Latest Posts
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Deadheading – For Living
While just about every other flowering plant in my backyard has said goodbye to the 2025 summer season, that Mexican sunflower bush I wrote about back in July continues to bloom with vibrant, deep orange gusto. Its flowers attract a daily crowd of butterflies, and I see new buds forming every time I walk past.… Continue reading
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Looking Up
Last Friday I was in the pool before sunrise with my swim friends (AKA “the Squad”) for our regular weekday workout. It was a gray and cloudy morning, and after weeks of relentlessly hot and dry weather, the forecast was finally calling for rain. But the sky seemed to be telling a different story –… Continue reading
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Trash Talking
Last Saturday, I was riding my bike with some friends in a rural area outside Tallahassee when we spotted a group of people in the distance along the grass shoulder of the road. As we got closer, I could see they were wearing reflective safety vests and carrying trash bags, so I assumed it was… Continue reading
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Everything in its Time
We are straddling summer and fall right now in Tallahassee. The days are getting shorter and the early morning temperatures have gotten decidedly cooler, but by 11:00 am, the summer heat returns and lasts through the evening. My backyard is a greenish-brown testimony to this funky between-the-seasons dissonance. The summer flowers and vegetables that haven’t… Continue reading
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Ruffling Feathers
A fascinating drama has been playing out in the town of Fitzgerald, Georgia since 2019 – and it centers around a giant chicken topiary. Fitzgerald is a small southern town with less than 9,000 human residents and approximately 5,000 wild Burmese chicken residents who roam the streets at will. According to the University of Georgia’s… Continue reading
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Out of Season
We have several gardenia bushes that produce fragrant clusters of tender white blossoms every year from about the middle of May until the end of June. Although gardenias are hardy plants, the snowy petals that form their flowers are very delicate and don’t retain their original shape or bright white color very long. But if… Continue reading
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Map or No Map
When my friend Sara Reece and her husband moved from Tallahassee to the Midwest, Sara (a botanist) sketched a beautifully detailed landscape map of her yard for the people who bought their house. The map not only labeled each of the trees and shrubs on her property, but it also showed where seasonal flowers and… Continue reading
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Every Weed, Everywhere, All the Time
I don’t plant them, I don’t water them, and I don’t want them. But I ALWAYS have weeds in my backyard. Weeds thrive in drought conditions, and they thrive after heavy rains. They pop out from under rocks, and they snake between the bricks in our patio. And every few years, a new variant shows… Continue reading
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No Home for Gnomes – the Story Continues
The day after I wrote No Home for Gnomes, I ran the Lake Overstreet trail so I could stop by the site of the Gnome tree one more time. I had not visited it since the village was dismantled. Turning right onto the trail spur, I was surprised to see the red door was still… Continue reading
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No Home for Gnomes
Just before Christmas one year, I was running the Lake Overstreet trails in Tallahassee and spotted a trail spur I had never seen before. My curiosity piqued, I followed the new path for about 100 yards to a clearing in front of a huge oak tree where I was shocked to find what looked like… Continue reading
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