The Road Grows Ever Greener

TN, living up to its reputation of “Greenest state in the land of the free”, made the green of TX look pale in comparison.  Wow, the rainstorm the night before that pummeled my little Motel 6 room, left grass that seemed to have grown an extra 6” by the roadside.  The trees got ever taller, fuller and the world seemed to be swimming in chlorophyll.  However, the “green” of my wallet was pretty diminished after the car’s latest surgical procedures.  The tax alone seemed to be about what I would have expected the total cost of replacing an alternator to be.  But then, when my husband and I do these things, we use rebuilt parts and pay in sweat and tears, not currency.  Ah well, this 11 yr old car now has a platinum alternator I guess.  Either way, I was back on the road and that’s a good thing.

Hustling to get to my daughters, I didn’t stop to hike anywhere but the hills rose on both sides of the road and it was a lovely drive, one of those “4-wheeled”, walk in the woods.  Once in TN there were children to play with, more things to be packed and a house to clean from top to bottom.  The good thing of having the dog with me is that even with everything else going on, I was up early walking him, and doing so a few times a day, meant I could enjoy the sounds of so many familiar birds. A constant “drink your tea” of the Towhees could be heard and the scolding and territorial calls of the Carolina Wrens too.  People’s gardens, both floral and vegetable, looked far more like the cover of Miracle Grow than ours in TX.  It has stormed here almost daily so plants look deliriously happy.

Next lap of the journey continued through the mountains, with the Smokies on my right and later Appalachian’s and Blue Ridge bracketing either side of the road.  The breathtaking part of this day’s journey was the combination of rain clouds wreathing the hills, fog rolling down hillsides and filling valleys and a sun that wasn’t so much as rising but just slowly illuminating the scene, to reveal cows in hillside pastures with grass up to their waist, horses frisking along fence lines and the occasional deer, also melting in and out of the woods edge and the fog.  Gorgeous!  And, amazingly, I came across an obscure College radio station playing Celtic music that fit the scene like a sound track.  These are the sorts of things I thank God for!  The announcer had the heaviest Scottish accent and played almost exclusively Scotch tunes.  When I think that is who settled these hills it seemed nothing less than magical.

Later, I would chose to go off the expedient path, to take a hike along the Blue Ridge itself but through mistakes only I, possibly a true descendent of “Wrong Way Corrigan” could make, I spent 45 min heading AWAY from the Blue Ridge rather than towards it! In my defense, with mountains before you and behind you and curvy roads that all look pretty much alike and no real towns or street names, it is easy to get turned around.  Stubbornly though, and because the dog is now standing in anticipation for he senses a walk coming, I backtrack over all the wrong miles, get to where I meant to be, only to find the trails that have you walking the ridge are so socked in with fog that I could be walking in Hoboken NJ for all I know.  Later, through more wrong turns, I ended up down the mountain with all trails leading straight up it again!  Stink!  But there was a trail along a stream and picnic area that would have to do and in fact turned up wonderful mushrooms, and dew lined spider webs, so, I was happy.  A perfect cup and saucer web was so etched in dew that it came out pretty clearly in the picture.

Presently I am in Baltimore, with my daughter, and early morning walks to Harbor side are our delight.  A young Night Crown heron is stalking the trash collected at this little side canal and a Great Blue heron is perched on the edge of a dock looking out at the harbor like any other morning tourist.  And Swifts fly overhead at night making Little Italy pretty much like the real thing.  Another day here, seeing a dear old friend from Boston Science Museum days and then on to CAPE COD!!  Yeah!

Traveling the Emerald Highway

Two days ago, I started on a month long sojourn that will take me from TX to Maine, then west to Michigan and home again to TX.  Helping a daughter move to Maine is the main excuse (no pun intended) behind this, but the chance to visit scores of old friends and favorite places is what is extending this to a month long voyage.

 After a constant drumbeat on the news about how serious drought is throughout the nation, I fully expected to just see fields of fried grass, crispy crops and a general beige blight from sea to shining sea.

 So, imagine my surprise, when my first day’s trip, crossing TX from San Antonio to Texarkana, was more like a trip through New England in early June.  The grass was growing lush and green in the pastures, streams and ponds topped off with water and a beautiful blue lake on either side of Rte 30, seemingly full, shore to shore.  Not what I expected. 

In Arkansas, a state featured nightly on our news with images of cracked earth, cattle at auction, and corn the size of those little ears found in Chinese stir fry, the highway was also bordered with green, waist-high grass, flowers (looked like the marsh mallows of Cape Cod) filling the ditches.  More puzzlement on my part.  Either, I was just, amazingly, following the one strip of land in both states untouched by the drought, or, and I think this might be the case, the 3” of rain we received in TX earlier this week, perhaps had drenched this area too.

And to me, the amazing part of that, is how quickly, how almost chameleon-like, the scenery can go from mostly brown, back to a dazzling green in such a short time.  You really have to hand it to chlorophyll.  One moment, dormant and shutting down, then, wham!, water arrives, heat and sunlight show up, and “Houston, we have a go” and all hands are on deck, so to speak, mixing those ingredients that suffuse the plant with a green glow of healthy chlorophyll again. The rejuvenating spirit of nature, it never ceases to astound me.  Again, I am not a card-carrying botanist, but I do believe that is the simple explanation for why this trip has been so lovely so far.  Rain has preceded me and greened up the earth just in time for me to pass through.  It brings to mind the Verna Aardema ,wonderful children’s story “Bring the Rain to Kapiti Plain” 

“The big, black, cloud all heavy with rain, that shadowed the ground on Kapiti plain…

to green up the grass, all brown and dead that needed the rain from the cloud overhead”

And so it has.

Now, I am in TN, momentarily sidelined by a car whose alternator chose the outskirts of Nashville to die in, so an extra day added while I wait for repairs and, what happened last night?  Another 3” of rain fell in a wild storm that probably would have washed away my “little red wagon” had I been plowing through it, so it’s probably for the best that I was forced to stop. 

Yet, wherever I go, even the area surrounding a Motel 6, there are interesting things to be seen.  I can’t believe it, but right over the door next to my room is a family of barn swallows, babies all crowding the nest and looking as though they would spill out at any moment.  My guess is this is the second brood of the season.  Good for them.

  An early walk with the dog through a nearby field for sale, showed the red, red, earth of clay that is present here, with a Grand-Canyon-like ravine created by the gush of rain rushing through it last night.  I am back to east coast plants of Queen Anne’s Lace and Chicory, absent from the TX landscape but lining the roads here; dragonflies and swallows snapping up early morning insects. Lovely. 

Now, if the mechanic would just call and say all is well, I could be on my way through this, the state of song and ballad, admittedly, the “greenest state in the land of the free” and on to see my grandchildren!

 Let the journey continue!  And may green highways lead me home to my blue ocean again.

Some Like It Hot

 Some may like it hot, but that wouldn’t be me.  And perhaps it isn’t you either.  In this overheated summer of 2012 many of us are dragging limply through the sweltering days, our jug of water by our side as we accomplish needed outdoor tasks.  Yesterday I was taking a water break in our gazebo, faced flushed and feeling like I was radiating heat from every pore.  It was in the high 90’s and I had just been pushing a mower around our convoluted walking paths for over an hour, when I noticed the cool-as-a-cucumber Queen butterflies sipping nectar from the flowers at high noon in direct sunlight and not even breaking a sweat.

Now, of course, I know that insects are in that “cold blooded” category where internal temperatures are regulated by external means, but STILL.  Aren’t they hot?  So I did a little reading, enough to know, there is no way I am going to be able to wrap up “thermoregulation in butterflies” or insects in a general way here.  I have said before, I am not a card-carrying entomologist and one read of one abstract explains why!  Although, here is a fun word we can all understand.   Butterflies are “heliotherms”, deriving their heat from the sun.  Many of my Cape Cod friends probably see themselves the same way, “heliotherming” on the beaches every day.

We have all seen butterflies spreading their wings out to bask in the sun, to raise their temperature so that they are able to get those flight muscles going, but I just wonder when is too much, too much?  Clearly they have a greater tolerance for the heat than I do, for even in the triple digit weather I see these dozen or so Queen butterflies sipping from blue mist flowers planted around the gazebo with no sign of stress.  Clearly I think they can take the heat better than I can.

Speaking of these Queen butterflies, they are new to me, a close relative of the Monarch, also laying their eggs on milkweeds and also absorbing the toxins into their bodies so that they are not something birds should add to their menu.   What amazes me is how long they have been here, almost two months now.  Perhaps they are long lived, or perhaps I am seeing successive generations.  I see milkweed, a TX variety called Antelope milkweed along the road when I walk the dog and it is there that I should search for the caterpillars.  I would love to find one, for being noxious they have the same warning colors as the Monarch, black yellow and white, and like the Monarch they have fake antennae to confuse the predator. “Is this my head or is this my head?”  Only the Queens have thrown in an extra pair midway down for good measure. 

 

At any rate, they have been omnipresent on these blue mist flowers and I just wonder how long it will last.  And, in reading about the flowers, they are supposed to bloom from late summer through the fall but they have been out since early summer.  Hmm, is that unusual I wonder or not?  All the things that stump the newly transplanted person.

Well, it is that matutinal time of day (another word gleaned from “thermoregulation in insects” research, all it means is early morning) and I have birds to feed. I believe it is going to be hot, no surprise there.  And the insects will be all around me, soaking it up without compliant.  What I need is an ability to add a little “vernier control” to my life with some “cooling dominant” thrown in and I should be good.