hold up! I need to photograph that

My husband was making some wood nettle and ramp soup yesterday. This is his pile of carefully selected ramp leaves. Just as he was about to throw them in the soup, they caught my attention. “Hold on!” I yelled. “Those are STILL-worthy.”

Ramps are also known as wild garlic or wild leeks.

ramp leaves (Allium triccocum, and Allium burdickii)

bright, shining, sparkling, dazzling, brilliant, glistening

Here’s some interesting etymology on bleeding heart:

The scientific name, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, can be broken up and translated: The Greek term “Lampro-” translates to words such as “bright”, “shining”, “sparkling”, “dazzling”, “brilliant”, or “glistening”, while the Greek term “-capnos” translates to “smoke”. The Greek term “spectabilis” translates to words such as “spectacular”, “showy”, “remarkable”, or “worth seeing”. The literal translation means “Spectacular sparkling smoke”.

Clearly the Greek namers were smitten with bleeding heart.

bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis)

in praise of variants

After a week of seeing only lilac-colored lilacs, these dark purple panicles almost made me veer off the road. Don’t worry, I did not steal them from someones yard, I stole them from my grocery store parking lot..but not in front of the store––these were not intentional landscaping––but back behind the store where the delivery trucks unload. It’s hard to believe these dark beauties were stuck in such an unbecoming location. I guess we can’t choose when or where we are born. But we can make the most of it.

dark purple lilacs (Syringa vulgaris)

blue-green tassels

Here’s a closer look at those spruce tips from yesterday. Beautiful blue-green tassels celebrating another growing season–hooray for seasonality!

Blue spruce new-growth tips

stopped me in my tracks

These blue spruce tips made me gasp today when I came upon them. The irony was that my son and I were out looking for spruce tips to gather for cooking. We were looking for black spruce in particular. But all we kept finding was white spruce and blue spruce. We had checked about thirty spruces by the time I came upon this one. And even though I had seen a dozen blue spruces with new growth tips, this one made me stop in my tracks. Not all blue spruces retain the waxy coating on the needles that makes them appear blue (although it is more common in spring and then fades all summer long). So, when I walked around this tree to the shaded lee-ward side, these blue-green tips jumped out at me as if they were holiday lights. The needles and tips on sunny wind-ward side of the tree were already faded to a dull green. What a fun find!

Blue spruce tips (Picea pungens)