a winter’s walk

abundance is in the eye of the beholder. or the gatherer. or the arranger. or the photographer. or the post-processor. abundance . . .  abundance is what i say it is. now go to bed.

winter stems

that little carved bowl of snow

normally i like to post photos with flat white backgrounds. today, i couldn’t resist the contoured, wind-gouged bowl of snow at the base of this tree. the first rule of STILL blog: backgrounds need to be pure white. the second rule of STILL blog: rules are made to be broken.

buckthorn tree in mid-winter

heraldic shield

here is a first draft of my coat of arms. i don’t know. there might be some arrows in there. and maybe a bow. and some symbolic sheaves of rye. but mostly it represents lots of walks along the grassy margins of suburban woodlands. i am a trail walker. hear me roar.

family crest of winter grasses. raaahr.

old and falling apart.

you can look at the tattered leaf, but how about that smoothly muscled forearm, and those strong fingers? you can’t make me sad about being a sunflower in winter. sorry.

sunflower leaf in winter

in between

a lot of the things i love most are on the edges or in the in-betweens. the first edge of spring when winter is in the air but the palest green haze of bursting buds is visible among the branches of the trees. the grays of november between fall and true winter. what i love about these cattail stems is how precariously poised they are between a stiffness that would not be graceful and a looseness that would not give them form. as they are, they submit to the wind, bending and straightening, but always insisting on their shape, in a suspension that is never quite rest.

winter cattail leaves