clematis cormorantis

a pretty little botanical still life of clematis buds. or an abstracted image of cormorants. don’t see it? squint a bit. see it now?

clematis buds

fook-see-a

another delight from gammy’s garden. what to say about fuchsia? well, let’s see: the proper pronunciation is techincally pronounced “fook-see-a”, however, even botanists pronounce it as “fyu-sha”. so there’s that. oh, and also, look at that little pac-man flower in the lower right, the way those stamen are climbing to escape. it makes me smile–life in all it’s enthusiastic exuberance. summer.

fuchsia flowers

gammy has a green thumb

my mom, gammy to the grandkids, has a green thumb. all that really means is that she pays attention to how often to water, and then she does it. her birthday is in spring, not too far distant from mother’s day. so, not knowing what else to get an 85 year old, most of us kids and grandkids shower her with plants for her deck and back stoop and front entry and rear patio every spring. right now, both her deck and her stoop, are lush with flowering plants. but the the showstopper is this clematis vine loaded with these purplish-lilac flowers. she tells me the centers open and reveal yellow stamens. i think i prefer them like this… you?

clematis flowers

enhanced character

the burdock leaves are already approaching the size of parasols. i picked three the other day because the texture of their veined backsides caught my attention. then i put them in my hatchback, and promptly forgot about them for several days.  when i finally did remember, they had already baked for two days in 100 degree heat. i couldn’t have planned a more visually engaging result.

three burdock leaves

98 degrees

minnesota sits at the center of the north american continent. i know you don’t believe me, but take a look at a globe. we are in the north of the united states, but it is very much in the middle of the continent, because canada extends all the way up to the arctic. anyway, being in the center of a huge land mass means we get what is called ‘continental’ weather. in other words, weather not mitigated by the mellowing effects of large bodies of water. what i am trying to say, is that our weather is about as erratic as it gets. we often get 40 degree temperature changes in a single day. in spring or fall, when snow mixes with warm temps, we sometimes get to brag (or lament?) that we have had, “all four seasons today”. all of this is a long wind-up to say that last week we had temps dipping to 30 degrees, and frost warnings. everyone ran outside to cover their tomatoes. and today, we hit 98 degrees, with a forecast of high nineties all week, and everyone ran out to water their tomatoes. it would be easy to blame global warming for a 60 degree temperature swing in one week, and i am sure that is at least partially the case, but the reality is, this is not so unusual for minnesota. we’ve seen such things before. the point here is that it was too hot (for me) to play outside today, so i reached for these dried apple blossoms, which have been shriveling on my specimen table since may. a welcome, if infrequent, reward for my laziness.

dried apple blossoms