Greensboro Birds

Hummingbird moths practically live on the May Night salvia. Last fall they were all over the hyssop, but that isn’t in bloom yet. These are members of the sphinx moth family (which reminds me that I have some nice sphinx moth photos to show you one of these days). They look a lot like bumble [...]

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Mine’s poison oak and poison ivy. I wage chemical warfare on this stuff every few days as fresh, juicy shoots emerge in the woods and at the margins of the yard. We have poison oak vines as thick as a man’s thigh climbing up the pines, PO leaves shooting out into the air high up [...]

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Today was a Day of Recovery, as well as Finish the Manuscript Day. Josh’s folks were in town for a whirlwind tour of the northern Piedmont, and I’m pretty wiped out from all that barbecue and rib eating. (I also have a high RDA of downtime, which makes any sort of nonstop activity involving more [...]

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House wrens are dueling outside the window this morning. I can hear their trilly, buzzy song from all sides of the house. I can also hear the first wood thrush of the year working out its double syrinx in the woods right now. Last night, the woods on either side of the house were noisy [...]

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Big problems sometimes call for big solutions. The dry creek was completed on Friday afternoon, a mere five days after the men of Chilton’s started the project. It’s pretty spectacular, don’t you think? The straw mats are seeded with grass, and the pine-needle areas will be planted thickly (or “junked up,” as Forrest says), so [...]

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This afternoon saw delivery of seven very large rocks to the dry creek (which is actually not so dry). This one was delicately conveyed via Bobcat and rested gently onto the ground. The other six? Well, let’s just say I had a little Northridge earthquake flashback as they rolled off the flatbed truck.

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At the end of Monday, we were left with a tremendous clay trench meandering from the woods, across the yard, and down to the front fence. Above, Josh is standing where the water trickles out of the original creek bed. There’s some conjecture that a spring might exist here. By this morning, the water was [...]

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Can you feel my pain? I feel like every cut of the yard is a cut into my own skin. (Just replace “skin” with “wallet” and you’ll really feel my pain.) Of the two human members of our household, Josh is the “we won’t miss the money in five years” person; I’m the “we could [...]

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