At the end of a hard day like this one, I love to paddle my kayak on the lake. Drifting, looking at water and trees and green …. so soothing. Sometimes, though, the lakeshore greenline is shattered. I see a group of trees that look like they’ve been hit with a terrible disease. One that is … read more Vanity view
Category: Trees
To See A Tree: A naturalist’s journal of the Southern Appalachians. Our ambivalent and ignorant relationship with the natural world
To get to the other side
Why were all the cars stopping? I was on my third lap of 12 at the playfield, just hitting my stride. I’d been half an hour late for most of the day, kept trying to make up for it, kept failing. On the road next to the playfield, cars were slowing down and stopping at a certain … read more To get to the other side
The urban naturalist
Chi-i-i-i-rp! About a month ago, I was walking through Dunwoody at the perimeter of Atlanta, and over the din of cars and the MARTA train I heard a lone cricket. Chi-i-i-i-rp! In the middle of an April day, I really didn’t expect to hear a cricket within view of the gigantic King and Queen office buildings. I was passing a field, … read more The urban naturalist
How do they find the trellis?
Yesterday, I noticed that I had eight passionflower sprouts up in the yard. This is cause for great celebration, as passionflower not only has a splendid flower, but is the most reliable herbal remedy for insomnia. Passionflower loves to climb, and gets thick and fruitful if it has something to climb on. So I have three round … read more How do they find the trellis?
Blue to you
Do these flowers look blue to you? Well, I don’t think so. It’s purple to me. My guidebook calls it “blue.” But then, my guidebook also calls violets “blue.” Um, hello? “Violet” is a color as well as a plant name, and it’s not a synonym for any other color except purple. Here they are in the … read more Blue to you
Sex in the forest
The forest fairly screams with sex these days. Flowers are sticking their parts out, begging to be fertilized. Hey there, bee, you wanna give it a go? And yes it is sex – it’s a reproductive act and there are male and female parts involved. Today it was the skullcap, seducing with its purple hood: Whorled milkweed, … read more Sex in the forest
Poison and prettiness
As I left on my neighborhood walk the other day, I was jazzed about looking for the newest flowers of spring. The first thing I saw was a dead squirrel. This time of year there are many of them. The young’uns don’t know about cars yet, and they dash out into the road, directly under the wheels. … read more Poison and prettiness
Chickens on a truck
There was a hard rain falling, and I was driving to Atlanta. Got behind a truck. A big semi. In the rain, it wasn’t clear at first what the cargo was. Then I saw it was chickens. Live chickens. They were stuck in there every which way. Didn’t look like they had room to stand up … read more Chickens on a truck
The beautiful black rat snake
I stood at the door of the cabin and said to myself, “Huh, look at that branch sticking up out of the ground. It looks just like a snake’s head.” The branch moved. It was a black snake, sticking his head out of his hole. The snake seemed to hold absolutely concrete-still. Made my neck hurt … read more The beautiful black rat snake
Big brown jug
My sisters and I long ago stopped buying each other gifts for birthdays and Christmas. I think we all hate the process of shopping for presents because, when you live far apart, it’s a guessing game with too many wrong answers. There’s one gift that my sisters will accept any time of the year, though. It’s always … read more Big brown jug