Sunday I woke up with a sort of “nothing sounds fun to me today” feeling, until Rachel remembered that she wanted to go buy some plants for our offices, and I perked up immediately. She convinced me to leave the house without showering first (always a hard sell) and we ended up running ALL OVER THE WORLD and having many adventures ( Read more... )

You may remember back in the spring of 2013 how I posted about discovering that a forest I walked through at work had been bulldozed. A happy consequence of this was that because I was forced to find a new walking route, I found another path through the woods that led to a glorious meadow and pond. For a year and a half, I've walked there almost ( Read more... )

The other day I discovered a series of woodland trails not five minutes away from our house. I'd always wondered what the "Recreational Area" sign behind the skeevy and oft-deserted gas station was all about, and on Monday, while Rachel was at her knitting group, I decided to drive down there and see ( Read more... )

I'm sitting in our yard, beneath our crab-apple tree, with a cricket or some other musical insect serenading me from the other side of the flower bed. Today is the most gorgeous day - the sky is a clean-washed blue and it's been unrepentantly sunny, with temperatures in the 60s. I stepped out of the door last evening to help Rachel bring in ( Read more... )

Most importantly, I am happy beyond measure that DOMA was declared unconstitutional yesterday. In many areas of my life, I'm very optimistic, but I honestly never expected this to happen, even though I recognize that the country has been moving in a very promising direction. Those who want to deny same-sex couples legal rights, in spite of their ( Read more... )

Lately I've become obsessed with birds. I've always loved watching them, but not until I read Molly Beth Griffin's Silhouette of a Sparrow (BRILLIANT, by the way) did I realize that I could actually transform this interest into a pursuit. The lake by my office is home to dozens of bird species, and they visit the maple tree by my desk's window all ( Read more... )

I guess it's a lesson that things change, and it can be sad when they do, but sometimes the change makes room for loveliness. I haven't walked down to where my forest used to be, near where I work, since I discovered that it was torn down. Instead, I went looking for the rumored path around the pond behind my office building, and I found a new kind ( Read more... )

Yesterday I went for a walk at lunch, and I discovered that a forest I used to walk through when I worked at our old building has been torn down ( Read more... )

I had the urge today to make a Post Full of Cool Things, so I hope you'll find some of them enjoyable :) This is a taste of the things I've been amusing myself with on the internets lately.

1. I started another blog! It's called Tea Under the Pine Boughs and it will be (most likely slowly) filled with articles I write about Victorians, pictures of ( Read more... )