this egg collection no longer exists. i had collected these eggs over the past five years of doing STILL. i had the eggs displayed in acrylic boxes on the sideboard of my living/dining room. when i returned from france, the boxes had been set in the garage, and contained only remnants and crumbs of broken eggs. i suspect one or both of the two cats that belonged to our house sitters got into them. i am sad the eggs are gone. they are not easily replaceable. but i am not mad. because the same thing happened to us in france. we took in a lost village cat for a week. the owner had placed a notice on the window of the village greengrocer, and when we texted her, she said that yes, indeed, we had found her lost cat but that she was in england for the holidays, and could we hold onto “kisses” until she got back. kisses, it turns out, had been on the streets for three weeks. so she took two days to eat and sleep on a blanket on the couch. by the third day, she had fully recovered and proceeded, methodically and thoroughly, to wreak holy havoc on our home. including eating the entire collection of found languedoc eggs i had placed on top of my dresser. all the world over, cats will be cats. and eggs are not meant to last.

egg collection: goose, duck, pheasant, chicken, quail, robin

st. paul, minnesota

ever since we’ve been home, my new creative routine has been waiting just over there. just beyond those bars. i can see it from here. let me just . . reach . . . through. I can’t . . . quite . . . get my hand through this . . . damn. Time to cook dinner.

raspberry canes

saint paul, minnesota

i’m sure you have noticed that although we have been back in the states for two weeks, i have continued to post some photos that i shot in a surge of last minute adrenaline as we were packing up in france to come back home to minnesota. partly, i wanted to document as much as i could of a place i so dearly love. but also, i knew i was coming home to a frozen landscape with an overabundance of brown twigs for the next two months. and i also knew i would need a few days to get back into my STILL rhythm. it took a few days longer than i thought, but i think i’m finally there. or should i say here? i feel fully present in minnesota again, and suddenly i can see.

winter milkweed

saint paul, minnesota

we’ve been home for a couple of weeks, but i am having a hard time getting back into a really productive creative routine. i have been preoccupied taking care of a backlog of “administra-trivia” that got ignored while we were away. things like doctors visits, orthodontic consults, deferred home maintenance, etc. but, if i am perfectly honest, i have also been preoccupied with feathering my nest. it feels good to be back among my things, organized in a way that makes sense to me, and that fits how we live our lives. as comfortable as we may feel in france, we are still renters there, which is not the same as being in your own space, among your own books and kitchen gadgets. so i have been reveling a bit in my role as returned mistress of the castle, putting her domain in order. no, the measuring spoons go there, dear. no not there . . . there.

abandoned nest

autignac, languedoc, france

yup, i know. a heart on valentine’s day is not very “still blog.” but if mother nature makes it, can it really be sappy? well, like it or not, i present you with amour-en-cage for valentine’s day. i hope you have a full and loving one. my husband, steve, is a tax preparer, so we will be celebrating with a dinner in front of the fire after his seventh client of the day leaves around 7:30 PM. and then we will very romantically fall dead asleep.

love in a cage (physalis peruviana)

autignac, france