Those who know me best will expect a dragonfly to be among my year in review posts! Of course. This particular dazzling beauty is a female Calico Pennant (Celithemis elisa). The male has the same forms and patterns, but where she is golden, he is dark red. A pair of them darting about in the sun…. well, Mother Nature’s most exquisite jewelry. And I know just where to find them! These are not the most common dragonflies. In fact, some range maps show them to be rare in Louisiana. And I know where to find them. Every year since about…

They say “April showers bring May flowers,” but in the south March showers bring April flowers. Lots of them. This lovely bellwort was on Mt. Nebo in Arkansas, a few hours north of where I live but still southern enough to have lots of flowers for the annual spring meeting of the Arkansas Native Plant Society. Bellwort is very ephemeral and not the most common wildflower. It grows in Louisiana, but I have never seen one here. We saw several patches on the day we climbed Mt. Nebo near Dardanelle. I was quite taken with their delicate beauty. I joined…

A few of my friends will not be able to look at this one, and to them I apologize. I do understand, as my own tendency to recoil in horror at the sight of a snake, even a photograph of a snake, once was quite strong. I am featuring this photograph of a magnificent broad-banded water snake (Nerodia fasciata confluens) in part to celebrate the progress I have made in confronting and overcoming that fear. That does not mean I pick up snakes in the wild. Far from it. But I do look for them and try to get close…

Tower cranes grace the sky. Construction sites of huge buildings present dynamic, colorful, complex facades. How in the world do the hard hats know what they are doing perched stories above the street? Moving purposefully through a maze of scaffolding and building materials? But they do, and the puzzle you see and photograph this moment is gone forever the next. The building will never be dis-assembled the way it was built. Each board put in place, each section of floor poured, each window hoisted into place… each and every act of the hard hats changes the puzzle. What you see…

You remember January 1, 2018, right? Cold it was, at least in northern Louisiana. But I heard about a thing called “1st Day Hike” and the idea had immediate appeal. I was ready to get outdoors in spite of the cold, and I had nothing better to do. It was too late to join an official 1st Day Hike, but I decided to go anyway, and to go to a place close to home I had never gone before: Russell Sage Wildlife Management Area. I was not disappointed. The winter woods has its own beauty, and the bare trees and…