Sometimes, when I think back on my years in the corporate world, it seems I'm looking at someone else's life. Who was that person? I changed so much when I traded in my power suit and briefcase for jeans and a diaper bag years ago. Now that my own babies are almost all grown up, I am finally claiming the time to focus more on my own life again.
Most of the time, I like what I see. So I'm trying to go through the rest of my life with my eyes wide open.
"Open your eyes,
look within.
Are you satisfied
with the life you're living?"
~ Bob Marley
My old corporate self would not have noticed a nest of baby bunnies, for example. I noticed the carefully mounded dead grasses, leaves and bits of rabbit hair about a week ago, tucked behind a bush in our garden. When I took our dog out a few days ago, we scared the mother rabbit from her nest while the babies were uncovered.
There they were - a wriggling mass of furry short-eared cuteness!
I hurried our old Beau back into the house, took a closer peek at the little cuties, and went back into the house myself, so the mother rabbit could finish tending to her family. Since I didn't have a chance to take a photo, I borrowed the photo above from the internet.
I know I'll be cursing at least one of these little guys out in a few weeks, when they are munching on something in my garden, but for now they are just so darned cute.
It's very cold and rainy here today, but yesterday I was preparing part of the garden for the tomatoes and herbs I'll be planting soon. As I was pulling up unwanted mint and grass, the tiniest frog I've ever seen hopped out.
photo from
http://handlensandbinoculars.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html
I didn't have a camera handy, but I found this photo online. It turns out this little guy was a Northern Cricket Frog, also known as a Blanchard's Cricket Frog, and it's a species which has been endangered since the 1980s. (More info here.)
Sad. So sad.
Sad. So sad.
It makes me sad that so much of our natural world is changing so rapidly - much of it through the thoughtless acts of humans. Yesterday, when I was driving around the area, I noticed so many people spraying pesticides. Home owners with spray bottles, men with tanks of pesticides on their backs, men with hoses attached to huge tanks filled with pesticides on trucks. The air was filled with the horrible stench of the stuff. I rolled up my windows and held my breath as I drove by.
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No wonder these little creatures love our little piece of property. Here, the dandelions are plentiful, and pesticides aren't used.
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For some information about the danger of pesticides to humans, there's an easy-to-read fact sheet here. Reliable information is available all over the internet, if you're interested.
"Chemicals have replaced bacteria and viruses
as the main threat to health.
The diseases we're beginning to see
as the major causes of death
in the latter part of this century
and into the 21st century
are diseases of chemical origin."
-- Dick Irwin,
toxicologist at Texas A&M Universities
