Lifescapes

Benjamin Bunny & friends

This nest must have been built by a very inexperienced mother bunny--maybe her first litter. She built it right next to the dog kennel, and barely scooped out a depression. I've surrounded it with bricks and put grass over the top to give them some shelter, and kept the dogs in the house, unless they're out with me, or leashed. At the rate they're growing, they'll be ready to leave the nest and start eating my garden in no time.

On the same day we discovered the bunnies, Zach discovered a pair of very young skunks--but still old enough to give him a squirt right in the face--probably their first encounter of the dog kind. They did themselves proud, and Zach was much less exuberant when he came home. Bill whipped up some hydrogen pyroxide, baking soda, and dish detergent and we gave him a good scrubbing. It eliminated most of the odor. I doubt if Zach will be quite so interested in baby skunks from here on out. Too bad the bunnies don't have a similar defense.

Summer garden report, such as it is (not much). The sweet potatoes (a few Puerto Rico bush purchased from a local nursery, the rest are slips from a sweet potato I got at the market) are looking good, the foliage anyway. The female squash blossoms haven't appeared yet--I have the feeling it's too hot. Three kinds this year: zucchini, acorn, spaghetti. I'm putting my raised beds back for fall; gave them up a couple of years ago, when I was touring in October. Then China's pub date was moved to April, so October is available for gardening again. And in the current circumstances (with oil hitting $140 a barrel this week, peak oil here or on the way, and climate change already upon us), it is definitely time to get back in practice again. Oh, and I'm making both compost and manure tea, with a little help from the ladies up the road (Texas and Blossom, our cows). You should see me with my shovel and buckets, out there picking up cow patties! And at least the heat is good for something: perfect climate for cooking compost! The center of the pile is up to 140 degrees.

While I'm on the subject of gardens, I ran across something (with help from a blog reader, Pam Price--thanks, Pam!) that I think is very, very important. Some people are urging a revival of the Victory Garden--like the gardens my mother and grandmother, skilled gardeners both, grew during WW2, and which I remember so clearly and with such affection. Check it out, think about it. Some of us are feeling that we can't do much to halt the direction we (this nation, the world) seem to be headed. This is what we can do, can teach, can encourage. You'll be hearing more from me about the subject.

Book report. The Tale of Applebeck Farm is emerging out of the labyrinth of multiple story lines. I'm at 59,000 words and moving pretty well. It's due at the end of August, but I'm hoping to be finished by the end of July, so I can get out to NM for August. I'm also keeping up with the journal book, my other big writing project for the year. And working with our Story Circle Book Review website. A reminder: we're always looking for reviewers, so if your reading interests coincide with ours, please join us.

A note to faithful blog readers: thanks for sticking with me through the busy times, and for your notes and comments. I learn something from each one of you, and you're all special to me.

Reading note. When we’re finished grazing in the garden, I want there to be some garden left. This is more than an aesthetic desire--though surely it is the beautiful complexity of nature that woos me. It is a moral desire. To use nature beyond its capacity to restore itself is to destroy the force and power that have given us our lives.--Alison Hawthorn Deming 

Sexy squash blossom

Garden news. My zuchs are blooming: the boy blossoms, at least. The girl blossoms are ganged up at the bottom of the plant, biding their time. They haven't opened yet. I've read that there are 3-4 times more male blossoms than female, and the males come along first. I wonder if nature has arranged this in order to lure the bees--not so many honeybees this year (colony decline is still a huge problem), but we do have at least some native squash bees. I saw one in a blossom yesterday. Flew off before I could get his picture, but here's a good one. For more on this amazing creature, go here. Zuchs are easy to grow, but our summer heat is slowing them down. We've had three weeks-plus of 100+ days, and the soil temps in the garden at 3 p.m. can be anywhere from 100-120. When it cools off some, maybe we'll get a small crop. One bright spot: the compost pile really cooks hot on these summer days, helped along by generous contributions from our cows, Texas and Blossom.

The best garden here, of course, is the fall garden. I didn't try last year, because we were gone through part of September, but I'm aiming to have one this year. I don't know about you, but I'm not making as many trips to the grocery store as I've done in the past. We're cutting back seriously on non-essential driving. How about you? Are the current high gas prices changing your driving habits? Impacting your life style, life choices?

Book Report. The Cottage Tale project (Book 6: The Tale of Applebeck Orchard) is moving along--nearly 50,000 words, aiming for 80,000, and expecting to finish by the end of July. There are too many storylines (makes for a bulky book), with a couple left to be resolved in Books 7 and 8. But this is the kind of series where most of the continuing characters have continuing stories, so the multiple storylines are justified--which doesn't make them easier to handle, of course. I got a piece of fan mail last year from a very bright 12-year-old reader who said she'd never read a book with so many stories in it, all taking place at the same time. I thought about that for a while--and yes, it's true. Most children's books have one, maybe two active storylines.

Reading list. People often write to me and ask what I'm currently reading. On the fiction shelf, I'm just finishing Robert Harris' very fine novel, Enigma. I read his Pompeii recently (at the urging of son Bob) and was delighted by it. I'm also reading and enjoying a memoir called Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Not artful, but interesting and rich with family spirit. On the serious side, I've been trying to inform myself about the current oil situation. The current book: Michael Klare's Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. Not exactly uplifting, but need-to-know stuff. For me, at least. I find that this material is helping me make better sense of the day-to-day news.

Reading note: Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown.--Ranier Maria Rilke

Sunshine splash and turtles

This is what's blooming beyond my window--coreopsis, bright as a splash of sunshine. Although we don't really need any more sunshine, I must say. What we need are clouds and rain, the same thing you have way too much of in Iowa and Wisconsin and Illinois and Indiana. We've moved to an "extreme" drought, they say. I don't doubt it. No rain--none at all, zip, nada--in the past month. Hot, too. Today, in the shade, our thermometer read 103.8 degrees. Hot enough to wilt even the hardiest coreopsis, and the tomato plants gave it up weeks ago: they don't set fruit when the temperature goes above 90. But the squash are looking healthy enough, and Bill's chile peppers, so all is not lost. Not yet.

I posted a photo of the South Padre dunes a few weeks ago, and wrote about a turtle rescue operation there. The turtle folks there scored a big one this week: the first leatherback turtle nest since the 1930s. What a joy to see that giant turtle track in the sand--the article isn't specific, but I'm hoping they were able to rescue the eggs and will hatch them.

Our own turtle here at Meadow Knoll wasn't quite so fortunate this week. I saw her--a large snapping turtle--laying her eggs in the bank along Pecan Creek, at Turtle Pool. (This isn't the first snapper we've seen there: that's why we call it Turtle Pool.) I watched her at this age-old task, depositing her eggs, scratching the earth over them, covering them against predators. But a couple of days later, the nest was completely dug out and a little pile of leathery egg shells lay on a rock at the head of the pool. A raccoon, we're guessing. The snapper eggs must have made a fine dinner. I'm sorry that there won't be any baby snappers from that nest, but raccoons have to eat and feed their young, too. It's the way of the earth: all living things feed on other living things. As the Inuit say, "All our food is souls."

The writing is going slowly. I am now a month into the book (a Beatrix Potter mystery), with about 35-40 days more to go. The storylines are feeling stronger (probably too many stories in this one) and the characters are coming clearer, which is good. I'm halfway through the book (38,000 words), which is also good. And this morning I had a fascinating email exchange with a man from the Ramblers Association in England about the history of footpath litigation (the story centers on a closed footpath), which resulted in the rewrite of a scene--entirely to the good. But I'm easily distracted these days, somehow. I should turn off the email and the Internet and let the rest of the world get along without me for a few hours. I should, but I don't. The dailiness of life is too interesting. That's always the pull for me: to stay with the story or move out into life. Even the laundry has its attractions. But maybe the laundry has its story too. Maybe I should put my laundry into Beatrix's story. I have to think about this.

Reading note. We are simply hungry for good stories, fiction or nonfiction. Story is the umbilical cord between the past, present and future; it keeps things known. Story becomes the conscience of the community, it belongs to everyone. When we think about what it means to be human, it is always answered or explained through story.--Terry Tempest Williams

Firewheels

Not quite perfect, but who is? We're all in the process of becoming, aren't we? Imagine your front lawn filled with these gorgeous gaillardias, also called by the picturesque name, Firewheels. That's what we have, mixed with bright yellow calylophus, purple monarda (spotted bee balm), Mexican hat, and knee-high native grasses. Summer sun-lovers, they've been getting their fill. Mostly sunshine the past few weeks, with afternoon temperatures hovering at 100. A lot of hot wind, too, which dries everything out. The blooms will be gone in another week or two, and Bill can mow, which means fresh fodder for the compost, high-quality nutrition for next year's garden. And since most of the flowers blooming now are perennials (or self-seeding annuals), they'll be back for another show next spring. What goes around, comes around.

I'm celebrating. On Wednesday, I turned in the manuscript of Landscapes of the Heart: A Memoir of Marriage and Place, which will (fingers always crossed) be published by UT Press in fall, 2009. Molly O'Halloran created the maps for the book. Theresa May (editor and friend) and I have been debating whether to include photos. I've opted instead for developing a companion website for the book. I'm looking forward to doing that: old photos of Meadow Knoll when we first moved out here, the garden, the geese, the chickens and peacocks and dogs, plus Molly's maps in color--all that wonderful material that's part of the story. Prohibitively expensive to put that into a book, but easy to post online.

Applebeck Orchard (the sixth Cottage Tale) is moving forward. After spending a few "stuck" days mostly doing rewrites (that's what I do when I can't seem to find the story's forward momentum), the storyline is finally coming clear and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I'm about a third of the way through the book, planning to be done in early Auguest. I hope.

We're moving forward, too, with the planning for next April's tour. For details (where, when, what's it all about), check out the tour page. I haven't posted a deadline, but I'd like to get this phase of the planning pretty well wrapped up by mid-September. This may be the last "big" tour I do, because the cost of travel is becoming prohibitive and I am (dare I say it?) getting older and less anxious to go bopping around the countryside. The blog tour was fun--that's going to be a viable substitute for "live" touring, I think.

Reading note. To me, writing is about how we see. The writers I want to read teach me how to see--see the world differently. In my writing there is no separation between how I observe the world and how I write the world. We write through our eyes. We write through our body. We write out of what we know.--Terry Tempest Williams