yes, you’re very pretty. ok turn to the side. now lean back slightly. good. good. hold your arms out. perrrfect. now hold that pose. hold it. chin up. yes. a little higher. hold it. hold it. yes. beautiful. all right. i think we’ve got some really great stuff. thank you, darling.

green foxtail grass

north oak, saint paul, minnesota

my ability to identify this plant has an unusual history. it’s one of the very few local minnesota plants i’ve ever known whose name i learned first in french and then had to translate back into english. when our friend, jean-luc, pointed out a pretty, delicate purple-flowered plant growing low in some languedocian scrubland alongside a vineyard, he called it “la vaisse.” it looked vaguely familiar, and then one day, back home, alongside a minnesota prairie, i saw a lovely little purple flowered plant with tiny fern-like fronds, and recognized it as “la vaisse,” which translates naturally and exactly to “vetch.” if you had forced me to place a bet, i would have said there was some latin mixed up in there, and sure enough, according to google, the latin name for vetch/vaisse is “vicia.” there is, as always, nothing new under the sun.

common crown vetch leaves

saint paul, minnesota

the point being, these are no longer the colors or patterns of high summer, but of the season that follows. a season that for now shall remain nameless. not my fault. you can’t blame me for this.

late august leaves: linden, maple, oak, fern, arrowhead, and poplar

shoreview, minnesota

i’ve been receiving a lot of requests for prints of my images lately. i don’t actually sell the prints themselves, but i do sell high-res digital files that people can download and print on any surface and at any size they like. anyway, these requests strike me a as a pretty good gauge of which of my images are the most popular. i get a lot of requests for feathers, flowers, and nature assemblages, as you might imagine, and i get a surprising amount of interest in insects, but, to my ongoing perplexity, i haven’t received any requests for possibly my personal favorite nature item: seed pods. i mean, come on. they’re always interesting, sometimes beautiful, graphic, three dimensional, and varied. what’s not to love? let’s go people.

black locust seed pods

saint paul, minnesota

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american tiger lily

saint paul, minnesota