going to seed

the phrase “going to seed” implies a sort of slovenly falling into disrepair. a loss of vibrancy and vigor. a letting go. a giving up. but i was just thinking today about what grasses do here in the north, emerging just barely before april turns into may, growing anywhere from a couple feet tall, to seven or eight feet tall, halting erosion, sequestering carbon, looking beautiful, feeding the soil, and then, sometime in late summer, exploding in slow motion into elegant, graphic, and potent seed heads. in other words, what grasses do is go to seed. it doesn’t look to me like giving up.

various prairie grass seed heads

redefinition

when you get to know thistles, when they become friends whom you can’t wait to catch up with each year, you no longer think of them as prickly and aggressive. all you really think about are their soft lavender flowers and their softer thistle down. thistles are such softies.

musk thistle gone to seed

it’s that time of year for blue jays

i know that technically all of my cells replace themselves over varying periods, and that for the most part i am a new person at a cellular level every 10 years or so. but sometimes part of me would simply like to molt. just like, ok everybody, i’m going to be in my bathtub for a week or so with an espresso maker and a few bottles of cava. i’m going to be shedding all of this, and when you see me again i’m going to be bright and crisp in high color and ready for the mating season. see you then.

blue jay tail feather

it’s hard to keep up

i spent the better part of the day doing a live Q & A over on stanford alumni’s @stanfordalumni instagram feed. i had a hard time keeping up. i don’t mean i had trouble keeping up with the questions. the questions were awesome and i had a ball answering them. no, i had a hard time keeping up with the technology. i’m a pretty savvy user of instagram, but it was hard for me to process the fact that instagram stories didn’t exist two years ago, and instagram stickers (which is the interface i used today) is maybe only months old, and yet there is an entire language and an entire software infrasructure in place to compose and post and illustrate and decorate  ephemeral photos that no one can see after 24 hours. of course i resisted instagram itself when it first came out (and this all makes me feel like a crusty old grandma who wants to know what in the hell it means to “text” someone), but today made me feel for the first time as if the complications of technology and social media may begin to leave me behind, and i will have to make my peace with being a little bit “out of it,” and maybe seeming a little bit old as a result.

agave leaves

what you see is what you get

first reaction: i see sea urchins on the white sand bottom of a south pacific lagoon. second reaction: i’m looking down at the bowl cuts of five sandy haired brothers. third reaction: five wet mops propped on the ground with their mop heads in the air. fourth reaction: the children of cousin it from the addams family. fifth reaction: five fox terriers are poking their snouts through a white curtain. sixth reaction. tiki huts. seventh reaction. all the palm trees died. eighth reaction: all the koosh balls also died. your turn. whatever you see, that’s what it is.

dried chrysanthemum flowers