Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Is what this sign used to say, before I messed with it, when I found it in the woods full of bullet holes and being eaten by this tree:

Not sure what I’m going to do with it now. Already got a perfectly good, conveniently scalable mossy skull for graphic purposes. Probably not going to change it, if ever I get around to designing ye blog theme v.3.

So. Anybody got a noble cause for which they might require a picture of some words, any words at all, on a bullet-riddled street sign getting eaten by a tree?

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

The newest entry in my occasional blog series on homebrewing is live on the Small Beer Press site.

In this one, I go on a pine-needle eating spree, brew some beer with spruce tips in place of hops, and then proceed to party like an 1830s New England housewife.

And by the way, just in case anyone is actually syndicating these, the location of the Literary Beer RSS feed has changed to the following:

http://www.smallbeerpress.com/?tag=literary-beer&feed=rss2

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Hale Reservation, Westwood, MA

What would happen if you opened it? And who has the key?

Happy Solstice.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Yeah. I’m a Whistler fan.

Birch and oak near dark.

Shadows of my backyard apple tree by the almost-full moon.

The tree casting the shadow.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

A hoop-shaped vine, somewhere off-trail in Graves Farm Audubon Sanctuary, Haydenville, MA. These vines tend to get me in trouble. Whenever I run into one, I am compelled to try to leap and swing off it. Half the time they don’t hold my weight. I took this lying on the ground. Got a mosquito bite right in the ear for it too!

A little altar I found on an island in Dead Branch Pond, Chesterfield, MA. Found a kickass beaver-chewed staff there too, seven feet long, tooth marks all over it, weighed like ten pounds. I left it leaning against the trail post adjacent rte 143. If you know somebody looking for a staff.

The planters’ moon, reminding me to buy seedlings.

The apple tree in my backyard, on a 16 second exposure, same night as the full moon. This is going on my computer background.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

I ran into a sprite today in the meadows of Sunderland. She was lying on her belly under a tree, bouncing her heels in the air and looking off at the mountain, in the middle of a field of lady’s thumb and grass gone to seed. My path took me between her and the object of her vantage. I was eating an ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles on the verge of melting, and wouldn’t have seen her at all if she hadn’t waved.

I couldn’t be sure if the wave was meant for me or the mountain, but I took a chance and returned it. It was breezy, and her wispy auburn hair danced up around her face like a little tornado.

“It’s a nice day,” she said.

“Lovely,” I said, and went on.

I’m not the sort to meddle in the affairs of the Otherworld.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Crawford Notch State Park, Hart’s Location, NH. Birches, in the col between Mt. Baldface and Mt. Meader.