Autumn gives a chill before it starts to claw the gifts of Summer back so today I saw the yarrow brown and withering and the thistle gone to silk and seed I'm not sure if this was the effect of the heat or a portent of Winter coming yet the clover thrives always the first to come back after the grass is cut and the chicory mimes its own success having escaped the mower and the heat but into the tangle of green I saw a shadow pass was it perhaps a garter snake or a field mouse quietly feeling their way either way they would prefer that I had not seen them even their ghosts wraiths of a longer night and so Fall exacts her toll with hands as cold as ice only doing her job so the flowers and the trees can rest in expectation of longer days and shorter nights and the promise of better light for some reason the groundhogs stood in attention in the mound in front of their dugout facing away from the street looking at each other's backs o...

While I am not Hansel or Gretel and never expected anyone to leave me a breadcrumb trail so I could find my way back to you yet there was a trail of sorts more piquant than pepporcorns more subtle than bergamot left to my own devices I instinctively followed the blooms made a fetish of purple and took my chance with nothing to lose but the try and so I began letting the flowers show their petals forth proud as pansies morning glory or braided like pigtails Winter vetch and socially awkward as Western aster aster's sister plainly plaintive chicory other flowers figured forth to point the way most of them thistles or so I thought I don't know if it's because of natural selection or the survival of the fittest or because certain adaptations are so successful that it doesn't make any sense to imagine that there should be others or could be others or disappointed with what presents itself and is just there to see and s...

I remember seeing my first monkey puzzle tree and wondering whether it was a prank, not played on the monkey, but a trick or treat for me. But far from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, I found a clue in the thorns of a thistle awaiting its due.  It beckoned me come hither, and in that moment I wished I had the feet of a bird that I might enjoy a perch in the catbird seat.