Rock Game
The dog plays a game with rocks and water. It is her favourite game, and involves the humans throwing endless stones—not too big and not …
Crazy with Green
In the clearing by the pond I am surprised by lupines, planted here by an unknown hand. In the winter we walked over this place …
Quarter Note
My daughter made me this notebook cover when I first started writing The Madrigal. It has been filled with several years’ worth of book notes …
Blue
It has been raining hard for weeks. The ground is sodden, the million colours of green running rampant: wildflowers, weeds, brambles, ferns, leaves, needles. We …
Wooden Heart
Near the top of the hill is a clearing strewn with plastic buckets, tractor tires, a rusted swing set, a wooden doghouse with a corrugated …
Frogs Eggs
They are easy to see in the clear water of the pond, attached to the stems of last year’s cattails. There are hundreds of them, …
Old Fence
Two trees have grown up inside a roll of rusted sheep fence. This woodland was once a pasture; cows and sheep stomped their feet and …
Dog Violets
It is both easy and difficult to find the wildflowers. Difficult because the blooms are tiny, and often grow in singles or small clumps of …
Robin’s Egg Blue
Delicate egg fragments lie on the path. The colour catches my eye when I am still many steps away and I don’t immediately know what …
On Clearings
In a month this growth will be knee-high, and in two months waist-high, but at the moment it looks like someone brought a mower deep …