Outdoors
Notes from a plant nerd: Orchidaceous!
Please don’t get me wrong, I love the orchids of springtime. Love them. They tend to be as big and showy and beautiful as springtime itself. Ladyslipper orchids, both yellow and pink (Cypripedium acaule and C. parviflorum) and showy orchis (Galearis spectabilis) are certainly beautiful and fun to see blooming in the woods in the spring.
Up Moses Creek: ‘When, Wren?’
Finally, we can go out the back door again. For a month we made a front door detour around an unplanned construction project on the back porch.
Respect your elders
Our culture tends to celebrate youth and youthfulness above all other life phases. Growth and vitality are venerated over age and wisdom. This wasn’t always the case.
The axe always forgets, the tree always remembers
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to cut it up and use it for heat or timber, is it a waste of resources? Or, put another way, are humans the only reason that all other life on Earth was created?
Up Moses Creek: Thinking Like an Empty
I was at Lazy Hiker brewpub in Sylva enjoying a meal with Moses Creek friends and talking about the neighborhood trash pick-up that was planned for the morrow — part of Jackson County’s “Cleaning Up the Mountains” campaign — when one of them mentioned another person who lives up the creek and predicted that we’d see his Michelob Ultra empties along the road. My friend had picked up after him more than once.
Notes from a plant nerd: What a Lark
I wear a few different hats in my world. A big straw hat for working in the garden or walking out in the sun. Wool caps and toboggans for the colder mornings of spring. Party hats for the celebrations. I’ve even been known to wear a tricorne hat when visiting Colonial Williamsburg as a kid.
Notes from a plant nerd: Spring, Sprang, Sprung, Sproing! What is Springtime?
Spring has fully sprung across Southern Appalachia, as we are awakened daily to birdsong and the bustling morning activity of bees and butterflies.
Up Moses Creek: A Siphon Does Not Sip
Ready?” I shout over my shoulder up towards the pond. I am straddling the end of a long, white plastic pipe filled with water, its end taped shut with a wrap of 5-mil plastic.
Notes from a plant nerd: Hope for the Hemlocks
In springtime, all things are possible. Everything around you that is alive is imbued right now with the same hopeful energy.
