The University Farm: Seasonal Charnel House

After parking, I watched two men get out of a truck and, while a third stayed behind the wheel, walk to the farm building's center back door, where they unlocked it and disappeared inside.

I minded my own business, wandered into the new hoophouse, ambled through, headed up the side of the larger hoophouse, then around it, all the time taking photos. 

When I noticed the dessicated butterflies, beetles, flies, bees stacked inside the interior folds of plastic, and, taken aback, thought of northern European still lifes of dead rabbits and birds and stacked fish on groaning boards, awaiting preparation and consumption, those reminders of fleeting time and death awaiting us all -- at that very moment, I heard a voice.

Looking to my right, I saw two of the men dragging a whitetail deer carcass (field-dressed and knife-slit-belly facing me) toward that very same door, swing it up the steps, go inside briefly, then come out, lock the door, and get in the truck. The third pocketed his smart phone, joined them, and they drove away.

Culling season in Sewanee, the season of darkness.

Last-minute Shopping at Lowe's

Whew! They have everything I want!

The Horrid Voice of Science

by Vachel Lindsay

"There's machinery in the butterfly;
          There's a mainspring to the bee;
There's hydraulics to a daisy;
          And contraptions to a tree.

"If we could see the birdie
          That makes the chirping sound
With x-ray, scientific eyes,
          We could see the wheels go round."

And I hope all men
Who think like this
Will soon lie
Underground.

Please, Sir, I Want Some More

I returned to Lydia's and Mary's gardens today, thinking I might find the Black Swallowtail caterpillar or others like him.

Someone filled my bowl again, and it was good.

Gulf Fritillary and Bee

Gulf Fritillary

Long-tailed Skipper

Long-tailed Skipper

Monarch

Sulphur

Dewy Gulf Fritillary

 I'll queue up again in the morning.

The Weight of a Small Thing

It's a small thing I do every day -- walk and look with my camera.  It's a small thing to write a blog post that would go unread were it not for a former student who religiously reads each post.  (Yes, you know who you are, W.)  It's a small thing to snap photos, throw most away, tinker with a few others, and upload one each day to a gallery. 

But there's nothing small about the effects. I see the world as if new every day.  I feel more fully myself in those moments when I walk and snap. I am more grateful than I have ever been for the small things -- legs that walk, eyes that see, ears that hear.  I have learned to love Sewanee for its smallness and the beings that live in it. 

I wear a kind of light weight now, like the bee burying its head in a zinnia: for a moment, it is mine -- all of it -- and then I fly away.

A Fullness

Not quite summer, not quite fall. 
An overlay of seasons
in shocks of color. 
A fullness --
cobalt sky,
Golden Gate-orange cosmos,
carmine leaves sweeping the lake --
fills my heart like pollen
stuffed into a bee's basket.