style

i love how plants of a single species grow in an almost infinite variety, and yet always look like themselves. you simply can’t mistake a basil plant, or a curly dock, or a thistle, or a maple tree, and yet every individual is unlike every other. it’s like style, whether a sense of fashion style, or a style of making art, or a style of writing. every combination of words is different, but you always know it’s iris apfel, or it’s mondrian, or it’s updike. who knows. someday there may be a thing that’s known in certain circles as “a mary jo.” wouldn’t that be wonderful?

unidentified wetland weed

sucker lake regional trial, saint paul, minnesota

dailiness

i’ve said for years that one of the biggest rewards of a daily practice is dailiness itself. there are things you see by being present every day that simply don’t show themselves any other way. these buds are just the latest of many examples. in a day or two they will be showy flower spikes, visible for hundreds of yards. yesterday they may have been dull buds nearly indistinguishable from the green leaves and stems that supported them. but today, my daily devotions were answered by this perfect, restrained ladder of magenta buds.

blazing star stem with buds (liatris)

grass lake, shoreview, minnesota

shrugging

this blue jay’s shoulders look as if they’re shrugging. in life, blue jays don’t appear to fear anything. maybe this guy didn’t even fear death, when it arrived: “oh. it’s you, is it? i figured you’d be coming around. well, ok. whatever. let’s do this thing.”

blue jay wings

saint paul, minnesota

underbelly

i intended to talk about these lily pads as having the most beautiful underbellies i’d ever seen, in comparison to the violent underbellies of cities and crime families, and the soft white underbellies of fish and birds and some mammals. and then i got trapped in a research rabbit hole and discovered that white underbellies are features of many fish and aquatic animals that are vulnerable to predators from below. the white underbelly camouflages them against the bright sky overhead, when viewed from below. but why would the vulnerable bellies be soft? well it turns out many species used to have gastralia–basically a network of bones that protected the abdomen, the same way the chest is protected by ribs, but when birds eventually needed to fly, they had to shed weight everywhere possible, and the soft white underbelly was on the evolutionary trading block. sometimes i love my job.

lily pads

lake valentine, arden hills, minnesota

fashion sense

these bottlebrush grass stalks are blessed with beautiful posture, stick-thin figures, and compelling heads of dramatic hair. but that sash belt, with the flowing ends. darling, that is simply fabulous.

eastern bottlebrush grass

grass lake, shoreview, minnesota