Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in …
In a rut III, the chase
A mini photo essay of sorts. As I arrived home this evening, the road was blocked by a fine-looking stag and two young does. I’ve mentioned the scientific name for mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus, but I haven’t really said what it means, nor have I made much of a distinction between the word stag and …
The Ravine
T. S. Eliot knew cats. His 1939 collection of poems, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, introduces us to the fact that cats have three names: an everyday one, a peculiar one (like Coricopat or Jellylorum), and one that only the cat knows. Many people are familiar with the idea, since “The Naming of Cats” …
Plains Cottonwood
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. I used to teach this verse …
Magician, Mystic, Maker
Our first blog post — was it only a week or so ago? — mentioned how, for me, the cycle of the seasons, the perpetual regeneration of living things, seemingly sprung out of nothing: bare ground, frozen ground, was inseparable from our own human urge to make stuff. Where does a musician’s melody come from, …
In a rut II, the Brunftzeit
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the writer, having the very sensible name Bardh Godwyn, passed down over generations by a hard-working and entirely believable family of Celtic forest dwellers, and certainly not a convenient pseudonym, instead had been given the unfortunate surname Brunst. It’s a peculiar enough thing to call someone, but …
In a rut
The deer have started to return. Mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus. A word about binomials first. I use them a fair bit, and there are two reasons: one, they’re much more reliable than common names — Pandion haliaetus is always an osprey, whereas “fish hawks” or “seahawks” can be any number of birds, or football teams, …
In the key of Whaa?
Here’s that picture of the hairy false goldenaster I mentioned in the last post. Now, if you didn’t know it was a hairy false goldenaster (I mean really, look at it) and even if you didn’t know your botany from your Bimini, you could probably guess it was at least a member of the Asteraceae …
Let me illustrate
Last night’s windstorm blew the cover off the hot tub. It ended up in the driveway at the bottom of the little hill the tub perches on, only a few feet from the Subaru. I suppose a stronger gust — stronger than the 40mph wind they said we got in the night — might have …
Rocky Mountain Juniper
Local ecosystems can vary over even small distances, so while both Red Cedar and nearby Reservoir Ridge share similar altitude, dry rocky soil, and common high plains shrubs like Rhus trilobata, Reservoir Ridge — just across Satanka Cove from us — has something in short supply on this hill: Rocky Mountain Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum). It’s …
