Black Blister Beetle Season

It's black blister beetle season again. When I watered last Friday, I saw 2, then I noticed a couple more this morning. So, I went back inside for my trusty peanut butter jar filled with soapy water and started looking seriously.

Wow. The potatoes are just covered. Using a conservative estimate, I picked off around 50 this morning and saw at least a dozen more that escaped my predatory grasp by dropping to the ground and scurrying into the mulch. (For insects who theoretically don't get eaten much because of their "blister" potential, they sure do have good predator-escape instincts. I have to assume that they taste better to some sort of animal than would otherwise be suspected.)

I blogged about the blister beetles last summer, so I won't repeat that information again today, but suffice it to say that I find them much more interesting now than I did before I learned a little about their biology! In rereading what I wrote last summer, I noticed that I was still quite squeamish about handpicking them without gloves. Well, I can't promise that everyone will be this way, but I've found that I don't have any problem with "blisters" at all, whether I wear gloves or not. In fact, I now prefer gloveless picking because I can feel whether I have them in my fingers so much better. I just keep in mind that I don't want to squash them, so I handle them very gently, and I seem to do fine.

I did find at least one predator chowing down on the blister beetles - a wheel bug female who looked very well fed indeed.

Another interesting note: while I was searching high and low in the potatoes for skulking beetles, I noticed droppings that I recognized as being from a horn worm. It took me 10 minutes of looking, but I finally saw the thing - about 4" long and fat as could be, about 2" from where I'd been looking the longest and hardest. Camoflage is a wonderful thing. (No, I didn't remove him. He was about ready to pupate, there was only one of him...and I love sphinx moths!)

Watering: A Simple Pleasure

It's due to hit 101 today and, since it's 99 in the shade at 2 p.m., I'd say there's a good chance we'll make the predicted high, even out here in the boonies. (With the heat island effect of pavement in the city, I'm pretty sure that Wichita is already 101 this afternoon.) When it's been more than a week since it rained and the temperatures are this hot, it's a sure bet that folks with gardens are going to be needing to water.

Nowadays, of course, the "in" thing is to have a sprinkler system. Then all you have to do is hit the switch and the system handles things for you. Meanwhile you get to stay inside and "be productive" (or veg out in front of the TV, depending upon your mood). I can see the appeal of that approach, but if I gave into it, I would miss some of the best moments I have in the garden.

Take this morning. Even at 9 a.m., it was hot. To be honest, I really didn't want to go outside and get myself all hot and sweaty and muddy, but I've only got one small sprinkler system in one flower bed and my choice was to go outside and water or probably start seeing some plant loss.

So I girded my loins, so to speak, and ventured outside. Once I got out and got the water running, it really wasn't that bad. Watering, for me, is rather meditative - like fishing in reverse. (I'm putting water into something, rather than taking something out of the water, but in both activities I'm standing still for long periods of time while holding something to do with water in my hand.) Watering gives me a chance to note what plants are looking puny, which ones are getting eaten, which ones are beginning to overrun their spots, and so forth.

However, watering does more than help me notice my plants more consistently. It engages all my senses, and immerses me in the life of the yard. Without realizing it consciously, I'm hearing and registering the birds that are living in the garden with me: a pheasant "coughing" near the draw, bobwhite quail calling, cardinals chipping anxiously because I'm too near to the feeder they want to check out, a Carolina wren coming closer and closer. In fact, the only reason I know that we have cuckoos nesting in the yard this year is because I've heard them.

If I'm lucky, the wind creates gentle breezes that cool me off and play against my skin. (If I'm not so lucky, it's dead still and the sweat pours down my back, or the wind is blowing so hard that I get unnecessarily soaked in overspray while my hair ties itself into Gordian knots of painful intensity.) I discover fragrances coming from flowers, like Knockout roses and oakleaf hydrangeas, that I didn't think were fragrant, or I note some blasted neighbor is burning plastic in their trash again. If it's the vegetable garden I'm watering, I even pick the occasional strawberry and pop it in my mouth, or chew on a piece of basil, just because it smells so wonderful.

But the ultimate benefit of hand watering is what I get to see simply because I'm standing out there, usually quietly without much movement, for such long periods of time. (I do practice what I preach in watering: deep and only about once a week.) This morning my best sighting was a dragonfly, perched about 2' away from me, savoring a fly he'd just caught. I didn't want to move and have him fly off, so the Brunnera and Asarum got a big dose of extra water as I simply stood there and watched, fascinated. His pedipalps acted like little extra arms, rotating the hapless fly around while he munched. In fact, his pedipalps were so arm/handlike that I found myself doing a leg count - sure enough, all 6 dragonfly legs were firmly holding onto the branch while the remains of the fly was moved this way and that, rather like he was eating a turkey drumstick or a piece of corn on the cob.

About the only time I see velvet ants is when I'm watering, but I see them frequently then, scurrying along the ground, obviously on a important mission to somewhere.

Two weeks ago, I saw a female tiger swallowtail circle around my single parsley plant, landing briefly to touch her abdomen to a leaf and lay an egg, then rising into the air to circle for a fresh spot, and repeating the process again...and again...and again...and again. I noticed on Friday, again while I was watering, that the caterpillars have not only hatched, they are past the brown and white stage and into the multi-colored striped stage that they'll stay in until they pupate.

I'm most likely to spot caterpillars when I'm watering. My meditative gaze will suddenly notice that the brown & white blob on that leaf is not really a bird dropping because it's moving in a very non-bird-dropping like way, or my eyes will pick out a misshapen leaf and notice the jaws systematically shaving its edge away. When I turn the leaf over, there is a rather large and brightly colored caterpillar staying stock still, hoping that I'm not particularly hungry this morning. Then I'll look the plant over carefully and realize that I can see 3 or 4 more of its siblings, munching away.

The worst part is that I can't photograph what I'm seeing, other than mentally in my own mind. Most of the drama that I witness when watering is something that I see only because I'm standing still, quietly, in one place for a long period of time. Running into the house to get my camera rather negates my "cover". I've thought about always carrying my camera with me when I water but, truthfully, I'm too lazy...and a little bit concerned about getting it muddy and/or wet accidentally. I love my camera, but it's a rather heavy and bulky for carrying for hours at a time while you're trying to manipulate something else, especially when that "something else" has the potential to ruin your camera.

So I can try to share some of these experiences verbally and through the written word. Hopefully, a few people will read this and want to experiment, then will recognize the simple pleasures and unique opportunities afforded by some quiet time in the garden with just you, your hose, and your thoughts.

Evolving Flower Gardens

Because it seems only fair that readers of my blog should be able to visualize the gardens that I'm working on, I thought I should post a photo of my newly "completed" front gardens. I took this shot a few days ago, when the sky was one of those jewel-like hues of blue.

I, obviously, like the cottage garden look - informal, blowsy, crowded, rich, vibrant.... The side of the garden closest to the house has been in for a year or more and the plants are thus significantly larger. The side of the garden nearest the camera is what I've been working on this spring. For the most part, this is the "year to sleep" for most of these plants - they are little and likely to remain that way at least until next spring. (That phrase is from another of the gardening mantras I learned in Mobile, "A year to sleep, a year to creep, a year to leap." For an impatient gardener who wants to see results NOW, this mantra helps remind her to have patience and give new plants a chance to get acclimated to their new spots before expecting them to look gorgeous.)

Don't forget, though, that native plants can be used in many different ways - they don't require a cottage garden setting to look good and perform well. In fact, if the focus is to be on the specific plants, a more formal garden or a more "manicured" garden can really highlight them better.

While I'm deep watering the new side of the garden every 5 days or so during the dry heat until it gets established, I've hardly had to water the older, more established side at all this summer. (I've spot watered the beebalm on that side a time or two, when it started to look wilted.) I've never fertilized, and I hardly have to even pull any weeds since the flowers have grown large enough to keep the soil shaded and covered on their own.

There's lots more to do, and it shows up especially strongly in a photo, but this is a start...and I'm learning tons while having a lot of fun. Besides which, a garden is NEVER truly complete, not even for a moment.

An Underground Life

This is the time of year when I start seeing cicada shells everywhere, as the nymphs come up from below ground and make their last transformation from subterranean root feeders into winged, adults. The discarded skins cling to tree trunks and perennial stems, to the side of the house and to anything else where they can get a grip. Each morning there are more, joining the somewhat bizarre yard ornamentation. Sometimes I wonder, if I camped outside, would I wake up the next morning with a cicada shell clinging to me?

However, despite the perennial evidence of all these cicadas living underground around me, I've never seen a live cicada nymph in its natural habitat. Until yesterday.

I was digging a hole, to put in a Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica), out in my new "rain garden" bed. This is a low area that carries rainwater running off our driveway and the higher parts of the yard toward the front prairie, and from there to the creek. Prairiewolf and I want to put in a series of flower beds with small "dams" to help keep some of that rainwater on the land, rather than having it all drain off and head towards the Gulf of Mexico. I'm calling these beds my "rain garden."

Anyway, I was digging a hole in this low area of the yard when I noticed that I'd opened up a miniature tunnel or cave with my shovel, about 6 or 7" down from the surface and about 1" in diameter. I looked at it for a moment, wondering what had caused it, and saw movement in the open space. This freaked me out just a bit. (I always have nightmarish visions of accidentally busting open a bumblebee or yellowjacket nest in such circumstances!) Nothing seemed poised to fly out of the opening, though, so I watched for a bit more. Finally, frustrated at not having a better view, I got a big flashlight and my camera from the house, then contorted myself into strange positions to try to use both to take a couple pictures. As I did so, I realized what I was looking at - the elusive live cicada nymph I'd never seen before! The claws were a dead giveaway.

This face is truly one that "only a mother could love", but I still find it fascinating. Hopefully I didn't cause this little guy any lasting harm. Based on size, he/she must have been close to making the final journey up into the night to assume adult form. One of these days, maybe the cicada song I hear will be sung by this strange creature who let me get a glimpse of his life, underground.

A Stroke Towards Understanding

On a totally different note, but still in book report mode, I'd like to share another book that I've read recently, My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

Every once in a while, someone experiences something in life that can radically change how we understand something considered generally "unknowable." When that happens, if we're lucky, the someone who has had the experience writes about it cogently or in some other way shares it with the rest of us and, then, through increased understanding, we can change how we treat each other in those particular circumstances. That's what has happened with My Stroke of Insight.

Jill Taylor is a neuroanatomist who specialized in brain function during her training and early academic career, trying to understand (among other things) why a beloved older brother developed schizophrenia. She worked at Harvard Medical School and was active on the national lecture circuit, helping others understand what was happening on an anatomical basis when the brain doesn't work properly.

Then, at age 37, she had a major stroke effecting almost the entire left hemisphere of her brain. She was conscious during the entire time the stroke was occurring and she was able to figure out, from her training, what parts of the brain were being effected and why she was having the problems she was experiencing. Despite that, by the time she reached the hospital, she was totally unable to talk, barely able to understand what others were saying to her, and almost infantlike in her reactions to stimuli.

In this book, she shares with us what she experienced, how she recovered her abilities (which took 8 years), and suggestions for helping others to recover from strokes as fast and fully as possible.

Because her stroke basically incapacitated her entire left hemisphere for an extended period, this account is also a fascinating look at how the 2 sides of the brain interact to produce our normal view of reality as well as our normal personality, and what each side of the brain contributes to that "normality". Last, but hardly least, she gives us a view from a brain that is ONLY functioning with the right hemisphere - what she could understand, what she felt, how she could and could not communicate.

I read My Stroke of Insight while we were on our recent trip to Chicago, and it seemed like I was constantly noticing parallels between conversational topics and what I was learning as I read. I'm sure everyone was sick of the phrase, "In that book I've been reading....."! I've already had to watch my mother-in-law suffer (and eventually die) from a brain tumor many years ago. I've always wondered what and how much she felt and understood as she lay, basically unresponsive but with her eyes open, in the hospital those last few weeks; now I feel like I have a better understanding. Having read this book will certainly change how I care for someone with a stroke, if that ever becomes a task that I am called upon to do. By helping me understand what she experienced, Dr. Taylor also helped prepare me for what to expect, should I ever experience a stroke.

This is not a long book, but it's an important and interesting book. I highly recommend that you read it now...and reread it, if anyone you know is unfortunate enough to suffer the life-transforming effects of a stroke.

Freshly Discovering An Old Gardening Classic

Lately, I sometimes feel like I'm back in grade school, writing book reports - but these books are so good that I really want to share them with anyone else who might enjoy them! So, please, bear with me.

My latest discovery was actually written in 1951, then reprinted (along with its 2 siblings) by Timber Press in 1998. It's called Merry Hall, by Beverley Nichols.

I actually discovered its siblings...eerrrr, I mean its sequels, Laughter on the Stairs (1953) and Sunlight on the Lawn (1956), as used books for sale amongst more normal, new gardening books at Crosby Arboretum in Mississipii, when I visited there with the Mobile County Master Gardeners in May. They looked different, potentially interesting, and their price was quite low, so I picked them up on a whim. Once I got them home, I decided that it was unfair to read the sequels without reading the book that led the way, so I ordered Merry Hall, the first of the trilogy, from Amazon. When it arrived, I dug into it.

I loved it. While this book is about gardens and gardening rather than about animals and animal collecting, it nonetheless reminds me of the books by Gerald Durrell that I was introduced to in my early teens and that I've loved ever since. It's charming, in a very British-dry-sarcastic-wit-with-lots-of-good-plant-knowledge sort of way. Nichols flits from repeatedly skewering a couple nosy, neighborhood women who take rather too much interest in his newly acquired garden (Miss Emily and Our Rose), to opinionated statements about how cut flowers should (and, most emphatically, should not) be arranged, to how he came to design his garden (wishing he were back in the womb plays a not-insignificant part), to flights of fancy about the best height to be (mentally, that is) when exploring a rock garden.

I could include quotes, but small snippets can't possibly capture the richness and humor of the tales that Nichols tells. Apparently lots of others have quoted from this book, though, and the most popular quote is said to be, "It is only to the gardener that Time is a friend, giving each year more than he steals." I certainly found that a great thought to turn over in my mind as I watered this afternoon, one of many gifts that I'm taking with me from having read Merry Hall.

Echinacea vs. Checkerspot Caterpillars, Revisited

If you've read my blog for a while, you know that I had an interesting experience pitting young Echinaceas against baby checkerspot butterflies (also known as checkerspot caterpillars) last summer. The last of 3 entries on the subject is here, linked to the prior 2 entries. I discovered that the plants weren't permanently hurt by the seemingly vicious caterpillar attack, at least not last summer. It was, in fact, a perfect example of the best cure being to do nothing but let nature handle the situation on its own, without my interference.

I thought folks might be interested in seeing those same 2 baby Echinacea plants this year.

As you can see, they don't appear to have suffered at all! They are waist high, "full and fluffy" (to quote Barbie), and covered with dozens of blooms.

Interestingly, I've planted several more young Echinaceas in the new half of the flower bed...and they are currently covered with checkerspot caterpillars as I write. The older, "more experienced" plants that dealt with them last year seem to have escaped becoming larva food this year. It makes me wonder if the adult checkerspot females preferentially seek out young plants to lay eggs on, or if the young (newly transplanted) plants are sending out distress signals until they get established...or if this was simply coincidence.

I'll probably never know, but it's interesting to hypothesize and try to figure out what makes sense.

Suet's Not Just for Birds Any More

I know that squirrels are acrobats, but sometimes it's just fun to look out the kitchen window and spy one doing something like this....

Glowing Golden...rod

I love goldenrod. Solidago species of all shapes and sizes. Those bright yellow, frilly looking native flowers that bloom in the fall and get (wrongly) blamed for everyone's hayfever symptoms. Like milkweeds, they seem to have an entire mini-ecosystem of insects affiliated with them, plus they just brighten the landscape.

On our 7+ acres of "wild" land, I've found at least 3 species growing naturally:

Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis)

Prairie goldenrod (Solidago missouriensis)

Stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida).

As I've been planting my garden beds, I've been adding varieties that I find in local nurseries. I currently have 6, maybe 7, planted in the flower beds:

Little Lemon goldenrod (a hybrid)

Wichita Mountains goldenrod (a variety of goldenrod collected in the Wichita Mountains of SW Oklahoma...but I've not been able to find a species name for it)

Golden Baby goldenrod (a variety of S. canadensis)

Gray goldenrod (S. nemoralis)

Stiff goldenrod (S. rigida)

Elmleaf goldenrod (S. ulmifolia).

I have one more variety in the beds that may or may not be Golden Baby - I planted two of them the first fall we were here and I lost the labels.... Hopefully I'll be able to identify them when they bloom this year.

Anyway, the first of my goldenrods is blooming already - (drum roll, please!) - and the summer speed demon is...Little Lemon! Here's a photo of the blooms taken from above:

The flowers remind me (rather appropriately, for this time of year) of bursting fireworks. The plants themselves are very dense - I put 3 in about a foot apart from each other, and now I wish I'd planted them farther apart, or even placed them separately. They've grown taller than advertised - these are about 22" tall now, rather than the 8-12" max height that they are labeled to attain, and I've done absolutely nothing special except plant them. Of course, they could be on "steroids" from the nursery-added fertilizer. We'll see how they do next year. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying their golden glow.

Beware. I'm likely to bore you with shots of other golden beauties as the summer moves on.

Fascinating Cloud Formation

Hearing prolonged rumbles an hour or so ago, I looked out the back door to blue skies and shrugged it off as fireworks being set off by the neighbors. Prairiewolf noticed the noise, too, and after a bit I decided to look out the front door. It was like being in an alternate universe! The sky was very dark, with frequent lightning flashes. There was no blue sky to be seen anywhere.

Even more amazing was the base of the cloud - a really unusal formation that I've never seen before. A circular area was distinctly set off, lower, from the rest of the base of the cloud. This circular formation was attached via a narrow band with a more linear, lowered section that seemed to run along the western side of the base of the storm. Almost a linear roll cloud on the backside of the storm, but much more layered looking and with no visible rotation.

I was able to get several photos. Does anyone know if this formation tells anything special about this thunderstorm? (The cell was an elongated single cell that seemed to arise, unexpectedly, in the middle of otherwise benign looking skies. Nothing was predicted, and it wasn't particularly hot - around 82 degrees F.)

Health Care - Sense and Nonsense

I don't normally blog about political issues here. Not because I don't care about political issues, but because I don't want this blog to be taken over by them, which can easily happen.

However, I feel like I need to make a comment or two "at large" on the health care issue....

Our current system is based upon 2 fundamental flaws that will keep it from EVER being good at delivering decent health care when people really need it:

1) Employer funded health insurance. I know why this started, but it makes no sense for it to continue now. When someone gets seriously ill, one of the first side effects is that they usually cannot work. Therefore they lose their employer and, soon after, their employer funded health insurance. Thus, when they need health care the most, they can't access it. (Note: Being the primary societal payers for health costs also gives our business community significant costs that companies in other countries don't have, putting them at an economic disadvantage in the global marketplace.)

2) Health "insurance" itself. Everyone is going to get ill or require medical care, sooner or later, no matter how well we take care of ourselves. Health "insurance" is an oxymoron. Being able to pay for health "insurance" doesn't insure that we will stay healthy individually. On a societal level, siphoning profit out of our health care system doesn't "insure" that people will stay healthier either - it just means that sick people cost too much money for health insurance companies to make a profit on. The statistic that sticks in my mind (although I have no source to quote for this) is that about $.30 out of every $1 spent on health care in this country goes for insurance company costs and profits. That's stupid. The only people getting benefit out of that are health insurance employees and owners. It's time for them to make a living elsewhere, and not at the expense of health care for the rest of our population.

I read (and hear) such statements as "we have the best health care in the world" bandied about. No, we don't. We have the MOST EXPENSIVE health care, per capita, in the world. We are somewhere around 30-40th on most health related standards such as longevity, maternal health, newborn health, etc. etc. Most other industrialized countries (who basically all have "socialized" medicine, by the way) provide better healthcare, as a whole, for half the cost or less, per capita.

Or how about "if the government takes over health care, we'll have HEALTH CARE RATIONING and then NO ONE WILL GET THE TREATMENT THEY NEED IN A TIMELY MANNER". Bull corn. We already have health care rationing - we are very stingy, as a nation, on how we provide health care to the working poor, for example. In the current recession, with all the layoffs that have occurred, health care is one of the first expenses that people are being encouraged to cut out. Oh, if it's an emergency, people can go to an ER and get treated with the hospital writing off their costs, but it often bankrupts the person/family. Meanwhile, the cheaper, preventive care (that could have kept them healthier in the first place) doesn't get done because it's still too expensive for individuals to afford.

In fact, right now, those who can afford medical costs the least - those who aren't covered by employer-based health care or government programs and who are "self pay" because they can't afford "insurance" - have to pay the highest costs at doctors' offices and hospitals. The health "insurance" companies negotiate quantity discounts, then physicians and hospitals are bound to charge the higher prices (that the discounts were based on) to the patients not covered by such discounts. The "savings to the system" essentially get made on the backs of the working poor.

Then there's the "Everyone in countries with 'socialized medicine' complains about their systems and feels like they get inadequate care. The entire world looks to the U.S. in longing because our health care is so wonderful." Ah,...no. That's garbage, being repeated by people who either have a strong stake in the system remaining as it is, or by folks who never actually talk with people from other countries. The relatives that I have in countries with "socialized" medicine (an uncle & aunt with their 3 sons and their sons' families in Norway; several cousins on both sides of our family in Canada - all of whom visit the U.S. with fair frequency, so they are familiar with both systems) report being very happy with the health care they receive. Our son, in Germany, has told us that the Germans he talks with are very happy with their system too. Both our son and our daughter have spent significant time in Britain, as well, where they've reported that the citizens they've talked with are quite content with their health care as well. Are there some complaints? Of course. There's always room for improvement and some people will always complain, but overall people are very happy with their health care in those countries. The objective numbers also say that citizens' health in those countries (longevity, maternal health, etc. etc.) is better for much less money, per capita, than in our country.

Then there's the proposal to give people "tax breaks" on health insurance costs. Another sounds-good-but-actually-doesn't-help, smoke-and-mirrors idea. People without health insurance are probably not going to be able to pay for health insurance, even with "tax breaks" - these are folks who don't make enough money to pay rent, food and transportation costs without problems. There's no room in a budget like that for hundreds of dollars for health insurance!

Plus "tax breaks" like that are actually taxpayers subsidizing the health "insurance" industry.

If you want the private health "insurance" industry to work, insurance companies need to take entire communities at a time, sick people as well as healthy people, and insure them all at the same rate. They wouldn't be able to single out the sick people and not pay for their care, as they do now. They shouldn't be able to search for ways to deny payment, based on bogus claims of "experimental protocols" or "pre-exisiting conditions" such as treatment years before for a cough that is used as the basis for denying later claims for lung cancer, or treatment for menstrual cramps used as a basis for denying later claims for ovarian or uterine cancer.

My last comment is cynical, but heartfelt. I wish the American populace, as a whole, would quit proving the claim that "a lie repeated often enough becomes accepted as the truth." Come on, folks, talk with your neighbors and fellow workers about their actual experiences. Quit passively listening to talking heads spewing half truths and outright lies. Question what you read and hear.

Most of all, remember, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." The truth, as far as health goes, is, "There, in my time, will go I."

Plant Associations, Trailing Through Life

Earlier today, in writing my review of Our Life in Gardens by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd, I came upon a passage I had underlined that I want to share. On page 65, they wrote, "Plants, like words in poetry, are both beautiful in themselves and also for the associations they trail behind, the histories they have in the world and in one's own life."

Everytime I've read those lines, my mind starts wandering to plants that have associations in my own life....

My first memory of a garden is from when I was about 8 years old. We'd driven to visit my Great Aunt Elsie and Great Uncle Oscar in upper New York state. I remember little of Elsie and Oscar or their home, but I remember vividly their backyard garden. It was narrow and deep, with rich flower beds curving gently along the sides, completely surrounding the open grassy area in the middle. About halfway back the beds came out into the yard a little farther, making the area behind them seem hidden and mysterious and extra-special. That garden fascinated me and I think that, ever since, my memory of it has formed the basis of what a "real" garden should be like.

Also when I was about 8, my parents planted a weeping birch tree in our own front yard. It was a sapling, probably 6 feet tall, with just a couple branches hanging down, but I remember "sheltering" under the one weeping branch that hung the lowest, imagining myself in some sort of hidden grotto. As barren and open as that spot was, it seemed magical and hidden to my young mind.

From first grade through fourth grade, my favorite place to play was in the woods, along the creek, at the bottom of the hill upon which our house was perched. I would try to capture tadpoles or crayfish, then get bored and switch to pretending I was a princess on my own private island in the middle of the creek. Some days I just explored, other days I went to favorite places like the grove of young holly trees where I constructed elaborate stories in which I was, of course, the heroine of the day. I knew what holly was, even then, and I remember learning what sassafras leaves looked like in that woodland. I don't think that I saw another sassafras until I was in my late 40's in Mobile, but right away I knew exactly what young tree sapling had sprung up in my front garden bed there.

Eastern deciduous woodlands played a big part in my growing up a few years later, too. During my early adolescence in suburban Massachusetts, my best friend and I would sneak over to the little bait shop one street over from ours and buy snacks, then walk over to a hillside overlooking the local "pond" (which was actually a lake, by Kansas standards). There we would sit on a big log right beside the path and watch the water of the pond through the woodland trees, feeling both adult and slightly naughty and illicit, eating our candy bars and discussing all of those important adolescent issues that filled our minds so completely in those years.

When we first moved to Massachusetts, the year I'd turned 10, I remember helping Mom try to make 2 flower beds in our new backyard. She'd outlined the bed shapes that she wanted and we started digging. Or, rather, we started trying to dig. The soil was full of rocks of all shapes and sizes; digging was downright slow and painful. I think we finally did get some semblance of flower bed dug out, but since then I've had a visceral memory of the stoniness of New England soil that flares up whenever history lessons mention the trials of the early European settlers farming that land.

After 2 years in Massachusetts, we moved to the Panama Canal Zone. Thinking of my junior high years there brings memories of huge bougainvillea shrubs, their branches covered in blooms, hanging over the sidewalks. There were tall palm trees everywhere, a big bamboo grove right next to our home's clothes lines outside my room, and, not infrequently, sloths hanging from trees in the neighborhood. Once I even saw a small band of monkeys chattering and travelling through the treetops while my best friend and I walked from her house to the movie theater.

Beautiful plants and interesting animals. Beautiful memories associated with them all. Even in childhood...no, especially in childhood, plants and gardens and wild areas enriched my life. Those memories continue to enrich my life, even now.

The Power of Stories

For 40 years or so, I've been interested in family history. Like most people, I started out collecting names and dates and places, births and deaths and marriages. After a while, those long "laundry" lists started losing their meaning to me. They started becoming simple facts, generally quite dry, that told me very little about the people who actually experienced those births and deaths and marriages, who chose to stay put or move across an ocean, who worked and loved and hated and tried to get by in the world in the best way they could.

So, about 10 years ago, I started becoming much more interested in learning the stories of my relatives. What challenges had they faced and how had they overcome them? What were their strengths and weaknesses? their hobbies and interests? their proudest moments? their biggest regrets? What were their personalities like?

It's actually amazingly hard to collect stories like this. Many folks assume that you just want "the dirt" on people when you ask for stories about them, but that wasn't my wish at all. I wanted to get a feel for my ancestors and relatives as real people, wanted to get to know them in the same ways I might have known them had I lived near them in time and space. I wanted, too, to learn what they could teach me about myself, my ways of coping with stress, my responses to happiness and sorrow.

I was a little unsure how to explain to others what I was searching for, even a little unsure myself about what, exactly, I wanted to know. So my family story collecting has been spotty, meeting with limited success, and I haven't pursued it actively for several years.

Enter Kitchen Table Wisdom, by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. I was aware of this book when it came out over 10 years ago and it sounded interesting, but I never picked it up. Soon it morphed in my mind into a sort-of companion to the Chicken Soup series, which I also never found compelling enough to actually pick up and read. Then, a few months ago, 2 good friends (with whom I try to get together on a weekly basis to discuss books...and children and husbands and pets and housecleaning and careers...and the meaning of life) both enthusiastically said that I had missed a gem by not reading this book. They recommended that I not only read it as soon as possible, but that I also read its actual companion book, My Grandfather's Blessings.

So I picked up both and have now read Kitchen Table Wisdom. It is truly wonderful. Remen is a physician, trained as a pediatrician, who has spent the last several decades counseling patients who are dealing with cancer. Obviously many of them are dealing with the prospect of their mortality. She has also dealt personally with a chronic, debilitating illness that, at times, has left her feeling hopeless and despairing. This book, then, is a collection of real stories that she is either telling from her own experiences or from the lives of patients she has counselled. Each of these stories has helped her enrich her own life, helped her begin to discover life's meaning, or has helped others in their own searches for happiness, contentment, or meaning.

This book is also a testament to the power of stories, real stories of things that have happened to real people, and the ability of such stories to help each one of us know who we are, why we are here, and why we matter.

As I read this book, it became obvious to me why I wanted to know these same sorts of real stories about my ancestors and relatives - they can help me learn to see the patterns and meaning in my own life, and hopefully they can help those who come after me to see their place and value in the world a little more clearly too.

As Remen writes in the preface to the 10th anniversary edition of this book, "I have discovered the power of story to change people. I have seen a story heal shame and free people from fear, ease suffering and restore a lost sense of worth. I have learned that the ways we can befriend and strengthen the life in one another are very simple and very old. Stories have not lost their power to heal over generations. Stories need no footnotes.
"Since Kitchen Table Wisdom was published, I have learned that the things that divide us are far less important than those that connect us."

Read this book. I can almost guarantee that you'll be glad you did.

Gut-Level "Got to Share" Gardening Books

I like to share good books when I come across ones that seem particularly special to me, and I've suddenly got three books that meet my gut-level "need to be blogged about" criteria. Two are gardening books and one is literally about life and death matters, but in a very gentle, non-threatening way.

Given that this is a blog that focuses on gardening, I'll start with the gardening books.

The first bok is Our Life in Gardens, by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd. Part garden memoir, part "how-to" guide, part philosophy of life and gardening, part plant guide - with touches of poetical descriptions and caustic comments - this book was first recommended to me by a dear friend from Mobile, a woman whose life is intertwined with gardening and with the gardening community of that city. In selecting a quote from the book that encapsulates why I enjoyed it so much, I think it's perhaps appropriate to go with one that echoes the blog entry I just wrote on watching the changing of the seasons last night....

"We have come to feel that an ordered movement through days and months and years is essential to happiness, or to our happiness at least.... Of all the many joyful obligations of our existence, the garden here has been the most sustaining just in part because it is the most rhythmic, through winter, spring, summer, and fall. It actually has taught us to love every day of our life. One cannot ask more of love for a garden than that." (p.310)

The second book, also about gardening, is very different. Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love, by Julie Moir Messervy, is one of the best "how to" guides for designing your home landscape that I think I've ever read. Rich in photos and small details that get my creative juices flowing, it's also excellent in making the big steps and design process overall seem accessible and inviting. The top of my copy is now bristling with post-it note flags marking ideas and photos that I want to specifically try in my own yard, while the text has numerous underlined sections of points that I think were particularly important or that gave me "aha!" moments as I read.

To give you just a little flavor of Home Outside, here are a few mental peeks into the book (filtered, of course, through my psyche, such as it is!):

* a concrete lion's face, hung on an exterior house wall and surrounded by a "mane" of vines, above an inviting table for two, half hidden by shrubs....

* 6 different possibilities, incorporating everything from curves to formal gardens, sketched out for one simple suburban house and its basic, rectangular lot....

* a garden, designed by a pair of gardening grandparents, both for their own everyday enjoyment and as a place for their visiting grandchildren to play, with special touches like a rose tunnel, a rusting dragon, and commemorative concrete stepping stones guaranteed to get the kids outside and to give them rich memories that will last a lifetime....

* different patio textures, including a circular terrace whose stones are set in ever-expanding circles that seem to echo radiating waves in a pond....

* discussions of the yin and yang of energy in a landscape....

I could go on for...the length of an entire book, actually, but hopefully this gives you a taste and encourages you to at least leaf through Home Outside at your local library or bookstore.

The last book that I want to talk about here is a total change of pace...and perhaps it should be the subject of a separate blog entry. In fact, I know it should. So I'll wrap this post up and begin a new one. Meanwhile, be sure to check out these 2 books! They're almost sure to enrich your gardening experience.

Watching the Seasons Change

Yesterday was the solstice. It was a busy day - being Fathers' Day, we had hosted a family steak cookout in the afternoon - but, by evening, everyone had gone home and I was free to relax. Remembering what day it was, I walked out back and simply stood, watching the sun go down and listening....

The sun was just above the horizon when I got to the edge of the draw and could see the whole of the western sky. The colors were blues and pinks and purples, bounded by rich lavendar-gray clouds above and the fast darkening edge of the Earth below. First I noticed a mourning dove calling, then a bobwhite, joined by cardinals and eastern meadowlarks. Fittingly, the first cicada of the season started buzzing, echoed by others near and far over the next 30 minutes. A bullfrog croaked in the neighbor's pond, and a few chorus frogs grated nearby. The wind was riffling through the willow and cottonwood leaves, rustling.

After a while the colors washed out and the wind seemed to die down too. The quail and mourning doves quit calling, although I saw the doves fly, presumably to their evening roost. Robins started to join the bird chorus, and I noticed red-winged blackbirds calling too.

Soon I saw a single firefly signalling from under the trees in the draw. Then another. The wind started to pick up again and the sky, between the horizon and the clouds, started glowing a soft gold. The colors of the leaves and grass began to fade, with the dance of the tree branches becoming a graceful silhouette against the golden sky. The bird chorus faded out, while the crickets and chorus frogs took over and other insects, whose songs I recognized but couldn't name, joined in the harmonies. By the time I walked back up to the house, the fireflies were dancing a visual symphony over the draw and through the trees, echoing the golden glow of the sky behind them in their shining, pinpoint, aerial displays.

As I stood watching and listening, I felt I could sense the Earth turning. Spring seemed to fade out and summer slowly take her place. The pinks and blues in the sky changed to gold, as inevitably as the pastel flowers of May give way to the vivid displays of July. Calm and peaceful, but unstoppable. Life, ever circling and ever changing.