what’s your seasonal bellwether?

My world is still mostly green. But signs of transition are everywhere–sumac being my personal bellwether here in the north. I really should not be posting leaves so early, as we are heading into a full two months were the leaves will be demanding my attention on every walk. We finally got past flower season, and have barely had time to take a breath, and already the leaves are beginning to shout at me. It’s very hard to ignore them, when they are so loud and demanding. It’s takes concentration and tricking of the mind in order to see past them to find other deserving subjects. The only true quiet is winter. In spring it’s all about blossoms and catkins, and in summer it’s flowers, and in autumn the colorful foliage. So, get ready for lots of leaves, because they are starting to make noise.

staghorn sumac leaves in early autumn (Rhus typhina)

months are arbitrary

I am not someone who pays much attention to holidays. In general, I am more attuned to the signs of seasonal changes than I am to calendar dates or official holidays. And yet, this late Labor Day has me feeling like it is still August! I named this photo “august colors” before I remembered we are already into September. Sigh. I don’t mind being out of sync with the world. I rather enjoy it, but every now and then it gets me in trouble: Usually when I miss an important gathering or event because I didn’t know what day of the week it was. Anyone else there have similar sensibilities?

dried botanical bits left over from summer

butterfly wings

I am cleaning up and putting away all the dried botanicals I sifted through before I went to teach for five days at Longwood Gardens. These leaves were hidden among my stashes; brought back from a workshop I did in Florida in early May. While the colors are not all that remarkable, I thought the nearly perfect butterfly-winged shapes were indeed remarkable–at least for this northern gal.

Funnily enough, I brought back almost no treasures from Pennsylvania. It was forbidden to take anything from Longwood, and when not in the gardens I was in the classroom. Sigh.

Interestingly, Minneapolis just got reclassified as Zone 5a (from 4b) in the USDA Hardiness Zones. Accorning to Google, Longwood Gardens are in Zone 7a, and Bonita Springs, Florida where I gathered these leaves is Zone 10a.

orchid tree leaves (Bauhinia purpurea)

moth or seedpod?

I was reading a book last night and was struck by the number of times during evolution, that major biological events poped up repeatedly in different ways in different places: flight for example. Flight evolved independently at least three different times in the animal kingdom: In insects, dinosaurs (including modern birds), and in mammals (bats).

amur maple samaras (Acer tataricum subsp. ginnala)

back to school

Welcome to September. While most of you are reading this post, I will taking my son to the airport for his LAST semester of undergraduate studies at New York University (NYU). If you have been reading along this summer, you will probably be able to intuit how much I will miss him and how sad I am: My foraging buddy, my kitchen companion, my mustard making summer side-kick. On the other hand, Steve and I have been holding our breath until we could get out from under the weight of paying college tuition. So it is a bittersweet day indeed. The older I get, the more I come to see the vast majority of life as bittersweet. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of purely sweet days, and just as many deeply bitter days. But the majority seem (to me) to fall in the middle–a little of both–bittersweet.

black mustard (Brassica nigra)