Resident Tortoise

It’s a beautiful day here in the sand hills of Georgia. These are rare and precious days with the sky so blue and the sun shining so bright. I do believe fall weather has become my favorite.

I had a chance to see a couple of tortoises emerging from their burrows for a day of grazing. The older one has been here since before us and we’ve been here for 22 years. There are several young tortoise burrows around, most likely her offspring.

I was devastated one late night when we had been gone and returned home to find the power company had ravished the right of way where the older tortoise resides. In 22 years, she had not been disturbed. This time they had completely plowed over her burrow so that it was no longer visible. I was afraid they had killed her or that she had come back from grazing to find her burrow gone.

I didn’t see her for a couple weeks or more. I had read online that I could try to dig the burrow back out on the chance the tortoise was trapped. Tentatively and carefully I began digging, a little more each day. I wasn’t certain if I was even digging in the right place. I despaired when I just couldn’t seem to dig into the opening, then one magic day it happened. I opened up just a tiny corner that obviously led down into her burrow.

Over a course of days, I dug more out. Then I returned to attempt digging again to find that she had completely opened up her burrow herself and her tracks were prominent on the mound before the opening! It was still a day or two before I finally got to see her again, but that joyous day did arrive. Now she is back residing in her refreshed burrow and going about her daily business.

I did contact the power company and the company they contract with to do the clearing of the lines. I also contacted the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. I received very little interest or help from any of them. We had put up signs alerting to the presence of gopher tortoises on the right of way, but the signs had become weather beaten and either overlooked or ignored.

The Summer of the Garden Spider

Outside my window, the skies are gray. All the recent rains have turned my yard into a jungle, and the crepe myrtle tree blooms to near its full potential.

The garden spider that took up housekeeping against my storm door bounces in fury at my approach, while his cousins hang casually in finely crafted webs nearby.

Blackberry vines cover the mound in thorny glory, their rich black fruit come and gone until another season, as the wild blueberry just begins to ripen, and the muscadine promises a bounty yet to come.

It’s the end of July, and August looms just around the corner. The drenched summer is flying by as quickly as the bee that buzzes past my window.

Soon the greenery will give way to red and gold leaves, and the banks will be filled with bright yellow fall flowers. An evening chill will replace the humid air, and the garden spiders will fade away into the sunset.

After the Storm

I stood at the edge of Lake Erie at the end of my dirt road and thought about fishing poles and egrets. I’d asked Mary Elizabeth if she thought we should go to Walmart and buy some of those fish out of the aquariums. We could drop ‘em in the mud puddle that rivaled the great lakes, and fashion us up a cane pole. She indignantly replied that those fish were pets, and they were not for eating.

With a sigh of contrition, I gave up fantasies of deep fried glow fish, and remembered I still had a six inch melt from the Subway in my refrigerator.

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Old houses make me sad. Abandoned, and often overgrown with vines and thickets, they stand sentinel to the past. They hold their secrets jealously while seeming to mourn the long gone families that once inhabited them.

The county that I live in is sparsely populated, and many dirt roads still ramble through the countryside. I’ve traveled many of those roads, and run across these derelict homes.

Their gaping windows and sagging doors beckon to me, daring me to discover the barrenness they now enclose.

I ache to know their history. I wonder who originally owned them, and whatever became of them.

I long to step over their thresholds and peer into every corner, searching for some hint of what once was. But alas, being that I am but a trespasser, I wistfully stand at the boundary, and bid them my own farewell.

photos courtesy
Robbie Wright

Scene Out My Window

Late evening and the bluejays are active. The sun has played musical chairs with the clouds today.

Out on the old sand mound, a black cat naps lazily between the blackberry vines. Soon twilight will fall, and perhaps he will go on the prowl for some poor, hapless field mouse.

Humidity hangs in the air like a wet blanket, and the trees seem still until I glance to the top and notice a little stirring in the branches.

The turkey oaks never seem to fare well in the brutal August heat. Spring’s green shimmer fades from their leaves and turns them brown around the edges.

I watch as a lone bird swoops through the oaks and disappears into the woods beyond. And as I drop the curtain on the scene out my window and another day, I imagine she’ll find a place to roost through the long night ahead.

courtesy
Robbie Wright

August in the Georgia Woods

Gone are the sunny days as clouds dominate my Georgia skies. On this gloomy Friday afternoon, a lone buzzard catches a free ride on the wind currents just above the sentinel pines.

A mourning dove comes swooping low across the field. She hovers for a moment over the birdbath, but soon takes flight and darts away. The bluejay lingers a little longer, taking a moment to rest among the turkey oak.

I step outside to cooler, yet humid air. A little rainwater rests in the basin of the birdbath, and the wind has littered it with pine straw.

The dog bounds up to me excitedly, and we take a brisk walk up the sandy road. A chorus of cicadas fills the pine forest,their otherworldly chimes ringing deep in my ear like some alien invaders.

Soon, the sun begins to set. An orange glow emanates from the lingering gray clouds, and a gentle wind rustles through the pines.

courtesy
Robbie Wright

Summer Day in Georgia

Great, billowing clouds sail across my skies today, teasing the thirsty land. The heat wave has broken here in the Coastal Plains of Georgia, as we see our temperatures fall from triple digits into the lower 90’s.

Outside, the birds swoop through the brush to take a sip from the birdbaths, and I’m reminded I need to go and refresh the water. The water warms too quickly in the summer sun.

photo courtesy
Robbie Wright

After the Storm

I step outside to a chorus of July flies, and a night cooled by earlier storms. A long legged spider sits encased in his web on my front porch railing, and water still drips from the overhanging plum branches.

The night is dark as the clouds obscure the moon, and the porch light barely illuminates the damp yard. A green tree frog sits under the light, poised to snare the beetle that climbs, oblivious, inches above him.

I walk across the sand to the edge of the road, and the murky pine forest looms before me. Somewhere nearby, a lone mockingbird sings.

courtesy Robbie Wright

Wednesday Musings

A dragonfly soars past my window as I lift the curtain back, and an airplane drifts against a cloudless sky. Near the ground below, a tiny yellow butterfly flutters in the weeds, pausing only seconds as it flits from leaf to leaf.

As a flock of bluejays sails across the field and disappears into the pine forest, and the occasional bee zips across my vision, I sit here in my air conditioned space and struggle to write.

It’s another hot day in the coastal plains of Georgia, with hotter days to follow, and July is fast approaching. My world seems limited to what is behind my curtain, and I struggle with the need to communicate, yet fall short.

I watch the wind stir the young oaks, and two brown thrashers flying between the branches. A gray cat catches my eye as she preens in the brush, and the afternoon shadows begin to fall.

photography courtesy http://rwrightphotography.blogspot.com/

A Monday in Georgia

Outside the window, my blue skies have given way to gray. As Debby churns in the gulf and tries to decide which way she’ll turn, her associating winds rustle through my oak trees and bow the pines.

A lone buzzard takes advantage of the wind currents and sails over the pine forest, while below, a brown thrasher rummages in the brush.

Rolie, the resident tom, makes a bed in the fall leaves between the yucca plants and the bloom-less jessamine vines. His nemesis, Skittle, prefers to sit straight upright in the sand. He stares at me through the window like some soulless Halloween cat, a dash of white on his collar offsetting his otherwise rich black fur.

As afternoon begins to wind down, a bluejay flies through the oak branches and disappears into the field. The first sunlight I’ve seen all day illuminates the clouds and brightens the pines.

Rolie retreats from his leaf bed, pauses to stretch in the grass, then rounds the corner of the house out of sight.

photography courtesy http://rwrightphotography.blogspot.com/