Upside Ann

You might have thought that I would have heard this - our beloved crabapple tree ripping itself in two - or being torn apart by some force super- or some-other natural - but it came as a great surprise when I went out on Tuesday to find an enormous and outwardly healthy limb lying across the backyard and peeking into my bedroom window. Obviously, it wasn't inwardly healthy.  Still, unlike a significant portion of its brethren, it still had a full leaf complement and tiny crabapples (crabapplettes?) Gosh.  Another of my mother's tree companions.  I remember watching my grandparents planting this tree when our home was new.   I'm going to have to find someone to take the entire tree down soon.  I'm not ready to face that today.   In honor of her beauty - I'm sharing photos I've taken over the last 8 years here on Harrison.  Spring, Fall, Winter.   As viewed from my mother's room upstairs.  Her canopy of flowers filled the courtya...

  My birthday was this week.  Each year Kevin takes a day off and we go "hiking" for a morning and out to lunch to celebrate.  Sometimes it is hot.  Sometimes it is wet.  Friday was "just right".  And I learned something interesting.  My camera phone will identify plants that I photograph.  Sometimes.  This is speedwell.  Maybe.   Speedwell, May 2026 - The actual color is a very intense purple which I couldn't capture.   Still I love the contrast of the yellow stamens with the petals and the drooping blossom starting to open.

Without a doubt, my mother is rolling in her grave looking at the way her yard is walking stepwise away from stability, from civilization, from uniform greenness.  What can I say? I don't like pesticides and my heart gladdens at the sight of dandelions - whether in cheerful yellow bloom or wistfull, wishfull, ephemera.  Today- Spring on Harrison - looks at the chaos I've wrought.  Smile.

  The paint at the fence shakes her head from too many horse thoughts rattling around in there and Cassidy shakes his head just the same, trying to get a rise out of her.  She's smart enough it works sometimes. Not this time She's looking past Cassidy. He turns, stands slow, dropping his bowl and Jo's both. "Holy shit," he says, having to move side to side to stay standing, from the dogs rushing this spilled lunch. He doesn't care about it anymore. Spread out behind him, just down the slope from the camper, are probably eighty, ninety elk.  Maybe a hundred. They're all looking right back at him, not a single tail flicking, not one eye blinking. Cassidy swallows hard, wishing more than anything for his rifle. The name he was born with wasn't Cassidy Thinks Twice, even though that's what he's doing now -- Where's my gun, where's my gun?-- but Cassidy Sees Elk. Names are stupid, though. Pretty soon he won't even ...