can’t get over you
we have had exactly two clematises over 25 years of marriage. there have been other plants and flowers and trees that have spent part of every single year with me, and yet i think of clematis as one of my favorite flowers. i don’t know if it’s just that beautiful, or if i met it young enough that i will always think of it as mine, somehow.
clematis
minneapolis, minnesota
a feather a day for six years
i probably see one feather on average for every walk i take. if that were true, and i had walked every day since the start of STILL blog, i would have amassed about 2000 feathers so far, which is not enough to completely feather any but the smallest songbirds. i would have to keep finding a feather a day for another 10-15 years in order to feather a raptor, and about another 60 years to clothe a swan. the wonder is not that i find a feather almost every day, but that we are not awash in them.
collection of found feathers
what a black background does well
i was reminded the other day that one of the reasons i wanted to switch to a black background for a while was so i could more easily, and with better results, photograph all the white things in nature that i previously found so difficult to document. i was subsequently reminded that i have a really kick-ass bone collection in a series of lucite boxes in my basement. and they’re white.
collection of found bones
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oh wow!
reply
compoundly pinnate
something beyond my understanding appeals to me about pinnate leaves. it has to be more than just symmetry. when i think that ferns grew alongside dinosaurs, i wonder if our species has just spent enough time looking at feathery fronds that the pleasure of it got baked into our genes, like feeling a little bit attached to the daily episodes of the sun’s rising and falling, to start and end our days.
sumac leaves
saint paul, minnesota
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Dear Mary Jo,
Thank you for this lovely blog and for tirelessly posting a new picture every day. I love the arrangements and their simple beauty. I read about your site in a German magazine and for several months now, this is one of the first things I do in the morning: refresh the page, watch the photograph. Pause and enjoy :).
Best wishes, Dorotheareply
homesick
in the midst of making our own minnesota home new again, steve made the mistake today of tuning in, via the internet, to france culture, the radio station he listens to in france as he drives the kids to and from school. suddenly he was mentally driving past rolling hills of vines, listening to a public radio station in the midst of a discussion about the poet baudelaire, with an imagined evening ahead of him that might involve olives from the tree behind the house, or the wine of friends, or those friends themselves, or all three. and steve was suddenly very homesick for a place that is not technically his home, but where he lives quite often in spirit.
olive tree branches
They are gorgeous. I’m nurturing a fall blooming clematis on my garage trellis and trying to coax it into bloom this year. Last year I planted a “Princess Diana” and its bell-shaped pink and white flowers are charming. Then they turn into a little Dr. Seuss looking little swirl. Lovely throughout all their phases.