i just learned that the color of hydrangea flowers depends on the acidity of the soil they grow in. acidic soils make for blue flowers, and alkaline soils create pink. there is so little actual blue in nature, that it has me wondering if there is some connection between hydrangeas and blueberries, which both blossom into blue around midsummer in acid soil.

lacecap hydrangea blossoms in december

minneapolis, minnesota

each of these linden bracts shares identical DNA, and yet, look at the variation. it has me thinking about the idea of infinity, according to which, there are an infinite number of variations on the linden bract, with such infinitessimal differences from one to the other, that the photo above looks like chaos–with each bract as proportionately different from its neighbor as a whale is from a desert scorpion. infinity freaks me out.

linden (tilia) fruit and bracts

saint paul, minnesota

the ground is now covered with snow. and the end of color in this part of the world has arrived. i am looking forward to four months of dinner beside the fire, and early to bed. but it also means four months of slim pickings for STILL. any of you who have been with me longer than one year will know this is actually my favorite STILL season– minimal, spare, and uncluttered, with a new emphasis on forms and shapes and shades, rather than on those saturated showy colors of mid-summer.  for those of you living in lower latitudes, this may start to feel a little monotonous. but i hope i can show you the quiet beauty of our long, dark winters. stick with me. i’ll need your body heat.

linden bract and fruit

saint paul, minnesota

as beautiful as i find almost all flora, i can also see why they make an occasional horror movie with plants as the creepy bad guys. doesn’t this photo look as if the head of some poor creature was used as breeding ground and soil to feed the growth of those slightly spectral plant fingers?

goldenrod stem with gall

rice creek, saint paul, minnesota

i have a dream. someday i am going to combine my quasi-professional love of nature and her colors with my very amateur love of painting, and i am going to crush every colored leaf and flower i can find, in order to make an infinitely nuanced rainbow of tints out of them. then i’m going to paint some canvases that will consistently fail to be as beautiful as the leaves and flowers they are made of. wait, this dream isn’t turning out the way i’d hoped.

assorted fall leaves, dried and crumbled

saint paul, minnesota

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