Journal Entry # 1

5/2/11

7:34

The sun is setting over my neighbor’s house and birds are flying above the trees by the power lines. Distinguished groups of birds can be heard coming from all different directions with gentle songs. In contrast to the typical urban lawn from Cradle to Cradle my yard is coexisting well with native grasses, really weeds, and non native species used for decoration. The 54 ACTransit passes by and for the first time in my life I can see a wood pecker, perched vertically on the top of one of those electrical posts. I assume it’s a woodpecker because it’s pecking furiously at the post and I guess it’s not getting any profit. Sitting above the wood pecker on adjacent power lines are two other wood peckers I guess. They all were pretty hard to see. Other than the birds there were mosquitoes flying around by now; they were creeping me out. I noticed how the most abundant plant species next to whatever type of grass we had growing in the yard was the hare grass. When I was little I used to pretend I was a hunter gatherer with my pretend little brother and his cousin and we would collect these among other things while running from an imaginary land shark.

Now the dogs down the street are barking in a strange fashion and the mourning dove on the light post is singing a melancholic song. There is an alluring scent being blown from the south to my front door and I still cannot figure out where it is coming from. I only recently within the last few months smelt this scent by my house. Before than the only other place I had smelt it was at my pastor’s house only a minute’s walk away.

Last month my magnolia tree was cut down, but the leaves and seeds are still here, and unfortunately the only tangible evidence I have that it ever existed. Like the magnolia tree I am pretty sure that the orange tree from across the street is a nonnative to California and most likely from Florida or maybe even another continent altogether.

Just as I was wrapping up a mosquito landed on my laptop and I guess nature was telling me to go back inside. Not really.