i suppose this was an appropriate find on a wednesday during easter week. ash twigs are among my favorite winter branches; so nubby and textured. they look far from ashen, though. look at those terminal buds, swollen and ready to burst!

winter ash twigs

lake vadnais, saint paul, minnesota

i pulled this anemic winter leaf from a vine this afternoon on my daily walk. i’m pretty sure it was a wild cucumber vine. the (lack of) color caught my attention. the leaf looked like i felt after this winter, a little damaged but still intact. as i was photographing the leaf two hours later, i thought to myself, “this will be my homage, my send off, to a long difficult winter. from here on out, i will focus only on spring and promise and renewal”. then i got in the car to pick up my son from school, and the weather report said ‘70% chance of snow over the next two days.” i laughed. but anemically.

end of winter leaf

vadnais lake, saint paul, minnesota

i was just square enough in college never to attend a grateful dead concert, which was an almost superhuman feat in madison wisconsin in the 1980s. today i cut some dried flowers from their stalks in our prairie, which is the closest i’ve been to a deadhead in quite a few years.

winter garden pruning, seedpods

saint paul, minnesota

elegant black and tans.

feathers of a virginia rail

saint paul, minnesota

i was hiking off-trail today, and was so excited when i stumbled on a fresh green carpet of  these charming corrugated rosettes. a magical harbinger of spring. i came home and started googling, and what i found was not magical at all: what i had stumbled on was the persistent winter growth of garlic mustard, or, as it is referred to by the minnesota department of agriculture: a class a noxious weed. in other words, the nifty retro checkerboard floors in my new mid-century basement had just revealed themselves to be made of a very useful material, called asbestos.

garlic mustard leaves

lake vadnais, saint paul, minnesota