white daisies on a white background

why i continue to challenge myself with photographing white petals on a white background, i don’t know. but, c’mon, daisies. how could i not?

roadside wild daisies

everything is fruiting

making seeds and fruits takes immense energy. so plants do it during peak conditions. and, here in the north, that is happening right now. 15 1/2 hours of daylight, warm days, with light rain overnight. nirvana for plants. it seems every plant i see is going about fruiting in one way or another.

white baneberry, false solomon’s seal, red elderberry

our colts are thriving

our sandhill crane pair that made a nest in our cattails had babies. they’re called colts because of their long legged awkwardness. the colts will grow one inch per day for the next month. imagine! they will be over three feet tall by august. we are giving them full run of the back yard and trying not to disturb them too much. so all i have to show for all this excitement is another feather, left in our grass, as a peace offering by one of the parents.

detail of a sandhill crane feather

create

STILL has been a daily practice for over 10 years. i intentionally defined it to be simple and flexible—so i could sustain it. i wanted to be able to do it from anywhere, which meant vacations too. the key to keeping a daily practice for this long is to define your project so that it can scale both up and down. STILL is infinitely scalable. it can be a single leaf held up against a white tee-shirt photographed with an iPhone, or a seedpod laid on a blank journal page, or even pampas grasses photographed against a winter-white sky. but it can also scale up in complexity and ambition for the days when i have the time and energy. i highly recommend a daily practice/challenge. but remember to make it scalable—for those inevitable days when life just happens.

play as medicine

i gathered these maple samaras from my deck and then spent a half hour playing. i could have made more elaborate tessellated designs, but that felt a little too much like work. it would have taken more concentration, and very patient placements. i just wanted to play. like we did as kids.  it’s high summer. hot. humid. i’m feeling languorous. i don’t like air conditioning. so, as the humidity rises, my ambitions melt away in equal proportion. it feels good to allow myself this indulgence. to remember what long, hot summer afternoons felt like. turn off the a/c and play. it’s good medicine.

maple tree samaras