we just had a cute exchange with a nephew who has fallen hard for jazz, and who was gifted a treasured vinyl sinatra record of my dad’s last night, after spending dinner with his grandma. i told steve i was going to write about jazz tonight, because i never talk about it, and yet it’s how we end almost every evening, by the fire, catching up on the day’s news, to the accompaniment of stan getz, and joao gilberto, and dave brubeck, and paul desmond, and sonny rollins, and miles davis, and bill evans. i told steve this photo reminds me of a jazz album cover. he told me to please proceed with writing about jazz, but that this is totally a folk album cover, and that a jazz album cover would have a cigarette butt or two, a square heeled dress shoe, a porkpie hat, and something made out of brass. i suppose he’s right, but it doesn’t make him any less of a smart ass.

collections of winter browns and tan

saint paul, minnesota

there are both male and female trees. well, of course there are. poison ivy makes pretty white berries that my husband is allergic to. didn’t know that. do now. hens don’t need roosters to lay eggs. never learned that growing up in suburban minnesota. the line of mosquito bites along my boy dog’s rib cage are not mosquito bites, according to the vet. in fact, boy dogs have nipples too. honey never spoils. and apparently i dated a guy named brian in high school. asked him to sadie hawkins. i just learned this from my high school girl friends at a girls’ weekend. it was news to me. they swear it’s true.

female white spruce with pine cone

lake phalen, saint paul, minnesota

these elements look good together. that sounds as if i’m taking credit but i’m not. i think part of my fascination with assemblages is that almost no matter how many objects you place in proximity to each other, as long as they all come from the same bioregion, they will somehow fit together aesthetically. so the wild grape vine, the flicker feather, and the spruce top above may appear not to have much to do with each other, but they all fit, because they were all made by the same place. they are all hearing the same background music, and without thinking much about it, they are singing in harmony.

wild grapevine wreath with spruce tip and flicker feathers

shoreview, minnesota

i have looked at this photo for half an hour, and decided it is a portrait of the family i grew up in. a family made up of rigid order and messy fragility. a family more or less aligned in the same direction, despite small individual differences. see the little feather at the bottom, near enough to be a part of things, but obviously breaking away to find its own quiet destiny? that’s me.

part of a flicker wing

saint paul, minnesota

this flower reminds me of an earlier post, when I promised to write a letter from my 70 year old self to my present self. the reminder came not because i have any hope or even intention of becoming stem-thin at 70, but because i might decide around that time to begin sporting some gray spiky hair. i was going to try to write that letter tonight, as a matter of fact, and somehow found myself on the couch with a laptop on my knees trying to apply for a trademark for STILL. i decided after about two hours that i am really quite a good taker of photos for STILL blog, but i am possibly the worst trademark attorney currently in existence.

wild sunflower in winter

saint paul, minnesota