Tag Archives: nature

Tree tourism

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A dear friend asked me last summer what my favorite tree is. I think of her question often, especially when I’ve found some new tree (new to me anyway). Is this new tree my favorite? Or is there one from home that’s irreplaceable in my heart? I’m never quite sure of the answer, and it probably changes with the seasons.

One of my favorite parts of traveling somewhere new is taking along a camera to capture memories of the place to take home with me. And I especially love photographing new or strange trees.

This past weekend found me in Santa Barbara, California, with its juxtaposition of native desert plants and tropical plants that require a lot of irrigation to thrive. I came across several fun trees, and I wanted to share a few of them with you here. Continue reading →

Nature’s pragmatic lessons

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Last Thursday, I came home from my afternoon walk with my dog to find two rabbits hanging out in the yard. Because there’s a bit of Mr. McGregor in my husband and me, and because we don’t want rabbits setting up camp in our yard or eating everything in our garden, I let our dog try to chase them away (with me still holding her by the leash). One bounded away, but the other just ran in circles around a newly-dug rabbit nest. Deciding the rabbit might be a new mother, I took the dog inside and then stood at the front door to watch.

That’s when I saw it – a movement in the grass near the front walk, a dark spot rustling the grass. I feared it might be a snake at first and walked carefully toward the area. Instead of a snake, here’s what I found: Continue reading →

The riotous garden

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“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” – Margaret Atwood

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He stood next to me looking out at our garden and said, “I want a riotous garden – like this.” He pointed specifically to the riot of irises and butterfly bush all grown over one another, and I see the dividing of bulbs that will soon come.

One view of a garden in our front yard

My husband and I built this raised garden when we were still newlyweds, adding stone and dirt and mulch and plants around an old oak tree that needed more dirt for its roots to thrive.

Some areas have grown in better than others. Beginner’s luck, I think, as I happen to get some plants in exactly the right place for them to grow riotously. Like the irises, mostly from my mother’s garden – purples, whites, yellows and sherbet-y combinations – that have taken off this year and created a bounty of blooms.  Continue reading →

Training dogs that rescue … trees?

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Spring is in the air, and for my part of the world, that means pine pollen is, too, turning the air and everything else a dusty yellow.

I can always gauge the level of spring fever by the number of tree and flower photos in Facebook status updates I see in a given day. Yesterday’s beginning of spring brought a profusion of blooms online. One friend posted a photo of a gorgeous bonsai tree blazing with fuchsia-colored blooms. Another posted a picture of Monet’s beautiful painting Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom).

A third friend posted a link to a story about a pear tree blooming at the site of the 9/11 memorial. The tree had been found severely damaged among the rubble after the attacks, was relocated and nursed back to health, and then replanted at the memorial site. Isn’t it amazing that someone thought to bother saving that tree and now visitors to the site can see it as an offering of beauty and hope and nature’s resilience?

Let’s turn back to that pine pollen, for a moment, and some amazing dogs who are being trained to make sure pine trees stick around and keep on giving us their tangible, hopeful announcement of spring every year.

Auburn University is doing some really cool work in a project called EcoDogs that trains dogs to detect certain items of ecological interest: animal droppings, baby fawns, boa constrictors and even tree fungi. That’s right: tree fungi. Continue reading →