The wife and I are living under the jurisdiction of a new Energy Domain: new to solar panels, new to heat pumps and new to Generac propane generators. We are not so new to power outages, and wondering about “best…
Ah yes. Now I remember. Life in the cloud. It was mysterious and eerie and the relentless fog lent a kind of drama to the aloneness that first year in Floyd County living, just me and the cat, on Walnut…
We had 3 widely-spaced friends (read that as you will) over for a porch visit yesterday evening to become reacquainted as the good friends we had been before covid. And what we rediscovered was how interesting ORDINARY used to be,…
When is the last time you stretched out on your back under a sky full of clouds? Your mind literally cannot help but make sense of the seemingly random balloonings or smears or pulled threads of clouds. It is what…
So VDOT got a late start on this project, supposed to have begun last Monday. (And work will NOT be finished until at least July 22 or 23.) The foreman realized how bad things really were, and instead of the…
We rounded the bend on Griffith Creek last week to find a hundred yards of creekside lined thickly with a flat-topped pink-flowered shrub I recognized as Spirea, a member of the rose family. But the members of the genus I…
I’d never seen a horntail wasp until I saw this one last week, but knew at a glance what it was. Note the horn on the tail, just above its rather short, stout ovipositor. It is NOT a stinger. And…
It seemed simple enough. On the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way back from an oil change yesterday, and in no particular hurry. I pulled off to the shoulder of the road and grabbed my camera (which you can also…
One of my favorite features on the trip to town along 221 this time of year is the wildflower assortment, the “unplanted garden” in which yellow is disproportionately well represented. Much less familiar than the yellow-rayed Black Eyed Susans or…
Don’t know about you, but for us, spring happened on Saturday (20 April.) By Sunday, the foliage of almost all trees was at least barely emerged, if not half-way, the sun setting spring colors ablaze. It is a different orange,…
Housekeeping the catacombs of my desk, I found a reflection from early on. It speaks to my hopes for myself, for my readers, for our world. Now, more than 15 years later, some hopes are realized, some will never be.…
I happened through a fairly mature oak-hickory forest on the grounds of Warm Hearth Retirement Community yesterday. With the road being surfaced, the woods became the alternative route to my car parked well beyond the paving trucks. I smelled them…
In an earlier column I confessed my (and my hapless wife’s) checkered association with snakes and so I suppose it’s a short step to admit that I also have an inordinate admiration as well for insects–for joint-legged animals (arthropods) in…