owl feathers were not commonly used as quill pens. usually it was goose or turkey feathers. all i know is that some days, as i look out over a sea of my fellow human beings, heads bowed, right hands raised, staring intently into the screens of their iphones and androids, i want to go back to the time when everyone knew that the flight feathers of big birds made for good writing instruments, and if you were right handed, you wanted a moulted feather from the left wing, so that it would curve out away from your line of sight as you wrote beautiful, longhand script.

european buzzard feather

i have no philosophical or artistic reason in particular to post this flower. i just wanted to share the russet of those dried petals, and even more so, the copper patina of that scaled flower base. no reason. just sharing.

dried protea blossom

another minnesota winter has preserved us more or less intact. it’s time to thaw out, shake off some dead petals, and bloom.

over-wintered daisy

st. paul, minnesota

this may look like a scrap of red pine bark, but look more closely (or google venus of hohlefels), and you will discover that it is really a venus figurine, flaunting its ample hips and showing off its vast child-bearing belly and drawing attention to the place where all human life begins and generally showing the world what it has to reckon with.

red pine bark

vadnais lake, saint paul, minnesota

imagine each of these asters growing on opposite stalks, on two different stems in two separate visual planes. now imagine trying to keep them all in focus at the same time. that’s how i sometimes feel about the multivalent life my husband and i have chosen. it never quite feels as if we can keep everything in focus at the same time. and it can look a little messy at times. and maybe it’s just unfocused, or maybe when you focus on what you can absorb at any one time, all of the hazy rest of it sits beautifully in the background waiting its turn. i don’t know.

winter aster stems

vadnais lake, saint paul, minnesota