It’s still Thursday, as I write this, and they’re still counting. Meanwhile, everything about the show I’m watching makes me feel better, even when someone chooses to make a steamed treacle pudding. Because of this show I can now tell a fiddly from a stodgy sponge. I know – by sight, at least — proper […]
The big red van will soon be stuffed to the gills. Sometimes you just need new views, fresh air, and worries as basic as “do we have enough water”? So, we’re heading to West Virginia. Country roads and all that jazz. Full disclosure: It’s not quite the way I used to do it. For example, […]
If 2020 has been good for anything except Purell sales, it’s been good for backyard observations. I’m fortunate to have two backyards–one in the woods, one in the ‘burbs–which gives me double the opportunity to get to know interesting critters. I’m populating this post with an array of creatures I’ve met (chased? trapped?) while hiding […]
I doubt I need to elaborate to make you love these itty bitty frogs that, on a dark and steamy night some weeks ago, emerged from our pond and pipped away (my term; they just weren’t big enough to properly “hop”) into the unknown. They didn’t even mind me with my flashlight, sitting on the […]
My latest happy distraction is the candy-stick of a male dragonfly that has taken over my backyard pond. A gorgeous blue dasher, he zips (dashes!) in circles around me, hovers remarkably close to my face like some tiny drone, then finally alights on a twig nearby, watching me—truly watching–with his cartoonishly large compound eyes. His […]
It never hurts to celebrate, again, the oddities of life on Earth. Here’s a piece about a discovery reported in 2017 that reminds us of our humble beginnings. Our microscopic relative might have looked like this. The fossil, waaaaay bigger than real life. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Mouth. Anus. Reproductive bit in between. […]
This huge bug hurled itself at me the other day and missed. It landed just to my left, on the wooden deck, and there it stayed—long enough for me to spend a little time admiring it. Alaus oculatus is what it was, and likely still is these few days later, named for its false “eyes.” […]
My father isn’t Superman. He doesn’t wear shiny Spandex and a cape, he can’t fly. If he could, he would be out of there. Out of there immediately, flying up and out into the clean air. The nursing home where my father lives is now crawling with Covid-19. Thirty-eight cases and counting, ten of those […]