quite often there is a personal connection to my images that leads to a caption worth sharing each day. in the absence of a personal connection, some combination of my own knowledge, my husband’s knowledge, and the occasional session of internet sleuthing, leads me to a fact or two, or a remembered encounter or story, interesting enough to base a description on. here’s my confession. i love this image, but i can’t find anything interesting about the catalpa tree, except that the southern version (which this is not) hosts a sphinx moth larva prized as fish bait. anybody got any fascinating catalpa stories? cause i’ve got nothing.
catalpa bean pod
from the catalpa tree on tanglewood drive, saint paul, minnesota
i try to avoid using food in my STILL photos. i don’t know why really, too domesticated i guess. too much risk of starting to present food styling photos instead of commemorating moments in nature. but these grape tomatoes feel wild to me. volunteers from the seeds dropped by last years’ abandoned harvest. they were unplanned, untended, and unstoppable. that’s wild enough for me.
grape tomatoes
michele’s garden, minneapolis, minnesota
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would be an awesome textile design
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i know i am rushing it a bit with the fall colors. the only color we have here yet is the red of sumacs and virginia creeper. but we have had such a dry end of summer that i am afraid we will jump straight from green to brown this fall without much pageantry. so i present this exquisite little cluster of virginia creeper leaflets, just in case.
virginia creeper vine leaf
saint paul, minnesota
with back-to-school preparations, my dad’s funeral, martha stewart living, and everything else, i have found myself a little distracted these days. today, before i knew it, 5:30 pm had come and gone, and i hadn’t taken my daily STILL blog image. my secret weapon in such situations is a 10 year old son who loves to bring his mom treasures. this evening, i cherry picked some favorites from the bits and pieces sitting on my desk, and with a brief nod of thanks to the god of snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails, i had the shot done in time to start dinner.
bits and pieces from my desktop
saint paul, minnesota
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Love
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we move our girls’ chicken coop every two days. otherwise they get bored and start bossing us around or trying to escape. yesterday, one of them made a break for it, and ended up on our neighbor’s front stoop, scaring the bejeezus out of his cleaning lady. they also scrape the grass down to bare dirt, so, for the first time in years, i have had to re-seed my lawn. the good news is that all the scratching and pooping makes for the best-prepared soil i’ve seen. since we’ve sort of given up on an actual lawn at this point, we’re trying a forage mix with alfalfa, grasses, and clover. if the chickens don’t like it, the bees and the deer will.
seed mix of alfalfa, grasses, and clover
mills fleet farm, saint paul, minnesota
I grew up on a high hill just across the Mystic River from Boston. My grandmother’s back yard was at the very windswept top, and her garden was magical. I still feel my amazement when Hurricane Betsy blew down that grand old flowering tree. It was about 1955 or so, and it still seems impossible.
What a sad yet lovely story. Thank you for sharing. I have the same kind of attachment to trees. It is nice to meet a kindred spirit.
Mary Jo
I grew up in Indiana and the catalpa tree was sometimes called “cigar tree.” The story was the young boys used to try to smoke the long fruit. Apparently that was when cigar smoking was “in!”
What a coincidence, because I am listening to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on audiobook right now, and I think Twain mentions that same thing!! Great story, thanks for sharing,
Mary Jo