common oddities

this weed couldn’t have looked more obvious when i came upon it. like some bristle armed alien marching out of the prairie. yet i have probably walked past this very stem one hundred times since april, and never noticed it until today. there it was, one step off the trail i walk most frequently with the dog. really? an entire spring, summer, and fall of walks, and now we meet? perhaps we have met before, and you just dyed your hair or got new glasses…

trailside weed

rice creek regional trail, saint paul, minnesota

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relics

it’s the last day of october. we had one of the most colorful falls in memory here in minnesota. but the north winds rolled down from canada this week and like the glaciers several hundred thousand years before them, they haven’t left much in their wake. we have some really nice soil, some piles of terminal moraine, and these damaged mementos of a colorful past. now it’s time to square our shoulders and face northward with stiff nordic upper lips.

late october leaves

grass lake, saint paul, minnesota

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tar spots

invariably these little black fungus spots are called “unsightly.” i find them sort of adorable. like the prints our dog makes on the white floor unknowingly when he’s just come in from trying to dig something up out of the back yard.

tar spot fungus on silver maple leaves

island lake trail, saint paul, minnesota

  • Traci says:

    This image isn’t showing up for me for some reason. I’ll have to check back. :]

    reply
    • Hi Traci,
      Thanks for the heads up. Let me know if you continue to have problems so I can look into it!
      Mary Jo

      reply
  • Charo says:

    Cuanta belleza en la composicion y en los contrastes. !!

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  • Carol Sommers says:

    I agree – adorable!

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tipped scale

we minnesotans talk about the weather because it is the most dramatic thing about our landscape. we don’t have oceans or gorges or mountains or the big sky of the western plains and southwestern deserts. we have lakes, which are pretty and placid but which are not, with the exception of lake superior, dramatic. we are, however, on the 45th parallel in the middle of our continent and we can have 130 degree temperature swings between high summer and low winter. all of which helps explain our weather obsession, and the reason  behind this photo, which stands as a marker of the day when a brief, gorgeous period of equilibrium between warm green summer and colorful fall tipped irreversibly in the direction of the latter. a chilly day blew down most of the remaining leaves today, and in 24 hours it went from color-on-color october to gray-on-brown november in my back yard.

a collection of late october finds: crabapples, nest, turkey feather, bracket fungus, pinecone, birdseye knot, dried leaves and weeds

shoreview, minnesota

  • Manisha says:

    That was a perfect description of the drama here in Minnesota. With such a lovely autumn, I’m ready to switch gears, at least that’s what I’m telling myself today.

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the very hungry caterpillar

between my husband and me, i believe we read the book “the very hungry caterpiller” to our two kids between 367,594 times and 367, 632 times. that is why i know the book begins with the words, “in the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf.” if you read my instagram today, you will understand that the egg was lying on a leaf, and had probably lain on the leaf since its mother had laid it, and left it lying there, laid bare for birds lying in wait to lay claim to both the lying egg and its laying mother.

beetle eaten leaves on an unidentified vine

grass lake regional trail, saint paul, minnesota

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  • LW says:

    i really dislike seeing my leaves like this…but it is nature!

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