We have been vacillating between snowy days and non-snowy days here in central Maryland, as if winter cannot make up her mind. Earlier this week there was no snow and then just under 4 inches
Category: Life
The holidays have come and gone. Decorations are down, house is clean and free of clutter (at least for the next 5 seconds) and winter has plopped itself on Maryland, with snow coming tomorrow and
Somedays I miss the freedom and lack of any type of schedule during the pandemic. I know, staying home and rarely venturing out didn’t feel like freedom to some, but it did for me. The
Usually I sit down and have something specific I want to say, something that has been gnawing away at my thoughts, eating my time with its attention. Not so much today. Today the sun is
This past year has been all about wildlife here in Maryland. Everywhere I looked, I saw new species and babes and I couldn’t help but take pictures of everything. Last school year began with Hooded
There is a little spider that is living in the sink of one of our bathrooms. We have five bathrooms (an excessive amount, I know, they all came with the house). Nobody uses this bathroom.
I love trees. I’m not sure why but I feel an internal, joyful pull when I see them. We watched The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers movie a few weeks ago with our
Vellichor – the nostalgia and temporality of used bookstores; the feeling evoked by the scent of old books or paper, the strange wistfulness of used bookstores. What a beautiful word, vellichor. It slips through my
I want to walk daily, through forests and glens, to be among those I feel closest to – the birds, the deer, the squirrels. They don’t hide anything. They don’t judge anything. There is a
On my way to the store tonight I saw two red-shouldered hawks sitting on the same telephone wire, about 100 feet apart. The wire sat above an abandoned farm field or an unmowed part of
Okay, so they were birds, not humans, but we saved them. My son and I. Two baby gray catbirds. Saved. Because of us. With one small speaker and a stolen nest. Saved. Today is Sunday
Spring came. Daffodills, tulips, cherry blossoms, crabapple blossoms. Fresh grass. New leaves. Rain and cooler temperatures followed by a few hot days. Then everything peaked. The greenest greens you can imagine. Kelly, mint, sage, lime,
The end of another school year is coming. Thank god. This year has been tough on us teachers, probably the kids too. Kids behaviors seem crazier than years past. The current 6th graders were 3rd
A friend and I talked about perspective a few weeks ago and then last week, I found myself assigning my photography students a project on perspective. The assignment was not intentionally driven by my previous
My friends, it has been too long. Technology is supposed to make our lives better and easier, right? Lately, well actually more like the last 10 years, I find technology and interacting with it exhausting
We have a mama white-tailed deer living in our back woods with her twins. Here they are, right as I walked outside to take their photo. To give you some perspective, the grass is about
Latin name = Troglodyte aedon Translation? Troglodyte = cave dweller, aedon = Nightingale…Nightingale cave dweller. Such a cool name. I wish the translation of my name was as awesome; my name literally translates to Crowned
I write, everyday, in my head. The writing is a constant conversation, lamenting on things I listen to on the radio, other’s words I read online, conversations from work, or conversations I had with my
“The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours …but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of
This week brought the end of the school year, for myself as a teacher in 7th grade science, and for my own children. The weeks leading up to it have been full – baseball games,
In winter, there is a time, specifically at sunrise, when the sun has not yet risen above the horizon, and it is as if the sun has arms, made of the most beautiful pinks and
This week marked the 8th month of the beginning of the quarantine here in Maryland. Although things have ebbed and flowed – restaurants were open, then closed, then open only outdoors, then inside but limited
I grew up in Iowa, where a few hundred years ago, tall grass prairie covered 75-80% of the landscape. Now, the land is mostly farms. Hiking into the woods was not an option. Trees, in
Our little bubble, the one we have been living in for 14 weeks, the one where we ventured into public places as little as possible due to the pandemic, the one where we spent more
(Written during late April, 2020) I don’t know exactly when the stay at home order began here in Maryland, I just know when my own school decided to close, 5 weeks and 6 days ago.