A June landscape is incomplete without water. Best of all, the river; but if not this, then a creek, a brook, or even the quiet mill-pond. However pleasant the day may be, the breeze cool, the blossoms bright, the shade dense, the sunshine tempered, there still is something wanting. The world has an unfinished look when there is no water in view, and wild life is largely of the same opinion. I have often found many an upland field almost deserted when the meadows and the river bank were crowded. ~ Charles Conrad Abbott (Days Out of Doors)
Everywhere, from sunup to sunup, the world is full of song. The days are hot, hot, and all the day long I listen to the bees lifting from flower to flower, to the watchful chipmunk sounding its chock chock chock alarm while the red-tailed hawk wheels, crying, high in the sky. I can’t see the songbirds in the dappled light of a thousand leafy branches, but I can hear them calling from the trees. ~ Margaret Renkl (The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)
3.21.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden sandhills pyxie-moss
Last year the sandhills pyxie-moss was blooming on January 28 and was still blooming on March 7. This year we saw only one flower on the clump on February 26, but finally, on this March 21 visit we found a full bloom! We will keep checking on it. You may remember that this miniature shrub is very rare and found only in a couple of North Carolina counties.
trailing arbutus
hepatica
little sweet Betsy
When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. ~ John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)
rue-anemone
purple cress aka limestone bittercress
bloodroot
It seems reasonable to believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. ~ Rachel Carson (Silent Spring)
eastern red columbine
eastern redbud
sassafras (redbud in the distance)
After enjoying this wonder-filled morning, a pleasant surprise was waiting for me at home in the evening. As I went to close the drapes in the living room I noticed a pretty mourning dove sitting on the edge of the birdbath on our deck. She was watching me. We made eye contact and we gazed at each other for the longest time. Tim finally went and got the camera and took this picture of her, still looking at me. Years ago, and shortly after my mother died, a pair of mourning doves used to keep me company in my garden while I was out there weeding it, but it’s been many years since I’ve had one make contact with me like this. I felt comforted.
mourning dove photo by Tim
Things have been pretty discouraging around here since Tim had his stents put in. Thankfully he seems to be doing well in cardio rehab. But my dear sister has been diagnosed with the same kind of endometrial cancer I had back in 2017, and her prognosis may not be as favorable as mine was. Also, due to osteoporosis I’ve had to give up my beloved yoga practice. I’ve replaced it with tai chi, which I am liking well enough, but I still find myself grieving for yet another loss. I was very grateful for the solace the mourning dove was offering me.
Tuesday’s visit to the botanical garden was bright and sunny, and we enjoyed seeing the gentle, even light of the approaching equinox illuminating grasses, spring ephemerals, and shrub buds and blooms. Every year before spring arrives there are controlled burns in some of the piedmont and coastal plain gardens, and we happened to catch sight of one that day. We even spotted a squirrel along a path, so busy eating a bundle of plant stocks and leaves that he didn’t notice how close we were to him.
I can scroll and worry indoors, or I can step outside and remember how it feels to be part of something larger, something timeless, a world that reaches beyond me and includes me, too. The spring ephemerals have only the smallest window for blooming, and so they bloom when the sunlight reaches them. Once the forest becomes enveloped in green and the sunlight closes off again, they will wait for the light to come back. ~ Margaret Renkl (The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)
dimpled trout lily
little sweet Betsy
‘lemon drop’ swamp azalea
‘Georgia blue’ speedwell
Lenten rose
By Chivalries as tiny, A Blossom, or a Book, The seeds of smiles are planted — Which blossom in the dark. ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #37)
weeping forsythia
The native wildflowers and grasses in these gardens beds evolved with periodic wildfires, which keep trees and shrubs from growing in and return nutrients to the soil. In a few weeks, new growth will be emerging from the ashes. ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden (Facebook, March 10, 2025)
a yearly controlled burn in the Coastal Plain Habitat
So many simple ‘chivalries’ exist and noticing even a few of them can bring us great pleasure and help us to ‘remember how it feels to be a part of something larger.’
7.18.22 ~ Groton, Connecticut great blue heron feeding
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~ Wendell Berry (The Peace of Wild Things)
“Autumn Berries & Flowers in Brown Pot” by John Constable
The Honorable Harvest asks us to give back, in reciprocity, for what we have been given. Reciprocity helps resolve the moral tension of taking a life by giving in return something of value that sustains the ones who sustain us. One of our responsibilities as human people is to find ways to enter into reciprocity with the more-than-human world. We can do it through gratitude, through ceremony, through land stewardship, science, art, and in everyday acts of practical reverence. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge & The Teachings of Plants)
At last! I found some mourning doves in North Carolina! I think these two were probably a pair. I’ve really missed seeing these gentle birds, who frequently visited my balcony in Connecticut, and also used to hang out with me whenever I was weeding my garden. They had come into my life to comfort me after my mother died in 1991. Now I feel my mother’s spirit here. More of this story here.
As I was photographing the mourning doves I got the feeling someone was watching me. Turned out to be a squirrel on a nearby tree, eye level with me. I didn’t need to zoom in at all.
Also close by was a tufted titmouse who was diligently looking for something to eat inside that twig.
Down a different path we encountered a northern cardinal walking ahead of us, and then turning around to give us this backward glance.
Another northern cardinal was way high up in a pine tree, tackling a couple of nuts.
pine needles in the water, leaves hanging over the water
I think I’ve seen a red-bellied woodpecker down here, but this female is the first one I’ve photographed. Isn’t she pretty? It was definitely my lucky day in the botanical garden.
She was inside the wonderful garden and she could come through the door under the ivy any time and she felt as if she had found a world all her own. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)
11.4.24 ~ Anderson Community Park, Carrboro, North Carolina
We found a lovely little walk around Anderson Pond in Carrboro’s largest town park. The fall colors were very pretty but I was disappointed to not see any waterbirds.
Trees don’t simply maintain the conditions necessary for human and most animal life on Earth; trees created those conditions through the community of forests. Trees paved the way for the human family. The debt we owe them is too big to ever repay. ~ Diana Beresford-Kroeger (To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest)
This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived. ~ Richard Powers (The Overstory: A Novel)
Carrboro has been recognized as a Tree City USA for 39 years by the Arbor Day Foundation. It’s one of 3,577 tree cities found across the nation. Every time we leave the house I love seeing all the trees in our densely wooded neighborhoods. And I love looking out our windows and seeing almost nothing but leaves!
Our walks are usually taken in the morning but we decided to go for an afternoon meander this time. Autumn is in the air even though the temperatures are above normal. The sun felt so good on my bare arms!
chalk maple
A southern variation of sugar maple, chalk maple grows to 25 ft. and usually has 2-3 trunks. Its attractive, mature bark is chalky-surfaced. The significant landscape feature of this tree is its brilliant fall foliage. ~ Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center website
aster
a very busy bee
sassafras
tickseed
male northern cardinal
female northern cardinal
oakleaf hydrangea
Before we left the garden we took a peek inside a little, dark, windowless shed called the Herb House. It was air-conditioned and had a bench for Tim to sit on. He hadn’t been enjoying the warm sunshine as much as I had been!
Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive — it’s such an interesting world. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)
the tabasco pepper harvest
a dragonfly? ~ an angel?
This afternoon walk was a very nice change of pace. At home we’re getting more frequent visits from the cardinal couple and the juncos are arriving for the winter. The squirrels are busy burying their nuts. It’s a wonderful time of year!
