Our peach, plum, and apricot trees survived their second summer. The green of their leaves is battling it out with the encroaching brown, and the cutter moths have done some damage, but the trees have officially made it. They are growing, alive, and in a few weeks, they will thrive, insects and triple-digit temperatures at bay.…
It is cold and late. I can hear the owls from my office. I often push the knowledge that life is fragile down deep somewhere around the equally unproductive “Why are we here?” and “That saguaro and most of these trees will outlive me.” We get an undetermined number of days in this life, and…
Six little birds are taking my office window screen. One piece at a time. I usually keep the blinds closed. While I’ve heard their pattering and pecking for about a week, I assumed they were dancing on the ledge doing… bird things. I opened my blinds this morning to find big holes along the bottom…
Seven birds and, as of this morning, six baby mice. That is the death toll this spring. I can not provide context for this loss because I don’t know how many baby birds were in all of the nests around our house, nor do I know how many mice families call our piece of land home.…
There is a wash behind our house. Part of it is on our property, which makes it “our wash.” That makes no sense to me because there are huge trees, cactus, and boulders. So many boulders and acres of earth. On a dry day, when the sun is shining, the wash behind our home is…
The moon was beautiful last night, and glorious this morning. Full and beaming turned to gold soft light in the early hours and not for the first time in my life, I felt small. The moon is always on time, constant and present as it has been for years before me. It will continue on…
I opened up the windows in my office today. It’s chilly out, and they were not open for very long, but sometimes a girl needs fresh air inside. I get fresh air outside when I walk Jack, or sit out back, but there’s something different when outside sweeps through my inside, my closed off. I tend…
There’s a cactus on the corner by our house. I honestly can’t remember how it got there. After we built our home and the land settled back down from the trauma of construction, this particular cactus ended up on the corner. Maybe we planted it there, I’m not sure. All I know now is that it is my…
I found a little bird a few days ago. The little guy had fallen or been pushed from his nest prematurely. I’m not sure why I knew it was a “he,” but a “he” it was, at least in my mind. He’d fallen behind the stand that holds our backyard hose. We have lots of bird nests…