what’s our assignment today?

whenever we go to the beach my boys–steve my husband and joseph my son–invariably ask “what’s our assignment today?”. sometimes it’s beach glass, or gray elondated rocks, or terra cotta colored shells, or only perfectly round rocks. last night, it was “ochre-colored rocks tumbled perfectly smooth.” as always, the job got taken very seriously. there were also some fishing rods set in the sand that were taken somewhat less seriously.

beach stones from sète, france

good hair day

this branch of eucalyptus caught my attention with its array of curled leaves. it looks like tousled hair. perhaps it’s because i am a northerner, and we don’t have eucalyptus and so that adds a bit of the exotic, but i do think eucalyptus leaves may be among my favorite leaves. their slender elegance, their sinuous curves, their dusty earth tones. yes. yes. and yes.

eucalyptus branch with leaves and seeds

make a grid, break the grid

this was an experiment in wabi-sabi, or imperfect beauty. how far can you stray from a 3×3 grid and still have a composition borrow from the structure of the grid, while expressing itself as something non-linear. or, put another way, i had nine kinds of berries and fruits. and i played with them this afternoon. i like the result, however un- non- or sub-conscious.

assorted fruits, berries, and seeds in late september

autignac, france

still blog feat. sjrhoffman

today i have a guest blogger. he happens to be my husband. he likes delicate compositions, made up of slender shapes that leave lots of white space. he also loves symmetry that is not quite exactly symmetrical. the question is . . . has he internalized still blog? is this image a still blog image?  or is it an sjrhoffman image that has colonized still blog and turned it into something it is not? i’m not sure. i think i  am willing to give him a pass, but await your judgment.

brown and tan bits and pieces of occitanie

same, same, not same

in my mind, the dry and prickly landscape here in southern france is in almost complete contrast to the moist and lush (summer) landscape of my native home in minnesota.  interestingly, i continue to hold onto that image even though i am greeted almost daily with species that exist in both locations…”hon, look at all the staghorn sumac” i said just yesterday as were leaving the city of montpellier and merging onto the autoroute. i did the same thing today, sitting under a linden tree …”hey, look at those seed pods..no wait, those are bracts…oh, of course, that’s a linden tree. duh.”  interestingly, our little village of Autignac sits at 43.5 degrees north latitude, and our home in minneapolis, minnesota sits at 45.0 degrees, and though they may share the occasional species, the remarkable thing is still how different they are, given their almost equal latitudes. and that has almost everything to do with the gulf stream, and the warm semitropical waters it carries north, to deliver to the atlantic coast of europe.

linden leaves/feuilles de tilleul