Second Oldest River
It won’t be too long before I can tell the whole story and/or direct you to the bigger picture from which these images of the New River and surrounding farmlands in Grayson County have come. The New begins in North…
Category Outdoors
Forest for the Trees
 Seeing the trees is not as easy as it sounds, at least not through the single monocular vision of the camera. I love being in the deep broadleaved woods, but I don’t often bring back an image that helps…
Beware, the Pit!
Let’s see a show of hands: how many of you grown-up adult kinds of folks 1) know what this conical depression is and 2) have been entertained thereby in your oh so distant childhood past? Get’em up there and let…
Driveway Moment
It is my favorite short stretch of the four miles of slow road home, a place where, on the topo the contours converge from both sides, creek and road running together. But just here, as you round the bend, the…
Let The Sunshine In
When the trees were first cut behind the Oak Grove Pavillion, it was disturbing–so much light where there had always been dense forest shade. I think I heard the pines were cut because of Southern Pine Beetle damage, the lot…
Play: Doh!
 Finally, some time with Abby outdoors–not much outdoors, only out in the back yard fenced off from the narrow, overgrown canyon that separates the houses on Abby’s street from the next one. We’d seen the pair of bucks out…
GoodYear for Goose Creek
But of course we already knew that even earlier in the day of the afternoon on which this image (er, these images) were taken. Isn’t it considered good luck if the first thing you see in the morning is a…
Garlic Mustard Buster
 We didn’t know we might need the services of the Univoltine Root Mining Weevil, but such is the case. Suppose, then, it is a good thing our pervasive pesticides have missed this little guy. link While he looks formidable,…
No White Christmas on Goose Creek
The pattern so far is for yet another icy winter, with the snow line creeping a little further north each year as the climate changes. So there will be no White Christmas on Goose Creek this year. Ah well. Even…
The Gift of a Green Hour
Yes, mom and dad, it might mean turning off your favorite weekend sports show or afternoon soap. It may require that you put off that nap or cleaning the gutters or the 101 other to-do’s you’ve given a little checkbox…
Following the Flow
Americans are, by and large, not very geographically aware on either the larger or smaller scale of things. As long as we can find our way home from the mall and know where our yard ends and theirs begins, we…
On Autumn’s Entomological Menu
Take your camera to the nearest stand of the season’s goldenrod, boneset, Joe Pye Weed, ironweed, and/or jewelweed. Bring home some insect pictures. Process gently, and serve. To whet your appetite, sample from this installment of Circus of the Spineless,…
Getting the Joke
Some of you will remember a month or so ago when our six-year-old grand daughter, Abby, came to visit. She is like a sponge, soaking up the details of all the alien creatures and greenery she never sees on the…
To Grandmother’s House We go
Was it only a week ago Abby spent all day–literally all day–in Goose Creek terrorizing the poor minnows? Some of the were captured and released a half dozen times or more, I’m certain. I needed a few more pictures to…