Kissing Under the Dung Twig
In the deep south the stuff is everywhere. I remember this time of year heading out with my .22 and shooting it out of the tops of oaks. Back inside, we taped or tacked sprigs of it over doorways before…
Category Outdoors
For Your Health: Take a Walk
I find myself, once again, staring out the window by my desk, my eyes falling more often than not on the “New Road” that rises out of the pasture just past the barn. We (and especially SHE) follow that path…
Wind and Whimsy
It’s an ominous symptom from a blogging-post point of view. I look at a list of potential topics I have been exploring–some of which are supported by a list of a few pertinent links. Some, like “synthetic biology” and “transhuman…
ReGrounding
I’ll miss this last SustainFloyd movie (and turkey dinner!) of the season this Sunday, but maybe a few of you will plan to go. (If you do, I hear they need another few veggie dishes and desserts.) Ground Operations [details…
Snow Globe Like the Present
Words fail me this morning. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s more a matter of this morning’s words belonging to an 11 page grant proposal that had to be edited for a deadline–today; and a SustainFloyd website post about the…
Phenom
I tried to imagine what the ancients must have made of a perihelion. It is one of the strangest celestial “omens” you might witness in the daytime sky. I took a picture, but not this one. Mine just shows an…
Refugium
Refugium: an area where conditions have enabled a species or a community of species to survive after extinction in surrounding areas. An area in which a population of organisms can survive through a period of unfavorable conditions;  an area of relatively unaltered climate…
Fading Light of Fall
We take a few hikes nearby each year just to prove we are not dead yet. One is to the top of HeartAttack Hill. The one yesterday was not as taxing to the heart, moreso to the ankles, knees and…
Thirty Thousand Foot View
Yesterday I desperately needed to get away. Away from the phone, from the computer, from the house, away from all the things that would fill  my time and my mind if I didn’t leave home. So I went with a few…
Down to Earth: Toasted Marshmallow Mushrooms
Let’s just say I need to pay way more attention for a day or three to what goes on under my feet than to what goes on in this Chinese Fire Drill of a world of ours. All world and…
Mist, Dew, Fog: Rain’s Gentle Cousins
There have not been a lot of rose-smelling pauses around here lately. And I’m most of the time not knowing whether to scratch my watch or wind my butt, as some unnamed fellow-southern-person famously said. It has been (blessedly) rainy here of…
Perspective
I think I had something to say on perspective but I lost mine before I could get it down. Somehow I ended up at security.google.com. If you use gmail, might want to give your google records a good look. Under RECENT…
Go Fish
I would never have thought it possible: I have gone–what?–maybe twenty years since the last time I held a fishing pole. Growing up southern and outdoorsy, there were not many weeks go by I did not either go or desperately…
A Day in the Woods
I confess I too seldom take time these days to recharge my batteries by getting away from home, away from the computer, away from various obligations and commitments and duties. I realize the cost of that missing element when, like yesterday,…