Afterthought (back)
This hydrangea stem came into the house with the hydrangea florets I posted yesterday. As I was cleaning up, the delicious texture of the dried leaves wouldn’t let my attention go. I had to take it’s portrait, so I could get on with me day.
Hydrangea stem with leaves in winter (hortensia)
Afterthought (front)
This hydrangea stem came into the house with the hydrangea florets I posted yesterday. As I was cleaning up, the delicious texture of the dried leaves wouldn’t let my attention go. I had to take it’s portrait, so I could get on with me day.
Hydrangea stem with leaves in winter (hortensia)
I love a good gradient
Gradients are one of my go-to compositional techniques. I love ’em. All these hydrangea florets were from the same bush, in front of my neighborhood Thai place where I had stopped to pick up spring rolls for lunch. Twenty minutes of snipping and sorting – et voilà – a gradient to be proud of.
gradient of dried hydrangea florets
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Mary Jo, your work and dedication to your practice of STILL and the fruit this practice produces in your life is incredibly inspiring to me. Thank you very much for sharing with us. I just wanted to share that this image was so inspiring to me today and gave me some much needed encouragement. Thank you ever so much for that.
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Dear MJ, I know that this has been a devastating and terrible year for you, but you were sorely missed. Now that you are back my morning ritual has been repaired and “all is well with the world”.
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Early pollen for the bees
Pussy willow loves wetlands. Which means we have a lot of it in Minnesota. It is almost always the first and surest sign of real spring here in the North–no more blizzards, no more sub-zero temps. It is also an incredibly important early protein source for honey bees. We have two hives of honey bees, and I saw the girls zipping around outside the hive a few days ago…which means they are hungry and on the hunt for food. Thank goodness for pussy willow pollen.
pussy willow with pollen (Salix discolor)
A little burr after the chill
While the recent snow melt revealed all sorts of over-wintered treasures, there are no acorns like this one just lying about in the woods. A tasty treat like this would have been greedily eaten by squirrels months ago. I plucked this specimen from my box of nature flotsam and jetsam that I haul to my STILL workshops for people to rummage through and make flat-lay compositions.
Bur oaks are kind of white oak, and among the most massive oaks in North America. Its acorns are the largest of any North American oaks. The bur oaks are the slowest growing oaks (~12 inches per year), which makes me feel very fortunate to have several of them on our property which I can steward and protect.
dried bur oak leaf with acorn (Quercus macrocarpa)
p.s. both bur oak and burr oak are acceptable spellings
