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

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