once again, a house divided

i like pretty. my husband likes interesting. i took a number of interesting photos of this fern frond caught at the ultimate point between budding and blossoming. this is the prettiest of the photos. it is not the most interesting but it is the very prettiest. i like pretty. my husband likes interesting. he liked the other photos. i like this one. he is wrong. i am right.

palm frond unfurling

the king

this is the only monarch i ever want to reign in north america. long live the king. may he gently swat away with tender wingbeats all other pretenders to his throne, should the constitution ever fail us.

monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus)

funkia

funkia is an alternate name for hosta, based on some guy named funk who collected ferns and alpine plants. i sort of love the idea of calling hostas “funkia” because they are perhaps the least funky plants in existence. they might be even less funky than day lilies, spirea bushes, and dahlias. they are the ward cleavers of landscaping solutions. they are the bill gateses of shade tolerance. they are the woody allens of angiosperms. and yet . . . look at this hosta. feeling itself. blooming however it damn well pleases. lost in its own private boogie wonderland. funk it up, mr. family asparagaceai, subfamily agavoideae, genus hosta.  funk it up.

hosta scape with blossoms

allez les bleus

we have a household bias in favor of the french national soccer team for some fairly obvious reasons. the problem is that, despite having been a competitive high school soccer player and loving the game, i can’t watch high stakes soccer games. they are too stressful. i have to do self-talk throughout the entire two hours, reminding myself that this doesn’t really matter as much as my adrenaline system and my amygdala is telling me it does. so today, instead of watching france squeak by belgium to reach the final round of the world cup, i photographed a perfectly pale, crenelated, peach colored day lily, and felt no primitive urge either to fight or to flee.

peach colored daylily

all i got

one thing you learn when you take a photo almost every day for 6 years is that you do get a little bit better, with many exceptions, on a gradual upward trajectory, every year as long as you care. this is a photo worthy of one of my better efforts in year one or two, but maybe not quite worthy of my best work in year six. but this is all i got today. the stock market is headed for a new record high sometime in the next few years. today is just a minor correction. i’m not selling. i’m all in.

roadside daisies