during our last trip to france, our neighbor jean-luc, who understands the importance of such things, came knocking on our door one day with the urgent news that some rare wild carnations were blooming along a hillside where he walked his dogs at night. we dropped everything to go see them, of course, and they were to domesticated carnations as this blue-eyed grass is to its cousin the iris. they were so delicate and compact with such understated flowers that i never would have recognized them, or possibly even seen them, if they hadn’t been pointed out to me. they spent their lives too preoccupied with the unglamorous work of survival to fuss with pretty clothes just for show.

blue-eyed grass

vadnais lake trail, saint paul, minnesota

i don’t have any good stories about these feathers or about my finding them. they were just on the side of the trail during another walk along the shore of vadnais lake, which is a placid and beautiful place during the day, but, given the number of feathers and bones i find there, must resemble a kind of hieronymous bosch hellscape between sundown and sunset. none of which explains why i chose this photo. i chose it for purely visual reasons: the crisp black needles of the feather shafts among the pillowy softness of the downy barbules. i love that.

canada goose feathers

vadnais lake trail, saint paul, minnesota

this weekend i had my first seasonal sightings of the following: red bellied snake, baby snapping turtle, fireflies, june bugs, and dragonflies. it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from aldo leopold, who is essentially, in this household, a favorite quote factory:  “Many of the events of the annual cycle recur year after year in a regular order. A year-to-year record of this order is a record of the rates at which solar energy flows to and through living things.  They are the arteries of the land.  By tracing their response to the sun, phenology may eventually shed some light on that ultimate enigma, the land’s inner workings.” –Aldo Leopold, A Phenological Record for Sauk and Dane Counties, Wisconsin, 1935-1945

dragonfly

saint paul, minnesota

this vine contorting itself almost painfully into a recognizable ampersand reminds me that i have recently begun claiming, to a number of indifferently disbelieving friends and family members, that our puggle jack is trying to talk. he has lately made several sounds so otherworldly and strange, whether greeting me at the door, or reacting to the news of an impending walk, or drawing my attention to a forgotten morsel of chicken just out of reach on the kitchen counter, that i can only conclude he is trying to pierce the human-canine communication veil, and simply tell me, verbally, “mom, there’s chicken! no, i mean it! right there! right in front of you! no, not there! over there! yes! i can smell it!” because, of course, his increasingly frantic and intrusive behavior can’t simply be the worsening etiquette of an indulged and coddled dog. that just doesn’t stand to reason.

knotted vine

vadnais lake trail, saint paul, minnesota

this foot was all that was left of a local goose, who must have gotten careless in the presence of a coyote or a fox or an owl this week. i have never had the occasion to look this closely at a goose foot. it is not exactly horrifying. but, on the other hand, it’s not exactly not horrifying either.

canada goose foot

vadnais lake trail, saint paul, minnesota