December: Birds & Blooms

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I shoot lots of both! It’s a fitting way to end this special edition of #YearInReview, giving you a glimpse of my world for the past two years. December 9, 2022 – The older I get the more I prefer the dead and dying flowers. That’s not at all a morbid thought. Truly, it’s not. I love so much the shapes they take as the petals dry: twisted, crinkled, yet graceful. Their colors reach a peak of intensity. Their age spots dignify them. May I age so beautifully, eloquently. December 26, 2023 – Goal achieved: An American Kestrel (Falco sparvarius)…

August: Dog Days Fun

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Come along now for a visit to a national wildlife refuge I had never visited before, and join me for a fun, heartening, and educational baby turtle release on the bank of the Ouachita River! August 1, 2022 – Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge is 24,000 acres of marshes and forests waaay down in the toe of the Louisiana boot, on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain. I don’t make it down that way very often, so when I had to drive I-10 and I-12 from points farther east all the way to Baton Rouge, I took a little…

July: Count Them if You Can

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Hot. July 2023 was hot, hot, hot. It is perfectly sane and respectable to just stay indoors in Louisiana in a normal July, and July 2023 was hotter than most. But you can’t see or count butterflies indoors, so…. a bunch of the incurable fortify themselves with bottles of water, field hats, and energy snacks, and out they go. July 31, 2022 – Knowing which flowers to plant is hugely helpful if you want to attract butterflies to your home, and Charles Allen wrote a book about it!* So counting butterflies at Allen Acres is great fun. Beauties like this…

May: All God’s Children…

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…get to sing in my choir! But fair warning to you snake phobes: Don’t click on this one, unless you want to see a lovely butterfly bad enough to also see a beautiful snake! May 1, 2022 – Once again I am driving slowly through Tensas River NWR, probably scanning the roadsides for birds, deer, wild turkey, maybe a bobcat or a bear–any of the things one can see in Tensas. Suddenly it struck me that I had just driven over something on the road. I hit the brake and checked my rear view mirror. Is that a snake? On,…

April: Winged Things

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And not just birds! Spring begins in March in Louisiana. By April, things are popping out all over. Flowers, of course. But also dragonflies and damselflies. It’s a great time to be outdoors. April 10, 2022 – The great damselfly emergence happened a few feet in front of my lens! Actually, I’m pretty certain it was happening all over Black Bayou Lake, not just in front of my lens. But that doesn’t make it less special to me that I captured four damselflies in different stages of emergence in one shot! For those who might not know, damselflies hatch from…