Dinosaurs, LEGOS and toads, oh dear
No better way to celebrate a big thaw than an impromptu field trip. We rounded up kids, friends and friends’ kids and headed for the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville. Our first stop at the Arboretum was the Baker Exhibit Center. Denise had checked online before...
You yellow-bellied sapsucker
In my youth never did a B-western movie make it to the end without the bad guy being cornered and denounced for the “yellow-bellied sapsucker” he was. Yellow-belly and/or yellow-bellied has for various etymological reasons been associated with cowardice. Sapsucker, I...
Rules rule and rulers rue it
I mentioned the fact a couple of weeks ago (Jan. 1 – “Time to rejoin the “battle outside”) that NC House Bill 74 the Regulatory Reform Act of 2013 was set to begin the process of reviewing – readopting and/or repealing all state rules and that the first rules under...
CBC gods smile on Lake J
The annual Balsam Christmas Bird Count (CBC) took place Saturday Jan., 4. In the weeks prior to the count many regular Balsam CBC participants, like me, had been crying in our eggnog. Bob Olthoff, long time compiler for the count was calling Lake Junaluska a “liquid...
Time to rejoin the “battle outside”
This appears especially true in the Old Home State where the (first in over 100 years) Republican triad used the 2013 session of the General Assembly to lay waste to decades of progressive environmental policy and programs that produced a state that was a leader in...
A white Christmas
We touched on this winter’s irruption of snowy owls a couple of weeks ago but these birds continue to pop up, not only in the Carolinas but across the South and into the mid-section of the country. I recently heard of one sighting in northeastern Oklahoma and one in...