the agave knows when to shed its skin, and how to elbow up toward the sun, and how many teeth to grow along the edge of its leaves. it is perfectly agave, and unconcerned with being anything else. i would love to spend even a single day in possession of the self-knowledge of a plant. to live exactly within my limits and possibilities.

succulent

you tell me why these ferns lost their fall colors one vein at a time, and ended up looking like the window of a gothic cathedral. there may be a scientific reason. but i don’t need to hear it. i just want to look at them some more.

pressed fern leaves

st. paul, minnesota

this meandering white stripe is something i’ve done before, and i will probably keep doing it until beaches run out of white striped rocks, or until i can no longer bend over to gather them. i allowed myself to bring home one quart-sized ziploc bag of beach treasures from southern france, and these wanderers made the cut. they have been happily introduced to their sister collection of striped rocks from our summer stay in brittany 11 years ago. not all beaches have striped rocks. i count myself lucky to know two of them. you can count wealth with bank balances, and real estate holdings, or you can count the number of woodlots and beaches you know well enough to call friends.

striped beach rocks from sète, france

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