I always believe my house faces west and backs onto east, but it isn’t so. Therefore we arrive at this point where nearly a month after the equinox the sun shines directly into the house through the door to the deck—Thursday the 15th—and I realize we’re looking southeast, not east. It’s momentarily saddening, but how can one be sad when the day opens like this and fulfills its promise to deliver near-90° temperatures?
Yes, that’s a lot of dirt down there. Not very green is it? That’s actually what a natural forest looks like around here, more or less. This fall and next spring we’ll be filling it in with some more plants, but mostly this is it. Soon the yellowing leaves on the tulip poplars (one at the right in the photo) will carpet the ground. The Carolina cherry Laurel keep its leaves—it’s an evergreen.
Does one wonder in hidden moonlight, drowned by noonday sun, if lunacy seeps even now into cracks, pores, follicles, corners of eyes? Surely this maelstromic soup, part mother, part father, part those who piled invectives during years best forgotten, cannot have coalesced entirely without simmering by some stronger force?
93/100 100 poems in 100 days [how weird! WordPress refused to add the tag “nurture”…and only that one…]
A recent sit on the porch yielded too many “morning” poems for one day. Herewith…
I sat in morning's glory: Sun on my left shoulder. Squirrels, possessed, scampered below, imitating smaller chipmunks. Finches swooped from roof to feeder, then returned. One belligerent wren whistled insistently. Towhee sang softly, Wren's backup singer. Suddenly bird-laughter through dense pines. Pileated woodpecker taunted from his shadowy safety, hidden. Sun limned dawn's clouds, painted our laurel. I wondered: could daytime meet My morning's grand promises?
Every major city seems to have a botanical greenhouse where tropical conditions have been created to foster the growth of orchids, bromeliads, and such—or “July” as a resident of the American South might call it. I left just past noon today for a 25-minute sojourn around the neighborhood. When I returned, our weather gauge reported a temperature of 81.1°F and a relative humidity of 88.8% (now registering an even 89.0% 30 minutes later). Lighting was poor: completely overcast, the sun approaching its zenith. That’s okay. My poetry attempts have been poor today, also. This is my second try, the first being filed in the “maybe-it-can-be-saved” bin. This really isn’t poetry, more poetic prose, artfully arranged—unless it’s true what a friend said, that poetry is what I say it is!
Every Southerner learns gradual acceptance of sweat, wears loose garments, overlooks each other's spreading stains. "Only mad dogs" indeed. Why walk now? Surely my Fitbit will multiply steps taken in such weather?
Escaping my climate- controlled cocoon, black-eyed susans cry welcome. They're sprinkled beside rattlesnake master, goldenrod, butterfly weed. Abiding our warmth, humidity humbly, they suggest I follow their lead.
Minutes later brings one patriotically-colored whirligig, neglected, spinning madly with each new breath of hot air, much like my country does these days. Inured to these new great divides, I just see [whirligig; patriotic] as I pass.
One neighbor's mailbox decoration swings madly with each puff of air. Its caretaker keeps it small: Chinese fringe flower usually towers twenty feet.
Where once I wandered scrub woods (leftover nature long subdued), newer years brought townhouses, all units clad in ubiquitous white, (accented with charcoal trim!)
Townhouses get young magnolias, crafted ever-so- perfectly by your local nursery, while everyone else nurtures what such abnormal specimens become.
Headed homeward I give friend Crow midday greetings, reflect upon our tree-bound need for vegetables in front (sunlight dictates placement), admire still-red maple leaves, register my soaked T-shirt: its limit of three-quarters mile, exceeded by my four.
A funny thing happened on the way to this post a week ago: all three monitors started blinking on and off rapidly for 20 seconds and then my video driver software said it had crashed. Since I thought I had installed it only two months previously, I swore and deleted said software… Not a good idea. After rebooting I had only one monitor functioning and it displayed smaller fonts/icons and a fuzzier image. Turns out I had only updated the driver a couple months before. Two days later I’m humming along with three glorious monitors again, but not enough time in each day to complete this post. Wherewith…
After experiencing Edinburgh, Scotland, and England’s Lake District on our recent tour of the United Kingdom, we headed toward Llandudno Bay, Wales. Just before we arrived, though, we took in the Bodnant Garden, a National Trust property near Conwy and Llandudno Bay. The five generations of one family developed it, and Henry McClaren donated it. I got that from Wikipedia mostly, and would recommend a quick tour over to that page because the photos capture it very well. It’s 80 acres present all sorts of habitat from well-manicured English garden to “nearly wild” and has exotic species like the American sequoia. (Hey, it’s exotic there.) We started walking in a summery rain shower but the sun soon overcame it; we regretted layering for rain as we sweated our way into a steep gully and back out.
The McClaren mansion. The family still lives there…on occasion. Bodnant Garden, Wales. June 2026.
Seemed to be a lot of locals enjoying a Sunday afternoon in the garden. Bodnant Garden, Wales. June 2026.
The couple above were gazing into the gully (when not gazing into each other’s eyes, I presume). If they had turned around they would have seen…
Bodnant Garden, Wales. June 2026.
The light varied. As we descended into the gully, cut by a fast-moving stream, it grew dark—not because the clouds had obscured the sun, but because the foliage had. As we walked along the stream, it got lighter. We found some old stone buildings, repurposed into a refreshment center. We however needed to head back to our bus and Llandudno.
Thoughts upon waking in my own bed again on June 17, 2026
As Jules Verne pointed out fictionally in 1872, travel over any distance isn’t just spatial, it’s temporal. In this age of electronic connectivity, this gets thrown in our face every time we realize our friend lies many time zones to the west: “I can’t send that text! My buddy’s gone to bed!” Or maybe he’s hours away from waking. Phileas Fogg’s seemingly lost wager reminds us we must consider how we’ve slipped through time as we’ve traversed any significant part of this globe.
Less than 24 hours ago we re-entered America’s Eastern time zone, which currently runs it clocks on the hijacking concept of “daylight savings” time (as if one could just pocket a bit of sunshine for a rainy day). Twelve hours previously we’d been delivered to the front of Heathrow airport’s Terminal 3 and just a few hours before that we had walked to St. James’s Square for a bit of air, exercise, and an attempt to distract my wife. She became quite agitated upon waking when she learned our flight’s departure to America had been delayed by 2.5 hours. The square is not spectacular in London terms: many areas exceed it in acreage and beauty. Yet the square offered a lovely little distraction and glimpse into the morning working world of London. Within it a very small area of peace existed. Few, if any, used it as a shortcut, no doubt due to its strategic gate locations. Had they been on the corners the story might have been different.
Not for the first time on our two-week sojourn I marveled at what I believe are plane trees. (I will happily consider being corrected.) I’m attempting to learn if the way the trees’ massive trunks (compared to each tree’s canopy) is natural or produced by extensive pruning over the years. Regardless, it’s striking.
Plane tree in St. James’s Square. June 2026.
By the time of our walk we were experiencing our 14th day of wandering the island, our 14th day of experiencing how 2000 years of history permeates this land. Or perhaps the British/Scots/Welsh just hang onto it more. I never felt France or Germany along the Rhine River held onto their historical tropes the way these Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic, Viking, Norman descendants do. Thus this bench brought me up short. I don’t read a physical book but maybe once per year and only then because I have a Luddite friend who insists on buying me one for my birthday. If this is the definition of contentment, I will be hard-pressed. Additionally, I received the reminder that my particular method of e-reading doesn’t work well in direct sunlight.
Bench in St. James’s Square. June 2026.
We wandered out. As we left I captured this photo showing how the natural world attempts to insinuate itself into the busy metro-life of London. Then again, how natural is it when every branch, stem, flower, even the plants, are artificially formed, planted, pruned, moved, replaced, and trained? The English do seem to love their carefully manicured gardens, at least within the historical districts of London.
Leaving St. James’s Square. June 2026.
Other elements for the returning traveler: an odd disjointedness associated with returning to one’s home country, but fearful about proving one belongs (via passport); having a distinctive experience of how different countries are…different countries, not just a place where “hey, people are people”; looking forward to the first time in two weeks that temperatures will actually align with “the summer months” of June/July/August; using toilets which aren’t square; drinking American beer which doesn’t hold a candle to the ones available around every corner in Great Britain; and realizing the myriad little ways a country founded on liberty has innate limits, wonderful as that liberty might be.
Removing oneself from the group grants both perspective and a desire (usually) to return to the group, the familiarity. Thus it was with us. All the little ways the United Kingdom differs from America brought our usually habitual daily habits into focus. Several hotels had Nespresso machines. One didn’t re-stock the capsules, however, despite our four-night stay. The simple act of looking right for oncoming traffic when crossing a street. (And on controlled-access highways, never getting used to the passing lane being on the right.) Marveling at how green everything was, everywhere. Sunrise occurring prior to 5 a.m. preceded by a leisurely pre-dawn that started around 4. On occasion, paying to use a toilet. Calling them toilets instead of restrooms. And the simple expressions of everyday life, turned sideways by a different culture despite ostensibly speaking the same language:
Not a “detour”. London, June 2026.
We don’t have these in America. Windsor, June 2026.
A double-dose: Top, the indication of the exit; bottom, how to take “fire action”. Chipping Campden, June 2026.
I prefer toilets that work, but that’s just me, I guess. Stratford-upon-Avon, June 2026.
…but some things remain the same, such as stating what should be obvious. Chester, England. June 2026.
I’ve decided not to publish an itinerary-based series of posts about our two-week tour of Scotland, Wales, and England. This partially is based on the fact I’ve never completed the Rhine River cruise series which we experienced in August 2025! Mostly it’s based on the fact I have over 1000 photographs of far too many locations to handle it adequately in the time I have for writing. Instead, I’ll drop in from time to time on a particular excursion: Conwy Castle on the edge of Llandudno; the Royal Mile in Edinburgh; the Lake District of England; and all that touristy stuff from London. Hope you’ll join me.
One day from full, says the Moon. What’s this silly stuff about calendars? New Year’s Day, 2026.
We gathered with friends to welcome the New Year with simple Southern fare: ham, boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, biscuits. After loosening our creaky social graces with applications of Belgian beer, my Southern brother of a different mother lit up his new chiminea and we talked of things ponderous and trivial. The moon stared us down, afraid to blink for missing our ephemeral lives. Oak hissed and crackled in the fire.
Radiating warmth in all directions. New Year’s Day, 2026.
At one point we paused to look at the pretty effects of his neighbor’s light pollution…
Finally we admitted our backsides were too cold and our frontsides were getting quite toasty. We headed indoors, while tarted up versions of the trees danced in our heads…
I took a walk this morning as the newly risen sun filtered through the tops of trees. The ethereal lighting isn’t quite captured here, sadly. Nice to see the natives doing well.
American beech, a.k.a., Carolina beech. November 2025.Red maple. November 2025.White oak…maybe…looks different than our white oak. November 2025.
Blue-eyed grass and blue mistflower. October 2025.
With all apologies to Huey Lewis & and The News, I need a new song. Its lyrics will borrow from the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always do what you want,….but if you try sometimes, you just might find—you do what you need.” Yeah. That. We were told once to pay attention to our Inner Child, and I’ve done that far, far too much in my life. That little pouty bastard gets everything he wants to my usual detriment. I’m going to start listening to my Inner Parent. Maybe I’ll graduate to Inner Adult. (transactional analysis—I can’t escape the cultural references.)
Anyway, it’s fall y’all. The dusky red of the dogwood illumines in direct sunlight and dances a colored jig with the wind-bestirred poplar leaves behind them.
…or crepe myrtles if you prefer…seem ubiquitous here in Raleigh, NC. From what I read and hear they’re throughout the South, though I haven’t paid enough attention while driving through our neighbor states. Crape myrtles take their time, slowly becoming substantial trees of a type called thicket trees. They can be well-tended and trained, as this one is:
With care, the trunks grow together. Raleigh, NC. July 2025.
Usual care involves letting them grow as they will, but pruning suckers and sometimes trimming the tops to shape them:
Crape myrtle with usual thicket look and showing white blooms. Raleigh, NC. July 2025.
Crape myrtles are everywhere here. The photo above is across the street from the first photo. The thicket-trunked myrtle in the foreground has a substantial myrtle right to its left, the one with a more substantial trunk. Follow the sidewalk and you’ll see two more, smaller (younger) crape myrtles flowering. These last two demonstrate the variety of the approximately 50 species of crape myrtle (or are a particular cultivar of one):
Younger, different crape myrtles. Raleigh, NC. July 2025.
Crape myrtle are maintained by the City of Raleigh in the decorative medians:
Three “City” crape myrtles at the end of my street. Raleigh, NC. July 2025.
To me the Ultimate Crape Myrtle lives in my neighbor’s yard. Its branches extend from the edge of the sidewalk and tower over her house. It’s at least 30 feet tall. Someone appears to have pruned a few suckers in its youth, but mostly it’s been left to its own.
Crape myrtle in neighbor’s yard. Our white car and yard in the background. Raleigh, NC. July 2025.
And then there are our crape myrtles. Ours were planted sometime between 2007 and 2014 (using Google Maps Street View), with the most likely time frame being 2010-2012, a period when the former owners rapidly changed the landscaping and interior of the house. The myrtles probably were purchased as saplings, and have doubled in height for the eight years we’ve lived here. For reasons I suspect have to do with amount of sunlight and my utter lack of any care beyond occasional pruning, they flower very late. I suspect sunlight because my other neighbor has three, also near the sidewalk, which haven’t bloomed yet either. In the photos above you might have noticed most of the myrtles nearing the end of their blooming period. Ours?
Our two crape myrtles, either side of the driveway, not blooming. July 2025.
But here’s the thing: though closely identified with the American South, they are not native to it. To quote the NC State University’s Extension Gardener website, “[Crape myrtle] is native to the Philippines, Japan and central Himalayas to southern China and Indochina.” Our whole move the past 12 months has been to replace everything in the front yard with native plants. (note that in the photo above) After a year of debate, and many years of saying, “Maybe they will bloom better when they get bigger,” we’ve decided to replace them. (Sorry, former owners. Consider it payback for removing that big tree in the front yard and not properly having the stump ground. I nearly broke my ankle in that mess many a time.) On one side will be an ‘Amethyst’ witch hazel which blooms in winter and very early spring. (Photo here.) On the other side will be a serviceberry. It mimics the look of a crape myrtle with the multi-trunk growth, but it will provide berries for birds and other critters.
