Getting The Hang Of Spring In Texas

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It seems the 6^th season is the charm.  This marks my 6^th spring here and I think I finally know what to expect.  First, and always most shockingly, is that “spring” really begins in February.  By Valentines Day, a number of garden chores MUST be done.  Pruning for instance.  Prune your roses, prune your Esperanza’s, be done pruning the oaks or you risk the dreaded Oak wilt. 

If you want to plant new things; bushes or trees, better do it now so their roots have a chance to grow before the heat arrives, as early as April. Actually, it comes even sooner than that for it can be 80 in almost any month in Texas, it just isn’t constantly that temperature.

In March you ought to attempt to get tomatoes in.  There is a risk in this though, it may get cold, and curtains for them, but I have found to wait, is to have it get too hot in June and curtains for them again. This year I am trying for March, praying that they do, as the tag says, come to fruition in 60-75 days because on the 76^th day I hope to be headed North. 

I have had little luck so far, for that matter, last years “harvest” fit in the palm of my hand, 3 cherry tomatoes!  Not exactly making the cover of any Burpee catalogue!  I have raccoons who must favor fried green tomatoes for they eat them well before the time to pick, plus the mockingbirds just like to peck at things and then say,  “Yuck, not ready yet”.  They did that with peaches one year. Every green peach pecked, followed by a “yuck”, and then, left to fester.

March is the time to get out there with a hoe and huge leaf bags for every weed that boasts a thousand stickers each will be coming up as though fed by atomic fertilizer!  They made Tuck’s life a misery, coating his fur and then making their transfer to our rug, to our clothes to everything!  With Dakota, my rescue Brittany, I will try having her clipped and see if that lessens the cling-ons: Burr clover, Hedge parsley, Malta thistle, Velcro plant, they cover the landscape and, like so many other things, must be dealt with in March.

The icing on the “break-you-back-cake” is that March is when all the live oak trees, of which we have a large number, drop their leaves with a vengeance over about a 2-week period.  Annoying that they didn’t get the memo that leaves were meant to fall in the Fall when other gardening tasks are done. So add endless raking to your March list.

But, thank you God, the weather is beautiful, most days it’s in the 60’s and 70’s so I leave the indoor chores and head outside happily.  For that matter, this needs to end here for in an hour I will be hosting some neighboring dogs to come and romp while I prune trees and pull weeds. It is Spring Break this week so some volunteering tasks are on hold.  Only some, consequently  if you note that spring is light on blogging that is because there are only so many hours in a day.  And we just lost one!

When time permits, I must write of getting a better sense for who is flying over when.  Hawks are migrating and spring is the times to gather the puffs of feathers for my simulated crime scenes as bird eating hawks have our house on their fast food list.  Flocks of cedar waxwings visit the many Ash junipers in the yard, and robins do their best to ferret out worms, which are not exactly abundant here.  But again, that’s another blog for another day.  Need to unbury the deck from the latest leaf dump before people and their dogs arrive. 

So, to you Northern friends who might be shoveling out and envying me my lack of winter, think again, there is more than one way to break a back! 

WHERE WOULD I BE WITHOUT ARMADILLOS?

Our Spring Outdoor Classroom has resumed at Cibolo Nature Center where I volunteer leading students on nature hikes.  My favorite approach is to tell them a naturalist is just a detective that is looking for clues to discover what animals have been there.  As the predominance of animals are nocturnal, and the others are not likely to make themselves seen when some 60 noisy kids are traipsing through the woods, then what we have left is to look for clues they left behind. 

Now it seems to me that there were far more clues left in the Northeast woods than you find in Texas.  We would find endless “middens”, piles of discarded pine cones the red squirrel had eaten, or plenty of tracks, especially in snow or in damp sandy places that abounded on the Cape.  Scat (scientific word for poop) was fairly easy to come by too; twisted ropes typical of coyote and fox that showed the presence of fur or bone, or cherry pits or beach plum pits if either were in season. 

Here in Texas, the ground is too hard for tracks, and it seems perhaps the presence of dung beetles make even scat, with the exception of the omnipresent deer scat, hard to come by.  Now my roof, that is another matter; it is festooned with raccoon scat that needs to be periodically removed.  Clearly they enjoy eating and pooping with a view.

But the one exception, the one animal that leaves an incredible amount of “sign” around is the Texas State Small Mammal, the armadillo.  Because they tend to have, as a minimum, 4-5 den sites and a maximum of 15, burrows are everywhere. At least they are at Cibolo, which has a blend of habitats.  Armadillos prefer forest areas where they can snuffle their way through the leaf litter looking for their favorite food, beetles, and along riparian ways where the digging is easy.  We have a creek running through the property and there, you find many of their dens dug into the sloping creek banks and, when the creek is dry, in the creek bed itself.

On top of that, when they are looking for their insectivore meal,  they  put that little pointy nose of theirs down on the ground, in the mulch or the leaf litter, and plow along until they find something tasty.   Then they dig a very obvious hole with the dirt shooting through their back legs until they find the proverbial “little bugger”. Consequently, even the youngest child can become an expert armadillo detective in short order.

The best purchase I made this year was a cute armadillo puppet that can mimic all these actions; plowing through mulch, digging and shooting dirt up onto the kids that are crouched around and it been a big hit so far!  Plus there are so many cool facts to share about armadillo’s that you never run out of things to say. 

Here’s a sampling:

-They have been steadily moving north from the Central America through the Southwest and have been found as far north as Illinois.

However when it is colder than 70, they start to shiver.  That’s because they are mostly covered with those leathery keratinous scales with fur only found between them.  They retreat to their burrows when it is colder than that.  We must have a lot of shivering armadillos for they clearly are foraging each night and our “winter” nights are far below 70. 

-Because they cannot regulate their temperature well they are host to many bacteria and virus and, as many people know, they are a carrier for leprosy.  However no need to panic.  It is not easily transferred to people, 95% of us are immune to it and the way you MIGHT get it is eating one, which indeed was done in the past but not on many people’s menu today.  And today, leprosy is easily cured with antibiotics.

 

-They usually have 4 identical young in the spring, which are all from one egg that might have been fertilized the summer before.  They are able to have delayed implementation so that the young are born the following spring.  And those pups will stay in the den for the first three months or so.  Look for little mini armadillos in early summer. 

-The bony scales called “osteoderms” are soft on the newborns and take months to harden up making them the tastiest ones for predators to go after.  However, having eradicated so many predators, it seems to be up to cars to keep their numbers in check.

- They can hold their breath for 6 minutes and can choose to cross a river by tiptoeing on the bottom hippo style or inflating themselves and floating on the top!

 

So now, four things on my bucket list are:

-Seeing an armadillo leap 3’ into the air when startled, then coming down at a sprint that can reach 30 mph.

-Finding armadillo scat.  Due to the fact that they eat mostly insects it must crumble apart quickly and there is a rumor they may bury it like a cat.

-Seeing one hopping on its hind legs clutching a load of leaves to bring back to its burrow to make a soft bed.

-I read that they also can climb trees!  Well, they have really long claws but I can’t say I ever heard anyone say they saw one in the trees. 

So, bless you armadillo’s; you provide so many things for me to point out on my walks, you provide many other animals with shelter on a rainy or cold night with your plethora of unused burrows and you are just one improbably cute critter.  Villa la Armadillo!

I Have Seen Spring and It Is Heading Your Way!

I realize the title of this entry will only apply if you are reading this in February and you live in the North.  Living in South Texas I can never get over that “spring” or what feels like spring to me, starts around the 1^st of February.  Our Spring Outdoor Classroom program begins at the nature center the first week of February and around this time, I hear the nostalgic sound of “perp, perp” coming from the trees as robins begin to move through Texas heading north.

The very first training session I had for the Outdoor Classroom was in late January.  I had only been here for a month, and although we were in the middle of a presentation, the speaker stopped and said, “Let’s go outside, there are robins on the lawn!”  Now, being a New Englander, no one has ever disrupted a meeting to look at robins but now I get it.  They are just passing through, so this is a bird Texans only see during its migration.  Now, I too, stop what I am doing when I hear their familiar calls.  And this week, returning from a yoga class, I found my back yard, covered with robins!  And it was a TREAT!  Which says something about how long I have been here (5 yrs!)

I am not sure what they were finding in the yard.  We have had a good amount of rain this winter so perhaps a worm found its way here.  If it was a worm that worked out regularly maybe it could wiggle down in this caliche soil but I kind of doubt it.  Oh, if only they had a taste for fire ants, I have PLENTY of those!  Whatever, they were gleaning away and the dog and I stood still to watch. 

Not only robins have been passing through but one of my favorite birds, Cedar Waxwings.  That they linger in my yard makes perfect sense.  Ashe Juniper is everywhere, as my scratchy throat can attest too and the female trees are loaded with berries, so the waxwings feast away.  I love their high-pitched calls that let me know I am not entirely deaf yet. Waxwings and Kinglets are a good natural hearing test that can save you a visit to the audiologist. If you can hear them, you are good. In the same way, finding the Pleiades in the sky means you can skip the eye test.

So, spring is headed your way, give them another month or so to get there.  And here, the Caracara’s are sighted more frequently now and I await the whistling tree ducks, the ones of the bubble gum pink legs and bills.  They will be calling overhead any day now.

These latitudinal changes make a world of difference.  While my grandchildren will be enjoying February break sledding and making snow forts, I will be filling my hummingbird feeders.   And yes, my Northern friends, if you want to envy me this time of year, go right ahead, but know that for 8 months of the year, you would NOT want to change places with me and the envy flows the other way.

Still, I have learned to enjoy the gorgeous days that are served up from January to April and then although it is hot in May, the carpets of wild flowers that linger through that month, make it one to be here for too.

There is a good chance that many of you up North are less inclined to be making snow forts but are just shoveling and shoveling and ready to be done with it.  Take heart-the robins are on their way!

The Miracle That Is Dakota

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(Authors Note)

(If you have not read the sidebar yet on this blog than you may or may not know that I am a Christian, a Yay God person, and sometimes God becomes the topic of my blog.  Well, He is always in the blog, just not always stated.  If, for any reason, that offends you, than skip this entry for I am praising God to the hilt!)

I feel I have been granted a miracle, well, if miracle is too strong a word, then maybe simply an intervention that seems God arranged.  My last blog was about Tucker, really the best of the three Brittany’s I had owned so far.  When he died I was nothing less than bereft.  Brittany’s are not terribly prevalent here in TX and as I searched Craig’s list for a suitable substitute breed, I just couldn’t find any.  Mostly I found way too small dogs for sale and way to big dogs for sale but none that were just the right size as a Brittany is.

There is, however, a Brittany Rescue in Texas that is based out of Dallas.  When I was in ME and using my nights to search on line, I came across it and was drawn to this one female named Dakota who was 7 and probably just the perfect age for me.  I am now 66 and although my husband thought I should get a puppy so I could train it, I just knew that would be unfair to the dog.  Two of my Brit’s lived to 14 which would put me at 80 when they were old and I just couldn’t be sure I would have 14 more ambulatory years for these high energy dogs.  7 though, the perfect middle age where, please God, I could keep up with till I was 73.  That seemed more reasonable. 

The long shot of this was that all of Texas is looking at this site and I would not be the only one interested in her.  Plus, you have heard my laments through the years of my old car, just turned 16, and I thought, I don’t even have a worthy enough car to make the 500 mile round trip To Dallas to get her.  But I filled out an application anyways.

Just two days after my return from Christmas, I got a call from BRIT (Brittany Rescue of Texas) with someone wanting to come over to see my house and yard and see if I would be a suitable owner.  I thought, Wow, you must be one dedicated volunteer to drive 500 miles just to see my yard!  But, and here is where I feel my miracle began, she was calling from Schertz, a town some 20 miles from here! Incredibly, a family there was fostering the dog I most wanted practically in my neighborhood I instantly went into my “Thank You Jesus!” mode!

They brought her over the next Tuesday and it was love at first sight! I had once said I would never get another Brittany here, no beaches or woods to run in, and all those hot days to suffer through.  But, as my friends kept pointing out, she was a Texas dog, she has no idea of a cooler life, and she had been kept in a crate 8 hours a day while the people went to work which will drive a Brittany, a high energy dog, to the point of madness.  So, my 2 acres and my proclivity to take my dogs everywhere with me when it is cool enough, would seem like heaven to her.  I am sooo glad I listened to them for that is just what has happened.  She races around the yard, as happy as Tuck had been racing over the dunes, and my mission has been, to borrow a verse from the Bible, “restore to her the years the locusts had eaten”. (Joel 2:25)

My daughter visited from Baltimore last week so we were out seeing the sites.  In her first week with us she got to go to the Missions of San Antonio , a world heritage site, take trail walks all around the Longhorn caverns, swim in Inks Lake and hike the trails and scramble the rocks of Pedernales State Park.  They told me she had not been in a car much and it seemed to make her nervous, but I knew, or I hoped, that like all Brittany’s, the chance to travel and smell new smells would be a gift and so for the 10 days I have had her she has accompanied me almost everywhere and done fine.

 

Do they sense they have had a huge change of fortune? I am not sure, but she is the most loving of dogs.  I have never had a female so maybe, as loving as my males were, the females are even more so.  She is amazingly smart, learning commands in one or two tries!  If you have a food driven dog, training is so much easier and that she is.  And she, like most Brittany’s, loves to please her owner.  In one just 10 days she has learned; the down stay, how to find hidden Kong’s, watch me, know that I enter and exit doors before her etc.  I keep saying this female is running rings around my males, but to be fair, they were trained as puppies so, and of course it took longer. 

And the cherry on top is that she is 10 lbs. lighter than my males and that translates to less wrenching of the arm from the shoulder.  Plus, they have come up with a new halter style that has the lead attach at the chest and not the back or the neck so they are led more like a horse in a halter and it works great.  It works so well that I am going to try keeping her with me on nature hikes at Cibolo.  A parent can be in charge of her while I teach the kids, but they can see how true it is that I am not the real naturalist but that it is my dog that sniffs out where the action has been overnight.  Plus it will be a great ad for rescuing dogs. I can’t wait! 

So, here’s where my God part fits in.  I take Jesus at his word.  He promises not only to be with me always but to go before me, to know what my hearts desire before I can even speak it.  While I hesitated filling out the application I feel it was God that kept prompting me to do so.  And the realization that as Tuck was dying Dakota was being rescued, plus, out of all this overly large state of Texas she would be within 20 miles of me and that the other man who wanted her ended up needing surgery and had to pass, well, from where my heart sits, this was God answering prayer.

Not only my prayers but all the children in the Faith formation classes had been praying for me.  They knew I was sad and now how wonderful, how faith affirming to be able to go to each and every class (I am a roving teacher that goes to all classes K-5 on Sundays and Weds} to tell them the story of Dakota and thank them for being part of this amazing God intervention was a God commercial in itself.  As this blog is, as my telling anybody who comes with 10 feet of me when I am with her, what a miracle she is!  In my book our lives should be a commercial for Christ and I always promise him, in all things, I will run his name in the credits, and so I do.  And so I will. 

By the way, the name Dakota comes from the Sioux language and it means, “friend, ally”.  I had given my daughter a magnet that said “Who Rescued Who?” In this case, the rescue goes both ways. Life is good again, there is the click of toenails on wood floors again, a reason to hike, to throw balls  and to have other friends over to my own “dog park” and  best of all when I make the long trek to Maine again this summer, I won’t be traveling alone.   Makes me want to sing the Doxology!

Praise God from who all blessings flow

Praise him all creatures here below

Praise him above you heavenly hosts

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

AMEN, AMEN AMEN!!!!

AN ODE TO TUCKER- MY BEST BRITTANY EVER

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Anyone who knows me knows I am always saying, there are only two sources of unconditional love, G O D and D O G.  All right, they aren’t the only sources but they are the most guaranteed ones.  God promises that nothing can separate us from his love, nothing, and dogs, most dogs, will greet you with a wagging tail even if they don’t know you.  Well, in November, I lost one of those sources, the one with the wagging tail.  Tuck.

 And if any of you follow this blog, you might have wondered what cliff I dropped off of, for the end of the year saw no entries.  If I recall correctly, I last left you on the cusp of my daughter’s wedding, which went off splendidly even though Hurricane Matthew was barreling down on us.  Torrential rains for the rehearsal (it was an outdoor wedding) but brilliant blue skies, with wild, cold, wind for the event itself.  We all had goose bumps through the outdoor ceremony for more reasons than just being moved by it all. But I digress.

Tuck, was the third in a line of Brittany’s we have owned. It is a breed that I stumbled on when we lived in IL.  I had been lobbying for a dog for about 8 yrs. to no avail.  When my second daughter was about 18 months she would hold out her arms saying “doggie, doggie, doggie!” every time one passed.  So when I finally convinced my husband to look at puppies, nothing large, maybe a dachshund, upon seeing them he said, “If you’re going to get a rat, get a dog”.  OK! Instantly I was researching for breeds that were good with children, then pouring over the classifieds and found a farm nearby selling Brittany Spaniels. By nightfall we had our first dog, Charlie (Pat, I thought this was about Tucker) Well, yes but this is how it all got started.  Charlie deserves his own Ode because he was such a great dog that we have stuck with Brittany’s ever since.

But of all of them, Tuck was the best.  Loving and kind as Charlie, not an Alpha like my second one Tyler and the best at, more or less, knowing where I was on any hike and checking back with me, in a reasonable amount of time.  Brittany’s are bred to flush game so they instinctively want to be ahead of you.  Both Tyler and Tuck were lucky enough to be raised on Cape Cod, a place that has set such a high bar for fabulous places to hike off leash that I daily lament not being there. 

 It was Tuck that made my trip to New England possible the summer after fracturing my leg.  Without him I could have only gone as far as my crutches would carry me, but I hitched his harness up to a patched together wheelchair and off we went. He was my one man Iditarod pulling me along beach boardwalks, Harbor Place in Baltimore, rail trails on the Cape etc. It was the most fabulous 2 months of travel and I could never have done it without him.  Thank you Tuck.

 It was Tuck that was the real naturalist in the family.  I always took him on trails prior to taking people so he could alert me to things I would have missed.  Here in Texas there are multiple armadillo homes but he would let me know by his enthusiasm, which ones were occupied and which were not. I always gave him the credit too.  “My dog got really excited about something coming up on the trail, can you find what it was?”

He died right at the end of the teaching season, and I couldn’t imagine how I would go there without him.  I couldn’t imagine a lot of things without him.  My trips to New England in the summer, hiking our favorite beaches and marshes together, playing with the grandchildren who loved him too, it just was all so sad.  BUT I never was parted from that primary source of unconditional love and God who always goes before me, has amazingly lined up another Brittany.  A rescue, a female named Dakota that I shall get tomorrow!! How this amazingly came to pass is a story for another day.

But for now, we salute you Tucker, my soul mate, my kindred spirit. I love that God says he prepares a room for us and I have already asked him that in that room he makes room for Tucker and Charlie and maybe even alpha Tyler. No dog takes the place of another, but they simply expand the list of dogs we have loved.

I end with a poem my 8-year-old grand daughter gave me for Christmas, the best gift ever.

 And so do we all.

IT'S SNOUT SEASON HERE IN SOUTH TEXAS

Snouts here, snouts there, American snouts are everywhere! The invasion is on!  

I remember this happening the fall of our first year here.  Driving back from work at the Wildlife Rehab there were hundreds of these smallish brown and orange butterflies crossing the highway at such dangerous levels.  Usually the draft off the windshield just shot them into the air and I wasn’t accumulating bodies all over the car but it was stunning! So many of them, and which butterfly were they?

I remember stopping the car at a light and finding some on the ground and here was this comically large nosed butterfly appropriately named the American Snout (perfect name for these Jimmy Durante look-alikes) (note to younger people- he was a comedian who made fun of his very large “snochz-nose”).  It turns out, when conditions are right the Snouts have population “eruptions” and as they fill the sky, it looks like a migration but it really isn’t. They do seem to be all heading in the same direction yet they say they are just in search of new food sources.  Whatever it is, it is spectacular to watch and it happened again this year.

What sets us up for snout-filled skies is a dry summer, check, followed by huge rains, check, which kills off the parasites that love to emerge before the snouts have exited their pupa and eat them all.

  Well, HA! Snout pupas must be fine with heavy rains, so out they come with no predator in sight.  Plus, the icing on the cake is their host plant, the Spiny Hackberry, a desert Hackberry, puts out new leaves when it rains.  The newly mated adults lay their eggs, the larva munches and, voila, soon the sky is full of snouts! Cool!

It lasts for about two weeks and we are now coming to its end in my neighborhood but it was a true spectacle and I personally LOVED it!  So many people were complaining and wanting to kill them! Can you imagine?!  Birds wanting to eat them I can understand but people feeling murderous towards them is beyond my comprehension. 

They weren’t the only butterflies filling the skies; so many varieties of Sulphur butterflies have been zigzagging through my yard, plus the omnipresent Pipevine swallowtails. They are brilliant and newly emerged.  However, the place that feels like we are filming a Mother Nature commercial is in my growing patch of blue  Easily 20 -30 butterflies at a time are sipping on this ambrosia of the butterfly gods. 

mist flowers which call to the Beauty butterflies like a siren song.

But what am I doing writing about Snouts and butterflies when my daughter’s wedding is only 9 days away!  Next blog will be on the other side of that.  Going to MD where perhaps by October it feels a bit like fall and I can regain my seasonal bearings.  Until then, for some the skies are full of falling leaves and for others flitting snouts, both lovely in their own way.  Enjoy!