black garlic, it’s a thing

black garlic is a form of “carmelized” garlic made by heating the whole bulbs of garlic over the course of several weeks until the cloves turn inky black. the process results in sticky cloves with a date-like texture and and a semisweet earthiness that is supposed to be utterly unique. they say to use it like roasted garlic–purée the cloves with oil, then smear the paste on crostini, incorporate it into dressings, or rub it onto chicken or fish before roasting. i’m not so sure. my husband is the adventure eater in the house. as for me, i’m deciding if i might rather just enjoy the look of direct sunlight slicing across the rough surface of a halved head of sticky black date-textured garlic.

black garlic

line up

when he was a toddler my son used to to “line up” with his trucks and his dinosaurs. he would line them up end to end across the room with lots of deliberation and great seriousness. it clearly relieved some kind of anxiety, or was more satisfying in some way than just creating order. a dozen years later, he helped me with today’s line-up, displaying a certain receptiveness to restraint and proportion, and an understanding of the energy of diagonal lines. he had a LOT of practice.

tidy rows of nature bits

pretty little thing

i try to say something about each day’s post that goes beyond the surface and that reflects my methods, or my mood, or the philosophy or aesthetics behind my choices. today, here’s the truth. i loved the little toothed fronds of these dried ferns, and i played with them all afternoon until i came up with a pretty little pattern whose only job was to be pretty. welcome to still blog, the trophy wife episode.

winter fern fronds

hot wheels

when i was a kid we had a hot wheels set in our basement, where little cars would speed along plastic tracks, and if you got them going fast enough, they would do loop-de-loops, spiraling upside down and back onto the track. it was a very very important skill to possess back then–the ability to get your hot wheels car to do a loop-de-loop. i’m grateful to this curly willow for bringing back to life such an innocent time. and i’m wondering if i could still do more consecutive loop-de-loops than my brothers.

curly willow

a study in contrasts

of course the first thought is how ephemeral and fleeting the dragonfly wing is compared to the permanence of the stone. but then the dragonfly can reproduce itself and the stone cannot, so in some ways the dragonfly wing has a kind of biological permanence compared to this single irreproducible stone. would i rather be the dragonfly or the stone? i think i like the idea of generations of little dragonflies darting over shallow water as my legacy, rather than a single stone, grimly resisting its long, gradual erosion.

beach rock with dragonfly wing