I lean against the railing on the deck with an iced coffee in hand and watch fireflies frolicking through the shrubbery in the garden. Midsu...

You really don't have to lose everything and travel to a remote valley to discover that the world is always rushing forward to teach us,...

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Bergamot Female, Dark Morph ( Papilio glaucus ) The commoner yellow form of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is a ...

Sticky is a fine word for this summer's puckish "toing and froing" between sunshine and rain, steamy heat and (occasionally) p...

At dawn this morning, a waning moon floating high in the cloudless blue, graces a perfect summer day, one that will never come again in all ...

Monarch butterfly ( Danaus plexippus ) One would have to go a long way to top the brilliant colors of the palette on display this morning. R...

Male American Goldfinch at the Birdbath ( Spinus tristis )

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, ...

An annual cicada's song is the quintessential music of August, a sonorous vocal offering from little jeweled beings who emerge from the ...

How the trees on summer nights turn into a dark river, how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try, walking as fast as you can, b...

They capture and hold the sun within, these buttery yellow gerbera blooms. Kin to dahlias, daisies, marigolds, calendulas, coneflowers, chry...

Our efforts to honor human differences cannot succeed apart from our effort to honor the buzzing, blooming, bewildering variety of life of ...

 Black walnut ( Juglans nigra )

Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my noggin, the passage of these sultry summer days is being marked, and ever so wistfully. The clock of t...

Wait for evening. Then you'll be alone. Wait for the playground to empty. Then call out those companions from childhood: The one who clo...

The English rose in the garden plot under my bedroom window is exquisite, and it is wonderfully fragrant. Nothing I can say here is up to ex...

Literature exists at every level of experience. It is inclusive, not exclusive. It embraces; it does not reduce, however simply it is expres...

In early July, the trees on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are gloriously leafed out, and vast swaths of woodland are as dark as night - the shad...

Lynn Schmidt says           she saw You once as prairie grass,           Nebraska prairie grass, she climbed out of her car on a hot highwa...

Happy Canada Day, happy July!