“Take Up Your Mat and Walk” - An update on our sidelined naturalist

 

When last I wrote, and it has been some time ago hasn’t it; I was probably giving too much information on a rod being placed in my leg.  Well, HUZZAH, it has been four weeks and finally, finally, I am able to gimp about with either just one crutch or no crutch at all, depending on how much I am willing to embrace my “Egor” walk.

During the time of recuperating I can’t say I was glued to my window looking for the latest in bird behavior.  Although one thing that stands out, was laying on the coach hearing a far too frequent banging on my roof, on the eaves to be precise.  When I finally could walk about a bit, I went to investigate and there it was, a huge hole in the eave that a golden fronted woodpecker was expanding daily. In my opinion he was taking the “Mi Casa es Su Casa” a bit too far. With all the dead trees about must he excavate my house!  Interesting though.   Could this woodpecker be as confused about the seasons here as I am?  Or was he just building a shelter against the cold 

I won’t claim to know the answers but this can’t be good for the eaves.  I suppose a more disturbing thought is that he found a nice collection of ants i and was just there to dine.  Pretty large hole though.  I did double check and the earliest reported breeding is March so a nesting hole seems unlikely. We went to my daughters at the University of Illinois for a week at Thanksgiving, and now that we are home, all seems quiet. Perhaps he has moved on.

                   

Seasonal ricocheting has been the main theme for the past few weeks. From the 20’s and 30’s of Illinois, back to the 70’s of Texas, and in a little over a week it will be the freezing temps of Maine. Messes with my mind. I don’t know which part of Handel’s “Messiah” I should be singing. It feels more like the “Halleluiah Chorus” time in Texas and then it will be back to “Unto us a Child is Born” in Maine.  It all fits though, for without the prelude, there would be no Halleluiah chorus. 

Wishing everyone, whatever the outside temperature is, the joy that comes with knowing the amazing true reason for this season.   And if you hear tapping on your roof, may it just be the sound of reindeer hoofs.

 ^“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”  Isaiah 9:6

Peace to you all and may 2015 see us all walking the trails of life again and once again having eyes to see the Glory of God that truly is all around us.

The Naivete of a Not Often Operarted on Person

I had surgery last week, on the tibia bone in my leg that refused to heal.  Now a nail has been shoved down the middle and a screw attached on both sides in a “so there” retribution for not healing.  I have only had one other operation and it was a long time ago and it left a minimal scar.  I had visions of the same thing with this one.

How I thought they were going to get a 14” or so nail down through my bone with just a tiny incision was beyond me, but thinking they might is the definition of naïve.  All summer I have walked like Frankenstein in this boot, lurching one foot ahead of the other and now I have the scars to complete the image. Too bad Halloween has past.

My other naïve thought was that, well I have been months at this, surely once this is in place it will be a matter of days before I am ambulating with greater ease again-or not.  LOTS of pain, lots of swelling, lots of clues that the hiking boots need to stay in cold storage a good deal longer.

In my quest for early answers of how zippy the cure would be, I turned to the Internet and tales from other nail driven leg surgeries.  What I found there were talks of 6 months, 18months, years really!!! But worse than that was that I stumbled onto a website for, I don’t know, do-it-yourself-doctors.  There, in full color, was a step-by-step guide on how the surgery was done. 

Now, I have always thanked God that they knock you out and you know nothing about what went on unless you are addicted to Dr. shows, which I am not, and even then, that’s Hollywood.  But here it was, in great detail, of slicing open your knee, reaming out your bone, shoving this nail down through the tibia etc.  And like people passing an accident, I couldn’t look away.  No wonder my leg is killing me, this was no simple procedure!

So here I sit, grounded today for yesterday I canned applesauce and my leg by the end of the day looked like a sausage ready to burst.  In 5 days time we will be taking to the highway for the 1,100-mile trip to our daughters for Thanksgiving.  The dog and I will be in the back seat and my husband will have to do all the driving.  I am naively hoping this works out fine. 

With trembling hands I also need to click “buy” pretty soon on tickets for a flight to Boston at Christmas followed by a 5-hour bus ride to Maine.  Oh please God, this is your naïve servant hoping there will be improvement by then and no layovers, sleeping in airports like last year.

Again, no natural history wonder here, just the wonder of how one fall could lead to such an altered year.  It is the very essence of an accident; an unexpected event that alters things for a good while to come.  May we all be thankful then, for the limbs that ARE working. 

In a Cauldron of Color with a Colorless Mind

It has been a month since I blogged. That sounds like the beginning of a Catholic confession doesn’t it?  And in a way it is.  I mentioned at the very end of the last blog that I seemed to be slipping back into my own version of SAD.  In my case I don’t think it has anything to do with light or the lack of it, but with heat. Cooler days at the end of August in New England have me all primed for my favorite season, fall, and yet when I come back to Texas I find myself in summer again. Can that make a person go over the edge?  In my case, I would have to say yes, for this is, eh gad, maybe the third time it has happened. If there are any PH.D students out there looking for a research topic, I can be your willing victim.

The very odd thing is, I was going right back to the Northeast for my husband’s reunion at West Point, and then he would leave and I would go on to ME and grandchildren and friends in NH, MA and RI.  Nothing but joy should have been coursing through my veins.  The world WAS a cauldron of color. I was there from the scarlet of red maples that line the highways, to the flaming sugar maples, all the way to late October and beech trees that seem to glow with their own inner light. Beautiful.  

 Yet the colorless mind didn’t budge.  Bless the friends that put up with me, bless my grandchildren who are too young to notice Nona wasn’t quite the same.  That may be because it seems the extrovert inside will rise to the occasion when children are involved.

Back home again and the unsettled, go in circles, accomplish nothing, mode of living continued.  Within days I found out that my fractured tibia still hadn’t healed and I would need surgery.  Which I just had two days ago.  Now I had a theory that maybe going under sedation would be like rebooting a computer and I would arise well.  Well, it almost feels that way.  So many kind friends have been praying for me, and I did finally find a Doctor who could at least explain what is happening, more or less.

She told me depression is the mind shutting down to take care of survival things only, no time to fritter looking at birds or calling friends.  So perhaps if I could convince my brain that, no there is not a saber tooth tiger in the room, we could get back to the frivolous part of life where joy is found.

My hope is then that I will return to a more normal me.  My goal is to at least be able to limp by Christmas, to take the dog for walks again, and to have eyes to see the beauty, the glory of God that so often surrounds me

So indeed, it was a confession. Maybe with that out of the way I will be able to write about nature again.  We had 6” of rain the other day-yippee and who knows, maybe that will set up a spring flower season to beat the band.  Oh, but it isn’t spring is it? It’s fall. Well, it still may make for a grand spring.   Just the fact that I can think that might mean the colorless mind is getting some new tints in it again. I hope so.

Some things I found, on returning home to Texas

I have been home for a few weeks now and here are a few snippets of what I found:

Crossing through East Texas, I amazingly found a lot of Kelly green grass. It must have rained while I was gone and it is stunning how fast the chlorophyll machine kicks into gear when water is added.  I was trying to take a picture of it without risking stopping on a highway and got myself into a little trespassing incident.  After taking a turn off and not quite finding the world as lush as I had hoped, I asked my, not-to-be-trusted GPS how to get back to the road.  Quickly she came up with a route for me to follow, which I foolishly did, even though the turn she recommended led directly into a private ranch.

 It crossed my mind that perhaps there are “sacred pathways” as there were on the Cape that are still allowed to be traversed by the public.  It gave me a great close up of some huge cattle, a nice change from all the goats I see in our area but after chugging down into a valley that clearly was part of the ranch, along came a ranch hand in a jeep who let me know, no, this is not a valid way back to the road.  More amused than angry while I showed him my GPS he helped me turn around and exit as I came. Texans are nice people.

At home I woke for the next few mornings to the sound of what I think is a Western screech owl.  They don’t sound like a whinnying horse as the Eastern screech owl does but the sound I heard matches up the recording on the Cornell site.  He has stopped by around 4 am on three different occasions.  This clumsy walking cast really keeps me from hobbling about in the trees looking for any tell tale owl pellets.  They would be pretty small and hard to find I would think.  Still, that’s my guess and I am sticking with it.

All the black-crested titmice kids of the summer are adept at all devices now, birdbath, feeders, etc.  I occasionally see them all exiting the hole in the tree where their nest was. Interestingly, I have read they love to crowd together in old tree cavities, sometimes packed so tight that some suffocate!  Yikes, I should post a warning outside the hole of what I think the capacity is.

Because my husband put more junk birdseed in than sunflower seed the house sparrows have laid claim to the jasmine-covered fence again.  Right out the window they make tons of noise, hold lots of beach parties in the birdbath that always empty it of water and engage in other gang activities.  I saw 7 of them on just a few branches all preening together the other day.  They are the most gregarious of birds. 

Hummingbirds are still here and it is the season of looking for them to be “fattening up”.  I really don’t think I have a keen enough eye to spot if some have added a few grams since I last saw them.

Likewise all the gangly looking scrub jays are fleshed out now and also making a racket especially when I have just put a new corncob in the holder in the tree. Ostensibly it is for the squirrels but the jays often get to it first.

The only sad thing that has happened though, is that for some pretty unknown reason I have fallen right back into my own, newly-created-since-I moved-to-Texas, SAD disease.  Depression that comes out of nowhere and robs me of my ability to think or create.  SAD indeed.  Could it be that I taste fall in New England and then return to heat and humidity and that makes the brain go haywire? Who knows, but I do hate it.  Last year getting reprogrammed for joy took three months!  It always seems to follow a marvelous time away.  Either then, I should never leave Texas or never return, one or the other! 

I am flying back to NE in three days, and should be deliriously happy but the joy robbing brain drain is blocking the normal emotions.  Hoping for the best though, a miracle would be nice.  The world will be beautiful, the grandchildren will be seen and please, oh please God, may that reconnect what has come undone. Blogs, or the lack of them may give you a hint at how I am doing.  Praying for the miracle.

"Sailing the Seven Seas" Sidewalk Style

I believe in “Have Crutches Will Travel”, I shared what a find it was using my dog and a cobbled together wheelchair to spirit me about Prince Edward Island and Maine with my grandchildren.  But I wrote that in the middle of the trip and I feel the need to sing my dogs praises even more, for in each new place we stayed, this one-dog-open-sleigh took me to all the sights I wanted to see.  Blessings galore, on my 12 yr. old, Brittany who had the ability to race me along anywhere at wheel-rattling speed.

I also shared with you how on the coast of RI, I discovered the leash could perform just like a rudder.  If the curve of the road was tipping me one way or the other, I just had to hold the leash farther to the right or left and it would right me again. 

On the Cape, Tuck and I and a friend and her dogs were able to barrel along the beautiful Shining Sea Bikeway in Falmouth that goes right through Sippiwisset Marsh. It is one of the most studied salt marshes in the world for it is in close proximity to Woods Hole and studying marshes is what they do.  The views were stupendous, of vibrantly green marshes with osprey still circling and crying overhead. 
 

  We saw some adding fresh branches to their nest in preparation for leaving it over the winter.  It’s a touchingly optimistic thing to do, “Just one or two branches and I am sure it will hold through any Northeaster”, they must think.  Sadly, the many stripped clean platforms you see after a hard winter would prove otherwise.  Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

In Baltimore where my daughter lives just blocks from the Inner Harbor, Tuck and I and a dear friend from Science Museum days, strolled and wheeled our way past tourists. Scaffolding and tents were going up everywhere in preparation for the Star Spangled week when they would celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the national anthem.  We struck two old men sitting on a bench as such “fun ladies” that we earned a marriage proposal.  I’m telling you; this dog-pulled wheelchair is a winner!

In Illinois where everything is flat, and sidewalks still exit, Tuck and I and my daughter and her newly, rescued dog, Willow would sally forth each morning.  The challenge of this walk was NOT to have my shoulder ripped out each time another lithe squirrel shot across our path. No damage done and after the Type 2 diabetes squirrels that dine regularly at my feeder, I couldn’t get over how sleek these Midwest ones were. 

They had paved a path through a native prairie park that I took my first Brittany walking through so many years ago, so how full circle it felt to not be kept from that delight now.  Even when I stayed overnight at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, I was able to hitch him up and away through the golf course we went. 

Now I am back home, in the Hill Country. And right away you might detect the fly in my ointment.  The HILL country.  A steep hill presents itself the minute I walk out my door, and another on the road to the mailbox and even steeper ones where we walked each day.  Stink.  He and I are having the same readjustment blues we had when I first moved here and couldn’t believe we were no longer walking off-leash through forests and dunes and swimming in nearby ponds.  It makes us sad.  I have months more to go in this boot and you just can’t help but lurch slowly when you try to walk, and a crutch is still needed.

I do have an amazing opportunity to return East to my husband’s reunion at West Point but this time Tuck can’t come, nor will I have my homemade wheelchair, so although it will be such an amazing thing to get to see fall and friends again so soon, Tuck will be sorely missed.  Nona just might not seem as fun as a gimping pirate as she was as a chariot of fire!  But hats off to you Tuck, for making me the coolest, fast-moving, fractured-leg Nona for a while. I will never forget it. 

Eating Good in the Neighborhood

If the spiders of my house knew how to steal ad slogans, this is the one they would steal.  When I first broke my leg, they had a two-week hiatus where no weekly tornado destroyed their homes.  They had no need to batten down the hatches, or to secure that isopod just waiting to be eaten with an extra roll of silk.  But then, I figured out how to vacuum from a wheelchair and the gig was up. 

Now, I have just returned after being away for 5 weeks, and any house spider that moved in during that time must have thought his life was golden:  no one sweeping away his web, or sucking up his well stocked larder.  But that ended yesterday.

I have been home three days, and even though I am still clumping around in a walking cast, it seemed time to tackle the spider “lace” that was dangling from every chair wrung, and draping the window corners.  I still can wield the vacuum from the chair, and wield I did.  I do admit to having a twinge of guilt as I suck up unfinished dinners and undid the spinning work that no doubt took them days to do. Double guilt, they produce their amazing silk with the nutrients they gain from their food, and enough sucked up webs equal a starved-to-death spider. After typing that factoid I feel guiltier than ever but housekeeping duty calls. 

I found another one had captured a scorpion.  Bravo for him and in my book a scorpion in your web nets you a “ no-vacuuming pass” for at least another week.  I also saw some pretty small spiders scurrying out of my way; new arrivals would be my guess.  They are perhaps feeling a bit disillusioned at the moment.  For 5 weeks the home they had selected had been tranquil and free of any indoor tornadoes.  But now, that “Pax Romana” has come to an end. 

One of the friends I visited over my prolonged vacation had lost her house to a tornado almost 10 yrs ago.  I thought of her as I created my own little vortex of doom and wondered what encouraging words she might share with these arachnids on how they could soon rebuild and all would be well, for another week anyways.

So, yes, I am back in Texas.  Many blogs had been percolating in my mind as I traveled but now the tyranny of the urgent has taken over.  My husband and I are heading back East for a college reunion that we thought was 3 weeks way but in fact is only two.  Gulp.  This time, plane reservations, rental cars, dog kennels, etc. all need to be laid on. And once at West Point I am so close again to grandchildren and friends, why would I hurry home?  New England in the fall is something well worth lingering over.   Real life and all its obligations will take a back seat again and the spiders can be lulled into thinking the monster has once again been vanquished.

Dream on my eight- legged friends, dream on.

Travelling the Golden Highway

 

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In the past month I have driven from Texas to Maine for a family gathering in Prince Edward Island and now I am en route back to Texas via a daughter in Baltimore and one at the University of Illinois. Along the way, I couldn’t help but notice that the world is solidly Solidago.  Solidago, a genus in the Asteraceae family that has over 100 species that we know as Goldenrod, was our omnipresent roadside plant bringing its bright yellow cheer to every landscape. 

 

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When you see a plant that is that successful you have to wonder what its propagation secrets are.  Well, it must help to have thousands of seeds packed into each inflorescence (think plume of flowers) and each plant has multiple flower heads.  But it is also a plant that spreads by underground rhizomes.  There is the ticket.  It sends out clones of itself so that some huge patches of goldenrods may be a hundred years old and all started from the sire in the middle. 

 

And what a grand plant it is.  Considered to bring luck by some cultures, and venerated for its healing properties by many others.  A cure for: kidney problems, sore throats, toothaches, combating fatigue, urinary tract problems, congestion, laryngitis and on and on.  It seems it could put whole rows of CVS out of business.  It’s very name means “to heal, to make whole” and these are only the human uses.
 

Walk up to any batch of goldenrod and you will have an entomological lesson on your hands.  So many larvae of butterflies consider it the perfect host, bees love the compactness of its flower heads; one-stop shopping for lots of nectar, beetles forage on the plants, and then the predators of these insects lay in wait, often perfectly camouflaged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps many of you have noticed those swollen stems that you often find on these plants. Those are made by gall flies if they are round, and gall moths if they are elliptical.  I imagine we have talked about galls before. The gall provides the perfect safe house for an insect to go through its stages of development undetected by predators.  Well, most of the time they are undetected.   The woodpeckers are on to them and if you find a gall with a sizable hole in it you know they never quite got past the juicy larvae stage.

 

 

When I was on the Cape I was thrilled to see the goldenrods on one hike we took were simply covered with American Bumblebees. To see so many of our native bees thriving was so encouraging.  You no doubt know the plight of bees so any good showing is cause to celebrate. 

 Last little botanical fact here before I let you return to your previously scheduled life.  Goldenrods are called ‘short day flowers”, meaning their signal to bloom is when the nights are longer than the days.  Ergo, late summer and fall is when they come into their glory. It is wonderful how nature keeps the larder going for insects through their year. 

Like the Irish blessing then,
 

“May the road rise golden to meet you,

May the wind be at your back,

And if your leg is broken

May a one-dog-open-sleigh help you to tack.”

And that is where our next blog will take us. How I “sailed” through this vacation with a wheelchair and my very compliant dog Tuck. At least I hope so, there are so many tales to tell, but, so little time, and at home, my deceased computer awaits burial. Rip Van Amish Winkle that I am, buying a new one may prove daunting. Till then, I shall be thankful for borrowed computers.  And I still have about 1,000 miles of “golden roads” ahead of me. I will be praying the real Irish blessing on the rest of my trip; May God hold me in the palm of his hands.

 

 

 

 

“When I was Down Beside the Sea..”

“When I was down beside the sea

A wooden spade they gave to me

To dig the sandy shore.

My holes were empty like a cup

In every hole the sea came up

             Till it could come no more.”               

 Robert Louis Stevenson

I love Robert Louis Stevenson’s, “ A Child’s Garden of Verses” for so many of them catch the essence of a childhood experience.  Digging holes by the sea was something I did as a child, my children did, and now, my grandchildren.  If you live anywhere near water, I bet it was the same for you.  It is elemental. 

What a delight then, to be able to wheel and crutch my way down to the beach, with my whole clan and this time, and to be the one in the chair, digging with her foot and overseeing production as the matriarchs of my life had done before.

We were on the Green Gables shore of Prince Edward Island, one of the maritime islands off of Eastern Canada.  It’s a great destination for New Englanders, not all that far, yet another country and on PEI, another time actually.  Potato farms cover the rolling landscape as they have for over two hundred years.  Tidy Canadians seem to have impeccable, yet wild flower filled landscapes.  Dairy cows graze in lush fields, not on feed lots and the essence of Ann of Green Gables is celebrated everywhere, but not in the overly tacky way that our dear country is so fond of.

My daughters had grown up watching Ann of Green Gables and Ann of Avonlea over and over again.  Knowing that it had been filmed in the 80’s I imagined the scenery, which is gorgeous, wouldn’t have changed much and it hadn’t.  Sweeping views of the ocean and the red cliffs, and in August the world was full of Queen Anne’s lace, Fireweed, Joe Pye weed and so many others. By the shore the flora and fauna is similar to Cape Cod; bayberry, seaside golden rod, beach pea, vetch.

However, they have soil, really good soil, rather than sand and rock that a peninsula made from the leavings of a glacier has.  Their characteristic red soil is from sedimentary rock rich in iron that oxidizes in the air.  As it turns out, this soil is every potato farmers dream and so for the last 300 years Prince Edward Island has been doing just that.  Today they are the largest potato-growing province in Canada with 88,000 acres of potatoes! That’s a lot of spuds!  They must plant two crops for we passed many fields where the plants were in bloom.

Back to the seaside hole digging- the amazing thing here is that dig as we did, down to the longest arm reach, our holes that were empty, stayed empty!  On the Cape you hit water right away. Perhaps we were too far back, maybe 20 yards from the water.  It was beautiful soft, rock-free sand, great for castles, but our moat stayed dry.  It might be that we were just digging in an area that had seen a lot of sand deposition over the winter.  Other days on other beaches, the water behaved as RLS claimed it would. 

On the south side of the island, the Northumberland Strait provides Canadians with their warmest water, as warm as Virginia Beach actually, for it is so shallow.  And there the sand is rust red. Access to this beach was too steep for my crutches but I had fun watching from the cliff top and my daughters came and entertained me with yoga postures.  Bless youth and their entertaining ways; from my toddler grandchildren to my sprightly young adults the week we spent there was pure delight. 

Bringing to mind, as the beautiful world often does, the other RLS poem,

“The world is so full of a number of things

I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.”  Amen

Have Crutch Will Travel

Admittedly, things were looking pretty grim back in June when I fractured my tibia.  Sensible people assumed my August trip to Maine, Canada and Cape Cod would have to be scrapped.  I, not being known for my sensible nature, thought, “Of course I am still going!  Wild horses couldn’t keep me away!” 

And so, here I am, one month into the journey, crutching and wheeling around in a makeshift wheelchair and I couldn’t be happier.  So many days have been the blue-blue, no humidity, in the 70’s, what I think heaven will be like, kind of days that they are worth any level of discomfort I have felt. Admittedly, I have overdone it a bit; a grandchild that needed to be carried, a beach that must be walked, a trail that must be taken and each time I pay with leg cramps that go on for days.  But like the people who “died doing what they loved”, I feel the same, the ensuing pain has always been worth it.  Still, I pray I haven’t dislodged the bone and that it is just unused muscles that complain long and loud when used. 

I am presently on the coast of Rhode Island about ¼ mile from an Audubon center and only two miles from Colt Park, a most glorious preserve that incorporates ocean and marsh, forest and field and bless it, a wonderful series of paved trails that Tuck and I sail along on.  Literally, it is like sailing. I have the leash attached to his harness and as he pulls me, it works like a rudder on a boat. We, “tack” back and forth on the pavement.  The slope of the pavement for rain run-off has the same effect on wheelchairs.  We are pretty amusing to watch. 

The park is a magnet for dog lovers and I have met the nicest people.  New Englanders can be far friendlier than they are given credit for.  All you need is a dog and a willingness to engage one and all in conversation. And that is exactly what I have been doing these last few days: “La Dolce Vita”, Rhode Island Style. 

Our trip to Prince Edward Island with the entire family is behind me, as is the extra week I spent with grandchildren in ME.  I wound my way down to RI seeing friends in ME and NH and tomorrow will head for the Cape.  Not that you are on the edge of your seat wondering what my itinerary is but I wasn’t sure how to jump back into blogging without some personal updates.

My computer did die an untimely death the weekend before I left. Being with family and grandchildren meant, even if I had a computer, there wouldn’t have been time to write.  Here at my friend’s house, I have a computer but the weather was just too gorgeous to stay in and use it.  Better to live life than write about it, right?

The journey isn’t over yet.  I have worn through one set of rubber bottoms on my crutches if that tells you anything.  And the wheelchair that we picked up along the way was missing a chair, but my clever engineering family fashioned me one out of webbing and rope and so far it is carrying me along to places I wouldn’t have the stamina to crutch too.

It was also the best child entertainer ever. I could join in hot wheel games with the youngest one on my lap: endless hours of throwing squeaky toys to the dog. Tuck by the way, deserves some meritorious service badge for how kind and patient he was with the children.  They in turn deserve their own reward for being so gentle with him.  A lot of ear piercing squeals of delight when Bryce saw him but he never once pulled his fur or pinched or grabbed his eyes or nose as so many one year olds do. It has been perfect.     

And I pray it will continue to be that way.  Only one more week and I must turn my chassis south, but stopping at my daughter in Baltimore than swinging by daughter in Urbana at the University of Illinois will lead to more happy anticipation.  Perhaps at their homes, I will find a chance to write. Perhaps.  Hope you are living life too, for the truth is, for each of us, we will never be this young again, so lets have fun while there is fun to be had. At least that’s’ my motto!