caught between

not quite ready to let the kids go back to school, and yet totally ready for quiet and the resumption of a routine. not yet ready for cold weather but ready for the end of the really hot weather. sort of ready for fall. sort of still in summer. exactly like these leaves.

unidentified prairie leaves

wisconsin

autumn feast

i used to see goldenrod and think “allergies.” but now i see goldenrod and think, “bees.” specifically, the friendly gatherings of honeybees and bumblebees and hoverflies that swarm over the fuzzy heads of goldenrod in the fall, and make, if you’re lucky, some dark and pungent honey to drizzle in your herbal tea all winter long.

goldenrod (solidago)

shoreview, minnesota

royal purple

the reason purple is associated with royalty is that purple dye could originally only be made from a tiny mollusc that was only found off the coast of lebanon. a purple garment at some points in history was literally worth its weight in gold. i wonder how medieval royalty would have responded to the sight of a field full of bull thistle.

bull thistle

river falls, wisconsin

joyful chaos

this photo was taken in late afternoon on a sunny day in direct sunlight. so the process of getting my background black means that the foreground is a little bit overlit and contrasty. but what the photo does (which is what i wanted it to do), is give a sense of the riotous diversity of growth in the middle of a wisconsin meadow around september 1. i love the sense of both competition and cooperation, of everything trying to express its individuality, and agreeing to be part of a whole. it’s a mini society, living in boisterous harmony. it’s america.

prairie wildflowers

river falls, wisconsin

meadow

is there an english word with as many pleasant associations as “meadow?” this evening i walked through one, buzzing with the sounds of crickets, vibrating with the leaps of grasshoppers, sighing in the wind. i walked through milkweed and goldenrod and evening primrose and milk thistle and big bluestem and the queen anne’s lace you see in this photo. the boys were trout fishing nearby. my daughter eva was my creative director and assistant. i was almost frenetically happy.  i won’t impose on you the three months’ worth of images i collected, but prepare for some meadow photos in the days to come.

queen anne’s lace (daucus carota)

river falls, wisconsin