We toured the White House today. Short but sweet. Beautiful weather.
Checking on the flowerbed and I noticed this tiny (about 7 cm long) box turtle.
And here’s the male Eastern box turtle up close.
Walking the hillside below our house, my brain registered another turtle before I consciously saw it. Can you spot it?
On the hillside below our house, Carolina climbing-milkweed (Matelea carolinensis) on a fallen log.
Raindrops and Turtles
Another walk in the woods to find box turtles and listen to the birds and cicadas.
Decided to walk the path along my rock-wall property line. It’s been raining and dripping since last evening. Thirty seconds after thinking ‘the turtles will be out today’ I came across this male box turtle with his head against the rock.
Hum of Cicadas
From Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a moment in the woods to listen to the birds and cicadas.
Over on the Zuiker Chronicles, I wrote about our recent road trip to Montgomery, Alabama to visit the Legacy Sites, which are beautiful spaces and displays and art that commemorate the horror and evil of slavery and lynching.
Waterfall in the preserve
I’m in Northern Virginia for a work event. I needed a walk and saw the Winkler Botanical Preserve nearby.
I observed the eclipse in Carrboro, North Carolina using binoculars with lens filters. I also used the perforated pizza pan to project shadows onto the back of the adirondack chair.
The hillside below our house is showing its wildflowers. In this nook are wild ginger, pennywort, and rue anemone. Lovely spring.
With warm weather and a big group of friends, today’s Sunday pickup soccer was pure fun. Then coffee and Colum McCann’s new book, American Mother, on the porch as birds chirp away.
I found time yesterday to get the Duke River of News back online. It’s now at dukeriver.news, though I expect to reconfigure the tabs to best reflect the complexity of Duke University and its wide range of medical, nursing, engineering, arts, sports, and much more.
A beautiful day in Chapel Hill. I spent the morning in the back finishing a flower garden in which I planted narrow-leaved sunflower and Eastern native mix from Garrett Wildflower Seed Farm (a North Carolina company).
A new book to read: American Mother by Colum McCann, one of my favorite authors. 📚
I’ve been using Micro.blog since the beginning yet I still don’t know what I’m doing wrong for longer posts. The full post with headline shows on my site but in my M.b timeline I only see the headline linked to the post. Guess I need to read the manual. Homework for tomorrow.
The monthly worknotes that I instituted for myself and my team at work have been a hit. Routinely documenting our work is helping me manage better and our team work better. (h/t @dave for teaching me to ‘narrate my work’). Naturally, I was happy to read Doing weeknotes. (h/t @benwerd)
Local Durham, local style
On my lunch break in Durham today, I went to the post office to mail our tax info to the accountant, then walked to a small coffee shop I’ve not yet visited, EverLou. The coffee was good, and served in a proper mug. I enjoyed it at an outdoor table, rereading Twenty Bits I Learned About Making Fonts Book by designer Dan Cederholm.
I like Dan’s style, so I subscribed to his new Simple Type Club. As part of that, I got a bundle of his typefaces, and Free Lunch is perfect for a new logomark for The Long Table, that people+meal+conversation project that has been dormant but not forgotten. I recently found new inspiration for the project, from conversations with my career coach and also that pile of lumber out back (milled from white oak trees in 2019).
Coffee and reading finished, I stopped into Chibanga’s Neighborhood Market, a bodega next to Everlou. Paying for my sandwich, I asked about the store’s name. Everything in Durham is named bull this, bull that, owner Marcus Morrow told me. So he and his partner named the store for matador Ricardo Chibanga (yes,a bullfighter).
Then I was back to the office and more work.