a lush palette

i love the deeply saturated earthy palette of late autumn after a rain (or in our case, an early snow). imagine a ballroom or a library full of upholstered chairs, in lush velvet, each one in the color of one of these leaves. each one a very slight variation on the other. each one uniquely beautiful. each one being part of whole that is bigger then the sum of its parts.

willow leaves in late autumn

the unstraightening of age

these cattail leaf tips are green and straight all summer, shooting eight feet into the sky. and then almost as soon as they have reached their full height, the tips start to brown, and bend, the way that time brittles and bends all of us, eventually.

cattail leaf tips

shy tigers

these tiger lilies’ summer ferociousness has been tamed by age. they don’t roar anymore. but their fiery beauty remains.

dried lily blossoms

is that? no its . . . wait, is it?

today i tried to make a non-alphabet look just enough like it might be a real alphabet, that you would look twice. did you? i had no idea ash seeds could serve so ably as the anatomy of alphabet characters, real or asemic.

ash tree seeds

stanza

today i tried to think like a poet instead of an artist. what should my stanza look like? where should the lines land? should one run on into the next? what tone was trying to set? who would think it pretty? who would be moved?

botanical bits and pieces