Alison Baker

I saw an ovenbird today, scuffling around in the dead leaves on the far side of the ditch. When it jumped up into the oak tree and popped around on a branch as plain as day, I knew at once what it was, the way you recognize things that you’ve read about in (more…)

This summer we’ve had no butterflies. Oh, we’ve seen an occasional fritillary, two black swallowtails, and a respectable – though not abundant – number of cabbage moths; but not one monarch has flittered across the deck while we eat lunch. And my common milkweed is gorgeous – six feet tall, in full bloom, and utterly (more…)

One day last summer I was poking around in the yard with my clippers, eyeing a tendril of American bittersweet that was shooting too vigorously toward a white pine, when a dark spot on the leaf of another plant caught my eye. I turned, blades raised, ready to nip incipient disease in the bud, (more…)

In March, 2009, I spent three weeks in Sweet Briar, Virginia, as a writing Fellow at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (a.k.a. VCCA). I started each day by writing a haiku, or some facsimile, to focus the mind on pen and page. Here are some results.

The silence changes
Fields and drowsy (more…)

CATALOG SUCKER

I pretend to be a skeptic, but in fact I’m a sucker for some kinds of propaganda. Seed catalogs, for example. Every year I tell my Companion I’m going to resist ordering anything this time; but when the new year starts and the mailbox starts filling up, I start folding (more…)

What makes a gardener fall in love with native plants? For me, the explanation’s simple: native animals. There’s nothing I like more than seeing a ruby-throated hummingbird hovering at the crossvine, grey squirrels collecting acorns or a praying mantis lurking in the clematis. And the more native plants you have, the more (more…)

I am not an avid birder. Getting up in the dark on one of the shortest days of the year in order to go outside and stand in the frost, hoping to see a bird, is not my idea of fun.

But then comes the day after Christmas, and there I am, (more…)