wild turkey tracks
This short piece, from the Opinion page of The New York Times (2/2/09), is unpretentious, evocative writing. Read it aloud…slowly.
Up here in the country, the world gets a used-up look a day or two after a February snowfall. Dust drifts over the fields from the dry roads, the corn stubble begins to poke [...]
An excited correspondent sent me a link to this video of an elephant painting a picture of an elephant.
YouTube - Elephant painting an elephant
It is an engaging video, and comments on other websites from eyewitnesses (most often reporting their visits to Thailand) to such “artwork creation” give good evidence that this is not a fraud. [...]
mephitis mephitis: North American striped skunk
The odor of skunk is very different up close than it is far away. A wee bit-o-skunk is sharp and somewhat lemony…stinky, definitely apprehendable, but not outrageously offensive. Full-skunk, however, clouding thickly outward from the furry hotness of a thoroughly swacked pet dog, is an altogether different experience. It [...]
Everything grew easily where I grew up. In the long Southern California seasons of sun and moderate warmth, there was no challenge.
I suspect, looking back, that such gardening ease actually produced a glory of flowering plants, but there are only two in my childhood memory: zinnias and nasturiums. When I was eight, I planted [...]
