The sounds of spring fills the night air now. Spring Peepers are calling! The only visible signs of spring so far as I can see are the bits of wild onion grass growing with a bit more spright than usual. And the chickweed is making my garden look like it already needs to be weeded. …
Traffic is always crazy when there’s snow in the Ozarks. We had to go into Fayetteville this morning. It was raining and I knew the colder weather was coming in, but we figured we should be able to get there and back before the roads started icing. Halfway there I noticed ice building up on …
Prefer to listen to your stories more than read? Do you like Pinterest? I’ve created a Pinterest board just for Ozark related stories and essays. Do you write fiction or non-fiction that is inspired somehow by the Ozarks? Put them to audio recordings and join my board at Pinterest. Ozark Inspired Podcasts I’ve started putting …
Today we were gifted with more snow. Yesterday when I got out of bed, the sun shown brightly with promises of warmth at least from direct sunlight. So I let the horses out to scrounge around for what little grass might be popping up from beneath melted snow from last week. We decided to go …
Snow and ice are a common winter-time theme of my photos out here in the wild Ozarks. I like the balance of movement and stasis and implied potential in this photo of the snow capped rocks. The creek continues to flow no matter how cold or frozen the surface becomes, even if it must do …
It’s our first snowy day for the season. First it sleeted about an inch or so, then it snowed. It’s still snowing today. Not too much but enough to make everything look pretty. It’s about 20*F, so no danger of melting away just yet.
We have an Arkansas Black apple tree overgrown by brush and saplings. Is it possible to recover an apple tree after it’s gotten overgrown? Pruning it has been on my list of things to do for a few years now. Today I finally got around to it. Here’s how it looked before: The first thing …
Devil’s Walking Stick. Strawberry Wahoo. Green Dragon. Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Fire-Pokers… All plants with strange names. Sometimes my friends and family think I make these names up. I remember coming home one day after running errands in town. I always drive really slow on the dirt road leading to Wild Ozark, and not just because the …
We’re holding our breath here this morning at Wild Ozark, waiting to see what happens when the lines on the mountain thaw. See, we’d insulated all the lines under the house and figured, hey, it shouldn’t freeze now under there tonight – let’s see what happens. Well, we forgot about the nature of still water …
It’s so cold and blustery outside I had to suit up just to dig around in the freezer for some chili ingredients! Can’t see it in the pictures, but the wind is gusty and the snow is blowing. It’s frigid out there. My ears are still frozen. Rob’s really wishing he had his shop built …
Springs at Wild Ozark I’ve written before about how we are dependent on our wild Ozark water. This is a post from last year around this time of year and it’s one of my favorites. This activity of inspecting the tank and lines is one that occurs at least annually here and usually more often than that. …
At first glance it might be hard to imagine how my fiction could be influenced by nature. There are three things that make it so. Maybe there’s more than three, but these are the ones that stand out for me. Setting, Plants and Predators Specifically, it’s the places where the stories take place, the relationships that …
Dripping Faucet Nature’s Water Water is such an integral part of nature, but we don’t often recognize it as such when it comes from a faucet. All water originates from nature, even water from the tap in a city. Our water source is home-grown Ozark spring water. We have a spring that feeds the house, …
Here’s the cover and sample page for “Forest Companions”, the last book in the “Into the Ginseng Wood” series. Should be at Amazon by the weekend! If you want to catch up on the others, heres a link to the first one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OFAMAS6. They open into full page photos, no double-tapping required! Click on the image …
Frosty hills are pretty and the Ozark hills are sporting white capes this morning! See the distant mountain with the white hoar frost? The 4-wheeler was also decorated. A light coat of ice had the key and brake lock stiff and I had to clear the encrusted seat so I could sit. Took a very chilly ride …
For you from Wild Ozark™ 🙂 Grab a cuppa & enjoy! A Misty Day in the Ozarks One of my favorite kinds of trees, the beech, keeps leaves long after the others have disrobed and gone into winter’s sleep. Almost all of the beeches I see are very young. This one is older than most. …
