there are advantages to being married to a writer. i don’t ever have to come up with the wording on thank you cards. i just hand them to steve. i can call across the room to my personal human webster’s dictionary pretty much any time of day. i also received some spectacular love letters during our courtship. on the other hand, we have forbidden words in our house that can seem arbitrary. “lovely,” for instance, is banned. it has been sorely overused, apparently. as has the word, “stunning.” there are others. but the word i’m most strictly forbidden to use is the word, “dance.” not “dance” to describe an actual dance, but “dance” as a metaphor for something vaguely moving and eloquent that could be described more beautifully and more accurately, if my husband is to be believed, if i just took some more time to find a better turn of phrase. but of course i am a rule breaker by nature, not a rule follower, even when it comes to the language rules set down by my resident language expert and life partner. and so i am describing these flocked poplar leaves as a circular autumn dance. but i hope my husband will lighten up and forgive me in this instance, given that the dance i’m describing is the hokey-pokey. all of the leaves in this photo have put their left feet in, and are about to put their left feet out. soon they will put their right feet in. and presumably at some point they are going to shake it all about.

white polar leaves in winter

st. paul, minnesota

this stalk is sowing its wild oats. it is not a randy young man spreading his seed as far and wide as possible. it is not a heedless late teenager making a series of bad decisions. it is, in fact, a wild oat plant. and it is sowing. not unlike the young boy who sits on an ant nest and has living ants in his literal pants. or the lumberjack with a dull blade, who has, quite unmetaphorically, an axe to grind. i could go on.

wild oats

my husband didn’t like this composition. he said it lacked intention. i said i intended it to look like the debris left behind after high tide. in other words, i intended it to look unintentional. he looked again, and gave the same verdict. i think he was intentionally misunderstanding. in the morning, when he asks if i might make him a cup of tea, i intend to go a little deaf.

mediterranean beach collections

sète, france

it’s going to take some experimenting to figure out how best to photograph dark subjects on a black background. these first attempts feel a little clumsy to me, like finding my way through a dark house in the middle of the night. i know how to do this. i know where everything is. but i still take tentative steps, and reach out gropingly, in hopes of touching something familiar.

dried eucalyptus twig

my sister-in-law is an occasional floral designer for weddings. she house-sat for us while we were in france, and i found these remnants of someone’s fall wedding on my deck when we got home. i’m guessing it was designed as a centerpiece full of a lot more color than it has now. i rearranged it a bit, and now i think it looks like something a pagan goddess would wear. who knows? maybe the bride was a pagan goddess herself. or maybe she was not an actual goddess but fierce and loyal and independent and strong. i wonder if the groom knew how lucky he was. i’m going to believe that he did. and that they danced a little wildly at the reception. and afterwards.