Quote for the day: progress and the planet

"To organize society merely on the principle of private profit leads to a rejection of nature...utilitarian 'progress,' so closely connected with the ideology of liberalism, breaks the contract of eternal society, despoiling the soil itself. 'For a long enough time we have believed in nothing but the values arising in a mechanised, commercialised, urbanised way of life: it would be as well for us to face the permanent conditions upon which God allows us to live upon this planet.'"  ~~ Russell Kirk, Eliot and His Age; quote from Eliot's The Idea of a Christian Society (1939).

Nature in our backyard

It's staying above freezing this week, which means the snow banks are shrinking and what's underneath is reappearing.  Dollygirl found her small shovel that had disappeared under a drift.

On the strange-wildlife side, a very corpulent raccoon waddled across our yard this morning.  We do get raccoons here (that's why we lock up the garbage), but not usually in the daytime.  We wondered if this one might be a mama-to-be.