The Urban Pantheist

Last weekend, while everywhere between DC and NY was getting whomped with 2 feet of snow, we got a steady but light event. I went out at twilight because the light looked weird and I liked it.


This snowy swamp is a retaining pond for road runoff.


Looking up into our neighborhood from the main road.

Another nice day in the yard. Maggie in full dead cow position.

( more stuff in and around the yard )

I canceled February's walk on account of we had more snow on the ground than any other time in history, and I didn't feel like walking through it more than I already was. We had a fair amount of melt in late March, and I was feeling good about seeing what creatures were out on the last Sunday of the month. Then on the Saturday before, it snowed again. In the Blue Hills, where the walk was planned, they got about 3 more inches. A friend and once-frequent Urban Nature Walker was going to be working at a maple sugar festival at Brookwood Farm in the Blue Hills, so that's where we went.

Above you can see the grounds of Houghton's Pond Recreation Area, complete with fresh blanket of snow and incongruent obsolete technology. We parked here and took a shuttle bus to the farm.



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Finding blue rabbit urine in the snow is almost becoming routine. All you need are wild rabbits (in our case, eastern cottontails), snow (got plenty), and buckthorn--an invasive woody plant that rabbits resort to feeding on in the winter when food is scarce.

The moai emerges from the snow

Pest control requires shoveling snow sometimes.

Alex's new house! She's been there a few months, but I think this is one the first pictures I've taken that shows a lot of it. Alex and Alexis are suspending Jim with a stick. Alexis and I came over to help chip out some ice and ameliorate the dogs' cabin fever.

The snow recorded a crow walking in a spiral

A stone wall on Glen Lane. Glen Lane divides Franklin Park into The Greeting (now the zoo) and The Country Park (now the golf course). Outside the zoo fence it's called Glen Road, and it turns into Green Street, a well known street in Jamaica Plain. I mainly think of it as the place where the zoo staff parks.