we got to watch a mama cardinal build a nest in a small balsam tree beside our deck this spring.  she carefully laid a piece of birch bark on the third highest bough of the head-high tree, then built a careful concave swirl of dried grasses, into which she deposited, on three consecutive days, three brown-mottled bluish eggs. we know all this because our nine year old son gave twice daily reports, after first confirming, each time, that mama was not sitting on the eggs and would not be disturbed by his investigations. two of the three eggs successfully hatched and fledged.  to our sadness but also, if i am to be honest, to my slightly abashed joy, one of the three eggs did not hatch. mama has long since abandoned the nest, and the world is poorer by one cardinal, and richer by one image of a beautiful  brown-mottled bluish egg.

cardinal egg

saint paul, minnesota

golden alexander is like the quiet kid in the classroom who goes unnoticed for the first half of the year but becomes the teacher’s favorite by the end of second semester. it blooms without fanfare in late june along with a lot of other yellow flowers. but i know now, based on a lot of winter walks, that come february, those celebratory flower heads will still be holding their shape, and summer’s wallflower will be winter’s star pupil.

golden alexanders

saint paul, minnesota

i had no idea when i composed this photo that there were waves being formed by the white crescents at the tip of each feather.  i’m not sure what it means, but i love the pattern and i love that i didn’t see it until i looked at the photo as an audience, not as the photographer.

mallard duck wing feathers

saint paul, minnesota

doing STILL blog has opened my eyes in many ways. not the least of which is that i no longer see summer as a monochromatic carpet of green. our home sits on a heavily wooded lot, with a long sloping yard down to a large cattail bed that eventually opens up onto a kidney shaped lake called turtle lake. in high summer, that long sloping yard turns into a dense tunnel of greenery. and the lake seems to disappear as if looking down the wrong end of a telescope. i used to curse all that greenery crowding out my lake view. but no longer.  now i see abundance, variety, texture. i see opportunity. STILL blog has helped me see differently

a spray of mid-june greens from my backyard

saint paul, minnesota

one of my favorite STILL blog posts was the giant assemblage i did of everything on our terrace table as we were leaving our rented house in southwest France. it summed up three and half months of being fully present and paying attention. it also commemorated a place i had fallen in love with. it occurred to me recently that i had not yet honored my own home in the same way. in minnesota, we sit on the dividing line between the boreal forests of the north, the deciduous forests of the center and southeast, and the prairies and farms of the southwest. i also love that anyone from wisconsin, or michigan, or manitoba, or ontario, anyone from the great lakes region, could look at this photo and say, hey, that looks like home.

all from minnesota