Mat Twassel's photos

First time we didn't make turkey for Thanksgiving, but we did make these.

Delicious!

Found yesterday while jogging.

We didn't want to pick too many because we were saving ourselves for the wine tasting.

When it's sunny I can never get these kind of flowers to come out right. They're always washed out. Luckily this morning was overcast.

The other day my brother, visiting from New Jersey, smacked into the old lilac bush which has guarded our front porch for all of time and knocked off one of the branches. This morning I got out my saw and trimmed the damaged limb. I found the hole vaguely unsettling.

Not an unpleasant smell--how helpful! I don't know what to compare it to.

Over the weekend we visited the Milwaukee Art Museum. We had not been in at least 20 years, and I was very pleased they still had the wonderfull gallery of Haitian art. I love the bright, vivid colors and interesting scenes of those paintings. New to us was this piece, "Laid Table (Still Life with Metal Pitcher), 2007" by Beth Lipman. The description reads: Blown, sculpted, lamp-worked, kiln-cast, and kiln-formed glass on wood table. The way it's lighted is spectacular and impossible not to photograph. Also in Milwaukee we discovered the Grohmann Museum, which is attached to the Milwaukee School of Engineering. They have a large collection of paintings and sculptures with the theme "work." Many of them were done by German and Dutch artists of the 18th and 19th centuries. I really like that style.

On my two mile jog this morning I found a dime, a quarter, and a nut. Earlier this week I found two pennies, a tiny washer, and a small screw—no more than one piece of loot per run. Back in the day my mom would pick up loose change (and the occasional five dollar bill) walking inside the mall. My coin collection probably is not genetic: I don’t expect to continue my road harvesting habit; not unless the value of the haul shows a geometric progression toward Trumpdom. The dime fits very neatly into the nut. That sort of accidental precision makes me happy.

Tea leaves and coffee grounds and chicken bones can be read, but what about muffin crumbs? Anyway, this one was delicious.

About every other day I go for a two mile run on the streets near my house. At the halfway mark I walk for about fifty yards to catch my breath before running home. The other day, during my walk, I noticed this spent shell casing on the pavement next to the curb. I thought about notifying the police, for gun fire is rare to non-existent in my neighborhood (to the best of my knowledge). But I let it be and did not inform any authorities. Two days later the casing was still there. I picked it up and took it home.

I have a passion, albeit a minor one, for bark. Too bad (perhaps) that here we're pretty much limited to the visual.

On sunny mornings as many as thirty turtles, some small, some large, some in between, bask on the bank of the pond just below our balcony. For several weeks now I’ve been trying to get a picture of them, but the creatures are skittish. One false move and they lurch into the pond. I sneak down to the lower level wearing my soft leather slippers, careful not to crack a twig, and snap them, but they don’t come out properly. Concealed in a hazy blur of digital film, they mock me. Today it’s cloudy out. Grayish green. No turtles. So I settle for this pepper.

I always think whatever it is that travels along this wire is going left to right, but maybe that's not right.