Another look at Milkweed
Common milkweed is sometimes dismissed as a messy weed growing in old fields or along roadsides. Its leaves are bulky and full of sticky sap. Its flowers pale in comparison with showier blooms. And its seed pods split open to send thousands of winged seeds into new pastures. Look again. This remarkable plant is tenacious, growing where many other plants would wither. Its heft makes it hardy, its sap protects it, and its fragrant flowers fuel monarchs. Its abundant, gossamer seeds dance like fairies in the late autumn sun. No wonder I… Read More
On My Desk
I should never have opened the seed pod. My desk was already littered with a growing fall collection, art supplies, field guides, and books I hadn’t put away. But it had been years since I opened a trumpet vine’s bean-like pod and I had forgotten what the seeds looked like. Of course, as soon as I split the case I remembered, just in time for an explosion of paper-thin seeds to scatter everywhere, as nature intended. I can also attest that the tiny round seeds of the yellow foxtail successfully dispersed, and… Read More
So Many Seeds
My yard is littered with walnuts, the driveway with acorns, the side yard with sugar maple keys. My desk, too, is nearly taken over by tree seeds of all shapes and sizes and in various states of decay. I have been collecting them for the past few weeks in order to make this painting. Collection pages are so much fun to do. Whether seeds or mushrooms or amphibians or moths, I enjoy learning about each species and about the group as a whole. And I enjoy the challenge of making the individual… Read More
Jean Mackay
The Nature Explorer’s Sketchbook
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