The mysterious past

Today I decided to break away from my botanical theme, but for good reason. Yesterday afternoon I did a little treasure hunting in my sister's backyard. The area has been inhabited by humans since the 1600s, so I thought there was a good chance of uncovering some little treasures. . .and I did. First I discovered an old medicine bottle dating from the 1890s, Dr. King's New Discovery for Coughs and Colds. Next came two little un-embossed pill bottles. Judging by mold markings and glass color I was able to tell they were from Chicago, but manufactured in southern Illinois. The fourth find was confounding. It had a daffodil design on the front, which suggested to me it was for women. It was some sort of gold-gilded large hoop earring holder or perhaps it was used to hold diamonds or small sharks teeth to ward off demons. It's impossible to know for sure. Objects like these have been all but forgotten by modern women. Maybe someday man will invent a time-machine and questions like these will be laid to rest once and for all.

Ghost of the woods

For years I've been searching wild places for lady slippers. Cypripedium orchids. These temperate orchids are rare in cultivation and even rarer in the wild.  They like it wet, wild and woody. They have since ancient times been associated with lust and desire. They were named by the ancient Greeks who believed that the Goddess Aphrodite lost her slipper when a lover’s tryst in the woods was abruptly interrupted. Where her slipper fell a plant sprouted forth with a flower the shape of a slipper. The lady’s slipper in all of its many incarnations has always been associated with elves, fairies and other spirits of the woods. Many cultures around the world have their own myths about these magical plants but the truth about these plants is even more incredible. Each flower, once fertilized by a winged insect turns into a seed pod containing millions of tiny lighter-than-air seeds which waft away with the wind. These tiny little capsules of life can travel up into the heavens, and in theory up into the jet stream and around the world. Of all of these millions of seeds only a lucky few will fall to the ground in a place where the temperature, soil, water, and light are just right. They also need a particular type of fungus to be present in the soil in order to germinate. The lucky ones do germinate, and if they are even luckier they will live uninterrupted for about five years until they produce their own lady slipper flowers. If you are as lucky as they are you might come across one in some clearing in some wild forest. If you are luckier than me, then if you do happen to see some of these magical plants...the fucking things will be in bloom! God damn it.

Some felled trees and stuff

This moss looked like a tiny alpine forest from a small plane to me. It was as if I was high up even though it was very, very close. I imagined tiny white wolves chasing tiny brown elk through the endless tiny pine landscape. The fallen leaves almost looked like rocky outcrops speckled across an endlessly large and remote wild. It was cold everywhere. Even on my normal scale. I needed a normal scale hot shower after I took this picture. I also needed clean normal scale pants after kneeling on that cold and tiny forest to get that shot. That tiny forest was as wet as a bog.

An intruder

This frog looked like a frog to me. But who really knows...he was up to something. Just sitting outside the window. I didn't trust him at all. When I was trying to catch him I could tell he was thinking about me. Creepy.

The creepy splendor of The Catskills

Flats in a greenhouse