do you want to photograph my garden?

i often get asked whether i want to photograph people’s plants and gardens, because they assume i am a flower photographer or a nature photographer, when in fact what i’m trying to be is a photographer of precisely the things i find on my walks and observations. it’s a difficult thing to explain. so i usually either decline politely, or go through the motions as a form of thank you for such a flattering interest in my work. the other day we were buying a chair from a woman who offered us a chance to photograph her garden and i didn’t know what i was getting into, but wasn’t particularly hopeful, until we started taking a tour, and suddenly there were seven different kinds of native milkweed before us, including this remarkable swamp milkweed with pods like praying mantises. she lives across town, but i may need to include her neighborhood again in a few of my “walks.”

swamp milkweed seed pods

minneapolis, minnesota

the ace of spades

poker. bridge. the shape of this hosta. lemmy kilmister. all united by one thing. the ace of spades. the ace of spades.

drinking gourd hosta

minneapolis. minnesota

punks

when we were kids we used to light long smoldering incense looking rods that would burn down slowly like a cigarette. we called them “punks,” and instead of lighting new matches for every round of firecrackers, we could just touch our punks to  the firecracker fuses and set them off. cattail seedheads look just like those old-fashioned fuse lighters, and i have just discovered that cattail seedheads are called, you guessed it, punks.

turtle lake, shoreview, minnesota

in the wings

the oranges are gathering in the wings, peering around the curtains at the gathered crowd, waiting for their cue to burst onstage and be the stars of the next few months before the snow flies.

mountain ash and lilies

unrelated but related

so what does a beautiful blue spike of salvia have to do with an eames lounge chair? nothing at all except that we had the opportunity to see both of them this afternoon. in the midst of a re-envisioning of the interior of our house just now, we went to look at a used 1987 eames lounge chair at the home of a charming woman in west bloomington, mn, who also raises seven different kinds of native milkweed from seed each year, and who drew my attention to this gorgeous blue salvia in her front yard just as a bee landed on one of the petals. of course, we bought the chair.

blue salvia

bloomington, minnesota