’m not sure. It feels both strong and fleeting. And now I think of my grandmother, who died in 1981. (She was the best gramma ever.)

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pollinator paradise

pollinator paradise

i picked this handful of wildflowers beside the parking lot of my local pharmacy. these are all pollinator favorites. it is high summer.

purple bee balm, yellow daisies, and orange butterfly weed

  • Old Lady Gardener says:

    So pretty!

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AI or real?

AI or real?

this is a real photo. i know, because i photographed it this afternoon. but when i sat down just now to post it, it occurred to me it looks like an AI generated image, with the goatsbeard “photoshopped in”. but i assure, dear reader, that it is not. the open-field wildflowers are peaking. there are dots of color everywhere–with purple, yellow, and orange in highest abundance. these tonsured prairie clovers are always a happy sight for me. someone surely missed an naming opportunity–for they should certainly have been called purple monks of the prairie.

purple prairie clover with goatsbeard (Dalea purpurea)

  • Mary Ann B says:

    Beautiful!

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