a good friend used to buy a bulb garden for her grandmother every spring. it became a bond and a tradition. after her grandmother passed away, her husband began buying her a bulb garden every spring, in memory of her grandmother. you married extremely well, i told her. well, she said, i did coach him. so he buys you a bulb garden every spring in memory of your grandmother and in addition to that, he’s coachable? you married extremely well, i told her.

hyacinth, daffodil, tulip, grape hyacinth

spent greenhouse bulb garden

our fifteen year old just returned from a five day visit to her grandparents in palm springs, california. i asked her to gather what she could for STILL blog between her daily poolside appointments. i love what she came up with.  she avoided the non-native landscaped palm springs, and instead hiked out to the foothills for the desert sages and smoke weed. she gets me.

palm springs desert assemblage

palm springs, california

in the spring, summer, and fall one or several of us will often choose to sleep on the screen porch. sleeping on the screen porch means, among other things, being awakened at the break of dawn by a very emphatic, and very loud, red squirrel. he leaps from the white oak to the maple, races along the maple branches outside the porch, then hops into the white cedar growing up along the corner post, and decides that any sleepers in his vicinity are either a threat, or have simply slept too long. the wake-up call is a deafening and incessant trill–equal parts charming and infuriating. today we found this fearless red squirrel in the driveway, dead.  he was intact except for one small bloody spot near his chest. if i had to guess, i would say he had been stealing chicken feed again, and one of the girls gave him a quick, vicious peck to show him who was boss. now, after two years of complaining about the din every morning, i am suddenly concerned about the lack of noise. was this our cedar tree squirrel just trying to get a free meal after a hard winter?? i almost don’t want to find out next summer.

american red squirrel and his luxurious mahogany tail

saint paul, minnesota

one late-march step on the long march toward spring.

tree buds on the first day of spring: cottonwood, lilac, poplar, siberian elm, ?, ?, oak

rice creek regional trail, saint paul, minnesota

another winter storm advisory today. so i went searching for inspirations among my collections rather than risking the bad weather.  my nature collections are sort of like putting up preserves for the winter–picked during peak season, and saved for later.  march can get a little “hungry” in minnesota, and these preserves make for good sustenance.

color wheel: red stag horn sumac, violet shells, blue jay feathers, green linden leaves, yellow rose petals and daffodil flowers, orange maple leaves