we’ve always got kiwi

this food series has been a blast and it’s not over yet, but much of the, ahem, low hanging fruit has already been plucked. for the last several days, steve and i have had to work harder to get compositions and images we were happy with. just in case, we have kept a small collection of kiwis set aside, saying to ourselves, “if we need a plan b someday, we always have kiwis.” they are bright and interestingly structured and easy to slice, and you see them all over the internet. today was the day we needed a plan b. and . . . you guessed it . . . we worked endlessly. everybody in the household was recruited to try their hands at composition. we tried organic and geometric designs. we tried slicing them thin and thick. we tried overlapping and setting them beside each other. starting tomorrow, we no longer have kiwi as a backup plan. thank god.

kiwi

young and simple

these were spring garlic cloves from a friend. i tried halving a number of other garlics for this photo, but the older and larger heads ended up looking convoluted and brain-like. eventually i gave up trying to compose them and went with the simplicity and easy geometry of these slender young cloves with their delicate purple segment lines. next up, according to my husband, is aigo boulido, or garlic soup. he’ll have some convincing to do.

garlic

panic

i’m STILL (ba-dum tssss) not thrilled about this image. steve and i tried five or six variations on these two slices of papaya. at some point we had nearly finished sprucing up a version of the photo, and i just looked at it, and all i could feel was panic. it wasn’t right. i couldn’t explain why. i used all my photoshop tricks to make it better, and none of them worked. i tried copying and pasting entire chunks of the photo in order to make it right. it kept fighting me until steve and i decided to take another version of the photo, which is this version, and when i saw it, i knew it was good enough. it wasn’t going to change the world. it wasn’t the best of this fruit series. but it didn’t make me panic.

papaya

pure celebration

this lily caught my eye on the way up my driveway today. i fell immediately in love with her “take me or leave me” attitude, with her open face, and her arms thrown wide. she’s at the end of her life, and is still finding a way to celebrate.

tiger lily (Lilium lancifolium)

gatsby pink

i love the name of this hydrangea, and not just because f scott fitzgerald is a saint paul native. every time i look at these petals i think about daisy buchanan and jordan baker sitting in that big room with the curtains billowing in the wind, wearing dresses in gatsby pink tuile.

gatsby pink hydrangea