growing up together
Yesterday, Steve and I celebrated 37 years of marriage! We got married young; neither of us fully formed. We grew up together; we grew toward each other.
As many of you know, the last couple of years have been bumpy ones for us (not marriage-wise, life-complication-wise). I can’t imagine a better co-captain to navigate with.
They say that choosing the right life partner is one of the biggest factors in determining overall life satisfaction. We got lucky.
Happy Anniversary Stevie! I STILL love you, And always will.
Cheers to 37 Years!
Today, Steve and I are celebrating our 37th anniversary! So I am popping in just briefly. Cheers to long marriages, and heavily veined fall leaves :-)
Smoke bush leaves in autumn (Cotinus)
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Smoke bush leaves never disappoint, do they? Interesting at all stages. These are stunning.
Congrats on 37 years, yall!reply
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
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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?
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Oh, so now it is “MY dehydrator” I thought your boys bought it for libation making purposes !!!
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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
