It’s been a year since we here in the mid-Atlantic were visited by my favorite bug and my favorite biological event: the emergence of Brood X, the 17-year-cicadas. I loved them in 1987, I loved them in 2004, and I loved them in 2021. Apparently cicadas sometimes get confused about how long 17 years is, […]
Helen
Helen and I argued about the Bay Area back in 2017. I mostly love it, she mostly does not. So, how have I not been there since late 2019?! (You know how.) I’m going back this weekend and I’ll see how the 2022 Bay compares to my happy memories and/or Helen’s less happy ones. * […]
Last weekend I went to the zoo, something I hadn’t done in at least two years and probably much longer. A friend was visiting with her kid, a zoo enthusiast who’d been looking forward to it for weeks. While at the zoo we saw many wondrous things. Two Asian elephants. A number of surprisingly giant […]
In Washington, D.C., in winter, a lot of horrible things fall out of the sky. We sometimes get a good honest snowfall. But usually it’s something worse – some godforsaken blend of snow and rain and ice and sleet that coats everything and makes you not want to attempt to stand on any hard surface […]
One of the great pleasures of the pandemic era has been going on hikes with my dad. We live in the Washington, D.C. area. When you think of this area, you may not think of hiking. But my parents live quite close to an undeveloped ravine with beautiful tall trees, kingfishers, and the occasional Common […]
The last time I wrote for this blog, I mentioned the black walnut close to my window. It wasn’t the closest tree to my apartment – that’s a catalpa that grows long beans and screens the morning light for me – but it was the second closest, and the walnuttiest. I wrote: I just recently […]
I’ve spent a lot more time in a car than I used to, since the pandemic started. Because of not wanting to be in spaces where other people are exhaling. On Sunday, I spent a few half-hour stretches in a car. And I noticed a number of things, and I’m here to tell you about […]
On August 17, a magical text arrived. It read, in part: “I have many many ripe figs just a block or so away. They are in the tree ripening as I text. Can’t eat them fast enough. Please come on over whenever and pick yourself some!!” I don’t know that I’d ever eaten a fresh […]