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Oh hornworm, if you aren't the most bizarre creature to squish through the garden...
Of course, it was the eldest who discovered and caught the hornworm. And it was the Eldest who refused to put this creature in the trash can, choosing instead to place him in the magnolia tree out front.
Notice the pink horn at the front? Evil gorgeous tomato eating creature.
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Some things
are so
big that
it's hard
to tell
you're going
round going
round them.
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Excerpts from Wendell Berry's poem, "The Farm", circa 1991.
Work done in gratitude,
Kindly, and well, is prayer.
You did not make yourself,
Yet you must keep yourself
By use of other lives.
No gratitude atones
For bad use or too much.
This is not work for hire.
By this expenditure
You make yourself a place;
You make yourself a way
For love to reach the ground.
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Father's Day was uniquely uneventful this year. Going into our second week without a dryer, the King meditated about various and sundry things while hanging out four loads of laundry. "There's something calming about having to hang everything, then wait for it to dry," he confessed later that night, comparing it to construction work and the way he'd get lost in manual labor.
Bunica brought by a delicious soup, thus sparing me the opportunity to start fires in the kitchen.
When we took a sunset stroll, the King found what every 21st century father needs most- something to climb and no good reason to refrain.
So being a father is the weight of the world and the lightness that comes with lifting it high in the hair and hearing it giggle.
It's looking down at the tracks laid by others and wondering if there isn't some heartbreaking limit in the places we can go if we agree to follow them.
It's knowing you can't fix the past but you bear a responsibility for the future.
For what you sow and how you sow it.
It's teaching your son how to love himself outside the emotional and spiritual confines of gender roles and assumptions. Discovering new paths and giving him a sense of self strong enough to sustain the adventures.
It's watching your daughters breakdance on a bridge and not feeling the need to "show" or teach them anything at all- only to watch them and learn from their joy.
It's knowing deep in your veins what Wendell Berry meant when he wrote:
We have ourselves to fear.
We burn the world to live;
Our living blights the leaf.
It's knowing all these things without knowing the sort of simple answers given by ideologies or self-help books. Learning to read the runes scribbled in spray paint. Finding yourself in what you leave behind.
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A tiny snapping turtle egg found at Watson's Bend.
While helping to cut and move privet and other invasive plants along Hurricane Creek, I stumbled upon something that looked like a perfect little pebble.... and yet, there was a translucence or fragility about the creamy exterior.
So I grabbed my camera- which gave me one measly photo before demanding more battery juice- and snapped a picture. The closer I drew to the pebble, the more clear it became that this pebble was actually an egg.
When I asked other volunteers about what sort of egg it might be, Curtis scratched his head, peered at the egg, and then told me it was probably a snapping turtle egg that didn't get covered very well. Curtis didn't think the egg would survive and manage to hatch.
An hour later, the Eldest and Ellie emerged from their morning-long swim in the cool creek waters to describe having seen a teeny baby snapping turtle wallowing through the sand-gravel bar. In the Eldests' words:
"It was speckled, and looked alot like a rock. But we could tell by its bright back and litle legs that it wasn't a rock. The baby snapper had a teeny head with a teeny beak. We inched up closer in the water and watched it swim around. Then it settled again, laying belly-down flat on a rock. I doubt a predator would have been able to see it."
I only wish I could have seen it, too. Part of me thinks that little egg might survive in spite of the odds (they call that part "the optimist"). Maybe we'll sneak over to Watson's Bend early in the week and see if the egg has moved or cracked.
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I picked up Jonathan Evans Maslow's The Owl Papers to help me understand the varying species of owl friends in the woods and trees around our yard. In addition to learning more about our barred owl companions, I discovered a few sad observations about owl species in the state of New Jersey- and how the New Jersey Turnpike and endless development have destroyed the wetland habitats of the previous owl residents.
Maslow introduces his concept of the "nature ghetto", a concept I think is an interesting one to present to kids and discuss as an environmental issue (or even a specific case study). In Maslow's words:
Instead of creating arks to save creatures, we created a new type of ghetto for plants and animals: nature ghettos. As in human ghettos, the strong and selfish survive, the fragile and nonconforming perish. The shy trillium and gentle columbine are rubbed out by the slick poison ivy and tough chicory. The sweet-voiced warblers are muscled aside by the sleazy starlings. At length, phragmites blanketed the marsh pockets, choking out most other plant life. They have proved by far the most tenacious of all local plants, ready to invade any vacant lot or send up shoots between buildings. All you see today are the phragmites' soulless stalkheads, bending to the breezes.
My curiosity about the mysterious phragmites led me to this well-written handout about Phragmites australis, invasive conquerer of native wetlands. In Newburyport, outdoorsman and conservationists are taking the fight against phragmites in the Great Marsh very seriously. The Nature Conservancy uses helicopters to battle the phragmites along the Platte River. No matter whom you ask, phragmites are a dangerous enemy to local ecologies and plant life. Many environmental groups even go so far as to give phragmites the herbicide exeption.
But it's Jonathan Evans Maslow, a reporter-turned-revelator, that truly inspires me. Beginning as a hometown reporter, Maslow's sense of interest rapidly expanded to include the borderless marvels of the natural world.
Maslow traveled to Guyana for eight weeks in 1999 on a Sen. John Heinz reporting fellowship to teach environmental reporters how to follow stories that uncovered environmental problems in that South American nation. His curiosity and love for nature led him to receive several Beagle II Awards from Stanford which, in turn, enabled him to write and publish more books about the world which captured his loyalty and imagination.
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This is all I have to say about the multiple news reports documenting the horrible immigration conditions of Latin American children trying to rejoin their parents in the USA.
Tell true stories. Tell stories of families like mine. Learn the language so you can translate true stories. And stop lying to yourself about immigrants being a lesser form of life than you.
We are all immigrants. No one has earned the right to be sick, oppressed, hungry, or silenced.
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Swiss chard sprouts
Seeing comes before words. But Annie Dillard is right to claim that words preserve the image of what we have seen.
It is the words- the story they weave- that turns a token into a treasure. Unlike the commonness and plenitude of the token, the treasure is unique and captivating enough to warrant a hiding place. We bury it carefully in a special place, devoting countless hours to creating the map that divines how we get there, ensuring that we are the only ones who will ever get there.
How blackberry fruits come to fruition
The story of our love and hope is the treasure map. As with any such map, the amount of time and passion spent in creating it reveals the value of what lies beneath the ineffable.
So I find myself staring at the tiny swiss chard sprouts, made crazy with joy at the scent of tomato stalks on my fingertips, looking for words to map the daily comings and growings of our garden. Only the call of the mourning dove comes to mind.
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Ahhhh... the annual piano recital. This year, Scott Joplin and Mozart were on the menu.
In addition to the Eldest's usual razmatazz, Prophet made her piano recital debut. As I sat in the library waiting and watching the little back in the front row, I remembered the feeling of raw nervousness at my own piano recitals. I remember hoping I could go first so that I might enjoy the other piano players without apprehension.
For all my performance anxieties, the little folks seem to have inherited nothing akin to a fear of failure. Perhaps I say "fear of failure" when what I mean is "fear of disappointing". Growing up as a child of immigrants with no extended family in the USA made me very conscious of my parents' desire for us to "succeed" and to excel at everything we tried.
My love for performing dissipated in the bright glare of wanting to please those nearest and dearest to me. There's an insight into teenage rebellion here- it was only when performing in roles that I selected against my parents' preferences that I felt free enough to let go and love the stage. Take theatre for example- there was nothing as sublime as picking up a script in high school and putting myself in a character's shoes, trying to walk as they would walk, talk as they would talk, and feel as they might feel.
Little feet nowhere near the pedals.
Love makes things heavy at times. Liberation is not an attack on the love we feel for others but an effort to better love and acknowledge our selves.
I marveled at the performances, hoping that the kids felt no pressure to please, only the excitement and adrenaline of the performing itself. The Eldest bubbled with excitement to have a friend there, watching, grinning when he made mistakes and perservered without angst.
Prophet even mustered her first grand post-recital smile- you know, the kind where your lips appear somehow incongruent with the rest of your face. She grimaced when I showed her the picture- "That's not how I look!". Recognizing our true selves nested within our performing selves is a complicated part of growing up. "That's not who I am," and yet, somehow, it's a part of who we were.
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Worksheet for using word root "bio"
Possible answers:
biography
autobiography
biome
antibiotic
biology
biotic
biopic
bioethics
bioluminescence
biopsy
symbiotic
amphibious
BIO WORD WORKSHEET (PDF)
Worksheet for using root word "pre"
Possible answers:
premonition
preschool
precedent
premenstrual
precaution
prediction
preempt
preface
prefix
preview
prenatal
precipitate
PRE WORD WORKSHEET (PDF)
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He is thinking of us.
These leaves, their lazy rustle
That made us sleepy after lunch
So we had to lie down.
He considers my hand on her breast,
Her closed eyelids eyelids, her moist lips
Against my forehead, and the shadows of trees
Hovering on the ceiling.
It’s been so long. He has trouble
Deciding what else is there.
And all along the suspicion
That we do not exist.
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1- DIY summer wall hangings (Handmade Charlotte)
2- Animals made from tape (Carla Sonheim)
Envisioning geometric forms in animal bodies.
3- Cardboard primary color paintings (Art Bar)
Recyling cardboard to explore color.
4- DIY woven wall hangings (Honestly WTF)
5- Nature collages (Picnic)
Nature's shapes and patterns as impetus for art.
6- DIY branchlers (Home Heart Craft)
Each tree is a life and a series of stories.
7- Vegetable stones for the kitchen garden (Playfull Learning)
8- 5 step DIY seed tape (P & G Everyday)
Saving seeds from one season to the next.
9- DIY plastic bag jumprope (Childhood List)
10- DIY berry picking baskets (Captain Crafty)
For blueberry picking days.
11- Spoon oil how-to (3191 Miles Apart)
For telling stories while polishing wood together.
12- DIY twirly garden stakes (Kokstradgard)
13- DIY firestarters for camping nights (3191 Miles Apart)
Each fire begins with a circle.
14- Wooden spoon dolls (Love From Ginger)
For telling stories on long car trips.
15- Geo decorative wall hooks tutorial (Red Thread Blog)
For hanging beach bags, backpacks, and summer outdoor gear.
16- Made with magazines challenge (Journey Into Unschooling)
17- Dye shirts and pillowcases with turmeric (3191 Miles Apart)
Bring sunshine to your pillow.
18- Candied violets tutorial (alina's adventures)
19- Decoupage leaf branches (Lait Fraise)
Inspiring natural headboards for sleeping under trees.
20- Stargazing sewing cards (Kids Activities Blog)
Nothing whets the appetite better....
21- DIY popsicle stick harmonicas (Housing A Forest)
Portable music for strolls.
22- DIY family art wall (Mood Kids)
23- DIY sunprint designs (3191 Miles Apart)
Exploring sunlight and shadow.
24- Embroidered thread notebook covers (The Red Thread Blog)
Handwork for nature journal covers.
25- Branch weaving (3191 Miles Apart)
26- DIY tiny clay planters (Merry Pad)
For gifts of flowers.
27- Simple hot water bottle cover tutorial (Rachael Rabbit)
Discussing the notion of comfort together.
28- Running stitch potholders (Peapod Fabrics)
29- Writing in wool (A Life Sustained)
30- DIY cardboard animals (Small For Big)
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I know it's odd to juxtapose trees with the images of weekend backyard fun- but there's an epiphany in the brew. It started with a Ukranian folk tale we read aloud this weekend. In the folk tale, a young boy set off to find his fortune. When the King and I asked the kids what a "fortune" entailed, they responded with all the wisdom of their American childhood- "money".
But there is more to fortune that money in the tales of yore. In our folk tale, a good fortune included a family, a shared narrative, and the joy that comes with the courage to work hard and seek the best.
Here's the rub: There is a qualifier- "good fortune"- that indicates the difference between merely having fortune and having the capacity to appreciate it.
America lacks a mythology for its trees. Unlike the Druids and pagans of the Old World, we approach our trees without the caution of reverence. Though we borrowed a little from Native Americans- mostly names and herbal remedies- none of what we borrowed was savored and kept lidded long enough to sow stories. The lack of studious awe, the stuff of stories, makes sense for those lured by the hard glint of gold.
As pioneers and homesteaders, our connection to the land proved more practical than spiritual. We loved the land for what we hoped to make of it.
Perhaps even the fact of ownership- the challenge of making land fruitful enough to warrant laying claim- demanded that the ties we forged be of the looser sort, loose enough to keep us from growing too attached.
Rather than name each tree, we calculated its value as timber. Here in Alabama, the longleaf pine forests made way for the rapidly-growing, productive loblolly pine. Certain birds and countless beautiful ecologies were lost in the process.
The nation prospered. Prosperity became a form of patriotism. But all our monied fortune did not translate into good fortune. All the money did not teach us how to use it wisely. All the toys and playthings only stole out attention from the unnamed trees and the holistic meaning of "good fortune" as a life lived in gratitude and joy for all that we've been given.
The dictionary defines good fortune as "an auspicious state resulting from favorable outcomes". I see a fortune in the stately pines and maple trees behind the house. But I see our good fortune as part of an agreement to live with them rather than against them- to live in their shade, knowing they bear witness to our stories- grateful for the chance to learn from our history.
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A walk along the covered overpass to Arcadia Elementary.
Even Aristotle knew that darkness is defeated by that tiny shard of light that squeezes through a small hole in the closed window shutters.
And that the image of any object standing in liminal space between sunshine and shadow projects itself on the wall of a room, reversed.
We mistake the projections of the camera obscura for something concrete. I guess I'm just not sure yet whether that is the willingness to entertain our own illusions is tantamount to self-delusion.
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Sweet pea at dusk.
The sweet pea was the last flower I expected to see in our garden this year. Somehow, the delicate Lathyrus odoratus wears the mantle of the most unanticipated marvel- the beauty made all the brighter for being unharmed by expectation.
Add to this the fact that we did everything wrong (waiting until the weather was warm before planting the seeds directly in the soil) and I'm amazed that we get to see anything at all... But the tiny plants continue to flirt with their teepee... their tendrils beginning to curl and reach out.
"Treat it like a found poem," I urge the Eldest. He weighs the possibility of laying claim to treasures discovered by other pirates.
"No," he replies, "I'm going to find my own found poem in another plant." Suit yourself, I think, remembering those days fondly, the ones where every secret worth saving needed to be entirely my own.
The surprise of the pea flowers enchants, keeps me from writing, the language of shoots and bulbs creeping into dialogue between characters. I need a technical distraction or some magical means of refocusing.
Sweet peas grow in full sun to partial shade and require rich, well-drained soil. A local green thumb I know warned me that sweet peas are heavy feeders, doing best with a few organic fertilizer treatments during the growing season.
Word also has it that deadheading encourages a longer season of bloom.
Pea Shoots brochure, filled with delicious recipes
on how to cook those splendid pea shoots
3 FREE LAPBOOKING PAGES ON GARDEN PEAS
A SEASON IN THE LIFE OF A PEA (1 narrative bi-fold)
SWEET PEA FLOWER AND VINES (2 bi-folds with diagrams)
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Early squash flower buds from late May.
You can't sow good seeds without learning a little bit about the birds and bees. Planning our tiny little backyard garden demands delving into the details, knowing, for example, about the intrictate breeding needs of tomatoes, cucumbers, blueberries, and squash plants.
I'll confess that I left the reproductive aspects of a few heirlooms up to the Eldest earlier this spring, when we plotted the locations of each vegetable and fruit.
In so doing, I began my own mysterious introduction to squash plant's reproduction. The first blossom emerged in its large, flamboyant yellow manner on a balmy morning about a week ago. Early this week, another blossom joined the first one.
Squash flowers today around 11 a.m., already folded tight.
Seeing the glory of the squash blossom requires a bit of self-discipline, since the flowers open early to lure the early-rising insects, like the squash bee, that pollinate them.
What's so fantastic about the squash plant is that you don't really have to worry too much about setting the ambiance for a love affair. Squash plants have blossoms of both sexes on the same plant. From the golden grandeur of the flower alone, it's hard to tell male from female.
That's why sipping the morning coffee with your squash plants is one way to discover the secrets of squash sex. When the flowers are open, luring their pollinators, you can see either a female pistil or a sturdy column of fused male stamens.
A folded male blossom.
Late risers need not despair, for there is another way to tell the male from the female, one that does not require gazing into its lovely flower face. Males are attached to long, slender stems that allow them to open their faces wide in almost any direction.
Our still-growing female squash flower and her lovely ovary.
Females, on the other hand, are more limited in their movement. Their stems are shorter and boast a small, ovwl nodule or bump between the stem and flower base, containing the ovary. This bump will become a squash if the flower is pollinated.
Barbara Damrosch describes how and why one should feast upon stuffed male squash blossoms for lunch:
Why males? Females are just as edible and stuffable. But for maximum squash production I leave the girls alone, along with just enough boys for the bees to gather pollen from and transfer it to the girls.
Given the high frequency of male blossoms on our plant, I have a feeling the time for harvesting is close at hand.
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What began as a plan to play basketball turned into an afternoon of cloudscapes. Looking up at the clouds and each other from the vantage point of a dandelion.
The King settles into a brief observation of Cumulus mediocris.
Nothing occurs without a context. Our context was clouds- and the study of weather and sky Prophet declares her favorite to be the cumulonimbus- the one which portends a promise of thunder and lighting.
She prefers the name "thunderhead". And she asks the Eldest, again and again, to tell her about the anvil at the head of the cloud and how it predicts the direction in which the storm is moving.
For the Eldest, the clouds make it hard to concentrate on other things- things of this world, things like basketball games. I like the way he prefers not to fight the daydreaming sky, adjusting his plans as needed. He's a person who acknowledges the leverage of a cloudscape.
Gnome sits astride the elephant and shakes it with her tiny arms. The effect is one of dispersion- each wave a break too soft to crest. The scattering and dispersion creates its own forms. Hail, little Gnome, ye shaker of clouds and creator of cirrus-scapes.
Each of us has his own way of interacting with the clouds. I incline towards the clouds- hoping to somehow scoop them into my body, where their mass mobilizes them into new shapes, always the yearning for new stories.
"Tell me," I say to the Eldest, "which cloud formations strike you as the most stable and the most unstable."
"Sure," he begins to point and pontificate. Then he asks if I'm worried about the weather, or why I want to know.
"I don't care so much for the stable formations," I try to explain that the unstable clouds are the ones I want to follow, the ones which will eventually be forced by their own inner dynamics to spill into stories- some involving rain and backyard vegetable gardens, others revolving around the way pressure changes and reconfigures us as less than massive.
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Gnome walks the line at a park in
Dublin, Ohio earlier this year.
The state quarter celebrates our love
of sky, minting the Kitty Hawk and the man
on the moon together: the first step
and the first flight growing improbably
from that same Ohioan soil. If I had
my own quarter, I’d stamp it with a girl
who sung me to glass that glittered to bits
and the wife who glued me back.
Or with the skyline of Derby
and a wasp-filled cupola at Fairfield Hills.
Or with the Beatles and the darkened dial
of my car radio. Or with a Gemini capsule
and a jetliner slamming itself to marigolds.
It’s possible to love the ground too much.
Before I’d ever flown I had a fear of flying,
which is really a fear of falling, which is also
a fear of pain—and how can a life be lived
except by accepting pain? So once
when I was twenty, I stepped off a Cessna
at three thousand feet above a field
of daisies and goldenrod. I remember letting go,
then nothing. Then a stillness, a floating,
the motor of the plane receding like a bug.
I hung there clutching a dandelion plume—
my legs in a dangle above the field
that kept on rising to where I was.
This poem was published in the Summer 2013 issue of Raffle.
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Prophet skipped into the house, screaming my name, begging to borrow my phone so she could take a picture of the bugs she'd found on a bucket in the yard. In a flash, she was gone, sucked from the room like a helium balloon from an open car window.
Upon her return, I recognized the grasshoppers of my younger years. I remember them as having a distinct, almost rubbery smell. My childhood summers were filled with these sleek black grasshoppers and their sportscar-orange stripes.
I also remember the way they oozed a white, creamy substance all over the hot cement street in front of our house. There was a time when dead bugs demanded mass burials and specially-tailored funeral rites.
EASTERN LUBBER GRASSHOPPER (Romalea microptera)
Now, Prophet asks me to marvel over them as if for the first time. I find myself hating the way marvel has assumed a more cerebral hue- the hunger to give it a name, to find out what it eats, where it lives, why it lingers on buckets and metal pipes.
The eastern lubber grasshopper is limited to the southeastern and south central portion of the United States. The northern boundary is central North Carolina west through southern Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, to Texas.
Our eastern lubbers are juveniles, still too small to boast of wings and more variegated coloration.
We learn that its wings are purely ornamental- too short for flight, running less than half the length of the abdomen. Also, that our friends cannot fly; they move by jumping short distances. Their range of motion is narrow and their style rather clumsy and slow. The eastern lubber's name reflects this clumsy movement. “Lubber” is derived from an old English word “lobre” which means lazy or clumsy. To call someone a lubber is to brush them with the tar of being big, clumsy, oaf-like, and rather dull-witted. If you've ever heard a sailor call someone a "landlubber", now you understand why it wasn't a compliment.
Eastern lubber is one of only four species in the family Romaleidae found north of Mexico, but there are many other species in South America, and many are winged and agile, so although some other species in this family are called lubbers, the “lubber” designation is not appropriate for the entire family.
Since eastern lubbers are known to prey on garden plants and flowers, many people make use of toxic sprays to keep the lubbers at bay. Fortunately, there are wiser solutions. If you find yourself swimming in a sea of lubbers, pot a few oleanders and place them in strategic locations to deter pests. Oleander is poisonous to eastern lubbers- but eastern lubbers don't know this, and will usually die immediately after consuming the flower or its leaves.
EASTERN LUBBER PRINTABLES
Eastern lubber fact sheet (University of Florida Extension)
Eastern lubber handout (Southeastern University)
Lubber grasshoppers (Fresh From Florida)
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