Frost on the Sky
The sky in February. Can’t seem to make up its mind. Clouds racing along, shoved by the sub-zero winds high above us. Is it clearing? Clouding up? Blizzard? Flurry? Even the Weather Channel doesn’t know. One minute, spring coming. The next minute, lots of winter left. Some days the sky is as gray as a wall of cement. Other days, as blue as a June noon. Ouch. When searching for metaphors, Robert Frost, poet and patron saint of nature observers, said it better. He would have been a wonderful blogger–he went out every day and wrote down his thoughts on mud puddles and stumps...
Read MoreRed Oak: You Can Go Home Again
This is…home. Top floor apartment, left-hand side. If you suddenly came up behind me and shouted “Where do you live?!”–I swear the first image that would pop into my head would be this one. 6A Old Hickory Drive, Albany, New York. We moved in here when I was in grade school and moved out when I went off to college. The other day I went back there to take a nostalgic look around. And amazingly, it was exactly as I had remembered it–except, of course, that everything had magically shrunk in size. But the houses were the same (my door used to be painted green,...
Read MoreMy Friend Bud
Under the snow, the leaves of spring are waiting. Thanks to Wells Horton for capturing this photo. http://wells-horton.smugmug.com/ One of my naturalist friends, Glenn Humphrey, likes to teach kids about “my friend Bud.” Buds, in strict botanic terminology, are those little brown bumps on the ends of twigs that no one ever notices. Until one fine day, when the little bumps burst open and reveal the leaves and blossoms of spring we’re all panting for. As miraculous as a chick hatching out of its shell. But when did Bud start incubating those baby leaves? Last spring. At the...
Read MoreQueen Anne’s Lace: Carrots and Butterflies
No, the train isn’t barrelling down the track here. The weeds growing up through the railroad tracks and under the wheels show how many months or even years it’s been since this train went anywhere. Railroad tracks are interesting little habitats. They cut, straight as an arrow, through cities, meadows, forests, mountains. Back in the days when people first built railroads all across the country, the rail embankments were the first road for plants to travel. Dozens, even hundreds of species of plants moved along the tracks–not puffing along at sixty miles an hour like the...
Read MoreTo Feed a Mockingbird
Another day, another parking lot. Now this might not look like a National Park or anything. But I drove into this parking lot in Guilderland, NY the other day, parked, and sat there thinking about nothing in particular for a minute. And in sixty seconds flat I had observed three gray squirrels, a flock of starlings, and a mockingbird. I’m no great birder, but I’m sure it was a mockingbird—big gray bird, long graceful tail, and a white flash under the wings as it flew into the bushes. Mockingbirds increasingly winter here in New York State, and they love thickets and scrub and berries....
Read MoreCold Winter Day
A cold day today. Snow, and then sunshine that seems colder than the snow. A hard day for chickadees and goldfinches and redpolls and nuthatches and such to keep warm. Good thing my backyard has a lot of birdfeeders in it. Lots of food for feathered friends. What, you don’t see the birdfeeders? I mean all those goldenrods, asters, dogwoods, grasses–all the shrubby, seedy, weedy stuff we haven’t mowed in…gosh, we haven’t mowed this back field in probably ten years. Bird restaurant.
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