Writing as Catharsis

I guess I would have to say I am still experiencing displacement issues. It’s been three weeks, and somehow I thought I would have been more acclimated by now. Perhaps writing the blog, even though I don’t have a lot of new nature to share, might be something that can feel like my former life.

I take that back on not noting any new species, one new species that has been more than abundantly prevalent has been the “Friendly Texan”.
Living up to their press as a more than welcoming people, I have found even a simple phone call to find out where to get my dog’s nails cut ( admission, in the past, I have done it myself and had the kitchen look like a blood bath had taken place, so now , it is the one thing I can afford the luxury of “trickle down economics” ), led to a lengthy discussion of how to cut an aging parrots talons, then on to “Welcome to Texas, but just one word of warning, don’t drink the water or give it to your dogs either”. Ah, good safety tip, I take it, it is so full of limestone that my innards would start to grow stalactites.

Another conversation with a neighbor included the interesting admonishment that I should be sure to feed the resident feral cat, or cats as the case may be. Hmm, out of kindness and compassion? “Well no M’am” and I don’t want to scare you, but that white and orange one killed a copperhead and rattlesnake in your yard last summer so you want to keep him on your side”. O.K. Makes me think twice about tiptoeing through the ivy to retrieve a bird feeder that keeps falling there.

And EVERYONE has warned me about the heat. “Oh you just wait, in a couple of months you’re going to die!” Nothing I wasn’t aware of, but now so many people have told me that that I feel I should start work on my own eulogy. Other’s ask me if I have encountered fire ants yet, which I have a feeling are perhaps everywhere but in a winter slow down at the moment. I suppose all the critters of summer will be something to blog about when they start biting with a vengeance.

Just yesterday I joined a group of people who are in a Master Gardening class, no room for me to take any gardening until next Sept, but again, they were also willing to fill me with information. Most of which went over my head, you know, when you are so new you don’t really even know what to ask. I was trying to figure out which of the lifeless bushes in my yard needed pruning and which were to be left. Unfortunately by the time the kind gardener was done telling me this abundance of things, the bushes were all cut so I am still not sure what they were. Yet I went at it today cutting things to the nub that either will return lovelier then ever, or disappear and not be a worry anymore. I am truly hoping for the former over the latter.

So onward and upwards hoping one day to transition from that ache of missing home to feeling this IS home. It will come. Probably just in time for me to expire from the heat, wouldn’t that be a pity.

Starting at Zero

Moving is a humbling experience. In my case, at any rate, it brings out all my inadequacies for general display; that I don’t know how to organize an overabundance of unwanted possessions, that I haven’t a clue how to shop to replace the unwanted ones nor clout enough to convince my husband that they need replacing and that the idea that I will just resume my role as happy naturalist is maybe a tad naïve. But it will be the attempt to teach this old dog some new tricks that will be my salvation. At least that is the hope.

But I am starting at zero, or almost zero. I know so little about the flora and fauna about me, but shall attempt to pass along what I am learning as I learn it. For instance, I who lament the loss of an ocean realize, if only I had arrived in the Early Cretaceous, about 150 million years ago, I would have been seaside, on the edge of the ancestral Gulf of Mexico. I suppose I also would have been a light snack for a T Rex so just as well that wasn’t my timing. And because it was once a sea teeming with marine life, many of which lived within calcium carbonate shells, the land now is turned to limestone and wherever you look or walk the ground is littered with rocks and outcropping of rocks. Rubble like, not a lot of soil.

Yet in this thin soil somehow Live Oak and Ash Juniper
grow in abundance. We chose the house we chose for the very fact that it had several of these lovely twisting oaks filling the view from each window. They have small sturdy leaves, good presumably for holding onto the water content when it comes, and the acorns they produce are on the main menu for the omnipresent white tailed deer, and if they don’t eat them all, then they are also enjoyed by turkey and jays, titmice and woodpeckers. And the jays are Western Scrub Jays not my blue jay of the east and two have deigned to finally come to some feeders I put out a few days ago. Lovely and slender looking I hear they have a distinctive call; I shall have to listen for it.

I also am lucky enough to have a couple of Golden Fronted Woodpeckers, which are very reminiscent of our Red bellied woodpeckers on the Cape so they feel like a touch of home. Juncos and cardinals too are further down in the yard, but their reluctance to come closer to the house is probably best explained by the fact that there used to be about 10 cats living here! Not sure how long it will take them to get the “all clear”.

My morning quests see me out trying to find a place to let my dog run off leash. He and I are far too spoiled by our previous life to give this up completely, but I am beginning to see the writing on the wall. I am afraid that thanks to the omnipresent deer and my dogs insistence on chasing them, he and I will be chained to each other for all walks here, which is so sad to contemplate. It also means I can expect, after a certain time, to have a left arm several inches longer than my right. But I have been warned of snakes and scorpions, skunks and coyotes, all of which I would consider a treat to see, but I guess I can’t risk it. Why is it so hard for yours truly to accept acting like a responsible adult?

I have driven some places in search of off leash venues, and today I did go to a small park, which had the one big perk of open land without deer, not a lot of room to roam, but it provided my most three star sighting so far. A Red Shouldered Hawk sitting atop someone’s totem pole décor. Gorgeous rufous breast feathers, narrow white banding on its wings and it seemed completely nonplussed by my staring. It’s only a winter resident here in this part of Texas so I shall consider myself lucky to have seen it.

Well then, I am starting at zero, but hopefully I will have some sort of a learning curve here and in time, in time, I shall find the beauty here. But a time of mourning my old life and setting is only natural. Still, may even the act of writing this bring a little cheer.