sometimes i need a little help. after a long day today i asked my husband what this photo reminded him of. “drenched irises,” he said, which sounded very poetic, until he explained that drenched irises are the term madeline bassett uses to describe the eyes of bertie wooster’s cousin angela, when she thinks about the breakup of her engagement to tuppy glossop. steve had gotten very deep into the world of p. g. wodehouse before i was able to pull him back, and say thank you. drenched irises will work just fine. you can go now.

iris

saint paul, minnesota

my son is just old enough to realize that this gall infested leaf is a potential still blog subject, and just young enough to think it’s still cool. he’s twelve. not yet a teenager. crossing my fingers…

leaf with galls

saint paul, minnesota

these tulips dried in their vase. they look like they have a little life left in them, but they are actually as dry as tissue paper. i set them in a vase out in the garage to be dealt with later, while i prepared the house for a party and then forgot about them until today. i have never tried to dry tulips before, and although i didn’t technically try to do anything in particular this time, i have to say i am thrilled with the result. i feel like the shepherd who forgot some sheep’s milk back in the cave and returned a week later to discover he’d invented cheese.

dried tulips

i took a very posed and orderly photo of these leaves early in the day, and assumed that it would be today’s still blog image. and then i gradually fell out of love with the composition, and asked for family help, as i sometimes do when i feel empty of new arrangements and possibilities. and they came through, working through several variations on the theme of orderly and neat,  before resorting to the theme of overlapping and random. and suddenly i saw the ground in polynesia where we lived for three months one winter, and where tropical leaves and mangoes and papayas littered the bush at our feet whenever we walked anywhere that wasn’t beach. and i decided i had now finally found my still blog image for the day, because it meant something to me.

assorted tropical leaves

i don’t have much to say about this. how many thoughts occur to you when you look at it? like how straight it is. how twisted. how clean and how messy. how like a birth. how male. how designed. how random. how floral. how vegetal. how sure of itself. how confused. how striving. how itself. how alive. not much to say, really.

onion

saint paul, minnesota