Happy Holidays

What pleases us so much is that this neighbor is nearly at the end of the road -- residents of just six houses, their guests, the mailman, & the FedEx & UPS guys are the only ones who drive past. Truly happiness for happiness' sake.

Wahrani Trees

Autumn all colored in.

Wahrani Trail

starfish

from Eleanor Lerman's poem Starfish

"This is what life does. It lets you walk up to

the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a

stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have

your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman

down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,

the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,

is this a message, finally, or just another day?"

Here's the rest of it

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19246

I have wondered about starfish in New Kent.

We've only got fresh water. Am I s.o.l.? No.

Today, I saw them swimming through the forest.

rebranding

1. Radio announcer credited the inteviewee as being from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Hey, my degree is from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. I've been rebranded! What's a girl to do? Solicit contribution from Mr. Booth to underwrite rebranding of my sense of self?

2. We're renaming our parrot fka Mercury, Hermes. There is precedence. Actually, since this is the Greek name replacing the Roman, such action is prebranding.

3. And finally, home is hereby renamed Log On Innstitute.

our nation's symbol in my neighborhood

I say it's high time we, the bleeding heart, recycling, organic eating, enviornmentally & socially conscious liberals, reclaim our awesome national symbol from the ddt-spreading, forest destroying, chemical dumping, pipeline laying, hate mongering, right wing jingoists. After all, it was the Rachel Carson following activists that saved the bald eagle from destruction. They're our birds now!

last gasps of an era

seen in Windsor Farms on River Road

Richmond VA

not my county

dead wren

window casualty - made quite the thud

fears

I obsess about two leeches found on the bottom of my kayak Sunday.
I draw comfort in thoughts that bears are not common here & are unlikely to walk through my screen doors.
My friends worry that, driving home, I'll strike.
My government wants me to dread foreign terrorists, nuclear weapons & chemical attacks.

Watch List

treefrogs on windows, doors, walls & plants
spring peeper - actually seen!
Eastern box turtle - brilliantly colored strolling after rainstorm
yellow-bellied flycatchers
acraea moth caterpillar
woolly bear caterpillar
hummingbird moths
monarchs
Eastern tiger swallowtails
Eastern black swallowtails
more Eastern black swallowtail caterpillars
neighbor's pet duck eloping with Canadian geese
swimming otter
compost eating raccoon
2 leeches on kayak bottom
pencil sized brown snake, not venomous
ravenous, territorial & perching ruby throated hummingbirds
(smaller than swallowtails)
barred owls - heard & seen
bald eagle perching
many Carolina wrens
laughing gulls
unrecognzed woodpeckers after storm
duct-taped tuba at the dump
mushrooms - brown, red, white, fresh & rotten