aliens

this is about what happens when you think you know pretty much all of the nature that surrounds you in a place you’ve been observing for a decade, and then on the side of the road there is this garish, tentacled alien that you can’t believe you ever  could have overlooked, and yet which turns out to be a not uncommon roadside plant. nice to meet you, blue vervain. you are very strange.

Verbena hastata, Blue Vervain, Swamp Verbena

shoreview, minnesota

a certain contemplative distance

assume for a minute that rain is a misfortune. then let us invite misfortune bead up picturesquely on our exteriors, and fall harmlessly away.

raindrops on garden weeds

shoreview, minnesota

awe

at some point maybe a few hundred thousand years ago, some slightly strange humanoid stopped foraging for long enough to stack a few rocks into a careful tower. i think of him or her pausing for a minute and looking out from an elevated spot, where a new, not entirely translatable feeling came swarming suddenly and overwhelmingly out of the landscape, and this person’s response was to make something that said, “i was here, and i was a part of this.”  at least, that’s how i visualize it, when i think about goethe’s great statement: “the shudder of awe is humanity’s highest faculty.”

collected beach rocks

from beaches on lake superior and the mediterranean sea

hell on a stick

our minnesota state fair has just started. it’s the biggest state fair in the country, and we tend to be both proud of it, and a little sheepish about some of the hokey folksiness of it. the fair is also a food destination, both high- and lowbrow, and among the innovations each year is some new food served on a stick. not just corn dogs, but alligator, and steak, and apple pie, all on a stick. this virginia stickseed looks like something that would get invented for the state fair. like maybe edamame on a stick. or sweet peas on a stick. but if you’ve ever walked through  a meadow full of these burs in late summer, and then tried to pry them loose from your clothing that evening, then you know there is nothing appetizing at all about them. the “dish” in this photo is nothing but hell on a stick.

virginia stickseed burs (Hackelia virginiana)

st. paul, minnesota

ripeness

our daughter is visiting home with her boyfriend before she heads back to school in california. she is nineteen and so adult in so many ways and then, in so many other ways, she is not quite adult but is moving surely along the rails that will guide her into a sane and fulfilling adulthood. this tomato is green. but if you look closely, you can see the first blush along its flanks of the deep mature red it will inevitably become.

green tomato

turtle lake, shoreview, minnesota