in the middle ages sage symbolized domestic virtue. if all was well in the home, your sage plant would thrive. if there was trouble, the sage would wilt. i have a huge photo shoot tomorrow for a project i can’t wait to tell you about, but for now, it is both under wraps and all i have the capacity to think about. so i’m very glad that the potted sage on my front stoop looks healthy, and that, for one more day at least, i don’t have to worry about the health and wellness of my domestic situation. after tomorrow, i’ll be back at the hearth, and back in nature, and a more interactive mother, wife, and blogger. love to you all.

sage

from my front stoop, saint paul, minnesota

these are not cabbage leaves. but they look as if they could be an exotic form of cabbage. when i asked my husband if he agreed, he went off on a non sequitur tangent about the two kinds of cabbage he thinks about when he thinks about cabbage in the fall. there is culinary cabbage, which an early-october chill always starts him thinking about braised cabbage with bacon and onion and apple cider vinegar. then there is broadleaf cabbage, the lake weed where bass and panfish and big october pike hang out, which he loves to cast for, standing on the bench of a lund fishing boat, in three layers of sweaters and a wool kromer cap. when he had finished, i said, “so these leaves. do they look like cabbage leaves? yes or no.”

rosette of unidentified fall leaves from a singe branch

lake johanna, saint paul, minnesota

i would love to be given one day to travel back in time and see the tallgrass prairie of the american midwest in its prime. deforestation is easy to imagine, and i think it gets a lot of press as a result. we all (including myself) love trees almost as friends. but grasses aren’t as cuddly, despite the fact that they are as indigenous as any american species of anything, plant or animal. i just read this evening that the tallgrass prairies of america created the deepest topsoil ever recorded. that’s sort of a nerdy accomplishment, but it fills me with sadness that what accomplished that feat is mostly gone.

big blue stem (aka turkeyfoot) prairie grass

lake johanna, arden hills, minnesota

i just sat through a soccer game during which, for one hour straight, a mother of one of the opposing players sang out a running stream of instructions, corrections, cheers, criticisms, and self-help slogans from the sidelines. she had a voice like a hydraulic brake, one of those sounds it is impossible not to listen to. steve and i call that kind of behavior “parenting out loud.” you hear it a lot on playgrounds, the kind of self-consciously correct parenting that is quite obviously about displaying someone’s deeply perfect parental love and empathy for a captive audience of onlookers than it is about effectively raising a child. what does that have to do with maple leaves, you might well ask at this point. well, i don’t really like photographing fall color for still blog. it’s too obvious a solution. it’s done too much. it’s pretty without always being interesting. but these leaves just kept haranguing me from the sidelines. they were shouting. i couldn’t tune them out. and eventually, i gave up and took their photo, just to shut them up.

red maple leaves in early october

arden hills, saint paul, minnesota

i am wound fairly loosely. i don’t let things get to me for the most part, and don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what people think. for some reason, though, i have surrounded myself with tightly wound, sensitive types. my husband is sensitive and (less and less, but still) anxious, my son is gentle and fragile, my daughter can be high strung and moody. and, of course, my dog is a complete mess. i’m thinking maybe the branch here needs the vine, and the vine needs the branch.

unidentified vines and branch

grass lake regional trail, saint paul, minnesota