FIELD NOTES: I see myself...

What Next? Haiku

I can scale walls, but
I sometimes tire looking for
the next toehold. Rest?

FIELD NOTES: Between a rock & a hard place...

...or a post & a shingle... A sound had puzzled us for days...not only was it a high-pitched whirl that was loud for small, backyard nature, but we couldn't figure out where it was coming from...Chip is known to scurry around the back patio, under the deck and in between the planters, but this trill was high up...yet not avian...I couldn't see anyone on the roof, so it was someone small enough to hide in plain sight...I wondered if a chipmunk was capable of 'throwing' his voice like a ventriloquist?...I settled on that thin hypothesis only because I needed a reason to quell my curiosity. One noonday I lunched at my bistro and in my daydream, the answer caught my eye! There was a mottled gray lump wedged between the deck post and the house...it had a inflated throat which I later Googled to find was a vocal sac that acts like the hollow wood on a guitar amplifying the sound of the strings, or the sound of an echo in a large cave, projecting it across long distances! It's satisfying to solve a mystery... Read more: How Does a Toad Croak?

Listen to a toad!

FIELD NOTES: Her favorite color was green...

Sunday morning musing

...that’s what I remember my mother telling me when I asked her that question. Little-girl-me turned up her nose as if a piece of cabbage had just been put in her mouth. Green?...how boring. Back then I was all about purple and pink…BRIGHT purple and pink…even going so far as to paint the bathroom tile with grape juice. I still can admire violet and fuchsia in the garden, but I have recently noticed I am going ‘green’ in a different context…my appreciation moving farther down the plant…sliding down the slender slipperiness of the stem…to water sipping, life-sustaining…green. Perhaps it is me getting better with age…like fine wine and cheese…or…becoming more like my mother (a mode some swear they’ll never allow)…but as most conditions go, so goes green with both positive and negative connotations. I do find myself unconsciously attracted to green in my clothing choices, accessories and home décor…and if I gathered it together like a bushel of vegetables, it might make a serenely self-describing still-life…..…but then of course…….there’s blue!

Garden: Day 20



Garden 'camo' (NOT green)

FIELD NOTES: Memorial Day tradition...

The Garden: Day 1



Garden Friend:



Ready to Go:

JUST HAD TO SAY...

Comment on a post by The Everyday Adventurer
Snake Attack
"In defense of the garter snake, king snakes eat garter snakes as well as rattlesnakes, birds eat them, cats eat them, so one man's snake may be another man's dinner! Having grown up as a nature girl, I guess I learned to accept the indelicate side of the natural world early on, but find the beauties of nature intensified by virtue of this contrast. Respect in the natural world is very important, sometimes for our own safety. As a teacher, I try to challenge myself to bring these two sides together because as the saying goes: "We hate some persons because, we do not know them and we will not know them because we hate them" can go for all creatures (bugs, snakes). Frogs and ladybugs can seem cute so we like them! I wouldn't say I 'like' snakes, but I felt awfully bad when I accidentally ran over one with my lawn mower! That was NOT a pretty story and I will spare you the details! If anyone would like to take the challenge, here's a good site for easing into the world of snakes: Dave's Garden"

FIELD NOTES: When I heard the snowplow in the early morning...

Afternoon, top of December

...I thought about being able to take my first snowy walk of the season, easy to think of in a warm, cozy bed on a Sunday morning. But when I do get to Harrybrooke at three with the temp on the dashboard reading 33, I am surprised by a powerful slap of wind and consider turning back. Not wanting to be a fair weather friend, I think “maybe, just once around” and doesn’t the ice trimming the waters’ edge look beautiful…like white lace? Then my stiffened cheeks mound up at the sight of a tiny snowman atop the post that holds up a small metal trash can. There is playfulness in winter, though the brisk wind continues to test my friendship as the huge white pines swoop down to flap at me like some fraternity initiation. The wind sounds vast and hollow and searching. The earth has turned one cheek away from the sun. Through cold-induced tears, I blink up at the sun that is no longer a radiant sunflower yellow, but so pale that if a sunbeam were to reach me, it would break over my head like a thin pane of ice. Over the river and through the bare trees, the flags on the golf course still standing in their holes bring soldiers to mind – so incredibly dutiful in their discomfort. I pass a few hearty souls…women walking…the passing greetings are less warm and more earnest, mostly an acknowledgment of what we must continue to do. I walk by a pair of lanky, layered, knit-capped figures blending in with the tree trunks…except for the cigarette and cell phone. A different purpose. After one mile around the park, the wind calms for a moment and, as if I have proven my mettle, Harrybrooke grasps me with steely arms, acknowledging my admiration, my respect and…that I am still here. My fingertips are warm now; the blood circulates under my frozen outer core like the mud of hibernating ponds. I feel as if I have been swallowed into the warm belly of a beast, welcomed now, although my body’s survival strategies are not nearly as ingenious as the frog’s with its antifreeze and adaptable metabolism that allows it to sleep winter away. The only sound today is a rhythmic whacking – firewood being split? In the periphery I see the movement of two sweatshirt hooded figures on a back deck. I guess it’s the whack of a staple gun installing Christmas lights – more dutiful discomfort. I have to watch my step on the way out; the wet pavement is icing up before me. Returned to my car, I find I don’t really need to crank up the heat because, except for my exposed face feeling like a drawstring is tightening around it, in the warmer interior there is enough contrast to feel the comfort. I am a lucky one; I can choose to survive this climate, I can choose to challenge myself in the cold because…I am not homeless, because there is certain warmth awaiting me. Really, I am only toying with survival …at least for today….

FIELD NOTES: Freedom came not from learning to ride my bike, but from leaving...

August afternoon

...my yard and driving on the mother-forbidden street! At Harrybrooke today there are lucky children, lucky because they have parents who brought them here. A toddler boy jogs alongside his stroller. The preschool teacher in me smiles when I hear the dad ask his boy to count the Canada geese. Although liberated from his stroller, he was not liberated from his parents’ fears: “Don’t go so fast, that’s how you fell last time. Slow down, slow down! That’s how you fell! Don’t go near the geese. Geese are very, very mean. They will bite you!” A helmeted elementary-aged boy learning to ride a two-wheeler is cheered on by his parents until he tumbles in the pathway. As I approach from behind in my power walk, I prepare to root for the boy myself and tell him to keep it up, but Dad is sputtering next to Mom: “Don’t stop pedaling! Come on, pedal, pedal…aw, not again! Don’t stop pedaling! (sigh) He KNOWS how to do it!” I close my mouth not wanting to go into the fray of family frustration. Instead, I notice how the cattails have evolved into their coveted state, brown and velvety and oblong, the frankfurters-on-a-stick of nature and how the voice of Harrybrooke has deepened from the soprano of spring peepers to the bass of bullfrogs. So will the voices of the young boys I notice today. It’s true that geese can bite and boys often don’t learn their lessons as fast as we’d like, but the streets of nature have often taught me to stand back and watch with my hands behind my back. Some things...water, wind, storms, weeds...will take their own courses anyway. And it is I that needs to find freedom in this loss of control. (Sigh)