zooming in

a detail shot of yesterday’s poppies. i was pretty chuffed with the detail in this photo (because i don’t have a macro lens).  it was also a thrill for me to see the beginning of those glorious poppy seedpods. this poppy was in a pot on my front step. after photographing it yesterday, i put it back out side on the stoop. today the bloom looked like a wet kleenex–not nearly as photogenic. yet one more reminder on why dailiness is so powerful (not that you really needed one :-).

poppy flower detail

a wisp of a flower

my husband planted some poppies from seeds this year. they are such a delight. the tissue-paper thin petals are so exotic for us northern where humans and flora alike tend to grow firm and fleshy. poppies are first recorded in mesopotamia. the only poppy native to north america is the california poppy. if you zoom in on this image, you can see the beautiful details in the seed pods. see if you can find the one with the ant on it. i was pretty happy with my resolution on this image.

p.s. in my winter garden, i definitely want poppies. they sport one of the all time greatest seed pods all winter long!

poppies

ghostly reminders

i flipped over yesterday’s wine cap mushroom caps in order to make some a spore print when i read that the wine caps have purple spores. look how dark the spore prints got after only a few hours. (we did indeed make mushroom risotto with the caps last night).  i ahven’t made a lot of mushroom spore prints, but i have never seem them get washed out and ghostly like this one…i am thinking it was the high humidity. whatever the reason, the effect is interesting, whish is good enough for STILL: “make it beautiful or interesting unless you can make it both”.

wine cap mushroom spores

steve has a new hat

my husband is a very bright, curious, and passionate man. which means he has a lot interests. some might call him a modern-day renaissance man. others might call him a smart guy with ADD tendencies. as with all generalization, the truth is somewhere in the middle. as steve’s wife, i often benefit from his voracious intellectual appetite–he speaks fluent french, he’s become an accomplished cook, he edits almost everything i write, i rely on his big brain for remembering names of flora and fauna…the list is quite long actually. but i also suffer the flip side of his far flung, often short-lived, deep dives–primarily his constant and relentless feelings of never having enough hours in day. he hurries through every day, trying to fit in time for all his interests, and inevitably hits a wall of fatigue about 9 pm every night. and then once a year he crashes, and can’t understand why he can’t make more progress on the things that matter most to him. anyway, all that was to explain why “steve’s new hat” is both good and maybe not so good, but probably mostly good. his newest hobby/passion/interest is northern permaculture. he wants to turn our three acres into a northern food forest. and since we have mostly shade, he is starting with mushrooms. these are wine cap mushrooms steve cultivated this year. they are easy to grow, and are ranked as  “choice”  for eating, closely resembling portabellos. so, steve has a new hat–mushroom farmer. and i will get some nice STILL subjects. and we will enjoy some mushroom risotto tonight. but steve is already behind on his manuscript deadline to his publisher. all the curiosity and passion in the world, cannot not change the hard limit of the 24 hour day. i will enjoy my risotto on the deck with a glass of wine made by our friends in France, and watch steve’s existential crisis play out. it’s like watching hamlet once a year, for the past 34 years.

wine cap mushrooms (Stropharia rugosoannulata)

all in a day’s work

the city of shoreview, where i live, recently planted a boulevard median with daylilies. daylilies are like apple pie. apple pie no one’s favortite pie, but everyone likes it, so it’s a safe bet. daylilies check the same box–hardy, colorful, and pleasant enough. the median, when it bloomed was in a gradient of daylily colors. wow!  i don’t usually think of city planners and road crews as exceeding expectations. but this was a delight. anyway, i have been eyeing the flowers all summer, but the problem is the median is on a  heavily trafficked highway so i was going to have to pull over, put my hazard lights on, and then cross two lanes of fast moving traffic. which i finally did. for STILL. for you. 🙏🏼

daylily flowers in various colors