Lifescapes

Sister Earth

Going on. Many thanks to all of you for your comments and emails. Bill and I appreciate it more than we can tell you. Our animal companions fill such an important place in our lives--it's good to know that so many of us have shared that kind of love, and that we can go on when our friends have left us.

So we are going on here. This morning, Toro (our heeler) and I were heartened by the sight of huge swarms of bees--many natives, but some honeybees--on the sumacs, which have just come into bloom along our morning path. After a long bee-drought, this feels like a blessing, a message from Sister Earth that the daily round of life and death, blossom, bee, and fruit--it all goes on, even though losses leave us lonely.

I'm leaving a little earlier than I had planned to join Bill in New Mexico. With luck, that will be tomorrow. Lots happening here today. For one thing, Peggy and I have just launched Story Circle's online class program--a project that's been taking up my spare time for some months. You can check us out here. For another, I'm packing and collecting stuff for the trip, including a box of to-be-read books I've been saving. And Peggy and I are putting together the herbal eletters that will go out while I'm gone. So today's busy. And hot. Yesterday, our digital thermometer told me it was 104.6, in the shade. It may be a couple of degrees high, but who's counting when the temps go over 100?

Book report. Yes, I'm finished with Applebeck Orchard. Well, more or less. One more pass through (probably about 5-6 days work), and then print and mail.

I'll be doing one book talk while I'm in New Mexico, on August 9. Las Vegas (NM) is an interesting old town, with lots of history. If you're in the area and looking for a Saturday field trip, it's a good place to go--and of course, you're invited to join me that evening, at Tome on the Range.

I'll try to blog while I'm gone, but we're on dialup in the mountains, and the line is verrrry verrrrrrry slow. I'll try to keep you posted.

Reading note. This earth is my sister; I love her daily grace, her silent daring, and how loved I am. How we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty, and I do not forget: what she is to me, what I am to her.--Susan Griffin

So long, Dolly

Thanks for the rain wishes--we got a half-inch last night, delivered via one of the shower bands that trailed Dolly as she moved across South Texas. San Antonio got a good drenching, Austin got well over an inch, and we got wet. But I'm not complaining. A little wet is better than a lot dry. Looks like the tropics have dried out for a while--nothing cooking from the Gulf to Africa, so it will be a dry couple of weeks ahead.

Dumpster diving. Yes, it's true. Both Bill and I are dumpster divers from way back. Favorite dumpster finds over the years: a wonderful washer-dryer combination discovered in an alley the year my first son was born, back in the Cloth Diaper Era; a cane-seated rocker like the one Jinni T tells us about in her comment, which I used when I was nursing my daughter Robin; a solid cherry fireplace mantle that weighs about 120 pounds, found on a curb, which Bill and I carried some six blocks home; and a useful bamboo wall cabinet snatched from certain oblivion on I-35 (Bill was certain that I would be obliviated). We never throw anything out that's useful; in fact, we rarely throw anything out at all, which presents certain other problems, as you can guess. I think we could live quite comfortably out of our stash, at least for a few years.

Garden report. Fall beans are up, and southern peas. More manure collection going on, and compost building. I'll plant some fall squash in the next few days--maybe it'll do better than the April planting, which didn't yield diddly. Big crop this year: our mesquite trees, which are loaded with beans. I don't have the time to make jelly this year, and I've never tried making wine or flour but it's nice to know how it's done.

Book report. Getting down to the end, with 83,000 words. Yet to be done, the wrap-up chapter, historical note, another historical recipe or two (I love that feature of the Cottage Tales), and a map. Today I'll draft the wrap-up chapter. Oh, and for all you Beatrix fans: Willie Heelis (called Will, in this series) proposes in this book (Book 6)! I hadn't intended this to happen until the next book (7), but he just got impetuous and popped the question. She says no, of course. She said no, right up to the last minute (Book 8). Which is the way it happened in real life, as nearly as we can tell. July 28 is Beatrix's birthday. Please plan a big celebration!

Reading note. Con tuna solo se puede vivir, pero con tunas y mesquites los dos se engorda mucho. Loosely translated: You can live on prickly pear fruit alone, but with pears and mesquite beans, you can get fat.--Mexican saying, reported by J. Frank Dobie 

Dillo Diggers

These guys aren't very bright, but they can do a fair amount of damage in the garden. They've taken a liking to the area around my sweet potatos, which are planted in the rose garden. So far, they've dug up five plants, which I've replaced with slips taken from the sweet potato that's growing in water on my window sill. Remember that trick from your school days? (Three toothpicks stuck into the potato and propped on the rim of a mayo jar filled with water.) Irish potatoes are a challenge here in spring (I'm hoping for better luck this fall, and already have my order in for seed potatoes), but sweet potatoes do well. I've given mine a good start, planting them in holes dug down 18" and filled with a sandy soil, in a heavily mulched area, and I'm determined not to let the dillos do them in, or dig them up.

As I say, these critters aren't very bright, so I've put rocks around the sweet potatoes, thus, hoping to deter them from rooting right next to the plant. I don't want to fence off this area, which is beside our walk. In fact, I was thinking of using it for blackberries--until I discovered that deer are devoted to blackberries. And I certainly don't want to go to war against the deer. It would be a losing battle, anyway. There are many more of them than there are of me.

I've added a list of Victory Garden links. Check them out. This is something we can all do now, wherever we are--and we may find that we'll have to do it in the future. Might be a good idea to get in practice, don't you think?

Book report. Bill went off to New Mexico this week, so I took a couple of days off to clean my office (yay!), do some housekeeping, and catch up on the email. I'm still way behind. I had jury duty on Monday: we found the guy innocent, which would have made China very pleased, I suspect. He got caught in a police sting that we (the jury--six good women and true) did not think was managed professionally. However, I did work a couple of days this week, and am now at 72,000 words on Applebeck Orchard, which means that I absolutely have to start wrapping up the loose plots and do something about the big plot hole in the main mystery. Looks like I have maybe two more weeks of work on the project.

Reading/viewing list. I live in books--do you? I'm currently reading ARCs of two new memoirs for Story Circle, both very good. More later, when the reviews are posted. (Probably much later, since both are October pubs. If you're interested in reviewing for us, or just want to see what kind of books we review, check us out.) Also this week, finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which every informed American ought to read. This is a follow-up to my reading of his The Omnivore's Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which is on our Story Circle reading circle list for tomorrow's discussion. Last night, I watched a documentary along the same lines called King Korn. After Pollan, it seemed a bit simplistic and omitted references to the environmental damage caused by this huge monoculture. But it's good viewing just the same, and if you're just getting into the question of where our food comes from, it's an entertaining and thoughtful start.

Reading note. We hoed out three deep rows, each about seventy feet long, in which to drop our seed potatoes. If that seems like a lot for one family, it's not . . . In my view, homeland security derives from having enough potatoes.--Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Gorgeous day

This is our Texas mountain laurel, which stands in for the lilacs we can't have here. I wait for it every year and love its grape Kool-aid fragrance. I started this tree (now about 8 feet high) from seeds I collected in Austin (from a planter in front of a now-defunct bank on Fifth Street) about twenty years ago. To my enormous surprise, all 36 seeds germinated and thrived and now live along our creek.

A perfectly splendid spring day here. Daffodils massed along the woods, redbuds arrayed in purple finery, anemones sparkling like stars in the damp grass. A trio of turkey hens stalked through the yard last night, clucking and trilling, and this morning, at dawn, I heard the gobbler’s wobbly, plaintive call. The hens lay a dozen eggs, but the predation loss is high. A researcher at Texas A&M University recently set up cameras beside turkey nests. Over sixty percent of the nests were destroyed by raccoons, foxes, and snakes. We raised chickens here for years, as well as peafowl, geese, and ducks, and I know from personal experience that it’s pretty darn hard to keep eggs safe. But there are enough survivors among the wild turkeys to keep the population growing. When I hear the gobbler calling, I know that turkey chicks—poults, they’re called—are surely in the offing. You've never seen a wild turkey or heard its calls? Go here for some nice photos and audio.

I've found a book networking site you might be interested in: www.goodreads.com. I'm doing a book discussion group there through April 11--you'll find a link on the "authors" page. Click on over and join us.

Reading note. I truly believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among . . . then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home . . . If we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put . . . then I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation. --Terry Tempest Williams

Winter webbery

One of the things I like about January: the absence of bright blossoms, leafy canopies, and an abundance of grasses forces me to look for small things, inconsequential things, tiny miracles. Like the intricate lace wrapping this bare sumac in a weather-proof web, the work of some small, industrious spider, weather-proof herself. The past few nights have been below freezing, and the days blustery, so the web is recent. How does she keep warm? What does she eat? Not many bugs out and about in such chilly weather, I wouldn't think. But she's doing her best, laying her traps, setting her snares. Or maybe this is just practice for spring, or something to do, an artful web-doodling while she's waiting for the weather to warm. Or a trick of snagging the sunlight on a winter morning in order to seduce this passerby, walking through the field with her dogs. The world has many wonderful ways to surprise us.

Zach's tests are back and yes, it's Cushings. We're seeing the vet next week about treatment options next week. Meanwhile, we're on the night shift, doing duty at midnight, 2 and 4 a.m. It's easy during the day, because we're home. But what do people do when they have to work and the weather is too cold to put the dog outdoors? Thanks for your emails. It helps to know that other people and their animal companions have weathered this particular storm.

This week: the Story Circle conference (there's a link in the sidebar). I'm doing two workshops and a panel--fun for me, and I'm looking forward to it. More goody: my daughter is coming from Colorado Springs and will be rooming with me. But this means that I need to cram the week's work into a few days. Peggy and I spent yesterday setting up web page and eletters--she's busy too, since she's managing the conference. Hard work all the way around, but worth it.

Reading note: more from Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings: Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. . .  I have supposed, but never found out, that this is the case with all readers--to read as listeners--and with all writers, to write as listeners. It may be part of the desire to write. The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth, for me.

Tallgrass prairie

The tallgrass prairie dominated this part of Texas two centuries ago. Most of it is gone now, turned into suburban backyards and parking lots, with only a small amount held safe in prairie preserves. But we're lucky enough to have a tiny bit of mostly native prairie, about four acres, on our property. And this year, the grass is really, really, really tall. Bill is 6'1", and he's looking up at the tip of this bluestem, which makes that grass, oh, maybe 6'5". And that wasn't the only stalk that high--there was plenty more. So the next time you read that on the native prairies, the grass was as high as the horses' backs, believe it.

Actually, what Bill is looking at in this photo is a non-native bluestem, King Ranch (KR) bluestem, that was brought to Texas from China, by way of California. It's more aggressive and more drought-tolerant than the native turkeyfoot bluestem or the little bluestem and might eventually crowd them out. But for the moment, they're healthy and holding their own. There's even a big patch of yellow Indiangrass that I hadn't seen before. We've never mowed this pasture. When we bought it, seven years ago, it was the home of a pair of burros, who had eaten every scrap of grass down to the root. We could never have guessed it would make this kind of a comeback, especially given the droughts of 2003-2006. But we've already had something like 40" of rain this year (it's hard to tell, exactly, because the rain gauge only holds 6", and a couple of times during the July rains, it overflowed). I think we'll have to mow it now, though, or we'll have a fire hazard when the grass freezes back and dries out.

But in the meantime, I'm enjoying morning walks with the dogs. It's been foggy the past several mornings, and as we wade through the sea of constantly moving grasses, the only sounds are the cheerful chirps of the mockingbirds and the long calls of the mourning doves. A lovely way to start the day.

Reading note. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls.--Mother Teresa

Whew

                                                                                                                                                             















We're home, to a big mess. There's no recent flooding damage, just remnants of the June and July floods and a half-dozen minor catastrophes around the place. The wild morning glory (aka bindweed) has moved into the garden, overtaking everything, even the Johnson grass! My dozen-plus rosemarys are goners, the Mediterranean herbs (lovers of dry heat) have given up the ghost, and even the native salvias are on their last legs. Surveying the damage, Bill and I have agreed that the best thing to do is wait for the first freeze (how long, oh Lord?) and chop everything down. There's nothing like starting over.

But in the meantime, the yellowbells is putting on a brave show, the garlic chives (too many to count!) are going great guns, and the turkscap is covered with tiny red blooms. I haven't had the heart to get out there with  my camera, but here, to cheer us, is a button bush photo that I took before I left. At this point, I'm grateful for all the small beauties.

I meant to blog while we were in New Mexico, but somehow just didn't get to it. Instead, I finished (all but) the memoir, painted the interior of the garage (white, over Popsicle green, so the green shows through, naturally), ordered and hung wood blinds for the whole house, painted the bathroom and the kitchen, read several good books, and watched Simon Schama's The Power of Art, which I heartily recommend--the fine companion book, as well. I apologize for ignoring the blog. I felt guilty the whole time, but not guilty enough, I guess.

Waiting for me when I got home: the rainsoaked copyedited manuscript of Nightshade, which I have managed to dry out and am working on today. (Wouldn't you think FedEx would have wrapped it in plastic when they dropped it on the doorstep?) Actually, though, this is good timing, because I need to start Wormwood next week, and I always try to read the previous book just before I start the new one. Also need to do next Monday's "All About Thyme" newsletter, and catch up with the mail. Not to mention a Big Project that Paula Yost and I have been working on--it's a secret, though. When its bloggable, you'll be the first to hear about it. Anyway, picture me chained to the desk for the next few days.

More later....

Reading note. Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted. Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden and choke the herbs for want of husbandry.--William Shakespeare, Henry the Sixth, Part II

Wet and wild

Hummingbirds at the feeder at Coyote Lodge, our place in New Mexico. Bill says that there are often as many as 30-40 hovering around, mostly rufous, ruby-throats, and black-chinned (but there are quite a few listed on the New Mexico bird list, and I haven't been able to study them yet). He's busy brewing hummingbird hootch when he isn't working on his log preservation project, or watching it rain. (Yes, it's raining there, too. Lots. And lots. Very wet.) He has time for fun stuff like that, since he isn't writing a book. Or blogging.

Son Michael has posted another of his monthly essays about life as a stay-home dad, written for the Juneau Empire. I'm hoping that seeing his writing in print will encourage him to do more of it--especially when his column is featured in the newspaper banner. That's what every writer needs: a boost now and then. That's one reason I love blogs. They give the writer a public space to fill and maybe even help him/her develop the discipline it takes to fill that space with enough interesting material, often enough to develop an audience. Sometimes this even leads to a book, like the memoir Julie and Julia, which grew out of a blog. Or No Impact Man, which is going to be a book and a documentary movie.

And then there are books, such as What Wildness is This, that become blogs. Which brings me to the two new posts in our What Wildness blog. Check them out. Linda Joy Myers writes that Texas tastes like Oklahoma (I don't doubt it--the wind blows from that direction) and Paula Yost writes an hysterically funny piece that ends with a naked wild wet woman in a cold shower at rain-soaked Beavers Bend State Park in Oklahoma. (What is it about OK, gals?) Oh, and Paula has posted a seriously beautiful photo of a clump of golden mushrooms, also naked and wild and wet.

Reading note: What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left. O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.--Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pecan Creek

I'm thinking water thoughts this morning, because we've had so much of it in the past few days: over six inches of rain since the last time I wrote to you. And although the trees and plants are doing their best to soak it up, the ground is saturated and the water is draining into Pecan Creek.

Pecan Creek is the name we've given to the little all-weather creek that flows through MeadowKnoll. Well, not quite all-weather. It's gone dry three times in the 20 years we've lived here, to the consternation of the red-eared slider turtles and stranded striped bass and bluegills and the great joy of Rocky Raccoon and Nostradamus, the great blue heron who lives in South Meadow.

In the photo: Long Pool and Canyon Falls (the name of the falls is sort of a joke, since it's only about a foot high). The tree to the left is Freya, one of the six bald cypress trees we planted the year we came. The creek banks are thick with ferns, Louisiana iris, cattails, goldenrod, coreopsis, and honeysuckle (an invader whose enthusiasm we try to restrain). If you'd like to see where you are, here's a map, which appeared in the Herb Quarterly several years ago. Long Pool and Canyon Falls are out of the margin to the lower right, along the edge of Lazarus Meadow--so called because when we came here, it was the home of a large mesquite tree that had obviously died and resurrected itself several times until finally it gave up the ghost for good. In its place, a young and thriving pecan tree. Life goes on, in different shapes and different species, but it does go on. 

All this water (there's a lot of it just now, overflowing from the over-full lake just to the northwest of MeadowKnoll) streams south through Ripple Run, under more cypress trees and through more ferns, to Iris Pool and under the Crescent Pool footbridge, which you can see in the background of the photo below. (Click for a larger view.) From there, it flows into our neighbor's small lake, to Bear Creek, the San Gabriel River, the Brazos, and finally the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, the Brazos, not the Lower Colorado--and those of you who know your Texas rivers may be surprised. We're fairly close to the Highland Lakes along the Lower Colorado, but there's a mini-continental-divide somewhere along Route 29. The sloping lay of the land sends our surface water north and east and puts us into the thousand-mile-long Brazos River watershed. (Do you know what watershed you live in, and why it matters?)

Work notes. Bill is in New Mexico for a few days, so I've been working in the evenings. There's been a ton of conference details, and I've started a new MySpace page, at the urging of the foks at Berkley (my publisher). I'm not sure about MySpace, but a gang of mystery authors seem to hang out there, so I'm joining in. And of course, there's The Tale of Briar Bank, which is chugging right along, with better than a third of the book done. I am in love with the badgers, and I'm pretty crazy about the dragon, too. (Maybe I've missed my calling. Maybe I should be writing books about animals and fairies and dragons who live in Edwardian England and serve scones and marmalade with their tea. The "Miss Read" of the animal world!)

Reading note. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him--J.R.R. Tolkien

Swallowtails, Fennel, and the Food Chain

These guys are the reason for fennel in my garden. It's not that I don't like fennel--it's a very beautiful plant, especially this bronzy variety, which is now some four or five years old, very healthy and wise. And wealthy, at least just now, in swallowtail caterpillars. I'm just not a fan of fennel's taste--a little bit goes a long way, as far as I'm concerned.

Don't tell that to the caterpillars, though. They find it extraordinarily tasty and nutritious. If past performance is any guide, in a day or two the eight caterpillars I counted on this plant will have it chewed down to mostly bare stalks. (Okay by me, guys.) Unfortunately, that doesn't factor in the wasps, who love to snack on the caterpillars. While I was taking photos, I was fending them off, although they were much less interested in me than in these tasty striped morsels. What we have here is a good example of the food chain in operation: the caterpillars chowing down on the fennel, the wasps nibbling on the caterpillars (truly--they seem to take them, live, a bite at a time), the swallows and bluebirds that feed on the wasps. I'm hoping, though, that a few of these stripy fellows will survive to become butterflies, rather than lunch for wasps.

I tried to write today, but not very successfully. The conference is coming up, and there are a million trillion details. But Paula (my co-chair) and I have lots of help, and we'll get it all done. We have to, don't we? It's just two weeks away.

Reading note. And what's a butterfly? At best/He's but a caterpillar drest.--John Gay, "The Butterfly and the Snail"