i’ve known milkweed all my life. i grew up breaking its stems to watch the milky sap flow. i cracked open its seed pods and tossed fluffy seed parachutes in the air. later i celebrated it as a home and food for monarch butterflies. when we got bees, i loved that its late summer blossoms fed the bees that made our back yard honey. and today i found this elegant old milkweed stem by the side of a walking path through a prairie and suddenly saw it as something brand new again. i still love you, milkweed, just the same as always.

milkweed stem

vadnais lake, st. paul, minnesota

in the case of the beaver skull above, the problem is physiological. but i have one teenage human boy in my house. and one adult boy who still has teenage boy in him. and one late middle aged dog who never progressed beyond the teenage boy phase. and like this beaver. their eyes are all bigger than their brain pans.

beaver skull

upper peninsula, michigan

have you heard of the Svalbard global seed vault? it’s an enormous deep freezer drilled into the side of a mountain on a small island halfway between Norway and the north pole. it currently houses about 1.5 million distinct seed samples, with a capacity for 4.5 million. leave it to the scandinavians to find such an innovative way to pay it forward. today i plan to pay it forward at my local coffee shop, buying coffees for the next dozen people in line. maybe i’ll just do it anonymously. or maybe i’ll ask the barista to let everyone know it is in honor of the Svalbard global seed vault. because they don’t think i’m weird enough yet, at the shoreview starbucks.

collection of various seeds and seed pods

fossils from a vineyard in our village in southern france. from back when the village had some different inhabitants, and the local vineyards grew a different kind of crop. but the seafood was still fresh.

aquatic fossils

autignac, france

I am so bummed to learn that you cannot stand an egg on its base at the moment of the vernal equinox, and make it stand perfectly upright without falling over. i wanted that to be true. i also wanted to be able to stand my broom up in the middle of the living room and leave it for tax clients to wonder at. i guess i will have to content myself with the arrival of spring. that’s magical enough.

feathered nest with pheasant egg