Oaks have cycles as to when they produce acorns and this will turn out to be a mast year with loads of acorns falling from the trees. Interestingly enough, this is also looking like it’ll be a mast year for apples as I have been watching turkeys in the orchards consuming the drops, so get…
Tag Archives: Hearken to Avalon
Ah, summer! As the days heat up delightful floral scents permeate the air. And some of the most delicious scents are coming from roses. My favorite is the beach rose (Rosa rugosa), a squat, deciduous shrub standing 3-6 feet tall, in the family Rosaceae, having dark green leaves, and flowers ranging in color from white…
“Here, I pray all day long and with my whole body, for my limbs are a moving benediction to the Holy Wild.” ~ Danielle Dulsky, The Holy Wild It’s true. I bit into the forbidden fruit. I even dipped it in forbidden honey, fresh from the wild hive, outside the garden, but within tantalizing reach.…
Sometimes when I think about the old ones who have gone before us, I consider what they’ve left behind – stone walls meandering through the woods, apple trees with forests growing up around them, juniper bushes in the old fields, maples trees like sentinels lining backcountry roads, unruly flower beds that have taken on a…
I think the spinster needs rebranding. A spinster has come to mean what a woman is not instead of who she is. A spinster has been defined as an older unmarried woman; as if marriage was of the utmost importance in defining one’s self. A spinster been called an old maid as if she is…
Humans are Part of Nature On a scientific level I think many of us humans have come to recognize that we are part of Nature; that we exist only because the circumstances meet the needs of oxygen-based lifeforms. But on so many other levels we consider Nature separate – either wilderness to protect from us…
The first Saturday in March has proven to be perfect tracking weather. The snow is firm enough so that lighter animals (i.e., non-humans) are not punching through too deeply, but just enough to leave clear prints. One can see the clear X in the four-digit print of the red fox and the five-digit prints of…
Raucous Raptors As I traversed the slippery driveway to the mailbox on the night of February 15th I heard the distinct hooting of one of the resident Barred Owls. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo; hoo-hoo-hoo-hoowah-wah. Ah, and so it has begun. The nightly serenating has commenced as the male woos his lady. Courtship takes place in February and behavior…
A gunshot echoes from the silence as I breathe in the dawn. If my ears could perk and swivel like a deer, I would alert myself to the source of the sound. It’s November and then December – hunting season in the Hilltowns. Echoing shots have become such a familiar sound to me and I…
Queen of the Fall She is no monk, hiding her face from the sun; her hood brazenly pushed back daring you to come in closer. Though she is the bane of every living mammal she stands defiant in the face of death. Frost covers her cloak yet she breathes in the waning light. She presides…
