woven

harmony is really just unlike things woven together, staying themselves and being part of something bigger at the same time. i still believe in it, and i think there’s more of it around us than we are led to believe by those who profit, emotionally or financially, by our focusing on the unlikeness, and not the wovenness. so there. cards on the table.

blah

woven cattail and daylily leaves

sprung snare

we leaped from summer to to winter last week, including snow and freezing rain. these wild indigo leaves appeared to be waiting for fall and never got it. instead their summer green got trapped and frozen by the sudden cold.

frost bitten wild indigo leaves

giving birth is messy

i took maybe fifty photos of this milkweed and there were several very elegant angles, but in the end i decided i liked this one best. we have caught her in the midst of giving birth, and i felt we owed it to her to show all the effort and mess she was enduring to multiply herself. bravo, mama milkweed.

milkweed seed pods exploded

beautiful bones

all of the flesh melted away from these poppy seed heads, and left behind the architecture and framing. they are as shapely and beautiful as a perfect skeleton. who knew those pretty red flowers had such character beneath their perfect skin?

poppy winter seed heads

the great wave off turtle lake

these snow laden grass seed heads remind me of the hokusai print of the great wave off kanagawa, as part of his thirty-six views of mount fuji. i may never reach his level of obsessive power, but i sometimes think of myself as chronicling thirty-six or so different views of each upper midwestern species of flora. he spent 60 years making paintings and prints. i’ve been at STILL blog for six. i’ve got some more obsessing to do yet.

snow covered prairie tall grass

turtle lake, shoreview, minnesota