How often do we start out to do one thing and end up with something else? And how often do we overlook what’s right in front of us? We headed out a bit before sunrise this morning for Wild River State Park. This is a large Minnesota state park located on the St. Croix River. My intent was to photograph the wildflowers that bloom in the restored prairie in the park. As we’re driving along the edge of the prairie, my eyes were seeing some unusual white “flowers” — they seemed to have a tuft at the top. They certainly didn’t appear to be anything I recognized, but I was intrigued enough to stop and look further. Upon closer examination I realized that these weren’t flowers at all. The early morning dew was undisturbed by wind and sun, and it was decorating the cobwebs that had been woven between the dried flower heads and stems. And once I looked through the camera lens further, these intricate dew drops almost appeared to have been “strung” along the web, with a small eyelet on each one. As I photographed I was thinking of how grateful I was to have been curious enough to stop the car and look closely at what I was seeing from a distance. How much easier it would have been to have said “no wildflowers here” and continued down the road. How sad it would have been to miss the wonder and beauty that was there for that small window of time before the wind blew and the sun dried the dew.
wildflowers
Coneflower blooms
The heat of summer brings the purple coneflowers into abundant bloom. And one of the best places to photograph these delights of summer is in my own backyard. Most photographers understand how important it is to be in close proximity to what you choose to photograph, allowing you to be there when the light changes, when the scene changes, and to observe and “see” the subject in much more detail. So my backyard is the perfect practice-field for me. Last night we enjoyed a beautiful evening — nice light, no winds — a perfect setting for photographing. This bloom was calling to me to sit on the ground and photograph upward, capturing the opacity of the petals, and colors of the entire plant, and to see it from a different perspective. Little did I know that there was a small insect hiding underneath too, posing just as I snapped the shutter on the camera.
Kansas wildflowers
We just recently returned from the Biking across Kansas ride where we traversed from the Colorado border, across the wide state of Kansas, to the eastern border with Missouri. As the state has had plenty of rain this spring, the landscape was lush and green. Although I was focused on bicycling (as opposed to photographing), what jumped out to me were the beautiful wildflowers that were dotting the fields and roadsides. The coneflowers, butterfly milkweed, daisies, spider-wort — all were bursting into bloom. Last year at this time I spent over two weeks in Iowa and was fortunate to document the daily changes in a prairie area. That experience gave me a new appreciation for the wildflowers that grace our landscapes with their burst of color and beauty. So our mode of travel across the state of Kansas by bicycle gave us front-row seats to this amazing display of blooms.
Purple trillium in bloom
In the heart of Minneapolis is a hidden garden gem — the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden. With fifteen acres of woodland, wetland, and prairie, it is the oldest public wildflower garden in the nation. The garden was established in 1907 by botanist Eloise Butler and the Minneapolis Parks Board. We spent a delightful early Saturday morning at the garden. These purple trilliums were blooming profusely, along with marsh marigolds, hepatica, anemones, two-leaved toothwart, and trout lilies.
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