The vixen fox emerged from under the schoolhouse yesterday at about 11:00 A.M.  I jumped to the telescope and turned on the camera.  Shortly after her appearance, three fox kits tumbled out of the den!  That's all I could count, as she was keeping them herded pretty close to the entrance.  Whenever a young one tried to follow her from the den, she ( Read more... )

 

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Leaving the den for some food and sunshine.


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 In the north when winter's claw
Relaxes now to keep the laws of Nature in control


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Emilia was reading political biographies.
 
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A small group of Tibetan monks, students at the Drepung Monastery in Atlanta, have made a detour to the NDSU campus to demonstrate the art and philosophy of sand mandalas.  What is a sand mandala, you ask?  The NDSU website describes it better than I could:

In general, all mandalas have outer, inner and secret meanings. The outer level represents ( Read more... )

 
Cinnamon was making quite a fuss this evening, baying like the beagle his grandparents were.  I figured it would just be a car, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or..the wind.  But no, I looked outside and saw a large furry animal swaying in the branches of a spindly boxelder tree.  At the bottom of that tree was Cinnamon, barking like he had cornered a ( Read more... )

Folklore has it that some native tribes of the region called this time of year "the moon of popping trees," referring to the sounds emitted by cracking trunks in the cold night air.  Last night was like that.  Just how cold was it?  I'll put the boring weather info under a cut.

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Time, whatever you define that to be, can best be experienced on a short winter day, particularly with access to a long unobstructed horizon.  One can actually follow the curvature of the Earth turning in relation to the sun, and almost feel the ground moving.  And every day, the sun appears to shift positions.  I found some neat animations online ( Read more... )

 

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