chance as a design tool

as you know, i love using chance as a compositional tool. and i also love a good experiment. so today i made two photos using the same pile of strawflowers. one was made by closing my eyes, and using my left (non-dominant) hand to place the flowers randomly on my white background. the other was made intentionally—loosely grouping by color and arranging the flowers as a gradient spill down the page. interestingly enough, this time i preferred the blind composition (this one) best.

strawflowers in september (Xerochrysum bracteatum)

fruiting season

this is one of my new-to-me finds this week: ditch stonecrop. i found it along my boardwalk out to the lake. i love the pretty early fall colors. in summer, this native wildflower has unremarkable small white flowers, with green leaves and  stems. hardly noticeable. but in fall, the fruiting carpels turn red and develop into red and pink seed capsules. it looks so striking right now along the dock against all the dark green cattail leaves. it’s an interesting example of a plant that is more visually interesting in it’s seed form, than in full bloom. i love that.

ditch stonecrop (Penthorum sedoides)

before it’s gone

trying to capture a little green before it disappears for five months. the regularity of these hackberry leaves caught my attention today. i am sucker for regular patterns in nature.

northern hackberry leaves (Celtis occidentalis)

i don’t think we have ever met before

so, this odd little plant showed up in modest abundance in my yard this year. it’s called turtlehead because the blossoms resemble turtle heads, which i think is accurate. it’s native to minnesota. and in all my 59 years, i have never seen it before. i’ll be curious to follow it into winter, and see if i recognize its winter form. what a treat to be so delighted at a new discovery. nature never disappoints.

white turtlehead (Chelone glabra)

all in the (mint) family

my husband and i have been having so much fun finding all the wild native wildflowers on our land this year. during covid, i used some of the down time to start clearing our land of overgrown invasives  (primarily buckthorn, thatches of rouge raspberry canes, and garlic mustard).  freeing up the understory has now let enough sunshine through to nourish a whole host of native plants we didn’t know was here. today alone we made five new discoveries: this obedient plant, turtlehead, ditch stonecrop, yellow nodding bur-marigolds, and ink cap mushrooms. yowza. all these plants had been there all along competing for sunshine under the thick cover of buckthorn. there is a metaphor here for us humans. what is our buckthorn? cellphones? social media? the news media?  it makes one wonder.

obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana)