my dehydrator tray

I am putting as much as I can, as fast I can, into our dehydrator at the moment. It’s jawd-roppingly beautiful our there right now, and I am trying to capture as much as I can so I have materials to play with this winter. It’s the STILL equivalent of “money in the bank.” This was my finished (dried) tray from today. The colors caught my attention as I carried the tray upstairs from the banned-to-the-basement dehydrator, so I slid the whole things right onto my black background and shot it as is.

For the curious, this trayful holds: orange dahlias, fall lilac flowers and leaves, ginkgo leaves, Meyer lemon tree leaves, cabbage leaves, honey locust leaves, one hydrangea floret, one oak leaf, two crabapples, a couple stray sumac leaves, and some dried dogwood leaves.

collection of dried flora in mid-October in Minnesota

an exquisite gift in a doggie poop bag

The other day I woke to message (a DM) in Instagram. It said: “Hi excuse my DM, but I dropped a little green bag on top of your mailbox with some of my prized big leaf magnolia tree pods (not poo ). The tree is magnificent, and the fruit starts off bright pink and then opens up to reveal this bright red seeds. It’s a bigleaf magnolia.”

I am glad she told me it wasn’t an actual poo bag, because I would have totally thought someone set it down on our mailbox to tie a shoe and then forgot it; we have a lot of walkers going around the lake. For me, this is a perfect gift. And an exquisite seedpod.

bigleaf magnolia seedpods (Magnolia macrophylla)

a head the size of a planet

I used to tell my son Joseph that I wouldn’t let him play hockey or football because he had a brain the size of planet it it was too valuable to risk in high school contact sports. That was years before we knew about the very serious long-term effects of repeated concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. I was joking when I said it 18 years ago, but boy oh boy. One of those awful times when there is no satisfaction in being right.

Well, shoot. I don’t like being a Debbie Downer, and I know many of you start your day with STILL. So let’s close today’s post by contemplating the massive fertility of this single sunflower head “the size of a planet.” And this after the flower itself spent all of late summer being beautiful and following the path of the sun in the sky.

sunflower seedhead in autumn

Happy Birthday to Stevie!

Today my hubby turns 61. We a fun Stevie-day lined up. I’ll be busy all day. So while I ought to grab the opportunity to write a nice paragraph about the symbolism of the circle, including wedding rings, I will refrain as my time is mostly spoken for today. ❤️

staghorn sumac leave (Rhus typhina)

sumac for the win

My neighbor down the street has a little patch (maybe a dozen) of staghorn sumac trees on the boulevard. It is not in full sun like all the roadside sumac. So, its fall colors are always a little different than the other sumac: More oranges and yellows, less red. Every year, I eagerly await its changing. This year it did not disappoint. All these leaves were from that small patch. Simply spectacular.

staghorn sumac leaves in peak fall colors (Rhus typhina)