My daughter Mel said she heard a whippoorwill a couple of nights ago.  Seems like it’s a bit early, but we’ve had a pretty warm spring, so maybe they think it’s already summer.  I sure do like to hear those little guys – gotta be one of the most beautiful of all bird songs.  At least I think so, and it just puts you in mind of a nice warm summer night.  I write songs for a hobby and I try to come up with lines about whippoorwills and jasmine.  In fact, I think I already have some of that, probably in more than one song, but in this day and age with all the electronic noise that passes for music, I doubt if a night bird song would interest many of us.  And the poor bird is bad ugly if you ever see one.  It sort of looks like it’s part toad – big gaping mouth. I always wondered how a creature that ugly could make a sound so sweet.  But I suppose that lady whippoorwill to whom he’s singing doesn’t look ugly to him. Oh yeah, and if you hear a whippoorwill during the daytime, it’s not a whippoorwill, it’s a mockingbird. And the mockingbird has the song down – you can’t tell the difference.

The pond frogs are out in force.  That’s another nice relaxing night sound here in the south.  And crickets and cicadas.  It seems like the woodland smells also come alive at night.  Even though it’s technically the south, we’re still too far north to have wild yellow jasmine, and I sore miss having it around because that little frail vine with fragile little yellow trumpet flowers it the sweetest smell you’ll ever enjoy wafting through the silence on a summer evening.  If you are in the deep south and live near the woods, it would be well worth the effort to go out and find one.  They are definitely odiferous – (is that even a word?)!  And try not to feed the ticks while you’re out foraging for jasmine.  Our ticks in the Ozarks are especially voracious and come at you hungry – seriously, they bring a bottle of bar-b-que sauce and wear a bib.  I have a special place in my heart for ticks.  I got one of those tick-borne diseases and it was a miserable two years plus – extreme pain.  Never mind – just wear insect repellent. 

And enjoy the red buds, too.

On some late evenings, we are treated to acappella gigs by coyotes – those little fellows know how to take the stage, too.  I get game cam pictures of coyotes pretty often.  But we can’t boast too much about our coyotes, because from what I see and read about, those little canids make their selves at home just about anywhere, so everybody has probably seen them in the wild – or maybe in the not so wild.  Being a big-time dog lover, I really like coyotes, and wolves too, but wolves are really scarce in this country anymore.  Ranchers didn’t want to compete with them, so they got slaughtered.  I think it’s a shame – it’s one of those things that if it had got a little higher priority, we could have figured out a way to allow them to survive.  I’ve heard them in the woods at night before and their song is beautifully eerie, and when you think about how few of them are left, the song is also kind of sad. Coexistence seems to be such tree-hugger tendency, and I guess I’ve grown in that direction as I’ve aged – no one takes the time anymore to pay attention to the needs of our fellow creatures and we continue to lose them and we’re going to miss them terribly.

It’s a rainy April morning, a little bit cool but not uncomfortably so, and the birds are singing the “Our yard needs to be mowed” song.  The day before yesterday I noticed the first of the bummingbirds scouting around where I normally have their feeders hanging, so I filled them and they are starting to show up in scant numbers, but that will increase soon.  Those little fellows can get vicious too!  Once in a while they slam into each other – on purpose – and you can actually hear the thump.  One or more of them will eat their fill, but not leave.  They light on a nearby wire or branch and watch the feeders and when another bird approaches, the watchman will attack the poor unsuspecting hungry bird. Thump! That’s why I call them assassin birds. Sure, they’re cute and all, but everything’s not always what it seems.

We have a few what we call wet-weather creeks on the farm.  I guess they are called that due to the fact that they never have water in them unless it’s raining.  Some of us like to go rock hunting in them when it dries up.  So, we get to feed ticks and find interesting rocks at the same time.

My old girl Dusty likes to help me and usually tries to get between me and the particular rocks I’m trying to look among.  She’s pretty good at it, too, and if there are any water puddles, she goes swimming and then always gets close enough to me before she shakes the water off to share it with me.  She’s a very thoughtful little old gal. She has a flea and tick collar, and those things work well. I need one for me.

Don’t even ask – no telling what you’re liable to find in these spring woods.

The dogwoods are in bloom right now, and they are spectacularly beautiful!  A couple of years ago we were treated to what I believe was the prettiest dogwood show I’ve ever seen.  This year they are nice, but not as showy as they were then. I think dogwood blooms like that only happen once or twice in a lifetime. What a treat it is to see!

I found an acorn that had a tiny oak tree being born out of it.  I guess it’s the first time I’ve ever seen (or at least paid attention to) one at that stage.

Just think, someday this little guy is going to be a mighty oak tree looking down at us walking in its shade with a spring breeze stirring in its boughs.  The shell it came from is lying there discarded like a pair of boots someone has outgrown.  In case I forgot to mention it, I’m not a photographer so just ignore that shadow in the picture.

There are lots of little wildflowers growing everywhere.  I couldn’t start to name them all, but if my late brother Paul was still around, he’d probably be able to tell me what they are. Before you get all excited, I do recognize the dandelion.

Some of the oak trees start out with colors that almost look like fall when they first start to bud out.

There’s a whole nuther world outside your door. Get out there and see it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little walk in the woods as much as I have.

Today is a mixed bag of weather here in the Ozark woods.  A few years ago, my grandson Matthew and I built this really cool little cabin up on stilts out here on a wooded hillside and it has a nice roof so if the rain starts, Dusty, my faithful old border collie mix girl, and I should be able to stay dry if we get the forecasted cloudburst today.  I went all out and ran electrical circuits so I can plug the building into a small portable generator and have a porch light, interior light, and receptacles for temporary low power loads like this laptop I’m writing this post on, and the music box. 

I started out with this thing as if I was just going to make some sort of lean-to for a deer stand, but my daughter Casie, Matthew’s mom, got wind of what I was doing and decided to apply her engineering background; she started by making “helpful” suggestions, and the next thing you know Matthew and I are up here hanging plywood sheets way up in the air using the backhoe bucket as a crane, eventually building a Marriot Hotel.  We put these neat little windows complete with screens in the walls, double walled and insulated it, and as mentioned, ran wiring and installed lights and receptacles.  It’s a wonderful place to retreat and get away from the house and noise.

During construction as I was putting up the interior walls and before installing the door, a little mama wren found herself a nice cozy spot inside what was to become an insulated space between the interior and exterior walls.  Of course, once I realized she was interloping on my cabin and had brazenly claimed my wall for her nest, I had to halt that part of my construction, and before you knew it, there was a lot of raspy screeching going on in the nest, and that poor little girl worked as only a loving mama can, fetching grubs and grasshoppers for them, and somehow, she managed.  I had other areas of work to do, so I got used to hearing them and watching as she, at first kind of apprehensively, darted in and out to feed them and take out the trash.

I managed to peek in the nest once, and thought there were three gaping little mouths, but I tried to stay away as much as I could.  Mama got to where she didn’t mind me being in here at all.  This all went on for a couple of weeks, and then one day she flew in, and it was a bit odd that she used a different entrance than she had been using.  She didn’t go to the nest but stood on the very top of the wallboard in the opening under the roof and chirped until the little ones came out of their nest one at a time.  She flitted outside to a nearby tree and continued to chirp and call for them until there were four (I didn’t see all of them when I peeked in earlier) little fledglings in a row on the wallboard trying to work up enough nerve to make the jump out into the unknown.  One by one they clumsily jumped out and flitted and fluttered into the tree from where she had called, banging into the trunk, but somehow hanging on.  Before long, she was flying ahead of them as they all found their tiny wings and within just a few minutes they mastered the art of flight! 

Mama, with babies in tow headed down toward the wet-weather creek, and that’s where they were when I heard the last of her chirps and flight training instructions.  I never saw them again, at least that I know of.  I came back inside and started to remove their lodgings, but not knowing much about wild birds, I decided to leave the nest in case they needed to come back, maybe to sleep in the night, but they never did.  They were gone for good. When I started removing their little nest, I found myself thinking and wondering if they might have memories of their infancy there and resent having their childhood home torn down, but I realized that wild critters don’t necessarily have attachments to things like us people do.  At any rate, I quickly found that I really missed their fussing and mama coming and going – I didn’t realize how attached to them I had become until they were gone, but my consolation was that they were out in the wild as nature intended, chasing their own grasshoppers, and finally I could finish that wall!

I’ve been posting about spring lately, but I just can’t get enough of this nice warm weather and green shoots are just beginning to show up on most of the trees.  I get just as excited when the fall colors burst onto the scene, but for now we get to anticipate springtime and it looks like there’s going to be quite the dogwood show, maybe as beautiful as we had in 2021.  Maybe that little mama wren will find another cozy spot nearby to raise more babies.

Enjoy the spring ya’ll!

I originally posted this one a couple of days ago and retracted it for a little more editing – I have to get better at proofreading before publishing…

* We are where we are because we haven’t tried hard enough to be somewhere else.

* If you don’t like your situation, as long as you have breath in your body you are free to change it. 

*People who conduct their lives in obeisance to desire for riches are the saddest and yet harbor the potential to be the vilest of all creatures.

* Keep in mind that this body we inhabit causes us much despair and grief and is surely to be discarded on that day when our spirit is freed – like an animal that has only known life in a cage.  The face I see in the mirror is not me, it’s simply a part of this container in which my spirit dwells until that freedom arrives.

I walked out into the woods yesterday to take a long drought from a new cup of God’s creation – it was a beautiful early spring morning with a plethora of songbirds singing like they demanded to be heard.  Indeed, I spent a lot of the morning listening to them.  They sang of greenery beginning to transform twigs and limbs, as heaven is about to reveal a majestic dogwood bloom.  Their song welcomed a gentle breeze from somewhere south that has come to visit our obscure Ozark hollow. The song indeed brings with it a gift of warmest elation that only a morning of God’s springtime grace can provide, but mostly it allows me to understand and appreciate that I am truly a blessed soul to be in the hallowed company of the Lord Jesus on this glorious day.

An aged crow came near and watched as I pondered events going on in the other world.  This modern time in which we find ourselves has brought the ability to hear of and see things happening in faraway places which people never could do before. Sadly, nowadays most of this news is not good.  The old crow behaved as though he knew what I was thinking.  Did he share my sympathy for those who cannot enjoy the rapture of a fine spring morning because they are ensnared in conflicts over which they have no control?  Was he wishing, as I was, that there was some way to make peace in places devastated by war and end the needless death and destruction?  Maybe a way to bring food to the tables of the destitute and hungry?

A lemon-yellow butterfly gently wafted by on the breeze in search of early flowers, at first glance seemingly oblivious to the vanity and evil of the travail we humans bring upon ourselves.  It further reminded me that there is another aspect of this existence, one that is served to us from another place – a place of peace, of wholesomeness, and of serenity where God-given wisdom demands that we should seek to be, a place where the spirit can prosper.  I wondered what, if that beautiful little insect could talk, it would say to me, but then I became astonished to realize that it was talking – saying profound things I could indeed hear, but only when I listened closely, for it was actually my own heart speaking without words, of things I already knew, but to which I hardly gave deserved thought.

The gravity of events in the world is beyond the ability of most to comprehend, but the pain of those on the receiving end of such terrible events, who often lose their (often piteous) earthly possessions, their cherished homes, but most of all their loved ones – taken from them by untimely deaths at the hands of other human beings – must be unbearable. Their grief consumes all of us whether or not we choose to acknowledge our part in it.  As the blood of Abel cried to God from the ground, so the blood of murdered innocents in diverse places cries to any and all who might join, or at least empathize with their pleas for justice, that is every member of the human experience, including those who understand nothing beyond foolish celebrity gossip, sports, or decadent fast foods.  The question my butterfly asks is, “Are there any who will listen?”  Sadly, I do not have an answer for him.  Do you?

A poor carpenter’s son once said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”  That’s the same God who creates crows and butterflies, and with His mighty breath, sends us a springtime breeze.  He’s the One who continuously beckons us with subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle messaging that urges us to listen to our inner selves where dwells the heart on which He has written laws by which He intends us to live.  If we all could find the courage and determination that also comes from Him, we could work together to put an end to those conflicts and bloodshed would undoubtedly cease.  What an incredible honor – to be recognized by all of heaven and earth as a child of the Great and Almighty – the Most High God!

The creatures and forests of spring ever bode a hopeful time, a time of joy and reverie heralded by new sunny days of warmth and optimism.  We have opportunity, as tiny green shoots emerging from dormant twigs, to seek the Creator from whom all blessings flow so that we might blossom into the beings that He has always intended us to become.  We have for now, the opportunity to seek Jesus Christ, whose sovereignty, love, and friendship we would do well to invite and to inculcate in our lives.  He is the only answer in these troubled times.  The ONLY answer.  I know this because of all the springtime creatures, the birds and butterflies, that kept screaming it in my ears this morning.  And because there are horrible things happening in this world that would not be happening if we only listen to the wisdom God put in our hearts. That wisdom can be understood and appreciated by actually living in and taking our rightful place as part – indeed the crowning essence of – His creation, among the birds and spring flowers, and our fellow human beings which we should regard as nothing less than precious, according to His own wisdom and grace.

Men of ill repute have arrogated to themselves unmerited authority, and vast earthly fortunes. They gather in dark halls to shuffle the cards and deal misery and Godlessness to multitudes, even nations, of the less fortunate who can only attempt to play the miserable hands they are dealt.  Needy and destitute people in faraway places, even in our own country, plead for relief and yet they suffer and starve, because the “gods” to which they plead are not gods at all. 

God, the Father of Jesus Christ, to Whom I pray gives relief in the form of peace in my heart – peace and comfort which is multiplied and displayed in its fullness upon the majestic arrival of springtime!

Get right with Jesus and enjoy the spring and His abundant love while there’s still time!

Early spring in the Ozarks.  I’ve finally found the place in the world I’ve been looking for all of my life.  It’s a place where you can walk outside and as soon as you get through the door, you’re in the early springtime woods.  You take a deep breath of late winter and watch spring songbirds starting to show up, they’re tuning their whistles and chirps getting ready to find mates to help build summer homes somewhere among the thickets. Twigs and branches already have swollen nodes waiting to bloom, slight tinges of ochre-green and light brown are beginning to paint the hardwood forest patiently waiting for the last frost to pass away north.  Sometimes if the timing and temperature is right, fogs can appear on the land and it can be pretty with bright sunshine above glinting off trees and twigs and sun rays stabbing through to shine on remnants of frost on the ground.

Out in the wild parts, black bear cubs will soon take their first tentative steps behind sleepy and hungry mamas out of the darkness and into a bright world of things that need to be explored and climbed.  Feathered mothers-to-be are already negotiating with nature’s realtors for prime locations to build and deposit this year’s egglings, all the while cheerfully singing and checking grocery locations for places to find fare to cram into little open beaks surely to be hissing and squawking for attention soon.   

We’re getting plenty of late winter rains and the wet-weather creeks have been running aplenty, which is good news for a nice dogwood bloom to follow in April.  They will complement the forest décor of red bud (which is actually beautiful pink, but pink bud just doesn’t sound as catchy as red bud).  I’ve heard those red bud blossoms make a tasty jelly, but haven’t tried it yet.  The dogwoods are especially pretty if the timing is right and they bloom just before the greenery gets going, because if they are late, they’re harder to see for all the new green leaves.  If they do their thing nice and early, the woods can resemble rivers of white and it’s spectacular – one of my favorite sights that occurs in the woods.

A lot of people don’t pay it much attention, but if you look carefully at the oaks as they begin to put on new leaves, the new shoots can be as red as black gums in the fall, they’re just not as big and showy as fall colors.  We have a tree or shrub around here, I think they’re called autumn olives, they put on tiny white flowers that smell close to the same as gardenia, just not nearly as loud, but if you get close enough, they’re a real treat to sniff.  That’ll be a bit later though.  In late summer those little trees put on a red fruit about the size of a bb that’s really tart but sweet.

Before long, there’ll be flocks of high-flying snow geese in endless v patterns – thousands of tiny white honking specks flowing across an indigo ocean, itself a beautiful marvel to behold.  They know where they are headed – to fields away north. When they come through this area, they are usually so high up you can barely see them, but it’s worth the squint to watch and hear their show.

It won’t be long now and there’ll be several little spotted white-tail fawns wobbling around the woods, chasing mom for a bit of milk here and there, and curiously nibbling at new grass shoots.  Daffodils and dandelions are already showing off – along with forsythia they are the first colors to appear in the spring.

Lots of trouble going on in the world of people these days, and I write about it, but there’s always a balance with good things created by God for us to enjoy, and I would be remiss not to mention the things for which we should be thankful. Spring is almost here. Get outside and breathe.