silken waves

the roadsides are now tossing with our midwestern prairie grasses. these are foxtails, but there are so many of these bushy haired grasses that get referred to as foxtail that the word isn’t very helpful. this one happens to be foxtail barley. i think it’s the prettiest. it has the longest hairs, and when the wind moves over dense clumps of it, it looks like lake waves moving in late evening light.

foxtail barley grasses

swamp gold

as most of you know, we live on a small lake in minnesota. between our home and the water is about 100 meters of cattails. every early summer, for one very brief week, the cattails flower and release an edible golden pollen. unfortunately, this pollen disperses quickly once it forms–the slightest breeze or rain will wash the pollen away before you even knew it had arrived. i have yet to collect our cattail pollen, but when i do, the first thing i want to try is making the golden pancakes below:

Cattail Pollen Pancakes

½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup sifted cattail pollen
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup milk

cattails in pollen season

the whole package

my morning walk down to the lake, to water the pots of tomato plants we put on the dock this summer, has me more in touch with my aquatic plants than i typically am.  i have photographed and dried many lily pads over the years. but usually i do it later in summer, when the lily pads are the size of dinner plates. now with my morning walks down to the lake, i am noticing for the first time these little silver-dollar sized lily pads sprouting up everywhere. the two different colors are simply the top-side and under-side of the lily pads. growing from umbilical cords attached to rhizomes in muck at the bottom of the lake, and floating contendely on the surface of the lake all summer. i am really quite enamored with lily pads: ingenuity, uniqueness, form, color…wonder and delight.

dried lily pads

summer touchpoint

after nearly 10 years of doing STILL, i have come to have several touchpoints through the year. some peoples’ touchpoints throughout a calendar year might be holidays (easter, 4th of july, thanksgiving, christmas). for those with school-age kids, you may have different touchpoints (spring break, summer vacation, back to school, and halloween for example). well, my touchpoints are very different. for example:  ice out on the lake, first red-winged black bird, first pussy willow, first fiddlehead etc. etc. etc.  i’ve started collecting my year of touchpoints into a seasonal calendar called 72 microseasons of the north. when it is complete, i will share it with you all. anyway, that is a long wind up to say that “musk thistles sway along roadsides” is definitely one of my june touchpoints.

musk thistle

press pause

i’ve been keeping visual journals for 21 years. i call them visual journals because they are 80 percent visual. i do write in my journals too, mostly lists and notes from whatever i am reading or listening to, but the vast majority of what is in them is visual–mostly collage and other creative experiments. i typically fill about one journal per year, although in good years i can fill two or more. last year during the pandemic, with our house full of five adults all distance working and learning, i made very little art other than STILL and my summer experiments into natural ink making. last night i took an hour to leaf through my journal from 2 years ago. what a delight that was! and wow, how little has changed. i mean, the whole world changed last year, but how little my creative thoughts, plans, and ideas had changed. it’s as if i pressed pause last year in march, and now i am just returning to my creative self. anyway, while leafing through said journal from 2019, this pressed botanical fell out. i think it might be some form of bougainvillea. the color, shapes, and translucence is gorgeous.

unidentified pressed botanical (bougainvillea?)