11:30 a.m.

I am having one hell of a time motivating myself to prepare for this trip. So far, I have a list that has been created over the past few weeks, added to whenever I thought of something to remember to take along.

But there are dishes to do, laundry to have ready for the suitcase, and mulch! The flower beds around the house need to be mulched or the snapdragons, at least, will parch and shrivel and be crispy ash skeletons by the time we get back here.

Last night I went for a bike ride and had to keep getting off and darting into the ditch to pick wildflowers.

I also brought home six stems of something — no clue what it is — and stuck them in a petite brass pitcher. My camera won’t take a closeup to show you, I don’t think. Oh okay, I’ll try. [please ignore the dust on my desk; it wont' go away]

They are less than a quarter-inch in diameter and stand about a foot high, with horizontal yellow rings at intervals up to an elegant crownlike bud. They could be slim, stiff, curved snakes! They could be Saskatchewan bamboo, if there were such a thing. Catherine Jamison, I need you to bring your camera and take a walk with me.

I am looking at the flowers, even of thistles, with brand new eyes.

Ah. While going through the motions of processing the picture, I got The Standing People out and opened it across my lap. Right at the beginning is the lowly, lovely Horsetail, and that’s what those neat little stems must, at some stage of development, be.

12:30 p.m.

Got sidetracked there and have been trying to identify wildflowers. These tallish purple ones, I’ve discovered, are Wild Bergamot. It’s a member of the mint family.

And what I’ve been calling brown-eyed susans are really the Prairie Coneflower.

And now, this computer gets turned off and I get on about my business.

xoxoetc
Kate