i recently began year four of this blog, which means that i have already gathered all of the low-hanging fruit, both literally and figuratively, in my surroundings. this results in the great gift of walking in nature constantly surrounded by old friends. but it also means i can’t just hop out into the back yard for tomorrow’s still blog subject. even an hour walk rarely offers up much these days that i haven’t already harvested, considered, and photographed, sometimes twice, sometimes more often. but last week, in the leaf litter along an old familiar walking path, i saw what looked like yellow flower petals. except that no yellow flowers have bloomed around here yet. when i picked them up they were sticky and hard like beetle shells. and then suddenly a visual veil was lifted, and i saw them everywhere, by the hundreds, scattered around the base of a grand old cottonwood. the cottonwood had burst its buds, and these were the the hard bud casings that had popped off and rained down onto last year’s fallen leaves. they aren’t even really that pretty. but they represent a moment of seeing more deeply that i thought many of you would appreciate, and that i wanted to remember.

cottonwood bud casings

sucker lake trail, saint paul, minnesota