And so I come to the end of this tardy and drawn out #YearInReview. Fittingly for the end of the year, the photo of the month comes from what I call my “Dead Flower Society” collection. You can add to a Dead Flower Society collection most anywhere in Louisiana in December because our dead flowers most likely will not be covered by snow! But a Louisiana bog offers the special treat of dead and dying pitcher plants. In December 2021, I spent a couple hours at Cooter’s Bog, one of my fave spots in the spectacular Kisatchie National Forest that…

Back in Chicago. Yay!!! On this trip, the only one of my Chicago photog friends who could meet me was Tom Tran, and that’s him walking toward me on the enormous question-mark shaped pier at Montrose Point. Tom grew up nearby in a neighborhood called “Asia on Argyle.” What fun it was to hear his stories of playing on Montrose Beach and fishing from the pier as a kid! I have been in Chicago much colder days, but see the ice forming on the pier? It wasn’t exactly warm, especially not for this mid-westerner who has, after 20+ years of…

Whew! It seems I will never finish this late-start Year in Review! I shall be short-winded about this because there’s an entire chapter devoted to this place in the book I am currently writing. Yes. I am. If you can’t reach me on a Friday morning, it’s because I’m writing. Yay! The first time I visited this place I call “Home of the Wounded Healer” back in 2010, it was all turquoise water and bare dirt. It was an eerily beautiful scar bulldozed into the face of the earth to get fill dirt for the expansion of nearby Highway 165…

Woohoo! Travel! I got home from a trip to a conference in March 2019 and immediately went into Covid-19 lockdown. Not until late September, 2021, did I board a plane again. Boy, did I miss it. I love where I live, but I also love to travel and specifically, I love to travel to big cities. I need my “city fix” a few times a year! It was quite wonderful to be back in Chicago. I wandered the streets camera in hand every moment I could. Yes, I saw an opera, and it was great to have opera back. But…

I am a wannabee biologist. When I went back to school in my 30s to begin collecting degrees, I chose the field of communication, and I love that field and taught in it for many years. I was afraid of the math requirements for doing natural science. But I was and still am a wannabee biologist. In retirement, I’m finally doing it. Not a degree. Haven’t time for that. But studying the natural world none the less, and hanging out with biology faculty–my former colleagues at the local university. So it was that I got involved in Dr. John Carr’s…