sea urchin mums

these chrysanthemums took not weeks to dry, but months. they were not an accident. i really wanted to dry them, but after a week, and then another, and then forgetting about them for a couple of weeks, only to find them in the basement still limp and pastel colored, i decided that i was in the process of trying to dry a succulent, and i sort of gave up. and then one day, doing laundry, i looked over and saw five straw colored mop heads over on my countertop, and when i turned them over, i thought to myself, “i’ve just made sea urchins out of mums!” and it was all suddenly worth the wait.

dried chrysanthemums

joe’s composition

i asked my 15 year old son to help me make a STILL blog photo this afternoon. and to my astonishment he said sure. this is what he made. and it took him less than 10 minutes. when i asked him how he chose what to put into the composition, he said “things with interesting structure.” he was so matter of fact, and so sure of himself, and so unselfconscious. apparently, i need to get out of my own way, and invite my inner 15 year old into the studio more often.

assorted bits from my desk

fall

i wanted these leaves to represent fall, and at the same time to imitate the act of falling. they are actually individual shots stitched together in postures that are supposed to look like a single falling leaf. i may have succeeded. i may not have. the fact that this doesn’t matter isn’t just me being flip. as i’ve said so many times, making a photo every day is constraining, timewise, but liberating, creatively, because if this photo doesn’t work, i don’t have time to worry about it. there is work to be done tomorrow. and the day after that. happy sunday all.

ginkgo leaf

bits and pieces of autumn that look like winter

this photo speaks of the holiday season, but in fact everything here was gathered in fall. white pine, vine tendrils, alder catkins, pine cones, and not holly berries, but crabapples. merry solstice. or something like that.

bits and pieces: pinecones, white pine, crabapples, vine tendril

pick three things

eight years ago our family fell  in love with a tiny village in a forgotten rural corner of languedoc in southern france (my long time followers will know all about this). ever since, we have been going back and forth as often as we can, spending anywhere from two weeks to six months in an unfashionable, slightly impoverished corner of mediterranean france. earlier this year, my husband sneaked off for a quick writing-related visit, and he came back with these three pieces of contraband, slipped through customs, that happen to be a three-part sensual distillation of that part of the world for us: wild fennel, wild thyme, and lavender. in the north woods of minnesota it would probably be cedar, balsam, and spruce. i’m so curious: what are your three primal plants that define where you are from?

wild fennel, wild thyme, and wild lavender from autignac, france