Lupines

 

This is my kitchen table. I will be the first to admit it is a mess. The beauty of living alone is that you can have a messy table while working on crafts for a week and nobody complains. Right now I am working on tile mosaics on clay flower pots. I had some tile left over from previous projects. I went to three tile stores in Duluth and they actually gave me some free tile. The free tiles all came in drab colors like black, white, grey and brown. I like colorful tiles. I went to Savers, the second hand shop, and got some plates and serving dishes that were colorful. Wow, breaking dishes into pieces with my nippers was a lot of fun. Unfortunately a lot of the plate gets wasted because I can only use the flat center of the plate. Last week I was running some errands in Roseville and I stopped by Color Tile on County Road C. Color Tile were really busy. But the tiles they head were so beautiful! Color Tile really lives up to it's name. I walked around picking up tiles in a rainbow of colors. I had 10 small tiles and one large one. I went to pay for my tiles. A man who worked there said they were so busy he was going to just give me the tiles. He said he does this all the time. I was so happy. Yet I was confused that he took the time to wrap my tiles but chose not to take the time to take money for the tiles. I think I had at least $20 worth of tiles. Anyway now I am rich in supplies which is why my table is a mess. The point of the entry is for you to see the beautiful lupines that I picked yesterday near the Us Kab Wan Ka river. See them in the vase on the table? I picked them about 3 pm yesterday and they wilted quickly as I walked to my car. I put them in my stream monitoring bucket with a little water from my water bottle. I got home about 3 hours later and they still looked wilted. I brought them in, trimmed the stems at a 45 degree angle and put them in a vase. Wow, they perked right up and they look so pretty. These lupines are an invasive variety. Native lupines also exist in Minnesota but these are invasive so I didn't feel bad picking them on a public snowmobile trail.