we have all the reds and golds and yellows and russets in our yard that a fall color lover could wish for. but today i woke up with a crush on orange, and this was all i could find. it was a quick fling, that left me wanting more.

autumn still life in orange and gold

saint paul, minnesota

apparently magnolias are ancient enough to predate bees. which begs the question, how in the hell did they pollinate? well, i will admit, in the middle of a time consuming photo commission lately, to getting my information from wikipedia, which theorizes that magnolia flowers evolved in order to encourage pollination by beetles. and once again, in a household enamored of e. o. wilson, and of coleoptera-loving 12 year old boys, we find ourselves on the subject of beetles. thank you for your patience.

magnolia leaves

i keep running into 3:00 pm these days like running into closed door in the middle of the night. i think to myself, oh, it’s early afternoon, i have a few hours left to take a still blog photo, and then, wham!, it’s dark outside. i just squeezed this one in, between soccer and dinner, and tomorrow, i’m sure it will happen again. i hate daylight saving time.

bittersweet vine

steve has been doing his writing and revising at the local library lately, mostly in order to escape the incessant demands of glimmer the chicken and jack the puggle. that sounds fanciful, but it is the absolute, unfortunate truth. i came upstairs from the laundry room the other day to see steve in an armchair with a computer on his lap, looking hunted, as a desperate glimmer paced and pecked at the patio door to be let in to lay her daily egg. the good news in all of this is that i have had some long overdue alone time in recent days, which gives me time to do these nature assemblages, which i love to put together and love to look at when they are done. hope you feel the same.

assorted collection of evergreens and pinecones

pine cones mostly from minnesota and a few from southwest france

i’ve walked by these leaves for about a week now. they are scattered beneath a white poplar on one of my favorite november walking trails. i only noticed them because i was investigating some off-trail crabapples on an adjacent tree, and then suddenly these leaves were everywhere at my feet, and the back sides of the leaves, which are white with a sort of flocking in the summer, were absorbing the blue of the sky, in the places where the leaves hadn’t already turned brown with age. and the brown and baby blue combination was perfect, and i have tried and tried tonight to recapture that color combination for you in my living room and on my computer, and i’m so sorry that i have failed because it was something you all would have loved.

white poplar leaves in november

grass lake, saint paul, minnesota