i am a natural rule bender and steve is a natural rule follower. every now and then i like to provoke him with some slightly outrageous suggestion that i know will divide him painfully between his wish to follow the rule i’m proposing to break, and his wish to follow the competing rule that says “make MJ happy.” increasingly he is willing to choose the latter, which is one more thing i love about him. every once in a while, though, i still get the old skeptical stevie, giving me The Look over his glasses. “just keeping it fresh,” i say. in a similar spirit, i offer you a bird wing this morning, almost entirely stripped of its barbs, but with shafts still intact. this is supposed to be a peaceful and pretty blog. but i’m pretty sure it was little mites that ate away every part of this wing except the skeleton.  just keeping it fresh.

bird wing with no barbs but shafts still in tact

minnesota

i am doing some product shots for a friend. she wants me to work within my STILL style. i got to pick my two color palettes. i chose gray. of course. and blue.  here are my assembled props for the grays. an easy assignment in minnesota in february. blue, on the other hand…yeah, what exactly was i thinking there? can i take a mulligan?

a collection of winter grays

minnesota

here’s my late night take. i imagine these heads of timothy grass as firework sparklers, i can envision the half-spent heads as those that didn’t burn completely. they left some of their combustion in reserve, and they ended looking a little ragged and the worse for wear. but the bare sparkler in the foreground burned bright, without holding back, and he reached winter elegantly spent. i like him.

timothy grass in winter

rice creek regional trail, saint paul, minnesota

i think we assume that everyone softens as the end draws near. that old age turns people fond and lovable and unthreatening. this happened with my difficult father. his gradual acceptance of the inevitable sweetened him and softened his bristly edges. others i can think of are going to end like this thistle leaf, crisping, curling into themselves, but never dropping their thorns.

thistle leaf in winter

grass lake regional trail, saint paul, minnesota

i love how much motion is implied in this very static stalk. the stems look like arms thrown wide in celebration, but they are also a little crooked and arthritic looking. so maybe they are thrown a little hesitantly and painfully wide, while the concerned looking aster heads bob uncertainly in the wind, looking up at the sky as if there were some kind of answer up there.

white asters (?) in winter

rice creek regional trail, saint paul, minnesota