“Look, here’s Fezzika,” my mother said, bending down to point out the Woodhouse toad tucked under the garden stone. We had discovered the amphibian’s house a few days earlier, and I was fascinated by the placement choice. She had dug into the soil under a cornerstone edging the flowerbed beside the main path through the [...]
About a week ago, I finally finished planting my garden. I ran late (as usual) setting out some seedlings and all three attempts to start my typical heirloom tomato lineup from seed ran afoul of greens-craving kittens and rough winds. So I bought hothouse starts, which as of this date are doing well, except for [...]
Late this past winter, my son decided to build a bat box for our summer bat visitors to nest in. Bats, of course, are migratory creatures, flying south in late autumn for warmer climes in the tradition of many species of birds. A few articles I’ve read lately assert that, given the extent and effects [...]
During fall of 2008, I was perusing a field guide of medicinal plants when a picture caught my eye. It was a small yellow leaf, round and stalked, with hairs rising from the top. On each hair was a small drop of glue.
A little over four and a half years ago my family moved from Payson City in Utah County to a new home at the desert’s edge in San Juan County, Utah. Living on the Colorado Plateau has been something of a dream come true. Besides reintroducing me to a more natural (for me) environment, living [...]
Last Friday night my son dug two of the last three holes needed to set our remaining fruit tree starts. We didn’t manage to plant any of them that night because he and my daughter needed to gather their things together for the early start they faced the next morning. They were to travel to Moab [...]
by J. Max Wilson
East of the cemented waste, the aspen stood, a sapling still,
And there a few aphidian peasants leeched their lives from phloem’s rill.
They lapped the aspen’s sweetest sap; rapt in bohemian blissmare, blind—
And sapped the sapling of its health (though still it prospered of a kind).
Then came the Bishop Barnaby and Stinkfly Deacon [...]
Late summer of 2008, I was sitting in Crossfire Canyon (here are parts two and three) at one of my favorite sandstone perches when I became conscious of a persistent buzzing noise. Looking down, I spotted an insect hovering just above the ground about a meter below me. The insect looked something like a yellow jacket, black and [...]