time of plumping

seeds are ripening. fruits are swelling. nuts are falling. it will be harvest time soon.

milkweed pods (Asclepias syriaca)

may you live in clover

have you heard the idiom: to live in clover?  it means to live a carefree life of ease, comfort, or prosperity. today i am wishing for you all a life in clover. xoxo

clover in bloom

a funny story

there is a funny story that goes with this photo. this is burdock. if you don’t know burdock by name, i am sure you know it by sight. look it up…while native to europe and asia, it has been introduced worldwide. i am guessing most of you have had an encounter with this particular plant. so, yesterday i noticed this beetle eaten leaf, and thought it might make a good STILL subject. so i bent over and snipped off the leaf which was close to the ground. when i got back to my car, my head caught on the roof of the car. and when i looked in the rearview mirror, i had a handful (about 8) burdock burrs stuck in my hair, and now stuck to the roof of the car. i tried to pull them our, but i only made the whole snarl worse. i stopped for coffee on my way home, and everyone at the coffee shop was speechless. when i got home, i sat in the front step for 30 minutes trying to get the burs out of my hair making exactly zero progress. i was thinking i may have to shave my hair. i begged steve to give it a go. he too made little progress, but he did realize that if he crushed the burrs into little pieces, then he could extract the pieces one by one. so that’s how we did it. one tiny burr hook at a time. by 3 in the afternoon (we stared at 10 AM) they were mostly out, and i was able to detangle the rest in shower with massive amounts of conditioner. in all the years of doing STILL, i have had very few incidences. no allergic reactions, no bug infestations, no rashes, no hives. so yesterdays mishap was probably over-due. and (perhaps as a result) it was a doozy.

beetle eaten burdock leaf (Arctium)

still going, still growing

just when i feel everything has reached it’s zenith, when all the flora around me has peaked, and has now shifted gears to putting out seeds, is see this wild cucumber vine still in flower. the cattail it is using for scaffolding, has definitely reached it’s highest point. the tips of it’s leaves are yellowing, and the brown sausage with it’s tightly packed seeds will at any moment burst open in the late summer heat, like a bratwurst on the grill. but that wild cucumber vine appears to be on its own seasonal cycle–with is spring green coloration, and white blossoms. there will always be late bloomers. i know several. most of them turned out just fine.

cattail with cucumber vines

camouflage

i love the camouflage on this moth. it’s a woodland moth, so imagine it resting on a branch or the bark of an oak tree. it would be hard to spot indeed. at first, i had placed the moth on the mottled L-shaped schist rock, but it blended in so much it got lost. while that was sort of my point, i think this composition that let’s him show off a little more was ultimately more harmonious. i don’t know about you, but my eye wanders around the four subjects of the composition in a continuous loop. it’s rather pleasing.

three rocks and a moth (american dagger moth/Acronicta americana)