buckthorn/staghorn sumac/milkweed

i sometimes think i could study botany in order to understand plants better.

but i also know myself, 
i'd be going off on tangents and would rebel against thorough scholarship.

this is only to say that i'm not particularly interested in doing this, 
not really, 
really.

but then i go outside and look around and know that i don't know the names, 
let alone the personalities 
and properties 
of many of my neighborwood plants.  

i had a shepherd visiting for a long weekend, 
and his 2 year old intensity, energy and ability to focus

were such a joy to be around. 
frances knows how to pay attention. 

especially to the snow in the new yard.

if i was still for a while

i found that he would do his best to keep me company.

intermittent sunshine and much rain 
and now, 
now these leaves are mostly down.

the fruit crops, 
wild and domestic apples, 
invasive and magical buckthorn, 
raspberries, blackberries, crabapples, haws, 

gray dogwood, wild grapes, staghorn sumac, and many others are everywhere.

oh, and paper wasps' summer home
fell out of the tree.

i did try once to pulp this paper to make pulp, 
but it was more like sludge.

milkweed constellations

my favorite paper plant (except all the others)

beautiful.

some late goldenrod, highbush cranberries (i think), yarrow,

all went into the contact print bundles 
and the dye liquor.

we've had only bits of sun and one sunny day all autumn.

it's locking up into winter now.

my neighbors have these for sale on friday and saturday

i'm told they're delicious.

sumac against the autumn sky

working in my kitchen to make prints involves 
buckets of metals and the occasional appropriated weight.

and a lot of vegetation spread out on a cloth.

my biggest round pot with some copper pipe 
and apple twigs
and aluminum and steel.

the fierce, diagonal autumn light 

all around my fallingdownbarn

made of recycled barn

and giving way to age and weather

i have staghorn sumac moving onto my place

giving me lovely leaves and stems

but not yet one horn,

but i can find them 
on the roadside, 
instead.
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