let’s talk briefly about how beautiful ginkgo leaves are, with their scalloped umbrella shape and their perfect crepe paper veined surfaces, and their triumphant golden fall color. and then let’s talk about planting something else for a while on the boulevards of our cities. thanks to dutch elm disease, and now the emerald ash borer, minneapolis and saint paul have lost a huge chunk of their urban forest canopy, and i think that’s true of many similar north american cities. it’s tempting to replace all of those elms and ash trees with an easy, hardy, pretty tree like ginkgo. but i just read that an urban oak can host 500 different species of caterpillars, and ginkgo biloba hosts only one. and where caterpillars go, so go native birds. and when there aren’t acorns and walnuts, the squirrels aren’t interested. and when there aren’t squirrels and native birds, the raptors go somewhere else. and soon enough our vibrant urban forest starts looking like a pretty, but sterile, urban desert. i offer this as the viewpoint of one single nature blogger, who will now pick up her soapbox, and go home.

ginkgo leaf

minneapolis, minnesota

somewhere among these succulent leaves, if you just put them together in the right order, there is a helicopter waiting to to engage its rotors and lift off. i haven’t gotten there yet. but i think i’m really close. little help?

assorted succulents

one of my favorite words is calyx. it’s that little green saucer at the top of a flower stem that used to be the bud of the flower, and then opened up into a stiff-fingered little palm that cups and supports the flower as it blooms, and gives it support. is there a better synonym for motherhood than the word “calyx?”

wild roadside daisies

saint paul, minnesota

yes, what you see there on either side of this hummingbird’s head are tiny, tiny feathered eyelashes. i think it makes her look coquettish: “But really Rhett, I can’t go on accepting these gifts although you are AWFULLY kind.”

ruby-throated hummingbird beak

saint paul, minneosta

sorry about all the grass lately, but it’s what i’m seeing, and it’s just pretty and awesome, and, well, pretty awesome. what i truly wish is that i could somehow recreate on STILL blog the incredible patterns made by the roots of these grasses. there is a wonderful graphic that should have won somebody an award showing the above ground profiles of tallgrass prairie species, compared to their underground root profiles. i could look at that image for days.

indian grass going to seed (a native prairie tall grass)

grass lake, saint paul, minnesota