“mom i know this sounds nerdy and all, but you know what that looks like? it looks like the mythical weapon they call greek fire. you can tell them that.” so now i’ve told you.

dandelion stems

saint paul, minnesota

today i turn 51 years old. it is an extremely boring age to turn. neither young nor old. a milestone and some change. steve and i decided to reward me for this singularly unimpressive accomplishment with an iPhone 6, since i am doing so much photo editing and posting on my phone these days, and the bigger screen might be easier on my aging eyes. i was mildly pleased with the idea. it was about as exciting as turning 51. then steve emerged from the back yard with this maidenhair fern pinched between two fingers. he stopped in the doorway and held it out to me, with a look on his face like mr. darcy in the rain. after 10 years in this house, i had no idea that maidenhair fern grew in our back yard. it was one of the most beautiful things i’ve ever seen, with its black stem and curvy symmetrical whorl of delicate leaflets. we raced to the bedroom to find some white paper, and he held the fern carefully while I snapped its photo over and over again to make sure i captured its youthful freshness before it began to wilt. i was quite literally groaning at the beauty of each new camera angle. we stopped just short of reverting to our 20s, and tearing each other’s clothes off. so, for my birthday, you can give me the very cutting edge of today’s mind-blowing technology revolution. or you can give me something really exciting.

maidenhair fern

from my yard, saint paul, minnesota

i bought three hundred daffodil bulbs last fall, and asked my daughter to plant them for me. she did, but this spring, only about 5 or 10 showed up at first. eva, did you plant the bulbs right side up? eva didn’t know. which meant that, statistically speaking, about half of the bulbs were planted upside down. so now the upside down bulbs are slowly finding their way to the surface, but in thin delicate waves, and what was supposed to be a thick, shaggy head of spring daffodil hair looks like a windblown comb over.

daffodil

saint paul, minnesota

i don’t know what to say about this photo except that i love the bell shape of these blueberry blossoms, and that I find myself thinking about all of the white blossoms that end up producing colored fruit: white blueberry blossoms, white raspberry blossoms, white blackberry blossoms, white thimbleberry blossoms, white cherry blossoms, white apple blossoms, white pear blossoms, white plum blossoms, white olive blossoms, white grape blossoms. Surely there is a reason for this. I await your wisdom.

blueberry blossoms

from my yard, saint paul, minnesota

let me say what any wild asparagus hunter already knows. spring is lousy with bullet shaped single green stalks poking up out of the ground. i can’t tell you how many times my heart raced over what turned out to be horsetail, or cattail, or sapling, or blade of grass. this unfurling false solomon’s seal was doubly false. it was also a false alarm. and instead of asparagus omelet for lunch, we just had omelet.

false solomon’s seal bud

sucker lake regional trail, saint paul, minnesota