paused at peak expression
I have been drying the last of the summer blooms as fast I can. I have found that if I put them in my dehydrator on a very low temperature setting, the colors hold. I plan to use these specimens as props in my workshops this winter. I don’t mind letting students manhandle my beautiful collections because they would be mostly faded by next spring anyway. The ephemerality is part of beauty.
assorted dried garden flowers
after 22 years…
We have lived in our house for 22 years. Our driveway is ¼ mile long gravel two-track though three heavily wooded acres. The ground, unfortunately, is heavily choked out by virginia creeper vines. For 21 years, those vines have pretty much gone directly from green to red, with a possible brief week of yellows in between. This year, for the first time I have ever noticed, the vines are going from green to a coral-ly orange, on their way to red. The month of August was a drought here, so perhaps that has contributed. Our new neighbor has waged a personal war on her creeper vines, pulling them every time she sees them. I thought it was a fools’s errand–her Sisyphean effort–but she is having success. I was thinking I might join hew war efforts next year. The creepers must have caught wind, and decided to put on a beautiful fall pageant in order to give me pause.
virginia creeper leaves in autumn (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)
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Oh, so now it is “MY dehydrator”. I thought that your boys bought it for libation purposes. . Just sayin’.
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mushrooms or limpets?
I love when nature finds a good form or algorithm and then repeats it in different applications: the Fibonacci series (golden spiral) being the best know example. But yesterday, as I was clipping the teeny tiny stems off these nameless mushrooms that pop all over the yard after a soaking rain, I suddenly saw the caps as nearly undistinguishable from limpet shells. I love limpet shells; looking like miniature rice paddy hats. Before the house fire, I had a nice collection of limpet shells from Florida and the Mediterranean. Today, I have ephemeral mushroom caps instead. I am okay with that.
unidentified small mushroom caps
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Aren’t they charming? Mother Nature finds a design/pattern/shape she likes and thinks, “Oh! This is good. Let’s do more of this”. How often have you noticed this? Probably quite often, since STILL is all about noticing.
As a child, my name for limpet shells was volcano shells, collected primarily on Sanibel Island, FL. Seems I remember you had a collection of coquina shells, too?
Sorry you lost so many lovely collections, but it gives you the excuse to go places again, to begin anew.reply
calling all gardeners
Do you know this plant? I happened on this preposterous plant for the first time ever just this week. Someone had planted several along their boulevard. There was a grouping of about a dozen plants, all about 8 feet tall and now mostly stripped bare of their cold intolerant non-native leaves, so that just these magenta colored flowers were bobbing and weaving in the September sun at the ends of their absurdly thin stems and branches. I was so mesmerized by the site, that I made Steve go see the spectacle a day later. And then, because the Twin Cities is really just a big small town, it turn out that the owner of the flower patch was getting her mail, and she was…a tax client of Steve’s. And permission was granted to take a couple stems. I know many of you are gardeners. I’m curious, are you familiar with kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate? I think it might win for best colloquial name ever.
kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate (Persicaria orientalis)
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Aren’t they just gorgeous!? And I love its charming common name :) I consider persicaria to be a somewhat unused old-fashioned flower that seems to be enjoying a resurgence in popularity. I have never grown it, and didn’t know it got that tall! Surely you have its weedy little relative growing on your land, the one called smartweed/knotweed, less than a foot tall?
How fortunate that the gardener turned out to be one of Steve’s clients (and you didn’t have to acquire the stems surreptitiously, heh heh).reply
common backyard mushroom
This is a fairly common backyard fungus, both in North America and Europe, found growing among short green grass after a rain. It’s called Dunce Cap, but that feels a little antiquated to me: Tilted Lampshade feels more modern to me.
white dunce cap mushroom (Conocybe apala)
The zinnias seem to do especially well. Golly, they’re pretty! The dehydrator seems much simpler than silica gel and the colors are strong. Are workshops part of your regular routine now?
Oh, so now it is “MY dehydrator” I thought your boys bought it for libation making purposes !!!