the unsung majority

not all leaves end their lives with fanfare and flames of red and yellow. matter of fact, the majority of autumn leaves fall quietly to the ground with hardly anyone noticing. these khaki colored leaves lined my walk this afternoon. not a siren red leaf to be found anywhere. i found this palette to be quite pleasing—olive green and tan. classic. earthy. relaxed. and warm.  like me.

ash leaves in fall

hiding in plain sight

once i learned that there were 18 species of goldenrod in minnesota, i have become curious about what else i don’t know. so i went searching…following my hunches, and sure enough, as i suspected, i learned there are 14 kinds of milkweed native to minnesota. now i am wondering about cattails. i mean, cattail are cattails, right? or maybe not…

swamp milkweed seedpods (Asclepias incarnata)

a compulsive sorter

my mom reminded me today that i was one in the family that always organized her junk drawers and cleaned her garage when i was a kid. clearly, i liked to make order out of chaos. and clearly, i still do. as bits of found nature pile up on my desk, i instinctively push, pile, and sort the bits into pleasing-to-me groupings. sometimes i don’t even remember doing it…it’s as though the specimens just find each other. like this collection here. i especially like the reddish-brown bits in the oak leaves, the scallop shell, the iris seeds, and the squirrel-eaten pine cone. can any of you identify all the bits in this composition?

collection of brown nature bits

first frost

october is really two months–with early october colorful and radiant in the golden sunshine, and the latter half of october fleaf-less and brisk. my local naturalist guru says that historically this switch-over occurs around the 20th of october. it looks like we will be right on par this year. fall colors are still peaking, but a hard frost last night had hastened things along. the annual Big Leaf Drop is almost always triggered by wind and rain. according to the current forecast, we can expect to hang on to the color until this weekend. get out and enjoy it while you can!

autumn sumac leaves

grabbing color before it’s gone

out temps have dropped below freezing at night now. so the vibrant colors will be gone soon enough. i actually like the fall colors even more once they have been saddened a bit by the cold. in natural dying, you sadden a dye by adding a copper or iron mordant. the metals will add a little bit of black, brown, or greenish-blue to the dye, making the original dye just a little softer (or muddier or duller depending on your perspective i suppose).  i prefer these softer earth tones, to the vibrant jewel tones. but, that’s not going to stop me from trying to capture these last few days of vibrancy.

collected bits of vibrant red in nature