Detail Diary, Vol #41
May | Roses and windstorms | Spring excursions
May 2026
Dear friend,
My sense of May has been blurred by the last week or so of lying around while recovering from a routine surgery, in which I mostly read books and watched Broadchurch. Before that interruption, I was out and about taking pictures of roses, roses, and more roses, going on architecture walks and little hikes and excursions, and worrying about the neighborhood trees during a series of windstorms. The English oaks lining my street, normally tight, tidy columns, look like herons or cranes with severely ruffled feathers.
Excursions: I visited Slate Canyon, one of the closest local canyons, once to introduce myself and the second time to bandy about fun ecology facts with a field biology class (we talked about bark beetle infestations, altitudinal vegetation belts, and alpine adaptations in plants while we hiked). I went to Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake for the first time, walked over cracked playa, waded in the silky salty cloudy water, watched black-necked stilts and eared grebes through my binoculars, admired formations of pelicans stark and stately in the blue sky. I revisited a classic Provo Canyon jaunt above Sundance, Stewart Falls, collecting wildflowers and aspen groves via photo. Yesterday was a festival on the shores of Utah Lake, the western boundary of Provo, blue and sparkling just after a solid night of rain. One more fleeting blanket of snow on the blue wall of Timp, today already melted back to spidery strips.
Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking a lot about books and reading, and will be sending those thoughts soon.
Read on for the Details…
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I hope the surgery went well. Speedy recovery! 🍀