capturing color

I am still playing and experimenting with our new dehydrator. I started using it mostly to quickly generate teaching materials for my workshops. But I am finding that it drying my specimens in interesting ways, especially if I have it set to a low heat. It seems to be locking in more color than if I had let the leaves or flowers dry naturally (usually hung upside down in the garage). If the heat gets too high, I get the opposite effect––I essentially crisp everything to a dull brown. These smoke bush leaves (one of my favorite leaves for STILL compositions) were picked this week, and then dried for a couple days in the dehydrator. I love how the drying process seems to have amplified the colors that were starting to turn; sort of like concentrating flavors by roasting your tomatoes in the oven for 45 minutes. That tomato reference made me hungry, and I am now realizing these leaves look delicious enough to eat!

dried early autumn smoke bush leaves (Cotinus)

P.S. Yesterday’s image was cutleaf teasel leaves (Dipsacus laciniatus)

what the weird?

I started to write about these leaves. But then I wondered if anyone would be able to guess what they are. Any guesses?

cutleaf teasel leaves (Dipsacus laciniatus)

Roy G

Are you ready for fall? I am jumping the gun a little bit, but I did get off the freeway today in order to inch my way back on a frontage road so I could grab these very-first-of-the-fall-colors. Have you ever seen so many colors on one (compound) leaf? Red, orange, yellow, and green: Roy G. is here already!

staghorn sumac leaves in late August (Rhus typhina)

a freebie in a floral bouquet

My friend Kristin and I share a “flower CSA”. Every week, bouquets of locally grown flowers are dropped off at restaurant/market that is a mile from my house. Kris and I alternate weeks. This week, my bouquet had several stalks of these blue hued glasses, presumably wheat. They are quite pretty. I put this photo into Google image search, and it said it was very likely Utrecht Blue wheat. Any grass/grain experts out there? Tall grasses, both wild and domesticated, are one of my biggest areas of weakness. Every year, I try to commit one or two more species to my mental data base, but for some reason they barely stick: big bluestem, indiangrass, turkey foot grass, canada rye, wild barley, switchgrass, quackgrass, foxtail grasses, squirrel tail grasses, brome, gramma, wild oats…on and on and on. I just googled native grasses of Minnesota, and I found a resource that lists 159 species of grasses. At 3 new-to-me species a year, I’d need to live to age 115 to learn the all. I had better up my average!

blue hued wheat stem (perhaps Utrecht Blue Spring Wheat?)

time of swelling

Everything is maturing, swelling, darkening…in a word, ripening. Including the milkweed seed pods. One of my all time fav seedpods.

Common milkweed seed pods (Asclepias syriaca)