The cicadas this year are out in force - a seventeen year brood. An event like that reminds me that there is no better place to live than the present. I'm glad to hear it, and glad to catch up with family and old friends.
I'm so over work on the real. My last day was Friday. Goodbye to AmeriCorps! It was a pleasure serving you, America - eliminating poverty and the like - but I must be goin' now. Well I'm on my way. I don't know where I'm going. I'm taking my time but I don't know where. I awoke early this morning before the sun had risen. A faint glow could be seen in the eastern sky and only the most brightest stars were still alight in the sky. I walked off the porch (where I'd been sleeping) and looked for the moon, but the moon had sunk too far west and was blocked by the neighbor's house (the same neighbor who keeps complaining to the city that our chicken coop is on their property). Chris, me roomie, told me of a lunar eclipse, but because the moon wasn't in view, I went back to the couch on the porch and lay down watching the dawn get on. Later in the morning, after I'd been to the bank and the post office to arrange for my impending trip - oh, did I m...
In the flat, coastal lands of Florida, one can barely step outside his door without falling into a swamp, and should he manage to avoid the murky waters, he will take not one more step before noticing some unabashed bird or reptilian take full advantage of the natural abundance. Indeed, as I write these words, I look out the window and see dark ripples spreading across the surface of a pond, and having now two weeks to feel the dirt and smell the air near Tampa, Florida, I can imagaine a few choice critters from which the ripples may radiate. Out in the full moon of a Gulf Coast night, with the stink of decaying plants wafting off the wetlands, the King of all predators glides without sound down through the millenia. I intend to meet him, if from a distance - a cautious yet thrilling distance. To that end, earlier this week, I studied what I could of this environment. The Cabbage Palm, state tree of Florida. It can be distinguished from other palms by observing th...
After breakfast, as I walked back to the hotel, a speck of color caught mine eye. It was flotsam in a green sea. There at lawn's edge, stood a flower proudly sunning itself, haughty though small, in the humid, salty air that blows through Newport News. Flowers stun me, halt me in my tracks, and draw me close, especially the violets. I've spent hours combing hillsides for the delicate beauties. I prize their faint scent, turn it into mead of the most delicious purple hue. Deep in a cold Ohio winter, a bottle of the bubbly brew recalls the warm sunshine of spring. This member of the violet family, Viola Tricolor, is a European native that is commonly planted as an ornamental here on the Continent. Sometimes it escapes cultivation, setting a tiny seed or two adrift on the wind to land underfoot, or perhaps to find a desert island, inhabited only by the native grasses, on which to start anew. It goes by many common names, including Heart's Ease an...
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