Yearly Archives: 2015

We are having Indian summer with warm sunny days in early autumn. The leaves are still mostly green, so it feels in some ways as if the seasons haven’t turned.  Seeing this grasshopper I was reminded of the old Aesop’s fable about the ant and the grasshopper. The industrious ants […]

After all the recent rain I am more appreciative of sunshine, glad for something other than uniform damp gray. I am not taking sunny days for granted, spending more time admiring the sky. I was delighted at this sunset that seemed like a volcanic eruption of color. The mountain is […]

Years ago as a graduate student at Harvard I was part of a team documenting the first case of carnivory in bromeliads. We spent time in Venezuela studying Brocchinia reducta, a plant living in poor sandy and boggy soils that developed a way to eat insects as a means of […]

It is fantastic to finally have a full day of sunshine again! When my brother came to visit he was concerned about the drought from the dry summer here, since he planned to hike and camp along a local river. He casually wished for rain, wanting the river to be […]

World Animal Day was started in 1931 by ecologists in Italy to raise awareness of endangered species, with the current emphasis on the welfare of animals around the world. October 4 was chosen as the feast day of Francis of Assisi who is the patron saint of animals, though the […]

My aunt was a nature photographer, and often emphasized the human element in her photos. Most of her hikes and travels were done with my uncle who would obligingly pose in her photos, most often in the foreground looking pensively off into her landscape. Perhaps it was a fashion of […]

There are not too many garden flowers that linger into October, but one of my favorites is wand flower. I planted this at my first home many years ago when I lived in central North Carolina, and have enjoyed it in many gardens since. In its native home in Mexico […]

The birth of impressionism had an unpromising start. The critic Louis Leroy coined the term impressionist in the title of his unflattering review of Monet’s painting ‘Impression, Sunrise’ which he concluded saying, “Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” Impressionism was partly a response to photography, […]

I travel back and forth between the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina quite a bit. My navigation system assures me the drive should be only a bit over an hour, but I have never achieved that pace. I blame it on the scenic overlooks beckoning me to pull over […]