The Big Backyard
The Big Backyard

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 …

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 …

Whale Bones

The forest is a beach, the hill a shoreline, this fallen tree a whale.  The current has carried the whale’s remains to this sheltered spot, …