I think I’ve got the wording right. That’s a quote from Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton: “Life finds a way.” You can try to breed dinosaurs to be all female, but you’re up against the power of life, which was designed to be pretty tenacious.
Look what I discovered in my backyard yesterday, amid the general Mordor-like desolation:
Life Finds a Way
I’ve been watching the green blades of the leaves for a week or more, wondering what might come up. Does anyone know what these flowers are? Crocuses is my best guess, but it’s only a guess. They couldn’t have been arranged any more perfectly if they’d been planted. There are precisely three, facing in slightly different directions. Faith, Hope, and Love, I suppose. All around them is brown and gray earth, twigs, half-buried bricks, mud, and trash that I pick up when I can.
Here’s something else I like:
The Hill at the End of Broadway
This hill rises at the top of my steadily-rising street. It’s at one end of my daily walk. We who grow up in the flatness of central Illinois think there must be something more to hills than a heap of earth. There must be something inside, right? This one always makes me think of Moria or a great dungeon as in Dungeons & Dragons — especially since there’s decrepit stonework at the bottom, and what seems to be a brooding entrance. Surely there are dark halls beneath the trees! Surely “older and viler things than Orcs” sleep in the deep places of the Earth. What else could this hill be for?
"In Hollow Halls Beneath the Fells"
Don’t the roots of those trees look pretty Middle-earth-like? The place I buy gasoline is up this road, and I always enjoy driving up between these dungeon-concealing hills. This past winter, there was a frozen waterfall of icicles on the left.
Another Hill
This all reminds me of these lines from The House of the Worm, my work in progress:
She peered curiously across the river. “Have you ever been over there?”
Paddy pushed his hat back a little and studied the wood with a wistful, loving gaze. “We surely tried, when we were boys. There’s hardly a path, even for a rabbit. The tangle marches on and on like that, guarding its secrets, for thirty miles and more, till it finally ends in the downlands, which roll on from there to the sea.”
“There could be lost cities,” my sister breathed happily.
“Ruined castles,” I added. “Tribes with green skin.”
“Quite right, too,” said Paddy seriously.
Sigh . . . So many books; so little time!
One more interesting landmark a few blocks away:
Stowe Tunnel
It needs no explanation, really. We didn’t have road tunnels where I grew up. When you have tunnels, you have a little bit of Moria, a little bit of the fantastic, in the most dreamless and urban neighborhood.
Finally, it’s the Ides of March. I don’t know if anyone’s keeping track, but that final ARC contest of mine closes at midnight tonight. If you’re playing, let me know your totals!
And may spring grace your surroundings!
Patrick says: 
fsdthreshold 
Joe M 
Morwenna 
Treefrog 
Hagiograph 
Hannah 
Buurenaar