this feels a little like my life right now. endless projects spilling off the page–none of them so embryonic that i can ignore them, none of them quite in full bloom enough that i can celebrate.

burdock blossoms

saint paul, minnesota

for some reason, blue jay feathers are as rare around here as dinosaur bones must be to archaeologists. i see blue jays glide across my back yard every day. i hear their dissonant voices in my trees all summer. yet i can’t seem to find more than the occasional odd tailfeather lying in the grass along one of my walks. but yesterday, my husband saw a flash of blue on the far shoulder, on the way home from a soccer practice, and, bless his heart, turned around to investigate. he showed up at the front door looking the same way archaeologist sue hendrickson must have looked when she discovered an 80 percent intact t. rex, skeleton sticking out of a cliff in the cheyenne river indian reservation. here was the elusive object of desire, impossibly complete.

northern blue jay wing

hodgson road, shoreview, minnesota

i couldn’t decide what to say about this, and suddenly i saw my family, mom, dad, and three siblings–a family portrait circa 1969.

nestled leaf stack

saint paul, minnesota

i have spent a lot of my adult life thinking about what is valuable to me and what is not. who is valuable to me and who is not. and then making the often painful decisions about what to shed and what to keep. i sometimes wish it were as easy as dropping a feather, and flying on.

found feather

lake vadnais, saint paul, minnesota

most evenings when i am editing my STILL blog image for the next day, i end up with two alternatives. i call my husband over, and inevitably he picks the photo that is the more “interesting,”  and i pick the photo that is prettier. so when i asked him to help me create a still blog image out of an enormous field thistle, i went to one corner of the room and arranged a pretty halo of lanceate thistle leaves, and he (and i love him for this) decided that the tips of the leaves looked like the tracks of a ruffed grouse walking through snow. so that’s what you get today. enjoy.

field thistle leaves

grass lake regional trail, saint paul, minnesota