today i announced, on instagram, a creative project i have been working on for several months, which i decided had finally matured enough to share with the world. it’s called @colors_of_languedoc, and it’s a combination color study and love letter to the Languedoc region. sunflowers seemed like just the right way to celebrate this celebration of southern france.

you can check it out here.

sunflowers

autignac, france

i don’t know how i manage to wait all year for this particular stretch of berry season and then always, always come close to taking it for granted. it’s so easy to see midsummer abundance as something that will surely last, while it’s here, despite how clear its transience is every year, once it’s gone.

backyard blueberry and raspberry

saint paul, minnesota

taking a photo of a white subject on still blog’s white background is almost impossible. i’ve tried and given up more times than i can count. so normally i would have dismissed these three lovelies as “white moths”  and looked somewhere else for a still blog post. but then i set them on white paper, and remembered one of the founding precepts of still blog: pay attention.

three moths: clymene haploa, rosy maple, and pale beauty

saint paul, minnesota

i found this plant in my back yard, and then i spent the better part of this evening trying to identify it. i googled seed heads, mn seed heads, fluffy seed heads, cotton candy seed heads, q tip seed heads, prairie clover seed heads, mn clovers, bottle brush seed heads, cottony seed heads, prairie plants july mn, disturbed soil plants midsummer mn, etc. etc. etc. eventually i turned it over to my husband, who spent more time than i had on the quest, and eventually came up with rabbit foot clover. my point is, if poetry is about evocative and precise use of language, is there a poet around who could have out-poetried the scientist who came up with rabbit foot clover? it’s perfect. it’s poetic. it’s science.

rabbit foot clover

rice creek trail, saint paul, minnesota