Spring is finally coming to that corner of Alabama I periodically reside in.
In addition to the wild iris, there are other small flowers. An Oxalis
and a spring beauty
Tag: Photography
Tybee & Savannah National Wildlife Reservation.
Alligators are the stars at the reservation. We visited in mid-March (during Spring break) which is a tad early. Mid-April is better. Still we saw (in addition to the big lizards): white ibis, glossy ibis, house swallows, coots, anhinga, osprey, great white egret, cattle egret, and blue heron. And we weren’t particularly careful about it (there were several other birds we didn’t identify).
Not all the birds were natural. This shows what my cheap mirror lens can do.
This blue heron calmly waited for us to take his picture. (he was fishing).
On Tybee, the gulls were enjoying the washed up jellyfish, when they weren’t strolling about and begging for handouts.
Spring in Alabama.
Nothing literary today. The weather’s too nice to sit for long in front of a computer. After a surprisingly cold January and first half of February, it’s warmed up and the signs of Spring are upon us. The tree frogs hide around our house, but we hear the wood frogs in the wet and swampy parts of the woods.
They’re already wilting in the heat.
Make Mercia Great Again – Offa’s Dyke.
I had a chance to walk on Offa’s dyke. About 800 AD (or CE if you’re a stickler), Offa, the king of Mercia built a wall along the border with Wales. Parts of it still survive.
It was rather dark under all that growth, so the picture isn’t quite as clear as ideal. It wasn’t really a fortification, but more of a definition of the boundary between the two kingdoms, and no the Welsh didn’t pay for it. You can see where the Mercians dug stone and earth from the English side to build it up – usually on the edge of a ridge where there wasn’t room to grab soil from the Welsh.
The trail follows the wall for about four kilometers. We came back through Beech’s farm (a good looking campsite) and down “Miss Graces’ lane.”
There’s a ‘goddess’ offering near the Devil’s pulpit (since Tintern Abbey is in ruins, I guess he’s winning).
The pulpit, itself, with the ruins visible in the haze below. The Devil was supposed to preach to the monks from here.
English Robbins have set up near here. There were at least to male birds, both begging and chirping loudly to each other. (Get off my lawn?).
Long-horned cattle that reminded me of Aurochs as they moved through the forest were in the woods near our car.
Trebuchet Balls
These, from a disused corner in Harlech castle in Wales show that they really did fling stones from Trebuchets. 
The gateway to the castle.
Draft cover
This shows a draft cover for the sci-fi-fantasy-romance that my co-author and I have put together. It’s what were doing right now for weekend writing warriors. I’ve also put a couple of chapters up on here
Wonder and Joy
Robinson Jeffers, 1887 – 1962
The things that one grows tired of—O, be sure
They are only foolish artificial things!
Can a bird ever tire of having wings?
And I, so long as life and sense endure,
(Or brief be they!) shall nevermore inure
My heart to the recurrence of the springs,
Of gray dawns, the gracious evenings,
The infinite wheeling stars. A wonder pure
Must ever well within me to behold
Venus decline; or great Orion, whose belt
Is studded with three nails of burning gold,
Ascend the winter heaven. Who never felt
This wondering joy may yet be good or great:
But envy him not: he is not fortunate.
The Tyger
William Blake, 1757 – 1827
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Willow Poem
William Carlos Williams, 1883 – 1963
It is a willow when summer is over,
a willow by the river
from which no leaf has fallen nor
bitten by the sun
turned orange or crimson.
The leaves cling and grow paler,
swing and grow paler
over the swirling waters of the river
as if loath to let go,
they are so cool, so drunk with
the swirl of the wind and of the river—
oblivious to winter,
the last to let go and fall
into the water and on the ground.
Modern Love
John Keats, 1795 – 1821
And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.
(Bath rather than London for the image.)