I love summer travel. Day trip, month trip; I just like to go and see, especially during the months when so many others are doing the same thing. I enjoy the camaraderie of the road and sky. I finally made it to Martha’s Vineyard this summer. Finally stood overlooking...

Maybe I just notice butterflies more later in summer. August is usually butterfly month for me. That's when the tall wildflowers push their stalks above the brush and serve the fluttering things, whether butterfly, bee or  even a hummingbird juicing up for the long jou...

Perhaps you are your family’s photographer. Smartphones may have made that position, like so many others, obsolete. Yet occasionally there’s the desire for a formal portrait with everyone dressed up, smiling and looking at the camera.  I was recently summoned to the lo...

Some years Mother Nature parses spring blooms like a strict mom who’s unsure allowance is a necessary thing. This year Mother won the lottery. Spring blooms have been big, bold and long lasting - and on time for the first time in several seasons. Landscaped dogwoods ar...

Woke up one morning and it was spring. It happens like that. Suddenly forsythia. No mittens required. Where I live, spring, like autumn, paints the town long before it gets around to coloring the woods. But I know where to get my blues and greens. The first March day i...

What do you know? We’re having a snowy winter! Not many of those this decade. When I was a kid, it seemed as if it snowed every week. Well, that’s probably seeing the world through snow-covered glasses, but still, is there anything more welcome than the first snow? Tru...

Once New Year’s Day passes, it's as if a gust of wind blows in and clears away all the tinsel overnight. Indoors becomes austere as well, shed of the holiday silver and gold. The outdoor world reveals what it’s been for a month, although we were too merry to notice: gr...

Yeah, I was that kid who looked out on what others regarded a boring roadside stretch of Missouri and saw woodland cultures flaking arrow points around the fire, or a lone shivering Frenchman snagging beaver from a rocky stream (France must have really been bad to pref...

I’ve seen snowflakes on daffodils in March, even February. Whether the snow was late or the flowers early, spring colliding into winter is not unusual. Winter muscling in on autumn’s territory is much less common. In fact, I don’t recall it in my lifetime, not here. F...

A lot of people around here put pumpkins on their porches the day after Labor Day. Hang orange and red autumn wreathes on their front doors. The week after Labor Day saw temperatures in the mid-nineties this year. You could have swum outdoors until mid-October. Septemb...