This mallard duck shepherds her -lings away from me. She has an injured leg, which becomes apparent when she leaves the water and gimps across a bank in search of respite from human interlocuters.
A fox squirrel, one of dozens in my apartment complex, nibbles a pecan.
Mushrooms sprout from the corpse of a large tree, which was mulched and left in a mound near a creek more than a year ago. The tree has become a lush habitat for fungi and grasses, not to mention the arthropods that almost certainly thrive in its mangled body.
These innermost tree rings formed the same year the Soviet Union dissolved, the United States embarked on Operation Desert Storm, Freddie Mercury died of AIDS, and “Terminator 2" hit theaters. I was six.
Lichens decorate the north side of a sycamore in my apartment complex, smoothing out the rough bark.
