On the Trail of Fairies

If you are in the company of a wonderfully imaginative, almost 4 year old, granddaughter, and find yourself in near magical settings anyways, fairies are bound to come to mind.  Well, bound to come to MY mind anyways.  Part of my job at the nature center was to lead birthday parties and thanks to the popularity of Tracey Kane’s books on Fairy Houses and how to build them, they were growing ever more popular.  So here I was, back on the Cape, in the “Seashell cottage” with lovely tupelo’s providing the base tree so OF COURSE we would be building one here.

If ever you are looking for a way to inspire kids to take hikes through the woods, and to play outside, this is the ticket.  They use only natural items, cones, bark, nuts, rocks etc. that they gather while walking and then they do the building.  So easy, so entertaining.  So Elena made a grand one while we were at the Cape, grand in her own eyes at least, and that is the beauty, they build it, they think it is grand. 

Then when we left for Maine, and had to entertain ourselves in the new yard while the movers delivered things, what better thing than to build another here, under the apple tree. 

We took walks daily, often more than one a day to gather something new for the ever- expanding way these houses have.  The yard has raspberry bushes and apple trees, so making “stews” and “soups” for the fairies became a daily pastime.   Again what could be simpler, and her Mom and Dad could keep unpacking.  Each day, a “gift” of a flower would appear and she was delighted.  I loved it, she loved it, an old “sprite” and a new sprite having such a grand time.  We even watched the charming movie  “FairyTale- A True Story” although at her age, I sped through some of the more historical parts.  It’s a sweet, sweet movie and might tempt we more sentimental types to join the ranks of believers.

So sad to leave her, to leave this idyllic setting, but interestingly I didn’t leave the “fairy theme” altogether.  My first stop that night was with a friend from Zoo days who lives in Tenants Harbor across from the island of Monhegan in ME where Tracy Kane saw her first fairy houses which inspired her book series. 

 

  

Next night, I was in New Hampshire with a friend there, a school librarian, who pointed out that Tracy Kane lived nearby.  Amazing.  So should I ever be called on to lead a “Fairy Expedition” this is the route I would take again, Cape Cod to Maine to New Hampshire.  Any takers?

But now I am back in TX, the heat has melted the sparkle off my wings a tad, and how I miss my builder-in-arms.  Growing up is never easy, even when you are in your 60’s!

A Seashore Strewn with Slippers

What unspeakable joy it was to return to the Cape that I love and this time not by myself, but with two daughters and my two grandchildren.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  We were blessed beyond blessed to be in my friends cottage again, the one that is perfect in every way, small enough to be so intimate, with a wide open view to the small lake in the yard, and every furnishing inside a reflection of the world outside.   A magical cottage in every way.  My granddaughter, who is three, called it the “seashell house’ for really, everywhere you look there are shells.  Shell wreaths, 30 or more Atlantic whelks decorate the fence of the outside shower, horseshoe crab shells greet you at the door.  It’s wonderful, in my granddaughter’s eyes and in mine also.

When I was last here it was fall, and without a granddaughter and grandson in tow, I had gone to the local harbor beach just to look once but didn’t spend any time there.  This time it was the perfect start to each day and the seashell motif is carried over there, with the high tide line being piled high with a zillion or more slipper shells.  Our home was on the other side of the cape on Cape Cod Bay and there you may find a few shells but nothing like this mother load that was present here.  And again, it gets you wondering, how does the sea support such an overabundance of life?

If you are a landlocked person, perhaps you don’t know the “slipper shell”.  It is really a gastropod, a snail as it were, and it is a filter feeder that subsists on phytoplankton and algae.  If you look inside an empty shell you see a “shelf” that in life would support the soft organs of the animal.  It is were the image of a “slipper” comes from.  If we look at their Latin name, Crepidula fornicata, you get the jest that these guys are great at replicating themselves.  And so they are.  They aren’t wanderers of the sea, but just attach to something hard, be it a rock, a horseshoe crab, a whelk, each other orr whatever is handy and from there they can just filter the plankton out of the water. No need to go roaming. 

And to find that special someone?  Well, they are often found in a stack, with the large shells on the bottom being the females, and the smaller ones on top the males.  Sooooo when its time to make even more slipper shells, your true love is nearby.  And if the large female on the bottom dies, than the next male in line will change into a female so that the ratio of “guys to girls” is always a good one.  Neat trick.  

So, food just for the filtering, mates handily available for mating and no predators to speak of and you have the reason the shore is littered with slippers.  However, what they do need, is a quiet harbor, sort of beach, no pounding waves thank you to knock me off my stack and that is why they are just feet deep here but hardly found on other more exposed beaches.

 

No matter the reason they were present, or the life style they lead, my grandchildren were just thrilled to be collecting them by the buckets and using them later in the fabulous fairy houses they would build.  And On the Trail of Fairies has to be another installment for it would become a main theme for much of my trip.  But that will have to wait for later.  Someone is expected to make supper here and I fear it is I. 

*Authors note- Sadly, on the very first day at the beach, on the very first visit, I was squatting down with my grandson in the water when my camera just “plooped” out of my pocket and into the briny sea, sadly these are the only pictures I have!

6,000 miles and So Many Friends Later

I have been back in Texas a week, trying to acclimate once again to a “cool day” being one that is only in the low 90’s.  Hard to accept after being in the truly cool weather of New England, but then, in time I will see that as “cool” too. Not just yet though.

Where to begin.  Clearly you don’t want ALL the details, for this is a nature blog, not really my life and times, but oh how good to be driving through nature that I know again.  The roads of New England, and really much of the East are lined with lace in August- Queen Anne’s lace, growing in thick waving lines along the side of the roads.  You wonder sometimes why one particular species seems to dominate a roadside like that.  Clearly there is something about them that thrives there.  Perhaps with the Queen Anne’s Lace it is the fact that it can produce several stalks and flowers even if mowed down, so bring on those highway mowers, it can take it.

My Stokes book on Wildflowers claims the name comes from a legend that Queen Anne challenged her ladies in waiting to make a lace as lovely as the flower for her wedding.  If anyone of them did, they didn’t get their names in print although the Queen did.  And the Latin name lets you know this is a wild carrot,  Daucus carota.   It is the wild precursor of the carrot they would later develop for our gardens.  However, this wild one is stringy and tough and takes hours to cook so stick with your supermarket variety.  They are so abundant in most places that pulling one up to scratch and sniff the root really is an acceptable thing to do.  Try it, it smells just like carrot.  As do the leaves, rub them between your finger and you will also get a carrot scent. 

If you don’t get a carrot scent, beware, for Poison Hemlock, of being used to kill Socrates fame, might be the plant you have.  It looks like a Queen Anne Lace on steroids reaching as high as 8’.  Its stalk has purple spots and is smooth, not hairy, like the Queen.  Not to be trifled with.  It grows abundantly here along the Guadalupe River.  I saw it in the spring and there is another difference, for the Queen’s Lace, appears later in the summer. 

Either way, it felt like a constant companion from Eastern TN through Maine and on the Cape and along the road through Canada.  Its distribution is supposedly throughout the US but I seemed to lose it in western TN and it certainly isn’t around here.  Or at least I haven’t seen it.

Interesting, that for all the adventures of this trip; broken down cars, my dog with a face full of porcupine quills, a cold front that attached to my bumper for the 4 day trip home with such heavy rain that I had to put on my flashers, I choose to write about Queen Anne’s Lace!  Guess that is the Nature blog part taking over.  I did intend to write from the road, but there really never was time, too many friends to see and laugh and talk with and then on the way home, that front and its accompanying “Severe Thunderstorms” would uncannily knock out the electricity each night as I settled in.  An amazing “Groundhog Day” feel to those last four day.  Perhaps I will follow this up with some other vignettes.  At least that will be my intention, providing a storm doesn’t hit!