this summer we harvested the very first blueberries from our back yard after years of watching them leaf out in the spring, grow taller all summer, and die back in the fall, without ever producing more than a few fragile white blossoms that always fell to the ground before anything like a blueberry appeared. this year was different, and now our plants provide the full color spectrum. the fall leaves give us R O Y G, and the berries fill in the B I V.

blueberry leaves in autumn

saint paul, minnesota

i swear to you that this is a photo, not an illustration, and that it is essentially unretouched. i discovered a tiny patch of ferns along the edge of my yard this fall that began slowly turning color in this haphazard, feather-like way. i have no idea how or why. i just know that, once again, the beauty and variety of nature fills me with wonder and disbelief.

ostrich fern leaflets in late october

turtle lake, saint paul, minnesota

unless you are a woodpecker who has met an untimely end in mary jo hoffman’s back yard. then your polka dots get taken with the utmost seriousness, and kept in the sacred fallen woodpecker feather box. there are times when i could wish i didn’t empathize quite so completely with the animal world and its inevitable disappointments and minor tragedies. but on the other hand, i would never choose to be so impoverished as to lose touch with it. so my heart fills, and breaks, and gets put back together again.

woodpecker feathers

saint paul, minnesota

water lily stems don’t need to be strong. they need to be flexible. if you pull a lily pad from the water, the stem has no resistance or strength. but that’s not its job. its job is to stay flexible so that it doesn’t snap under the force of wind or current. and, astoundingly, its other job is to conduct oxygen from the leaf to the root, by means of pressure built up in the air spaces of the leaf tissue when the young leaf is heated by the sun. in other words, sometimes you need a soldier and sometimes you need a poet. thank heavens for both of them, but don’t put this delicate specialist into battle. let it float motionless, soak up the heat of the sun, and contemplate it’s very narrow conclusions on the meaning of existence.

dried water lilies

turtle lake, saint paul, minnesota