back when reading the kids to sleep involved picking any book about any kind of animal in the world, we read a lot about the odd extremes of the animal kingdom, because those are what kids want to know about–the biggest, the meanest, the ugliest, the tiniest, the grossest, and the most unusual. i realize as i look at this protea flower that it reminds me in every way except its color, of a pangolin, which is an animal i haven’t thought about much lately, now that eva is reading steinbeck for english class instead of “animals of the rain forest” picture books, and joe . . . well . . . joe is probably still reading about pangolins at night.

protea flower

bought at a saint paul, minnesota florist; native to south africa

we worked very hard to have joseph, our number two child. it was a tough stretch and one we will be glad not to live through again. he’s eleven now, caught between the innocent enthusiasm of boyhood and the guardedness of adolescence. last night he got sucked in by the internet for an evening and, boy-like, forgot to get around to his homework project. then, adolescent-like, he told a lie about it. the latter is as close to a cardinal sin as we have in our family, and i tried really hard to be mad at him. but part of me will always live in that time before him, when we were three–mary jo, steve and eva. a time when joseph was a hazy shape in the background of our lives that we couldn’t seem to bring into focus. a time when we got very close to giving up hope. all i could think last night, as i halfheartedly scolded him for his behavior, was how happy i was to have him around to tell boyish fibs.

hackberry branches in winter

lake phalen, saint paul, minnesota

i feel about this white. and about this dry. i need a week of 95 degrees and 95% humidity. and a foo-foo drink.

white finger starfish

florida

this is the big frozen period at the end of the iconic teenage text message called “K Dot.” It’s when you end a text conversation coldly, like this: “K.” It says that you emphatically have nothing further to say, because you are exasperated with your correspondent. It means, “End of conversation,” with an implication that the recipient of the K Dot has been, at best, lame, and at worst, infuriating. we have a sixteen year old in the house. we have received quite a number of K Dots over the last several months, both verbal and textual. we have come to accept that we are, as parents, both lame and infuriating. we are, on the one hand, exasperated ourselves at being bossed around by a creature whose diapers we were changing not long ago, and on the other hand, charmed at the pluck of our assertive daughter, as she builds the walls of her adult self on the foundation of a succession of boundary-setting K Dots.

snowball

saint paul, minnesota

ok people. this is what you get when in addition to groceries, laundry, lunch, dinner and still blog, i am also asked to put together several collections of my images sorted by color. you get bracket fungus. from a stump. next to my driveway. i’m phoning this one in. can you hear me now?

bracket fungus

saint paul, minnesota