tamaracks are a favorite in this family. sometimes you can mistake a spruce for a balsam, but you can never mistake a tamarack–especially not in fall when whole swamps ignite with yellow fire. the cones in this photo are waiting to make new tamaracks, and the little buds along the branches are waiting to become another year’s worth of feathery needle tufts that will turn honey colored next autumn, and carpet the swamps of northern minnesota with gold.

tamarack cones

vadnais lake, saint paul, minnesota

my thoughts about this image are: 1)  After more than two years of walking the same path, how can I not have noticed this plant before?, and 2) it is almost impossible to identify plants in winter. are those dark spots flowers? berries? galls? dried leaves? on a related subject, we are currently tapping a couple of maple trees in our back yard to make maple syrup, and my husband, a nonprofessional but knowledgeable lover of the trees of this region, just spent an hour he couldn’t really afford this late in tax season researching, and failing to decide, whether the bark on one of the trees in our front yard was the bark of an ash or a box elder, the latter of which is in the maple family, and can be tapped for syrup. we’ll know in a month or so, when the leaves burst from their buds, and the sap has long since stopped running. all of which, i suppose, is a further invitation to pay attention. this summer, when it won’t seem to matter, we will risk taking for granted once again that the tree in the front yard with the low fork, and the gray fissured bark, is an ash, or a box elder, although the difference could be crucial the following march.

unidentified late winter stem

lake vadnais, saint paul, minnesota

i had been struggling with this late winter assemblage for some time when my friend Kristin showed up at my front door.  “what are you trying to do do?” she asked. “i’m stuck,” i said. “i’ve already done bouquets, and wreaths, and lineups, and grids, and…well, i’m stuck.” she sat down on my kitchen floor in the way an old friend can, and said, “what if we put the pieces together like a tile mosaic?” and with that, the floodgates opened. i  love it when that happens!

assemblage of late winter finds

lake vadnais, saint paul, minnesota

two nights ago at dusk, we saw two foxes playing along the edge of the cattails near the dock. it was too dark to make out their coloring, but we were sure they were foxes by their big bushy tails. we couldn’t tell if they were gray or red fox–both of which are residents of our woods. they chased each other and roughhoused with a jubilant abandon that was both endearing and thrilling. far from feeling threatened by the nearness of such predators, we had an obscure instinct to let our puggle, jack, out the back door to join the fun. last night, the same pair returned, this time earlier in the evening. and the flat afternoon light revealed that they weren’t foxes at all, but young coyotes. still we were charmed by their puppyish games, until we thought about the six hens, each possessing a name and a personality, slowly making their way along the foundation of our house toward their evening roost. we locked our girls in a little earlier than usual that night.

bouquet of foxtail grass in winter

vadnais lake, saint paul, minnesota

here is a dried rosebud, because it was the photo i had in my queue, and because sometimes the need to post a daily picture runs up against your daughter’s insistent request for a savoyard potato dish called tartiflette, and instead of spending the afternoon arranging an evocative nature display for your blog, you spend it parboiling potatoes and trying to find the nearest thing to reblochon cheese in the twin cities metro area, where true reblochon does not exist because the fda has banned raw milk cheeses in the united states although of course such cheeses have been eaten safely for centuries throughout the world. on the other hand the tartiflette was sumptuous. all of which is a very roundabout way of saying: here is a dried rosebud.

dried rose bud