Early autumn is the heyday of the orb-weaver spiders. A spider's egg sac bursts open in spring, and the infinitesimal hatchlings spend all summer growing and hiding from predators. By fall, they are large enough to emerge from their secret places and spin their marvelous webs. Every night the female makes an intricate trap for … Continue reading In Darkness
Back in July, as I sat before the butterfly enclosure in my family room, waiting to see if maggots would emerge from a twitching monarch caterpillar clinging to the screen at the top of the cage, two thoughts occurred to me: 1) is the caterpillar suffering? And 2) is this what obsession looks like? Here in … Continue reading Meddling with Monarchs
This is a picture of a red-tailed hawk. The hawk’s tell-tale color is muted in females, in certain lights almost brown, and the dead tree this hawk often uses as a hunting perch is distant enough from the street to make the bird’s identity a matter for debate. My neighbors are convinced it’s an eagle. … Continue reading Not Always in the Sky
The autumnal equinox came and went last week, but you wouldn't know it by the weather here: yesterday's high was 93, and today's was only marginally less enervating. On the bright side, the little English daisies, which normally bloom in June, have come back for a second, more subdued round of greetings during this extended … Continue reading Different
The arrival of Hurricane Harvey ushered in an unseasonable cool spell here in Middle Tennessee, and the last fragments of Hurricane Irma arrived before those blessedly cool days could give way to our regularly scheduled heat and haze. I wouldn't wish a hurricane on anyone, but I admit to being grateful for the rain. I drove … Continue reading In Between
Early this summer at Radnor Lake State Natural Area and Wildlife Refuge, a piebald fawn was born. Her twin is reddish-brown and spotted with white, the usual color of a newborn white-tailed deer, but the piebald fawn is mostly white with reddish-brown markings. Next to her mother and her twin, she looks like a magical … Continue reading Searching for the Piebald Fawn
The remnants of Hurricane Harvey arrived in Nashville on Thursday, dropping ten inches of rain overnight, spinning off at least two tornadoes, and outmatching the banks of area rivers and creeks. We've had a surprising amount of rain this summer, but Harvey was a shock here in landlocked Tennessee. Rain was coming in through the … Continue reading Imagination
Back to school season is always a busy time in families, especially in a teacher's family, but these last two weeks have been unusually chaotic. All jumbled up together were writing deadlines, crunch time at work, the family patriarch's birthday, a series of houseguests, a long-distance wedding (for which there were no suitable shoes in … Continue reading Ragged
Today something ineffable, something beyond the reach of my own language, happened in the everyday sky. The air turned blue and then silver. A dog barked. A bird whose song I don’t know began to sing and then fell silent. The air cooled, and suddenly Venus was gleaming in the midnight-blue pitch of the sky. The … Continue reading A Ring of Fire
Out in the pollinator garden, the season of plenty has given way to the season of competition as ruby-throated hummingbirds bulk up for the coming migration, goldfinches stuff themselves with flower seeds against a lean winter, and insects squeeze in one more round of procreation before the daylight shortens and the cold creeps in. All day … Continue reading Territorial
