not spring yet

not spring yet

once, in our twenties, my husband and i spent three months of winter in french polynesia, from mid-december through mid-march. we planned to come back in march because, hey, march is sort of like spring, right? we arrived at msp airport tanned and thin and beautiful, and then we stepped outside to get a cab and looked around ourselves in disbelief. i actually think we might have been wearing tank tops. there were snowdrifts everywhere, it was below freezing, and the air was so dry it was as if we could see our skin retracting, cracking and splitting, like desert floor over the course of a prolonged drought. march, we concluded, as we drove home under gray skies, past highway embankments piled with gray snow, is not spring. march, in minnesota, is still winter.

morning frost on prairie grass

 

  • Charmian says:

    Bird of Paradise!

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lol

lol

this is an inside joke. my husband is headed downstairs this morning for his second sunday in a row of tax work, after two straight weeks of seven appointments a day. in such a state, a whimsical exhortation to “play,” like most pop culture affirmations, will drive him slightly mad, in a kind of adorable way. don’t worry, i’ll have a fire in the fireplace and a glass of rose waiting for him at the end of his 14th straight day of fully-booked schedule. he’ll be a lamb by bedtime.

twig typography

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setup. reinforcement. payoff

setup. reinforcement. payoff.

six years into still blog and you can’t really talk anymore about the spare and simple elegance of the prairie grass stem. you need to find a new frame of reference. i’m choosing the classic structure of a three-part joke. setup. reinforcement. payoff. wile e. coyote buys the acme dynamite kit. wile e. coyote waits for the roadrunner and presses the TNT plunger at just the right time. nothing happens, the roadrunner speeds off, and wile. e. coyote goes to investigate the dynamite, which explodes in his face. it’s just exactly like a split stem of winter prairie grass.

prairie tall grass in late winter

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collage?

collage?

i want a single tree in my yard that produces gardenia flowers, lilac clusters, raspberries, strawberries, sweet cherries, fall maple leaves, honeycrisp apples, hazelnuts, lily of the valley, joe pye weed, blue flag iris, morel mushrooms, and magnolia seed pods. my needs are simple. any plant geneticists out there???

 

  • this made my blood pressure do a happy dance. i just gazed at this lovely piece and took deep breaths.

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a soft spot for quince

a soft spot for quince

historically in the u.s., a well-considered orchard would always have one or two quince trees. quince are loaded with pectin, and were coveted for pies and preserves. but when commercially available pectin became available, the quince tree grew out of favor. in southern europe, however, they are still revered and grown in large numbers. the floral scent of the fruit n fall is one of my fondest memories from living in southern france. i am sad to say i have never seen our village gardens festooned with these sumptuous pink blossoms. as most of you know, my husband is a tax preparer, and we make most our income for the year in the first four months of the year. so, as long as we have kids in college and a mortgage to pay, we will be stateside in the spring, dreaming of almond trees, quince trees, and olive trees all in bloom.

quince blossoms

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