Camille has put a lot of work, love, and intention into this garden next to our front door. It is now mostly pollinator friendly perennials – Sweet William, Miniature Dahlias, Echinaceas, Butterfly Weed, Milkweed, Gladiolus, Purple Tradescantia, and some remnant Mondo Grass.

We wandered out after dinner to have a look at what was happening in our little slice of the world.

A wheel bug nymph and carpenter bee checking each other out.

Echinaceas are great! So many colors, so dependable on their spring return. Each one is like a firework caught in time.

Retirement is great! I highly recommend it. Unless you’re a bee.

Raleigh and nearby Research Triangle Park draw cosmopolitan talent like our friends Heyward and Caroline. What a nice surprise to receive their invitation to Art in Bloom 2021 at the North Carolina Museum of Art on June 6.

‘Twas a joyful vibe at the museum and we dove right in to absorb the colors and the light.

Here’s how Art in Bloom works: Flower artists choose a painting or other object from the museum’s permanent collection and create a floral arrangement that dances with, or mimics the piece.

Some entries are stand-alone creations unassociated with a work of art, like this giant arrangement meant to evoke, “the feelings of freedom and movement and the excitement of sailing.”

I stood in front of “A Swan Attacked By A Dog” trying, and failing, to imagine how I would depict this mesmerizing pair in blooms.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry totally captured the frightening fierceness of the terrible swans who lurked in the rushes at the end of the street behind my childhood home on City Island. The dog doesn’t scare me at all, and I have no doubt who will win this battle.

Bucolic as heck, this was another picture I got myself tangled up in. Two horses of entirely different temperament — one placid, one a spook — and their languid handler on a fine summer day. I love how the bay is washing out his mouth, sticking to the business at hand, while the black fixates on something across the pond, prepared to prove his spirit.

I found the art aficionados nearly as captivating as the art.

Heyward laughed out loud when he saw this painting. “It’s 2020!” he said and so I asked him to take my picture with Caroline as proof of our endurance and survival.

A mirrored box drew us like moths to a flame.

Inside, a flurry of pulsing light threatened to run away with our eyeballs. The experience reminded me of my Nana’s kaleidoscope. My brothers and I would point it to the sky to maximize the colors.

For whatever reason we had no such toy at home and I suppose the drive to see my grandmother and the anticipation of finding the kaleidoscope there made it all the more fun. The art museum is like that, a box of toys just waiting to be played with a mere thirty minutes from home.

Meanwhile, there was a bonsai exhibit happening outside.

Artist Diane Makgill explains how her arrangement was inspired by the painting below.

You come, you see, you are wowed by the colors, you get caught up in images of horses and whatnot, but it isn’t until you encounter one of the artists that you realize all the thought and wonder that goes into every piece.

How fortunate I am to live so close to Raleigh and for friends like Caroline and Heyward!

This apparent wealth of winged delights belies the truth. Butterflies were noticeably absent this year, and our milkweed survived the season untouched by monarchs.

These large moths are so birdlike in their movements you do double and triple takes before realizing you should run inside for the camera and shoot.

The Webby Things

By early July, several large garden spiders set up shop, turning tomato and okra harvests into a dance resembling the limbo.

One fine July morning, we walked through a garden of young pines near the dam. We were taken with their upright buds of new growth (called candles) and upon closer inspection, discovered a miniscule spider clinging to one of the spires.

Busy Bees

Bees relentlessly worked the garden all day and, as far as we can tell, slept in potato flowers at night. In the morning when the blooms began opening, we would watch the sluggish bees crawl out and fly off.

Close  Encounters

Summing Up

The turtle is an apt mascot for 2020. We mostly hunkered down, doing our part to limit the spread of the virus, in retreat beneath the dome of our house — solitary, and complete.

See Critter Pics – Part One

A young white-tailed deer high steps past our rental car during our stay at Southern Shores.

It appears that this youngster is clacking the way young horses do, an open mouthed gesture that says, “Don’t hurt me. I’m just a baby!”

Bob was sitting on the back porch just minding his business when something prompted him to stand up. Turning, he examined the back of his chair and witnessed a little high drama between a spider and an ant. He captured the moment with his cell phone.

Another cell phone capture: a click beetle that took a liking to Bob’s pants. Bob has long said that if there’s a bug in the room, it will automatically seek him out. It appears this also holds true in the great outdoors.

This small beetle has an arduous journey ahead, prompting the question, “Why did the beetle cross the road?”

But look at how quickly it makes its way over the asphalt. “What the heck is that?” we said when we saw that ball rolling across Jordan Lake Dam. We didn’t even think dung beetles were a thing in North Carolina.

Honestly, we don’t even have to do drugs to get into the oh-no-zone. That nature thing, she is her own drug.

Mr. Green Lips is lord of the ditch along the Moncure Pittsboro Road.

Bob added a lily to the breeding pond outside our guest room and it really does it for us when we see the little frogs making use of the pads. They are so seriously cute.

This may be a leopard frog, perhaps a second species getting it on in the feel good pond.

Dragonflies make me nostalgic for our friends Jan and Tineke of  Green Hills Ranch in Belize. We spent many a happy hike or evening in their company when we lived across the Chiquibul Road at Mountain Equestrian Trails. Jan and Tineke studied butterflies and damselflies and instilled in us an appreciation for binomial nomenclature.

One grasshopper does not a plague make. In fact, this was the only grasshopper we saw all season. Instead we suffered a plague of paranoia over invisible aerosols.

A Green Tree Frog and either a Cooter or a Slider from this year’s week-long stay on the Outer Banks for Bob’s Birthday Beach Extravaganza.

I often sit up at my desk and lean towards the glass in our office windows to get a better look at someone in our orchard, usually a squirrel, sometimes a rabbit.

We have not been alone during our pandemic-driven isolation thanks to the critters around our rural home. Although we miss our dear two-legged friends, Mother Nature is doing her best to help us feel connected.

Hungry for more? Check out Critter Pics – Part Two.

What a year, eh? — so virulently packed with death, pestilence, and rhetoric. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I saw the election results. If it hadn’t been for the birds, I’m not sure I would have made it.

Birds keep me grounded. Watching them flit around up there in the sky makes my life seem dimensionally stable in comparison. It seems that no matter what’s going on in my spun-up human world, they confidently go about their business: hatching, eating, fledging, scavenging, and breeding. Yet, upon closer inspection, I realize they are also dealing with death, pestilence, and perhaps rhetoric.

Bob and I started a joint bird list when we threw in together twenty-eight years ago and it now included four hundred species, pending Bob’s sighting of a Yellow-throated warbler. A new bird does not make it onto the list unless we both see it.

Here are a few of those birds, as seen through the lenses of our new cameras between May and November.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are extremely competitive. This beautiful male sits on a hanging planter near the sugar water feeder, daring anyone else to dine. I’d like to think I am not this proprietary with my daily feed.

Coming in for a landing, he keeps his eyes peeled for trouble.

It must feel good to finally reach his goal and take a long drink, although I can see from the upward tilt of his eye that he is still vigilant.

This female has found a workaround – the canna flowers in the front yard are seldom policed by the males.

Confident and bright, she approaches the canna flower. I love, love, love her little feet! I many be anthropomorphizing here, but I don’t see wariness or worry in her eye.

I can relate to how completely she fixates on her food.

Canada Goose

A pair of Canadian geese swim serenely, male slightly ahead. This is the first time I have seen any geese at all in the pond on Carl Foushee Road. I think about how they mate for life, a thought that brings me comfort and peace until I realize that Bob is not standing by my side. I have left him at home where he is filling his mind with words and numbers for pay. Maybe Bob will be with me the next time I stop to gaze upon a lazy pair of geese.

Great Blue Heron

“If there is such a thing as reincarnation,” I tell Bob, “I’d like to return as either a horse or a heron.” Herons are the Geminis of the bird world, seamlessly melding ungainly with stately.

We have yet to see an embarrassing heron moment. They always seem poised regardless of their clunky webbed feet or wind-fluffed feathers.

It is unusual to see a Black vulture so close to a blue heron. We wonder if they hang out together often and why we’ve never noticed before. Also, who joined whom, why didn’t the other just hop or fly away, and is the vulture eating a scrap from the heron’s latest meal?

Black Vulture

This was one of the very first photos we took with the Sony a6100, an old, Black vulture. We think he/she is old because of the white showing in its wing feathers.

What do you suppose these guys are talking about? I find Black vultures irresistibly cute.

After I confess my inclination to walk over and touch a grounded Black vulture, Bob keeps his eye on me when in their presence.

One of the things I like about vultures is that they appear non-assuming and self-effacing.

Others might sense dark menace in this vulture perching so close to razor wire, but to me the bird’s expression seems dolefully hopeful.

Spreading his winds like solar collectors, a vulture welcomes the morning sun.

A Black vulture sits on the rocks as Bob inches toward it, and although the bird occasionally shifts as if to launch, it remains sitting until Bob can get a proper portrait.

Bob sees the reflection of himself standing atop Jordan Lake Dam in the bird’s eye.

Vulture beaks, Bob tells me, grow like fingernails, as do the beaks of all birds. This explains why a well-outfitted parakeet cage should include a cuttlebone for beak sharpening, and why I’ve seen wrens and bluebirds rub their beaks against branches and fenceposts.

Shore Birds

We encountered groups of Sanderlings while vacationing at Southern Shores and noticed that they often rest on one leg. I failed to grasp why they might find standing on one leg relaxing until the next time I assumed standing tree pose, one foot tucked up against my thigh, arms stretched skyward.

A Lesser Black-backed gull struts down the beach. Measuring nearly two feet, they have every right to be confident about their place in the coastal pecking order.

It takes a very secure bird to stroll about in full makeup.

Gulls and terns lounge on pilings in Duck, North Carolina.

Bob caught this image of an airborne gull. It appears suspended, much as I have been for the past few weeks, wondering if number 45 will be the last American president as my father predicts.

When Bob noticed two gulls arguing over rights to a piece of garbage, he readied his camera and followed their epic tussle as it rose into the sky.
Clearly not letting go, the garbage gull continues swooping and evading the pirate gull for several minutes.

Finally, the pirate breaks away, squawking in defiance and defeat.

Despite the illusion that birds have a copacetic life, I find they mirror my doubts and frustrations as often as my triumphs. I am learning to view myself objectively, to catch myself in moments of grace like the stately herons, in dishevelment like the fledgling mockingbird, and in mid-air meltdown like the squawking gull.