• In defense of ‘trash trees’

    Apparently, they do need defending. A couple of weeks ago, on the radio from Austin, a Texas tree specialist used that expression dismissively, as in cut ‘em down, get rid

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  • Aliens on a mission?

    It was one of the last nights of The Big Freeze, 16 January, 2018. Doing a new-normal walk-about to check for frozen pipes, WHAT WAS THAT? It couldn’t be! No

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  • A New York Kid’s Ethnic Christmas

    [This article first appeared in 2004 when my daughter and I had a website together. I hope that new desktodirt readers will enjoy it, and that long-time followers will appreciate

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  • Rabbit unmasked!

    FINALLY! An image of a rabbit in flight is captured. It’s very tough to get a decent one, even with a camera at the ready; you can’t predict when the

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  • George Washington, Henry Winkler and Me

    [A story from years ago that still has relevance today.] ***”I tell her ‘No,’ and add ‘men’s colognes and soaps are a real tough sell on me. They smell too

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Pooch Lost and Found

It started out as a simple morning ride down a pastoral road. Wait, what is that over there to the left? It’s a loose dog. His tongue is hanging; he’s racing frantically along the road going in the opposite direction. Am I going to callously drive by an opportunity to save an abandoned canine? I could at least take him

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Sun settings

I used to think that the only real sunsets were those you’d see from a shoreline, or perched on a vacation home deck overlooking the wavy expanse. There was something about water – and the sun being gobbled up by it – that made them cool. This probably started by watching all those old movies where the guy gets the

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You’re all wet!

“You’re all wet!” That is a recently extinct expression meaning you don’t know what you are talking about. But in terms of body chemistry it reflects reality: humans are between fifty and seventy-five percent water. (*) We can’t live without it. Extra-terrestrially speaking, our need for water even dominates the current discussion about sending humans to Mars. [To join the

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Just Horsing Around

A couple of weeks ago I made a trip to Golden Curls Ranch outside Dallas in Kaufman, Texas. The BLM’s [federal Bureau of Land Management] website put me onto Angie’s place, as I have come to call it. Angie Gaines is a horse-lover whose enthusiasm and affection for her equine family – especially curly mustangs – is contagious.  Oh, I almost

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It’s CayenneThyme

As you can read in the piece Drat That Dirt, I have been relentlessly trying to grow things in amended black gumbo soil. So far, no luck. But recent developments from soil nutrient tests are pushing me into another reality (more about that shortly, in another article). Meanwhile, my agricultural bent has been channeled by Nature; or serendipity, you might

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The daToad family branches out

An admission of confusion begins this episode. Fuzzy and family are toads not frogs, but not “true frogs.” Please keep reading [*] and perhaps by the end of this piece you will have made up your own mind. To continue……… So, I’ve been concerned: Fuzzy and the Mrs. hasn’t been seen in a couple of weeks. Their dugout looks deserted. But

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Eeensie Weensie Spider

I have a nagging question on my mind: how smart are these creatures that live amongst me (or better said, that I live with)? Can a frog in the wild be taught by us to do something, anything? A bird? A snake? What about human intervention modifying a spider’s intentions? Around nine p.m. many evenings, I open my door to

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