We’ve been busy alphabet hunting all summer, and here are our latest catches. Jann shot the bear grass “A” in Glacier National Park, and the rest in the Madison area. Lynne’s are mostly from Rainy Lake, Ontario, and the smartweed “V” is from Ridgeway, WI. Choose from these new images as well as the rest of the collection shown below. Numeral images are in a previous post. (Click on images to get a closer look.)

Visit us at the Cedarburg Wine and Harvest Festival September 18-19 and the MMoCA Holiday Art Fair in Madison November 19-21.  You can have a name framed right there while you wait – it takes us only about ten minutes!

Or order by phone or email right now.

WILD ALPHABET CHOICES :

NEW PRICES (9-1-10):

(include images, mat and frame):

2-3 letters (6″x10″) $30

4-5 letters (6″x14″) $39

6-7 letters (6″x18″) $42

8-9 letters (6″x22″) $46

(shipping & tax additional)

TO ORDER NOW:

email Lynne at lsdiebel@gmail.com or call (608) 235-6317

Tell me the word or name you want to spell (list letter choice codes in order), your choice of mat and frame color, and your shipping address. I’ll reply with delivery date and shipping costs. To complete the order, prepay by phone with VISA, MasterCard or Discovery.

TWO MAT and FRAME CHOICES:

OR

Here’s a sampling of our growing collection of numeral images. Click on the image for a closer look.

0-1 argiope web

0-2 goats beard puff

1-1 asparagus

1-2 lupine

2-1 grass seeds

2-2 grapevine tendril

3-1 moose shed

3-2 leaves

4-1 spruce branch

5-1 driftwood twig

6-1 Kentucky Wonder bean

7-1 milkweed

7-2 grass

7-3 false Solomon’s seal

8-1 button bush

8-2 dandelion

8-3 hibiscus

9-1 blackberry cane

Identifying the Wild Alphabet

(All images were photographed as found, without any manipulation of the natural objects)

A-1         Vitis riparia (riverbank grapevine)

A-2         leaves in ice

B-1         yellow pond lily pad

B-2          tree stump

B-3          Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan)

C-1         hoary puccoon

C-2          Nonesuch shale pothole, Presque Isle             River

C-3          dead leaf

C-4          frosted dead leaf

C-5          cottonwood twig on ice

D-1         cattail

D-2          Manabezho Falls, Presque Isle River

D-3          grapevine leaf

E-1         Lathyrus japonicus (native beach pea)

E-2          ice drips, sideways

E-3          fall sumac

E-4          fall sumac

E-5          frosted sumac

E-6          fern fronds

E-7          raptor feather

E-8          spring sumac

F-1          Clintonia borealis (blue bead lily) flower

F-2          marsh grass

F-3          maple branch

G-1         birch bark curl

H-1         leaves and berries

H-2          blazing star

H-3          tree roots

H-4          fern fronds

I-1           lupine with arachnid visitor

I-2           cracks in Silurian dolomite, Rock Island

I-3           rattlesnake plantain

I-4           caterpillar

I-5           driftwood on cobble beach, Lake Superior

I-6           lupine

I-7           onion top

J-1          Monotropa uniflora (ghost plant)

J-2           lupine, upside down

K-1         corn stalk

K-2          corn stalk/blue sky

K-3          sandstone cracks

K-4          maple samara

L-1         sunset over Lake Superior

L-2          river bed shale

L-3          pasque flowers

L-4          maple twig in fall

M-1       cattail leaves

N-1         birches

N-2          wild grapes

O-1         white flower circle

O-2          eye of green frog

O-3          yellow flower circle

O-4          amanita mushroom

O-5          sarsparilla berries

P-1          driftwood on Lake Superior cobbles

P-2          blackberry cane

P-3          fern fiddlehead

P-4          onion top

Q-1         bubbles over sandstone lake bed

Q-2          dandelion puff

R-1         Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan)

R-2          lady fern fiddlehead

R-3          onion top

S-1          blackberry cane

S-2          green plants in ice

S-3          fern fiddlehead

S-4          tiny snake on maple leaf

S-5          flamingo at the zoo

S-6          onion top

T-1         dragonfly/blue sky

T-2          dragonfly/leaves

T-3          gypsy moth caterpillar on thimbleberry

T-4          Union Bay shale

U-1         Baptisia tinctoria (wild indigo)

U-2          wave line on sand

U-4          snake

V-1         Turk’s cap lily

V-4          red-twigged dogwood

V-5          sandstone

V-6          birch log and trillium

W-1        cattail leaves

W-2        blue bead lily

X-1         shale lines in Copper Harbor sandstone

X-2          garden spider

X-4          red-twigged dogwood

Y-1         black maple samara

Y-2          birch log

Y-4          maple twig in fall

Z-2          Virginia creeper vine on railroad gravel

Jann and I are going to sell our photography at art fairs this summer.  We’re starting the season with the Syttende Mai Art Fair in Stoughton, Wisconsin, on May 15-16.

At our Wild Alphabet booth, we’ll be offering a “frame your name” service, which means we’ll mat and frame our letter images to spell a name. And we’ll do the framing right there in our booth. Just like that, you can have a personalized, one-of-a-kind work of art.

I’ve posted the name BEN because Jann’s son Ben, now 27, found the very first nature letter that Jann photographed (a mussel shell “B”) when he was 5. That was way back in 1988. We’ll have other mat and frame colors too.

We’ll also sell our poster prints, signed copies of ABCs Naturally, and greeting cards. Jann will have some ceramic tiles with images on them to show. You can order custom prints too.

The rest of our art fair schedule (so far):

June 26-27 Strawberry Festival Fine Arts Fair in Cedarburg, WI

August 21 Agora Art Fair in Fitchburg, WI

In Wild Alphabet No. 4 we’ve named all the things we photographed. Each image opens a door into the life and times of these bits of nature. While writing the facts and folklore section of ABCs Naturally, I spent endless hours researching these fascinating pieces of our natural world. And I heard some great stories from the naturalists who helped me understand.

Yesterday I spent a wonderful afternoon with the third graders at Columbus Elementary School. I hope to hear from these budding young poets and naturalists.

We like to write messages with our images.  And we’re into caring for the environment and experiencing nature firsthand. Does that make us Environmentalists (with a big E)? More on that later… Meantime, it’s outside to capture the snowy landscape before March arrives and the spring meltdown begins.

For two weeks in August 2008, we (Jann and Lynne) were Artists-in-Residence at the Porkies (Porcupine Mountains State Wilderness Park) in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We stayed in a lovely little primitive cabin, hand-built by the Friends of the Porkies. August days are long, and for two weeks we did nothing but alphabet hunt, sometimes hiking miles in search of a single letter. And we found all 26. It was wonderful.

frog leg, frog eye, driftwood, hemlock,

rocky pattern, lily pad, birch bark, bubbly water,

grapevine, lupine, waterline, shoreline,

beach pea, fiddlehead, ghost plant, cracked shale,

Turk’s cap, marsh grass, pothole, birch,

snake shed, dead leaves, cattail, samara,

caterpillar, waterfall – see if you can find them all!

www.wildalphabet.com is a brand new Web site, very much a work in progress. We’ll be posting more images and ideas soon. You can learn a little about us by clicking on About in the menu at top right.

Here’s the latest in our series of wild alphabet posters, with photographs taken in Wisconsin and Michigan.

One thing you should know is that when we call our photographs unedited, we mean that everything you see in our photos is just how we found it in nature. No manipulation whatsoever of the subjects or the images.

Note: if you have trouble seeing the letters in these images, just ask a child for help.