calef brown

when our kids were young we were desperate for good children’s books. there are so many, and yet so many terrible ones. among our very favorites were the books of calef brown, including “polka bats and octopus slacks,”  and “flamingoes on the roof.” his verses were just exactly right–silly enough to make the kids laugh, sneaky wise enough to hold our overtaxed young parent attention. this photo reminds me of one of his poems, called “skeleton flowers.” i recommend finding the original. thank you calef, for a lot of bedtimes that were a lot less soul sucking than reading about big purple dinosaurs.

poppy pods

this is not a black and white photo

i can manipulate a photo to fall into almost any color palette. working with saturation and warmth and color filters, i can, to some extent, make the same photo look as if it was taken under an overcast winter sky and a warm summer night. not totally, but to a surprising extent, this is true, thanks to photoshop. but this one is not manipulated. these cones were exactly this frosty gray, as was the branch they were attached to. you can see, if you look closely, the lichen and the brown spots where the bark is worn away, show that this is in fact a color photo, not black and white. a fun friday headfake. hope you enjoyed being fooled for a few moments.

jack pine (pinus banksiana) pine cone

look once, look twice

first, take a  look at the convoluted crumples of these two leaves. then look at the convoluted crumples of the white space between them. stay there for a while. then repeat. you’ve done your STILL blog homework for the day. now get out there and slow down.

dried catalpa leaves

STILL going

someone asked me the other day if i was running out of ideas for STILL blog. i understand the concern behind the question, but i almost had to restrain the enthusiasm behind my denial. i have thought to myself that i could probably do a year’s worth of STILL blog from one square meter of forest floor, not only because there is such a shocking amount of biomass in that square meter, but because the contents of that square meter change almost daily through the seasons, not to mention the phenomenon of creativity blossoming in an atmosphere of constraints. anyway, i’m not currently running out of ideas, in case you were worried. ask me if i ever get tired of evenings by the fire. ask my puggle if he ever gets tired of begging for leftovers. ask a northerner if she ever gets tired of spring. or a fisherman if he ever gets tired of opening day. i think you get the idea. running out of ideas? that’s crazy talk.

anthurium leaf

2019

for those who have been with me for a while, you know i typically make some kind of big announcement about this time of year with my plans for STILL blog in the coming year. i have no big pronouncements this year. right now, my only goal for the year is to put together a STILL book proposal. i get lots of requests for a STILL book, especially around the holidays. i have wanted to make one for a while now, but my husband (the resident writer) is working on a memoir about our family’s immersion in southern france. so, i have been kind of waiting for him to be available to help edit or maybe even co-create a STILL book with me. he is still hard at work on the memoir, but i am usually pretty good at encouraging him to think big. i figure a proposal commits me to nothing. what do you say, mr. hoffman?

happy new year my friends! i do what i do because of your continued enthusiasm and encouragement.

xo, mary jo