Keeled scales! Finally, in real life and not just in pictures, I meet snake scales so up-close-and-personal, I not only see them, I feel them.
The snake let me touch, and then run a forefinger down the curving keyboard of scales.
Not smooth, not rough.
Pebbly.
Dry.
Warm from the sun.
My short, personal essay “What White Tree is Blooming Now” from 2018 has just been archived online, thanks to The Hopper, an environmental literary magazine. And the timing could not be more perfect…
Here’s the first bit, to test if you’d like to read more:
Continue reading “What White Tree is Blooming Now”It started. The procession of trees. The trees don’t move, but the white does: white tree blossoms, from species to species.
First, in late February and if not charred by sleet, come white flowers of star magnolia.
Stinky Bradford pears are next, trees so ubiquitous in corporate landscapes (and invasive in natural ones) that when they froth white, even people who don’t notice trees notice.
Then, dogwood. Everyone loves dogwood.
Serviceberry, hawthorn, black cherry, yellowwood, black locust, and so on, week by week of the rolling spring, one white tree bloom after the other. It won’t stop till summer, and by then, who is watching? By then, Nashville is a weedy jungle and we stay inside to escape the chiggers.But I’ll be watching. The procession is important. There are rules: only white, only trees, and only where I can see them while I go about my business.
No rant today: just the Beauty and Wonder of Crying Plants.
I’ve already posted here about guttation—the clunky term for a delicate process—but this morning’s weepers must be shared. As must be an update about what guttation really is…
Continue reading “Guttation: a square meal in a round drop”
I’m calling it. Dogwoods are in full bloom, but this morning dawned a surprising 42 degrees—parka weather for me—so I’m calling today a Dogwood Winter.
Dogwood winter is one of the “Little Winters” of olde tyme: one of the cold spells that snuck back to bite us (and our crops) when we thought cold spells were over.
Continue reading “Dogwood Winter / Dogwood Spring”
This Pearl Crescent is one reason why my To-Do list never graduates to Done. I’ll start a task—hanging laundry, pulling weeds, etc.—and then I’ll see a “bug.”
Full stop. Nothing else matters but a sudden, urgent need to know:
Who they are,
Why they are here,
What they need.
Here are my favorite “Whereas” statements in the new, bipartisan Resolution that just days ago declared April to be “National Native Plant Month:”
Continue reading “a National Native Plant Month!”
Easiest butterfly garden ever: let celery butts and carrot butts sprout, then stick ’em in soil.
Maybe I mean “easiest butterfly factory” ever, because these butts won’t just feed butterflies, they’ll make butterflies.
All summer, Black Swallowtail butterfly moms will find the leaves and lay eggs, and then you’ll have more Black Swallowtails.
And if you put your butts where you can see them every day, you can watch the whole butterfly lifecycle from the comfort of a lawn chair.
If you have not yet watched a butterfly lay an egg,
or a caterpillar hatch,
or a caterpillar molt,
or a caterpillar become a chrysalis,
or a chrysalis become a butterfly,
this scrap garden is your chance to increase your chances.
You MUST SEE THESE THINGS.
If you have a kid or a parent or a friend or soulmate or neighbor, then THEY MUST SEE THESE THINGS, TOO.
Continue reading “Instant Butterfly Garden (from scraps)”
“Smothered and Covered” works great for hashbrowns at Waffle House, but not for trees in your yard.
When invasive vines smother and cover trunks and branches, the tree—eventually—is toast.
Look around. It’s winter. Are shade trees casting shade from twigs that should be bare?
Are elms and hackberries magically green from soil to sky?
I have a winter hummingbird!
“Please consider leaving out your feeder year-round,” said the hummingbird researcher to Facebook, and for some reason I considered.
“Keep it cleaned, maintained and easily viewed and YOU might be one of the lucky ones to host a winter hummingbird.”
I want to be a lucky one, I thought, but I’m a slacker with feeders. It’s hard enough to keep scrubbing and filling and PROVIDING during normal hummingbird season (April to October), especially when I see no hummingbird for weeks at a time.
I need instant, gorgeous, iridescent, humming feedback that the work is worth it.
But, I fetched my feeder from storage. Maybe mold grows slower in winter?
Continue reading “Winter Hummingbird”
The Robin ‘Hood show is starting. Nashville ‘hoods keep robins all year, but we get an influx of winter robins, too, and right now all the robins are appearing in a hackberry near you.
November is the month I love hackberries all the more.
And, it’s the month hackberry haters hate them all the more.
The same reason explains both: ROBINS.
The Sidewalk Nature pic below is another Robin “hood:” the hood of a car. Surely the driver must was from out of town, because locals know better than to park under a hackberry full of robins.
Continue reading “Robins for Thanksgiving”
Sidewalk Nature 