cousins?

i brought these feathers home from southern france. they are from a raptor they call buse variable, or common buzzard. the coloring looks a lot like the osprey that patrol the edges of our lakes all summer long, and the owls that patrol the woods at night. the buse variable has a couple of advantages over our local raptors. for one thing, it gets to circle above the endless, orderly beauty of vineyards for its whole life. for another, when it comes down out of the sky, it gets to eat French food.

feathers of the buse variable

autiganac, france

  • Today, while I was at work, my cousin stole my iPad
    and tested to see if it can survive a 25 foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sensation.
    My iPad is now destroyed and she has 83 views. I know this is entirely off topic but I had to sharre
    it wwith someone!

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  • I have read so many content regarding thhe blogger lovers butt this piece of writing is truly a pleasant post,
    keep it up.

    reply
  • Bridget says:

    so happy to have come upon your site. beautiful work.

    http://ambataliafabrics.blogspot.com

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too few turtles

this was probably a biking accident. i am always a basket case during the turtle migration periods each year when they seem to be in the process of crossing every road i’m on, and i have to watch them scramble in slow motion through traffic. oy.

baby painted turtle

rice creek regional trail, saint paul, minnesota

  • I, probably like so many now, discovered your blog through Martha Stewart. How lovely to see such a kindred spirit in your endeavours to photograph the odd, beautiful, dying and decayed! I quite often do the same and a few years ago kept a nature journal in the fall of things I found everyday. I documented them similar to yours on white paper!
    Your blog is simply lovely and inspiring…while travelling through Ontario this past summer we came across many turtle crossing signs but luckily we didn’t have to witness any carnage.

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broken packaging

i thought six eggs per day from the back yard might be too many for us to keep up with. i needn’t have worried. veggie egg scrambles, frittatas, spinach omelets, quiches, egg sandwiches, gougères, salade catalane, egg salad, poached, fried, à la coque, soft boiled, and hard boiled, and that is before the occasional half-carton cadged by guests, friends, and family. which is all a way of saying, keep ’em coming, girls!

a tall stack of eggshells from our six golden buff hen eggs

saint paul, minnesota

  • Margie says:

    Fun

    reply
  • You must have 6 chickens. I thought the same thing. Sometimes there will be 2.5 dozen in the fridge and I’ll think, “I hope these don’t go to waste!” Then a week later I’ll go to bake something and there will only be three eggs in there!

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mid-september garden

my friend michele’s garden is providing lots of fodder lately.  it is a completely unique micro-climate: a northern urban garden, in the alley behind her hair salon, up against the enormous south facing brick wall of an abandoned movie theater.  that wall provides such a large heat reflector, and heat sink, that it creates a mini Mediterranean climate in the heart of Northeast Minneapolis: hot, lush, and heaped with inspiration.

michele’s garden in mid-september

foiled again salon, northeast minneapolis

 

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catalpa fruits

quite often there is a personal connection to my images that leads to a caption worth sharing each day. in the absence of a personal connection, some combination of my own knowledge, my husband’s knowledge, and the occasional session of internet sleuthing, leads me to a fact or two, or a remembered encounter or story, interesting enough to base a description on. here’s my confession. i love this image, but i can’t find anything interesting about the catalpa tree, except that the southern version (which this is not) hosts a sphinx moth larva prized as fish bait. anybody got any fascinating catalpa stories? cause i’ve got nothing.

catalpa bean pod

from the catalpa tree on tanglewood drive, saint paul, minnesota

  • Peter LeRay says:

    I grew up on a high hill just across the Mystic River from Boston. My grandmother’s back yard was at the very windswept top, and her garden was magical. I still feel my amazement when Hurricane Betsy blew down that grand old flowering tree. It was about 1955 or so, and it still seems impossible.

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    • What a sad yet lovely story. Thank you for sharing. I have the same kind of attachment to trees. It is nice to meet a kindred spirit.
      Mary Jo

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  • Sandy Huron says:

    I grew up in Indiana and the catalpa tree was sometimes called “cigar tree.” The story was the young boys used to try to smoke the long fruit. Apparently that was when cigar smoking was “in!”

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    • What a coincidence, because I am listening to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on audiobook right now, and I think Twain mentions that same thing!! Great story, thanks for sharing,
      Mary Jo

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