About that Parallel Universe

I am not sure if I wrote about this here in the blog or in a letter to friends, but there are many times that, inconceivable as this may seem, I often feel like I am living in a parallel universe of my life on the Cape. Inconceivable, for in no way would you generally confuse Texas with Cape Cod, but here are some of the things that seem like carbon copies of my old life.

First, I am sure I have mentioned that volunteering at the nature center here is pretty identical to the joy I had working at Greenbrier on the Cape. (Minus the paycheck I suppose!) It provides an excuse to romp about in nature with enthusiastic children, to share the thrill of discovering something new. Often, as common as the flowers or deer scat may be, these kids, although this is their home, haven’t noticed them before. Yes, deer scat is a dime a dozen, but going further to decide whether the producer was, buck, doe or fawn makes it more interesting.
Whether or not it is “hot out of the oven and steaming” or dried up to raisinettes is something else to take note of. So the joy I am having at “work” is one parallel I am overwhelmingly thankful for.

Because of all the rain, and we have had a lot of rain, praise God, the world is looking as green as Ireland. And the parallel here is the intense and beautiful green of the salt marsh in June is mirrored in these lush green grasses that are not only along the Guadalupe River, but now in most any pasture that isn’t 100% limestone and caliche. (the local clay) My own yard, although mostly made up of these wonderful varieties of wildflowers, still has enough grass, trees and vines to look more like the Daintree forest of Australia than a Texas scene.

And although I recently wrote that the “Air was full of Vultures”, the other day, while out gardening, I heard that familiar twittery chatter, looked up and saw about 30 swallows circling overhead. Yeah! I still am not sure what type they are, I know who they are NOT, not tree, or barn, or martins, but maybe cliff swallows, the ones that congregate under a nearby underpass. For that matter, I was trying to identify them through binoculars as I waited at a red light, but the grayness of the day, and the worry that some impatient driver might not take too kindly to someone bird watching from behind the wheel, made me give up the quest, but I do think the ones over my yard are from the same crowd. And in a parallel to watching the tree swallows on the Cape, they have the same mysterious habit of being there by the hundreds one day, and all gone the next. I am not sure if they are nesting under the bridge. For the same aforementioned reason that slowing down to look for nests when the light has just changed would not be smiled upon. But if they have built nests than they seem pretty lackadaisical about their care.

One last parallel and I will let you go. Right about now, end of March, early April, on the Cape I would be delighting in the return of chipmunks to the deck. I always used to put out sunflower seeds in a large conch shell for them right outside my kitchen window. They provided hours of amusing antics, climbing in the shell to eat, chasing each other around the shell etc. Without fail some one or the other would turn up one day with only a stump of a tail, clearly having escaped a near death experience, and for the rest of the season it would go by the name of “Stumpy”, pronounced more like “Schtumpy” with a German accent. Well, no chance of a “schtumpy” here, or so I thought, for chipmunks don’t live here. But, what skitters across my path on the deck the other day, also returned from a season of hiding out? A lizard with a stump of a tail! “”Schtumpy” I cried out, “you’re here after all!”, just in another taxonomic category. How cool is that! And one of those things I instantly thank God for! Way to go! Little by little restoring to me so much of what I thought I had lost.

OK clearly, as always, I could go on and on, but I write this just to express my thankfulness that once again, and against anything I expected, “The boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places for me.” Praising the parallels while they are here, for we all know, soon, the summer will arrive, and comparisons may be harder to come by. But on this day, which by the way is wonderfully misty and foggy, just like the Cape, I am filled with thanks. Hope your day gives you reason for gratitude too.

The Joy of Discovery

Every day a new flower. Every day a new butterfly, a new bird song. It is spring in Texas and I am reveling in the joy of discovery. And that, in itself, is an amazing thing. If you are a regular reader of this blog, and you are good at reading between the lines, you must have noticed my mindset when I first arrived in January was one of DOA “Depressed On Arrival”. The reality of leaving the Cape, set in, and I could see nothing good here. The house that I begged to own now looked overwhelming. What was I thinking, 2 acres of land planted in things I knew nothing about! Well, that was the DOA speaking. Now, thank you, thank you God, I see it for what it is, a daily teaching tool on what grows in this limestone, caliche (the clay that is prevalent in the Hill country) environment and I love it!

What started with a scattering of Wind flowers, which made me hesitate to cut the whole yard when I was mowing, has led to a yard that you can barely walk through without stepping on something blooming. These are wildflowers, at least I believe they are, and whether the previous owner scattered seed, or just that bless her, she didn’t use pesticides and they found sanctuary here, I am not sure. My neighbors on either side have cultivated green lawns and they seem so dull by comparison.

I am not sure how to do this without boring you, but here is a partial list of what I have found so far. I will try to include some pictures: clumps of Black Foot daisy
and Prairie Fleabane on the poorest looking of soils, Slender Stem Bitterweed, (a lovely yellow flower on a long stalk with a not so lovely name), everywhere, absolutely everywhere sweet smelling, and this will seem ironic, Wild Garlic and Wild Onion. Also omnipresent, Prairie Verbena as lovely as the Verbena I used to buy and plant on the Cape, here I get it gratis, and in the early morning and late evening, saucer sized yellow Stemless Evening Primroses cover the lower portion of the yard. Sprinkle in some Blue eyed Grass that used to line the banks of the cranberry bog back home, and of course the state flower, Bluebonnets and you simply have a naturalists delight.

The bottom part of the yard really does have rich soil. Years of rain washing away the topsoil from the hill, coupled with the fact that nearby is a creek and perhaps this is an old river bottom, means the growth there is particularly thick, think Sow Thistles with stalks the size of small tree trunks. The ground was covered with thousands of rosettes of what I assumed was a weed, a ground cover or sorts, but just yesterday it began to throw up stalks topped by the most beautiful purple flower. It is called Storks Bill for when it stops blooming it will send out this long, spike of a seed reminiscent of, dah, a storks bill! How cool is that! And from the profusion of them I shall soon have swaths of purple down there. And on top of all that, this yard of hidden nectar, means I have a parade of butterflies flitting about constantly. You will surely hear about them in the future.

But isn’t life amazing. Here I was bereft, thinking a Cape Cod naturalist would be worth a bucket of spit in Texas, but now I have wonderful places to volunteer, and a daily delightful chore of researching all that grows around me. I love a song by Sarah Grove, embarrassingly I am not even sure of the title, but it had been a theme song of mine for the last year. It covered the feeling of depression, but also covered the sense of hope, that God saw something else that I couldn’t see and how true that has turned out to be.

“From this one place I can’t see very far. From this one place I’m square in the dark (my DOA days) But this one thing I know in my heart. You can see something else, you can see, you can see, you can see something else.” And so He did. From that heavenly three months in the cottage in on the lake in Falmouth, to this yard that, at the moment, is blooming like a little Eden, He saw something else. And at the risk of being ridiculously repetitive, how I thank Him! And by the look of unopened buds on unnamed plants, there is so much more to come. Bloom on dear flowers, bloom on!

The Air is Full of ...Vultures!

I know I have written several times about how much I love it when the “ air is full of swallows”. Their graceful swoop always means the return of summer and then in the fall, on the Cape, it was always a thrill to see thousands of Tree swallows mass together, dipping and diving over the dunes, swirling in funnels like avian tornadoes as they psych themselves up for migration. Well, here in Texas, I am also thrilled to have swallows but, more often, when I step out the door, the air if full of vultures!

The other morning when I went out to walk the dog, there was an avian tornado all right, one comprised of about 35 vultures, a mixture of Turkey Vultures, and Black Vultures. Clearly someone in the wild kingdom wasn’t so wild anymore. But it is often that way. I have started volunteering at a Wildlife Rescue place where not only do I see numerous vultures riding the air currents as I drive, but when I arrive, the place is lousy with them. Some are there opportunistically for, after all, the “rescue” part implies some animals aren’t completely up to snuff and might need a sanitation crew to take care of the clean up after. However, others are there for they themselves have been injured and, lucky for them, the Rescue people found them before their brethren did.

One Black Vulture that is there, hmm I think his name is Sam, was raised by someone with a kind heart but not very schooled in the nutritional needs of vultures. As so often happens, this animal has deformities caused by a lack of nutrition in its growing period. Think misshapen shells in turtles that need a ton of calcium in their diet to form the shell and often don’t get it in the hands of well meaning amateurs. Here in Texas deformities that often crop up are the misshapen hooves of deer that have been fed deer corn. Again, the well intentioned but uninformed people who set out “Deer Corn” don’t understand how bad it is for the deer. You see it sold everywhere, grocery stores, hardware stores -”low price, stock up”. However, feeding a deer corn is rather like raising your child on cotton candy. Little nutrition but yummy I guess, so they are happy to consume it. However they pay dearly for it later. Not only with deformities but sometimes it can cause death within 72 hours. They don’t have the intestinal enzymes to digest it and in short order their digestion fails. It’s sad. But I digress.

Back to Sam. Humans raised him and because vultures easily imprint on their caregivers he is happy to be where you are. My first day, I was in a building that houses all the sheets, bedding and laundry and while I washed bedding, Sam was happy to keep me company, pecking at my shoes, untying my shoe laces and every now in then attempting flight. If it wasn’t sad that he can’t fly, his antics would win some mega bucks on Funniest Home Videos. He starts flapping, and then because his wings aren’t symmetrical (one of his deformities) he spins in a circle, finally gets about a foot or two of lift then spirals down again. Like a helicopter spinning out of control, luckily it is only from a foot or two. Then he starts again; pecks your shoe, unties your retied laces and flaps about. It made my laundry job far more entertaining then it is at home.

I guess we should include a word about Black Vultures here to get the credit for being an informative blog. First of all they are more social than Turkey vultures and that’s why you see them in such large gatherings. There is strength in numbers so where they couldn’t hold their own, one-on-one with a Turkey vulture, as a group, they drive them away from carrion. They fly higher and flap more often than Turkey vultures do and hold their wings in less of a “V”. An easy way to identify the Turkey vulture is that it looks like a V when if flies, all the better to catch the wind at low altitudes while it glides over the countryside sniffing out decaying animals. Both types of vultures have excellent senses of smell, tough stomachs that aren’t affected by the rotting things they eat, and both nest far from people.

They don’t actually build a nest but just lay the egg on the ground, in a cave, a hollow tree, or an abandoned building, as long as it is secluded. They say the vulture pair will check out a potential nesting sight for a couple of weeks making sure its not a human hangout. And they don’t spread disease and some people think, but rather prevent disease from spreading. So, even if you grew up with the cartoonish version of the hulking, sulking, vultures that spelt certain doom, don’t believe it; they are doing us all a service. And if a camera ever catches the whirl-a-gig act of Sam, I predict one of them will be famous. And I will be able to say, I knew him when!

Still Confused by Seasons in Texas

The oak leaves are falling, but there are no apples in the orchard.
The oaks are turning golden but there are no pumpkins on the porch. Rather there are lambs frisking about, birds building their nests and butterflies filling the air. How weird is all this for a displaced Yankee! March and time to get the rake out!

But that is the cycle of the Live Oak. How naïve of me to think, “Hey Live Oaks, always green, I guess I won’t have to rake in Texas”. Silly me, of course pines that are “evergreen” shed their needles once a year, and clearly these oaks weren’t planning on keeping the same leaf for the 200 plus years of their life, so March is when the change out occurs. I heard they would just, WUMP, all fall off at once, and with all the trees I have hanging over this Titanic size deck (its true that absolutely everything is bigger in Texas) I would have a lot of raking to do. But they didn’t WUMP, instead they are making a lovely swishing sound and because they are small leaves they really look rather lovely on the deck, so multi-colored.

I know I keep going on about the beauty of these oaks but they really are something. If you have been anywhere in the south you have seem them festooned with Spanish moss. Here they are a home to Ball Moss that would make you think you had a zillion nests in your tree for from a distance that is what they look like. But it is an epiphyte that hangs on to the tree but does no harm and provides a home for countless insects. There are even celebrity Live Oaks scattered about the country. Maybe you are familiar with the Live Oak in Louisburg, LA that is said to be over 1,000 yrs old,
or the one in Aluchua, Fl that is 85’ high and able to be seen from space!

And how do you like this for a historical fact I have to relearn. I, as a good Bostonian, always knew that Old Ironsides was made from such tough oak that the cannonballs wouldn’t penetrate thereby giving it its name of Ironsides. But, in my provincial New England way I assumed it was made from a local New England variety of oak. But no, even though it was built it Boston they used, you guessed it, Live Oak from St. Simmons Island in GA. So, there you go, you learn something new everyday!

At any rate, I have said before that the Live oaks out this large window that I am typing in front of were the reason I chose this house, and they have not disappointed. The stove-top doesn’t work well and, once again, the smell of sulfur has returned to the hot water but the oaks have remained glorious. And bless them; their acorns are also home to Curculio beetles that I love to teach kids about. I haven’t picked up an acorn yet that doesn’t have the telltale hole in it. And, a wasp gall rather like our Oak apple gall on the Cape, parasitizes these oaks so I have so many wonderful artifacts right in my own backyard that I can use when working at the nature center.

But, raking in March, that will still take some getting used to. And too hot for hot cider. But we humans are supposed to be adaptable creatures so I will do my best. Raking will need to wait though for I bought my tomato plants today and need to get them in the ground. In MARCH! At best, I was planting one potato on St. Patrick’s Day on the Cape, now the whole garden needs to be by the Ides of March! Crazy eh? And again today it is close to 80 tomorrow a high in the 50’s. Maybe I should hold off on those tomatoes after all.