This photo and the next eight are from our front yard, as spring takes hold.

They come every spring.

This camellia has fallen.

Boxwoods on the way out, little purple blooms on the way in.

Our favorite tree, this majestic oak is in a vacant lot across the street.

The big oak in the background gives us shade and a beautiful view from our front window. If someone ever builds on that lot, though, the massive oak will fall.

This time of year in Atlanta, the precise temperature doesn't much matter. It's perfect almost every day.

A lot of wrens visit here.

One of the camellias that crowds our front porch.

Wonderful trees in front of the hotel we stayed in, Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico.

Little Mexican holy man.

Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico.

Church tower, finished in 1749, in Ajijic.

A small statue on the side of a casa in Ajijic.

Bird in a gnarly bush.

Bougainvillea along a street in Ajijic. Those flowers are everywhere but in the nasty parts of town.

Just outside our hotel in Ajijic.

Chapel on a hill above Ajijic.

Mexican cactus

A house in Ajijic.

Mountains above Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico, from a friend's terrace.

View of Lake Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico.

Garden in Ajijic, Mexico.

Woods near Aberdeen, Md.

Wetlands, Orange Beach.

Scenes from near Wolf Bay, Orange Beach, Ala.

Near my parents' house in Orange Beach, Ala.

The Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis.

Hardly Peterson's Guide quality, but one of my favorite birds, a red-headed woodpecker, in Grant Park. I didn't see any hawks today, but plenty live there.

Part of the inscription on a fountain in Grant Park.

Dead tree in our front yard

The railing on the gallery in front of the Cyclorama in Grant Park.

The gallery of the Cyclorama in Grant Park.

One of Grant Park's many big hunks of stone.

Atlanta's Grant Park in early winter.

Weird fungus picture

A dead tree in our front yard supports other life.

Cross atop Greater Moses Chapel Baptist Church across from Grant Park.

More from the corner of Grant Park.

Splendid autumn in Grant Park. This one's shed its leaves.

Turning leaves

Georgia capitol, CNN Center beyond the trees of Grant Park.

Oaks in the southwest corner of Grant Park, Atlanta.

I got to visit the amazing Georgia Aquarium on Saturday. Here are some photos I took there. When I was a kid, jelly fish often stung the hell out of me. But these make a cool space-like picture.

Sea nettles are related to the jelly fish.

I say, this chap is called a look down.

What's that weird creature pointing the little box at me?

He's not sad, that's just how he looks.

Whale shark, the world's biggest fish. Remember, whales are mammals, not fish.

Pickin 'n grinnin -- the guitar fish.

One of the 20-foot-long whale sharks, which will grow to at least double that size. It eats krill, not the little fish near its mouth.

Afrrican penguin. I'm not sure what the thing on its right wing is.

A weedy sea needle. They use the kelp as camoflauge.

Zebra shark. I know it's spotted, but it has stripes as a baby.

He'll eat you. These are piranhas.

One big grouper and his posse.

This dude is about five feet long, and if he weren't in the Georgia Aquarium he'd be in the Amazon.

Beluga whales do underwater gymnastics.

Beluga whale. They look like they're smiling.