Yesterday we had some thunder and then hail. Even standing a couple feet away, I could smell the herbs from this barrel because the hail bruised them.

As the leaves fall from my contorted filbert, the beautiful twisted branches come back into view. Those yellow pods are called "catkins." According to Wikipedia, pale yellow catkins on a filbert are male, while female catkins are small and red. I can't...

As the leaves come off the trees, you can see where the birds lived during the spring and summer. In the Barbara Pym novel Less Than Angels, after the death of a loved one a character reads or remembers these lines of poetry: He that hath found some...

The position of this leaf is pretty unlikely, but nature placed it there. A pretty tree in our back yard. Our neighbors' tree had very pretty color. Those leaves are gone now. A Japanese maple shrub in front of our house had pretty color.

This is the tree in our cul-de-sac with its leaves in color. Here it is with the leaves pretty much gone. From Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen: "And how does dear, dear Norland look?" cried Marianne. "Dear, dear Norland," said Elinor,...