here’s the little secret behind this photo. i was photographing this little line up of puffball mushrooms (or possibly false puffballs) that i found in my backyard today, when my camera slipped from its tripod and slammed into the mushrooms. the exploded puffballs were far more interesting than the shot i had been taking. the camera was fine. so, once again, a happy accident.
pear-shaped puffball mushrooms
saint paul, minnesota
the ten acres of woods that lies between our home and the main road is still a dense wall of almost impenetrable green. until yesterday. when i found this one blood-red vein climbing up the trunk of an enormous elm. fall, fall stay away. come back some other day.
virginia creeper vine
saint paul, minnesota
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lili stopped to pause at the garden gate yesterday to admire the red leaves of the ivy. We are getting summer like weather here this week with the start of fall colours. A beautiful combination.
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i love your work and also hearing about a different perspective. where we live, in Texas, the thought of the first cold front of fall is the only thing that keeps me from going crazy during the heat of summer. :)
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went to check on the bees this morning, and noticed that everything in bloom, with the exception of one brash tiger lily, was some variation of purple.
a collection of purple wildflowers and one orange tiger lily
from my yard, saint paul, minnesota
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purple flowers are so lovely and dominant at this time of year along with the yellows. I had my sept issue of MSL delivered to my office today and although i thought it would be hard to love you and your family anymore than i already do without actually meeting you, I do :)
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we live on a heavily wooded acre, so a pile of downed limbs is always accumulating under the screen porch. when the pile gets big enough, we spend an afternoon cutting kindling for the winter. the pile includes branches from venerable 100 year old oaks, from drama queen birches, from richly colored cherries, and from tiresome invasives like buckthorn. above is one such bundle with eight different woods. i can identify mountain ash and cherrry, but that’s all. how about you?
kindling bundle
saint paul, minnesota
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i have a beautiful sanded slice of one similar to the yellow one in the middle and mine is sumac :)
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my fifteen year old just got her driver’s permit. today while coming home from soccer practice i asked her to pull over sharply, in a construction zone, and put on her hazards, so i could jump out of the car and grab a few stems. she couldn’t remember learning that move in driver’s ed.
these wild sunflowers are growing on six foot high plants, each with multiple flowers, in large colonies on many of our roadsides right now. a glorious celebration of high summer. i don’t know why a double armed galaxy shape suggested itself to me, but my husband saw it and started giggling about poor humanity, trapped, according to douglas adams, “far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy.”
wild sunflower
along snelling avenue, saint paul, minnesota
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i love the image and the analogy
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I love happy accidents