a kind of camouflage
the reddish color in these young oak leaves comes from anthocyanins, which will probably also contribute to their color next fall. there are a number of theories about why this happens, but one of them is that the color discourages insects from munching on them. reddish leaves and greenish leaves in the same vicinity during the same season will see the greenish leaves visited much more often by hungry insects. Something like the opposite of us americans, who crave our red meat, and don’t really like eating our green vegetables.

just burst white oak leaves

turtle lake, shoreview, minnesota

i will be giving a talk this wednesday for the see change conference in minneapolis. i will be telling the story of my creative journey through the story of STILL blog and the places it has led me. but the main topic will be the power of dailiness. how a daily practice generates such enormous rewards through the accumulation of small things that add up to large things over time. one of the other rewards of dailiness is that, if you have been taking photos of nature every day for over five years, you get to stop and notice the particular day when the very first lilac flower blossoms on a head of unopened buds.

lilac beginning to blossom

saint paul, minnesota

it’s complicated
there’s a tendency to think of ancient things as simpler than contemporary things. but then you read about how ferns reproduce. they’ve been around for 360 million years, so they know a little something about survival. but then why do they reproduce via spores that don’t actually grow into full adult ferns, but only grow into an intermediate kind of plant called a gamephyte, that needs to be further fertilized before it grows into a mature plant? well, it’s complicated. meanwhile, let’s keep more species around rather than fewer, shall we? just in case something over a quarter of a billion years old might have something to teach our infant species someday?

spring ferns

wait. hey. spring. get back here. hey. yo. slow down. come on. wait up.

spent dandelion with morning dew

my daily walks with the dog get more interesting in the spring because i get to watch him follow his nose from one newly released smell to the next. after a winter when all but a few scents have been frozen and buried beneath the snow, our walks are suddenly smelly again, and watching jack interact with this new world is like watching a blind person suddenly able to see. if i were to do the same, following my limited human nose from one spring scent to another, i might simply find myself drifting along an endless path of crabapple trees in blossom.

blah

crab apple blossoms