This is a photo of a “possum” (opossum), Didelphis virginiana, that was in our yard last week. I had to shine a flashlight on it in order to take a picture because my camera doesn’t have a flash suitable for night photos. It is the largest possum I have ever seen. The possum is [...]

The red fox returned last week. About 9:30 p.m. I heard the alarm calls for a few minutes, then silence.  It’s strange how this is the first time I’ve heard it calling since March. That’s from vernal equinox to summer solstice, almost. Does it have some kind of internal clock that sends it to this [...]

    In the late ’90s I was walking up the main road to the back entrance of the Palace. I encountered a very large turtle on the side of the road opposite the Palace driveway. It had a shell that was about 12″ in diameter, so I knew that it was very old. I was [...]

This is the herb motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) in flower:

    There is a chorus outside my window. This haiku seems appropriate for this first day of summer:
The cricket
proudly pricks up its whiskers
and sings.
—-Issa
(trans. by Stephen Addiss)

    Today is celebrated as West Virginia Day, in honor of the entrance into statehood of West Virginia. It split from Virginia in 1863 and today marks the 144th anniversary. West Virginia is noted for great natural beauty, an abundance of wildlife, and a huge variety of plants. This is a photo of [...]

“I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular . . .”
—-from When Death Comes, by Mary Oliver

This is the young buck who visited our yard. His antlers are about 3-4 inches long.

    I’ve just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. It is the account of her family’s one year experiment in eating locally grown food (theirs and others nearby). In order to do this, they moved from Arizona to Virginia. They already owned an old family farm in the Virginia countryside, so they didn’t [...]

Yesterday we traveled to Barkcamp State Park, just past St. Clairsville, Ohio. The lake was formed from the damming of a creek (1963).  I observed two different species of hawk and a great blue heron. One of the hawks, the one with the longest wings,  swooped down and snatched something from the water.  It was [...]