a very specific kind of nightmare

these angelica stems (or should I say “trunks”) lined the bank of a trout stream that my two boys (husband and son) were fishing last week. angelica can reach nine feet tall and might be the tallest wildflower in minnesota. when i asked the boys to cut two or three of the striking plants down for me, they fell into long laments about the nightmarish flower heads, which seem to come alive behind a fisherman’s back and reach out to grab his back-cast, and then wrap his line in tangled balls around their stems. apparently an artist’s graphically beautiful silhouette, is a fisherman’s treacherous nightmare. who knew.

angelica (Angelica atropurpurea)

river falls, wisconsin

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