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Tag Archives: garden

Irises et al

Sat, 29 Mar 2014, 08:06 AM (-06:00)

So they came into town, my family did. My aunt. My brother and sister-in-law. My niece from Berkeley. My other niece soon to be (perhaps) from Austin. My nephew. And my mother. They came to town as the weather was oscillating wildly between warm, spring, sunshiny days and cold and dreary. Except the Berkeley niece, […]

Hot Cold Dry Warm Cool Wet

Sun, 9 Mar 2014, 11:06 AM (-06:00)

1. There’s a butter-yellow butterfly fluttering among the Irises. The blossoms came out of nowhere and opened last night. And the butterfly has found them, uncertain about the white fall, intrigued by the yellow anther. And there is an orange butterfly in the Lacey Oak, resting on a branch, opening and closing its wings. As […]

Spider and Bees

Sun, 8 Sep 2013, 08:26 PM (-06:00)

1. A Spider There was a spider on the leaf. A tiny green one with huge green claw-like front legs. It sat motionless on a leaf as we watched. It sat motionless even as we approached. I pointed at it, but it did not move until I crossed some threshold just millimeters away from that tiny […]

Goldeneye

Sun, 9 Oct 2011, 01:02 PM (-06:00)

The hardier-than-hardy Goldeye that Bill gave me years ago have been pacing themselves thru this parched summer waiting for the rain. Finally last night it came. So now this: Front yard, back yard, side yard, too. Blooming Goldeneye to illuminate October. Thank you, rain.

Bird Succession

Tue, 30 Aug 2011, 10:10 PM (-06:00)

In the morning they come. Before the sun climbs over the roof of the house. While the cool 82 degrees of morning remain. Before the heat begins to bake the dust. They come for a drink. First come the Lesser Goldfinches. They perch on the Coneflowers and pick at the dry seed heads and flit […]

All the Way From Kentucky

Sat, 12 Feb 2011, 10:30 PM (-06:00)

The fair and industrious Trudy bought some strawberries on a sunny weekend a while ago. A few days later we put some soil in a whiskey barrel and two old leaky buckets, and we planted the five little plants. We gently surrounded them with a little bit of pine straw and a three inches of […]

Coffee Grounds

Wed, 26 Jan 2011, 08:55 PM (-06:00)

The man walked up to the counter at the end of the long, warmly lit room. A couple was sitting in some overstuffed chairs in the corner, but otherwise the place was empty. The clerks looked up as he approached. They had been talking and stopped as he got near. He smiled, but they just looked […]

Celestial Bodies

Sat, 25 Sep 2010, 12:04 AM (-06:00)

Jupiter has been rising with the full harvest moon lately while Venus sets with the sun. The rain has been falling. The gound is wonderfully soft to walk upon. The grass has been growing. And the Zexmenia. And the Russian Sage. And the Wright’s Skullcap. And the Oak trees. And… And ants are herding aphids […]

Water, Water Everywhere

Tue, 7 Sep 2010, 05:05 PM (-06:00)

The August heat was brutal—not on us, we can always sit in the shade and drink iced tea or retreat to the house, but brutal on the garden. As we dug in the dirt last weekend, preparing for fall, we looked in horror at the parched, dry dirt just below the surface that we had […]

Caught in the Act

Sun, 8 Aug 2010, 02:44 AM (-06:00)

He was standing on the patio in the sun. He was staring into the back yard with great concentration. This struck me as odd. He was neither relaxed nor was he in his hunting-the-wiley-squirrel pose. Those are pretty much the two positions he assumes back there, and this one was neither. Something was up with the […]