Spring flowers
autumn moon
summer breezes
winter snow:

With mind uncluttered
·  this is  ·
the finest season!

-Wúmén Huìkāi

Maculate conception

Cautiously inquisitive…

Short of domestication

Even when installers don’t neglect to put landscape fabric between pavers and bedding,

keeping a walkway weed-free can be challenging to those of limited knee flexion:

Fortunately, many such greens are of the edible (not to say delectable) variety, so otherwise indolent residents

Life is a sun-warmed bed of Cornus florida […]

Dust bath

Our native (actually, re-introduced) turkeys—Meleagris gallopavo—are as fastidious as other avians hereabouts. To maintain appearance, comfort and health, they bill-groom frequently with the aid of a long and flexible neck:

And even when a hygiene error occurs, they have the good taste to appear embarrassed:

Poking and preening do not suffice to control […]

March of the batrachians (PG-13)

A frog is just an egg’s way of making another egg…

 

So many signs indicate the onset of spring: mechanical events like the vernal equinox, human inventions like tax day or a school vacation, mutable natural rhythms that follow the particularity of each unique pass around the sun. Of these, some are triggered by […]

The gleaners

With most of last year’s edibles stripped bare, new seeds months away and bugs of all kinds mostly still buried, submerged or otherwise hidden, it’s slim pickin’s for big eaters.

 

Too close for comfort?

The stream is shrunk – the pool is dry, And we be comrades, thou and I; With fevered jowl and dusty flank Each jostling each along the bank; And by one drouthy fear made still, Forgoing thought of quest or kill.

Now ‘neath his dam the fawn may see, The lean Pack-wolf as cowed […]

Any port after a storm

 

Who went there?

“I say, Holmes, whatever do you suppose left such odd impressions in the snow over there?

“Odd, my dear Watson? I should say, rather, exactly what would be expected from a female circus dog with one lame trotter, walking erect, bearing on her shoulders a juvenile bonobo in a mauve linsey-woolsey cape, carrying in […]

Caged, uncaged

Hawk (Cooper’s? Sharp-shinned?) chases a red squirrel under an old potting shed, then inside through a gap in the floor. Forgetting how it got there, or just seeking the closest light, it flutters in panic until the noise attracts someone who can open the door.

I see the sky, but I can’t touch […]

Cold culling

Eat hearty and dress warm…

This mole and flying squirrel were apparently unable to keep up with the chill; the camera found them before some other hungry bird or beast happened along.

Memento mori.

[…]

Snow stinkbug

“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called by the Masai “Ngàje Ngài,” the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard […]

Empty nests

Some shut up the house for winter; others just let it blow away and rebuild in spring from scattered bits.

Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus)

Gloryvine (Vitis coignetiae) and wisteria on oak stump

 

When trees are pollarded, dense growth of small branches creates a natural picket fence:

Rose-of-Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus)

 

[…]