freefall

it appears we may go straight from the green leaves of summer to bare winter stems without a transition this year. i’m seeing a lot more fallen green on the ground than yellows and oranges on the trees so far. and this morning, in my back yard, it snowed. it was a very unsubtle hint. you can do better than this, mother nature.

maidenhair fern frond (dried)

1 of 72 seasons

there are supposedly 72 japanese microseasons, which i have written about before. i love the idea and believe it is a very STILL blog compatible way of looking at the evolution of the year. i am declaring this the season of khaki colored oak leaves, to be followed shortly by the season of the oyster mushroom, to be followed by the season of the putting to bed of the winter beehive. i can keep going if you want…

pressed young red oak leaves

pleasantly surprised

i was truly phoning this one in. this was a “what do i have around the house” collage, and i played with the elements a little bit dispiritedly  for a while, and then suddenly i was looking into my viewfinder at this arrangement, looking like a tropical still life, and like something painted, and at the same time like something out of a slightly faded,  illustrated 1930s edition of islands in the stream, and i wanted to be on a veranda somewhere, sweating in 90 percent humidity, with a rum drink at my wrist, and maybe some bonito ceviche with garlic and lime and onion and coconut milk, while my kids went snorkeling in the surf, and my husband puffed on a cigar and made scintillating conversation.

pressed leaves: anthurium bloom, money tree leaf, and variegated rubber tree leaf

building inventory

i try pretty hard to avoid using clichés here on STILL blog. i don’t do hearts filled with pink and red flowers, or smiley faces with daisy eyes, or rainbows of flower petals. but today, working toward building an inventory of holiday images for a project i hope to share with you sometime in the next year, i told myself it was okay to make a variation on a clichéd image as long as the variation itself was something a little bit new. ok, let me have it…

eucalyptus seeds, juniper, bush rose stem, cedar, crabapples, red pine needles, twig

interwoven

i found some comfort in this image today. i thought about all of all the variations on the human creature that could possibly have been, and how much alike we ended up. as if these leaves could have been the whole spectrum and instead chose their wildest variations to be simply a lighter or darker shade of yellow or gold. it reminded me that we are more alike than different. and encouraged me to think that we will fit ourselves back together someday, maybe even sooner than later, when this particular human cycle has had its turn on the wheel.

collection of yellow autumn leaves