I’m cross-posting these poems in my CyranoWriter.com creative writing blog.
Identifying plants — especially native ones — can be a somewhat difficult process, especially if you’ve moved (as I have) to a bio-zone different from where you’ve lived before. I was talking about this issue with my brother Gene, out in Washington State. He’s gotten very good at identifying native plants on Vashon Island, where…
Is Nature’s Guys nature-focused lifestyle sustainable? It is a question I’ve asked myself a lot, perhaps no more than yesterday when, with an allergy-induced fever, I worked myself into a sweat clearing away privet bushes, planting an elderberry plant and a yellow squash by the creek, cleaned out the ditch of old, disgarded tires; and…
Recently, I relaxed in the water rapids and deep pools of the #WestChickamaugaCreek near my home in Northwest Georgia. It was a typical hot, muggy, sunny Georgia noon, and the cool water called my name. As I floated, wandered and sat in the creek — sometimes only inches deep, sometimes over my head — I…
The Northwest Georgia summer is hot. That doesn’t surprise me. I expected the weight of heat like an oven. What shocks my mind, not my system, is that August on the banks of the West Chickamauga is not as uncomfortable as I remember Wisconsin being. Mid-August growing up in Milwaukee when it was 99 +…
Today, in a single, natural life and death moment, I rediscovered the phrase “To Kill A Mockingbird.” It’s spring. Birds aren’t known for paying attention when they’re in love. So it was, evidently, with the mockingbird that jumped into the path of my ragtop today. I didn’t even hear a thunk, but looking in my…
Yesterday, May 5, 2018, was a Big Day in birding, and it left me wishing I knew bird songs better. First, what’s a “Big Day”? If you’ve seen the Jack Black / Steve Martin movie “The Big Year”, it’s kind of like that. www.eBird.org organized a world-wide “Big Day”, where birders all over the world…