an ordinary day

there is always an excuse not to take up a creative challenge. today, my son’s soccer team played two games and won a tournament, and my mom stopped by to debrief about some family drama, bringing dinner with her. it was a perfect day just to accept that nothing creative would get done. but i am in year seven of this crazy project, and so i did not see the soccer tournament, and by the time my mother had come over, i had taken these photos of a giant african land snail shell, and a day that should have been perfunctory turned into a day of image-making that i am particularly proud of, and that is what happens on those days when you just make it happen, and expectations are low, and you don’t give yourself an excuse.

giant african land snail shells

violets for Violet

my maternal grandmother’s name was violet. like her namesake, she was shy and inconspicuous and reliable, and sort of sadly beautiful. my grandfather was a banker, and she was the elevator girl at the 1st national bank in downtown st paul. he would take the elevator up and down several times a day, neglecting his banking duties, in order to stand in the same elevator as violet. later, after her open heart surgery, this man who had never cooked a meal in his life, learned how to make three meals a day, and change diapers, so that his beloved “Vi”  would not have to live outside her home, where she felt comfortable. don’t tell me violets, despite their delicacy, are not powerful beings.

wild violets

merely a suggestion

The spathe, known in this plant as “the pulpit” wraps around and covers over and contain a spadix (“Jack”), covered with tiny flowers of both sexes. there is really quite a lot going on here that the pope, the imam, the rabbi, and the vicar would recommend you not to linger on, lest you . . . well . . . shall we finish with a prayer then? let us all turn to psalm 23.

jack in the pulpit

1 sigma

these are still trilliums. they are a couple of weeks past their prime. they are not white anymore but a sort of lavender rose. their leaves are beginning to look variegated. but the point is, this is still a trillium. the trillium, like all annual plants, maybe like all plants period. exists on a spectrum. there is dormant trillium, and emergent trillium and budding trillium and blooming trillium (which is what we are all inclined to call “trillium”), and there are these evanescent blooms, that are still, at their core, trilliums. i wish we could think of our fellow humans this way, just a little more often. these aren’t roses. they are trilliums. they just happen to be a different color, a different hardiness, a different texture. and quite beautiful.

trillium patch

first love

i have posted a lot of feathers and i really don’t ever find them less than compelling. they are among the first loves of STILL blog, and the romance has not faded. i have never quite figured out what exactly speaks to me so strongly. in some sense i think there is something suggestively mathematical in them–as if the pattern of their construction could be summarized in an elegant algorithm. and yet they are as beautiful and unique as any work of art.

wood duck feathers