the beetles at work on these aspen leaves had worked through the soup, the fish, the meat, the salad, and the cheese, and had just gotten their first taste of dessert at the end of this branch when I apparently ended their meal. my kids would have killed me. they wouldn’t have talked to me for days.

beetle eaten linden leaves

national sports center, blaine, minnesota

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cardinals, blue jays, flickers, and woodpeckers are biggish birds. big, that is, in comparison to sparrows, finches, warblers, and wrens. but every one of them shrieks and dives for cover when the shadow of an eagle rushes across the ground.

bald eagle tail feather, cardinal feather, blue jay feather, flicker feather, woodpecker feather

vadnais lake, saint paul, minnesota

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my husband has an uncle who used to scour parking lots for loose change that fell out of people’s clothing. he wasn’t homeless or destitute. in fact he was an otherwise charming and conscientious attorney. i always thought the loose change thing was weird. then today, i found myself stooping over in the grocery store parking lot, peeling a squashed dragonfly off of the asphalt, in order to bring home the four little pieces of gold attached to its thorax. not weird at all, i decided. not weird at all.

dragonfly wings

shoreview, minnesota

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tomorrow morning will be the first morning in over three weeks where i can sleep in. on the other hand, tomorrow morning is the saint paul farmer’s market. and it’s berry season. and i haven’t made a rustic fruit tart for over a week. and berry season doesn’t last forever. and i’ll be thinking about fruit tarts all winter long. and what is summer for anyway if it’s not for making fruit tarts in season? then again, there is this consideration: tomorrow morning will be the first morning in over three weeks were i can sleep in. although, on the other hand…

two sunflowers

saint paul, minnesota

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The Kentucky coffeetree is believed to be an example of evolutionary anachronism. The tough, leathery seed pods are too difficult for many animals to chew through (in addition to being poisonous) and they are too heavy for either wind or water dispersal. It is thus believed that the tree would have been browsed upon by now-extinct mammoths and mastodons which ate the pods and nicked the seeds with their large teeth, aiding in germination. This behavior is seen among African Elephants eating Fabaceae relatives in Africa. Because of this, its prehistoric range may have been much larger than it has been in historical times. Today, in the wild, it only grows well in wetlands, and it is thought that only in such wet conditions can the seed pods rot away to allow germination in the absence of large herbivores.

kentucky coffeetree seed pods and leaves

minneapolis, minnesota

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