The Suburbs: What I’ll Miss

There are many things I will love about living in Chicago again. But as I am preparing to leave Bolingbrook, I’m focusing on saying goodbye to the things I’ve loved about this place. What will I miss? Plenty of things. Wide open spaces – cornfields, soccer fields, parking lots, no buildings over 3 stories, vistas across […]

Holy Week: Dog Walk

Early spring is tough. A parishioner once said to me that it is an ugly time of year because it’s about “shaking off death.” Holy Week falls into this space, easily. Bare. Ugly. Broken. Bleak. For all that subdivisions were designed to be ideal places to live, there is a haunting, lonely look about them. They match the spareness of […]

Evening Falls: Exurbia, December

The landscape between our church and our house, banal but somehow beautiful. (Dusk makes everything pretty.) Sky, warehouse, driveway. Sky, streetlight,warehouse, parking lot. Sky, warehouses, semitrailer, brush. Sky, warehouse, sunset reflection, trees, fire hydrant, handicapped parking. Warehouse lights, rearview mirror, sunset reflection. Sky, young trees, asphalt, signage. Sky, subdivision, wetlands, busy road, baby trees, sidewalk, lawn. Sky, warehouses, […]

Fall in the Neighborhood

Fall photos, taken mostly while walking the dog around our neighborhood. The farm where our vegetables come from – Green Earth Institute, and the head farmer, Steve Tiwald, who greets us every other Tuesday when we come by for our pick-up. Arugula, having been inspired by its neighbor, mint, taking over a garden plot (this stuff has amazing […]

The Silo of Poetic Despair

I took these photos a few days ago, meaning to write about a silo down the street from our church. It’s surrounded on four sides: by warehouses, a Lutheran church, an empty lot, and a busy street. The property used to be a nursery (started by the family that used to farm the land?) but the property is now […]

The Lonely Old Sugar Maple

In 1820, before any Europeans had settled down in Barbers’ Corners or anywhere around here, Illinois was about two thirds prairie land – no trees, just miles and miles of waving grasses. Trees could be found in small groves around rivers, streams, lakes, and isolated places here and there. But by 1900, the prairie had almost entirely been plowed […]

Subdivision Winter Wonderland

Ducks!   Rabbit and dog tracks in the yard, and lots of scattered bird seed. View from my church office window. (Cross-shaped w/ little cross prism on the ledge)  

Rain Over Townhomes

Suburban Vista – July 2013

Restored prairie and Black-eye Susans with subdivision and storm clouds.

Game of Thrones, Bolingbrook