Our dog has become very anxious about recent thunderstorms. She gets nervous and barks, something I try to discourage. Petting to try to comfort her seems to help, but only works if she will stay near one of us. Over the last few days, we’ve heard random firecrackers in the neighborhood. At night, these seem […]
Category Archives: culture
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.” — Kahlil Gibran I grew up very near the 30” rainfall line that transverses Texas and the entire U.S. from north to south and reflects the significant climate differences. Science writer Harvey Leifert described it as follows: “It separated “cattle country” from “farm country”. Crops […]
Recently, the BBC released a list of the 100 best children’s books ever. Reading the list evoked my childhood and even my later youth. My father read to us frequently, and I became the reader for my younger sister, a role I kept into my teens. My wife and I both read to our son, […]
“All are from the dust, and to dust all return.” ~ Ecclesiastes 3:20 Over the last week or so, I’ve been taking my compost pile apart to move it. Normally, I take it apart in the early spring to separate the good decomposed material in the center of the pile from the un-decomposed (composed?) […]
“Among the first to document the exuberance of urban ecosystems were casual observers and curious botanists in war-torn Europe in the 1940s. The rubble-strewn cities of World War II, to the astonishment of their inhabitants, very quickly brimmed with plant and animal life. The vegetation that emerged from the debris was totally unexpected, a cornucopia […]
Edinburgh Castle rises above craggy heights in the middle of the city, part castle and part palace, the home of Scottish royalty. An ancient hill fort dating to before the seventh century, Edinburgh’s steep cliffs and rocky slopes preclude entry or attack from all but one side. Today the Royal Mile is filled with buildings […]
“Farmers are the heroes.” ~ Rhett Brian Burning is an age-old practice to clear the fields of the remains of last year’s crops, and it makes plowing and seeding much easier. However, poet and journalist Rhett Brian reports, “At roughly the same time each year, 2 million farmers across Punjab and Haryana set their […]
“For gardeners, this is the season of lists and callow hopefulness: hundreds of thousands of bewitched readers are poring over their catalogues, making lists for their seed and plant orders, and dreaming their dreams,” ~ Katherine S. White, A Romp in the Garden, The New Yorker Magazine Every winter the Nichol’s Garden Catalog arrives to […]
Think of the cave drawings that tell a story or capture a moment from some year BC. Someone meticulously scratched images on a rock wall to immortalize the event. Men with spears, mastodons, cave bears, big cats or buffalo tell the tale of a hunt and survival. Later, colors were added to better and more […]
“Wild thing (bam, bam bomp!) You make my heart sing (bam, bam bomp!) You make everything … groovy.” ~ The Troggs My sister reports from San Antonio that she has made friends with a neighborhood possum. She occasionally puts food out for it, mostly leftovers of some kind. Possums are omnivores, so they eat […]
Writes of Nature 