Blooming

A photo journal of quiet adventures.

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A look back at a few things growing during 2025.

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My annual October pilgrimage to the Quaking Bog.

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When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.

-Mary Oliver

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It doesn't matter how many times we go back, there will always be something different to pay attention to on San Juan Island. The trip we took this August was less focused on photos and more on family time, but here are a few textures and the Sturgeon Moon.

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A few frames from fair Ireland this past May - certainly the home of the world's happiest cows.

I can understand why so many poets were inspired by these landscapes. And why the fair folk might also want to call them home.

Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs, All night awake.

-The Faeries, William Allingham

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Floating down the Meramec River on a raft with a few companions and a few more adult beverages seems like a popular summer pastime in Missouri.

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San Juan scenes. There's beauty at every scale there - and I didn't even take photos of the mountains, or the scale of the trees, or the breadth of the sea.

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Exploring William O’Brien State Park was one of my favorite aspects of 2020. I saw my first ever sandhill cranes on the first day we went last spring, and over the summer and fall spotted a lot more wildlife and practiced identifying all kinds of plants. It was a pleasure to go back in January, on a day where freezing fog had coated everything in a lovely veil of ice. Not sure where that blood at the base of the tree came from, though. 

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The Minnehaha dog park is an offleash wonderland that I’ve had the pleasure of going to a couple times with friends, both two and four-legged. The dogs always seem to have a great time, and I do too. It’s impossible not to have your mood boosted by watching dogs play and explore in every direction.

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2020 struck again. 

We were looking forward to our weeklong BWCAW trip, already once postponed, but I only made it a day in before slipping as I was lifting a canoe out of the water and opening up a pretty good chunk of my knee on a sharp rock. My friends and husband took good care of me, and soon I’ll have the stitches out, but it was a far too early end to the adventure (though I saved a lot of blood loss from mosquitos). 

Mostly I’d been excited about time with friends spent unplugged from the larger world, and I feel sad about all all the pictures I didn’t get to take. But hey, there’s always next time.

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I’ll never get tired of looking closely at nature. Top 3 - Jay Cooke State Park in early June. The rest are from this week at the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, where it’s the prairie’s time to shine.

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A year ago I first learned about spring ephemerals during a volunteering introduction at the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden. I’d never heard of them before, the first flowers that come up before the forests leaf out. This year, during our unexpectedly quiet, uneventful spring, I’ve been delighted to spot them at the state parks we’ve been visiting lately. Hepatica, trillium, trout lily, Dutchman’s breeches, false rue anemone - the Garden is closed to visitors and volunteers, but it’s been so good to see these brief, lovely plants growing in the wild, and I’m surprised and pleased to be able to spot and name them. 

Spring waits a long time, then hits fast here in Minnesota. From the last week of March to the first week of May, everything has at last turned green. We’ve also spotted some fantastic birds the past few weeks (though no photos); a male pheasant, two (two!) sandhill cranes, an owl, countless bald eagles and hawks and woodpeckers. The red-winged blackbirds are back and their songs are still my favorite. 

I spent an embarrassing amount of time over the last year worrying whether the ferns in our front yard would come up again. They’d been trampled a little during summer construction; they didn’t have any leaf-litter insulating them when the snows came. I love them, the lushness and texture they add, the fan of their leaves, the shapes they make. And a couple weeks ago they started coming up, and they’ve unfurled a little more, a little taller, every day since. It turns out they didn’t need my worry. They were only waiting in the dark for it to be warm enough, bright enough, to grow again. They knew what they were doing the whole time.  

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Well, 2020 took a strange turn. Here are the only images from our February Vegas trip I liked, back when things still felt ‘normal.’ It’s a heavy-heart time now.

But spring is still (slowly!) arriving here, and soon the plants will emerge, and hopefully I’ll get to photograph some of them.