the thing about fires is that they tend to spread. i caught this contained little blaze on one branch of an otherwise green maple tree today, but try as i might, i don’t think i will be able to extinguish it.

maple leaves in early september

north oaks, minnesota

when we bought our house almost nine years ago, we inherited a small back yard pond.  the kind that needs a little pump to keep the water circulating and fresh. the pond sits under a copse of oak trees. so each fall, it fills with leaves. each spring i rake it out, top it off, and pretty much ignore it for the rest of the summer. the kids love the pond, and so do the wildlife who come to drink from it. this spring, due to the general busyness of preparing to leave for france, i didn’t rake the pond. so we now have a very dense, very lush aquatic weed garden.  my son, the budding naturalist, has counted no less than 7 resident frogs, of four different breeds–wood frog, pickerel frog, leopard frog, and green frog.  he is convinced the weeds are the draw. now what do i do next spring?

naiad pondweeds from our backyard pond

saint paul, minnesota

today steve and i went to breakfast at a beautiful farm-to-table restaurant in south minneapolis called wise acre eatery. but first a culinary digression. we went there specifically to buy their thick-cut, unsmoked bacon. our recent time spent eating and cooking in france, has hooked us on the joys of cooking with lardons, which shouldn’t be, but are in fact very difficult to find in Minnesota, land of Hormel, where bacon means smoked bacon. end of digression. in the end, what stunned me at wise acre eatery this morning was neither the breakfast hash, which was delectable, nor the bacon, which is the best we’ve found, but the landscaping, which appeared to include about 50 varieties of coleus. when, exactly, did this happen?  i am pretty observant. i like to visit botanical gardens and conservatories. but never have i seen so many cultivars in one place. is there a secret laboratory somewhere with eccentric botanists madly hybridizing coleus? the last time i landed on planet earth there appeared to be only a dozen or so varieties. whoa.

a collection of coleus leaves

wise acre eatery, minneapolis, minnesota

the monarch in the middle of this arrangement will not be making the journey down to mexico this year, and there are too few of them left these days to afford even this small loss. so i am sending him, if only symbolically, southward toward warmer weather, surrounded by all the signs that it is time to go. i hope all of his brothers and sisters make it intact.

early september assemblage: cattail, sumac, red oak leaves, white pine needles, milkweed, and monarch butterfly

vadnais lake trail, saint paul, minnesota

i am happy not to have been one of the grubs chewing just slightly too noisily through the trunk of this tree when the hairy woodpecker arrived and started cocking her head sideways to listen.

tree trunk with woodpecker holes old and new

sucker lake regional trail, saint paul, minnesota