The War On Shrubs

Armed with the lopper I cut through thickets of invasive bush honeysuckle, starting with the path to the creek (wanted to take a friend there). My muscles grew as I spent a couple of hours per day lopping the fountain-like woody shrubs despite having to do it seated, and I proudly finished the path of about 150 feet to the creek's stony little "beach" where my friend and I basked, six feet apart, in the late-autumn sunlight.

 

That was such a tonic I tackled the invasive honeysuckle surrounding the house, sipping nutrients and water away from the oaks and hickories that rightly grow here. Yes, the cream-colored honeysuckle blossoms in summer are pretty, and so are the red berries on them now. But the price of pretty was the next generation of native Missouri trees. Birds don't care for honeysuckle berries; I understand they are low on nutrients, like candy. One morning I saw a cedar waxwing bite one and then fly away.

I can lop shrub trunks and branches an inch or less in diameter. Hired a man with a power saw to cut the rest. Before he arrived, I tied red ribbons on the young oaks and hickories I didn't want cut. I explained this, asked him to cut only the honeysuckle, "the fountain-looking things." He kinda-sorta did. There were plenty left. Spent this morning clipping and stacking the one-inch-or-less honeysuckle branches. The berries in the second photo are the fruit of the shrub in the first photo.

 

Invasive honeysuckle is truly removed either by ripping it out of the ground, roots and all, by fire, or by painting the cut stumps with Roundup or Rodeo herbicide (no other herbicide will work). Can't do any of those. When the shrubs grow back, though, they'll mostly be an inch or less across. Then they'll face the business end of my lopper, its blade sharpened daily, and I'm just as persistent as they are.

The Picture of Happiness

I pined for a Nikon camera, nothing fancy or weighty, just a point-and-shoot with a few bells and whistles, and around 2004 finally bought a Nikon Coolpix and loved it: great optics, a 4x zoom lens, a close-up option for intense nature photography; and I got a tripod, too, and with them snapped hundreds of gorgeous nature photos, turning some into calendars custom-made and lovingly sent 1) to my parents, who hated the calendars; one year I included a dramatic, unbeatable photo of a blacksnake, and photos of turtles, and close-ups of mushrooms, and a green bug on a pink flower; I had no clue they'd be so repelled and offended, and 2) the couple who lived on this Divine property just before me. They liked the calendars.

I hung the camera by its strap near the door, to grab when I saw deer, turkeys, sunrises, orioles & that. I'd owned other, heavier cameras, SLRs with multiple lenses. The Nikon felt so portable and good in my hand! It had a 256MB memory card, and no wireless capability. Around 2013 or 2014 its electronic shutter got gummy. It was not worth the repair. Besides, we now all carried cellphones with built-in cameras.

Realized when trying to photograph the Moon the other night how I missed the little Nikon and steady tripod mount. (The difference between amateur and wow-factor photos is the use of a tripod. )

 

Often I had thought to sell or throw away my tripod but didn't. Someday, someday. It waited patiently in its box for years until today, when I mounted on it a used Nikon Coolpix, purchased on eBay, one configured and operated very much and delightfully like the old one. Could have bought the latest model for about four times the money. Decided to see if I could again love photography enough to haul a tripod around and sit in the cold to wait for the ideal light, or wait an hour  to snap the just-right bluebird photo.

 

The 256MB memory card is now 8GB and that will be nice. Yes, to download I'll have to run a firewire between the camera and computer. So.

Here is my setup to take a photo of tonight's blue moon. I could just cry for all the time I missed my former Nikon camera, and for joy that I have one again.

Territory

It's a young turtle if its shell is vividly and clearly painted and shines, and surely a young one if it's crossing a road, likely in search of a place claim-able as territory. With great self-possession -- animals seem to have more confidence as humans have less -- it held its pose as I sidled near and snapped the camera. In the background is my own home, my own protective shell. So this is a picture of what's important to us both.

On this walk just a few minutes before, yards down the road, I met a pencil-slender baby copperhead snake lounging on the gravel in the exact spot copperheads in summer quite often lounge on the gravel. Recalling well the first time I met a copperhead -- full-sized -- at that spot and nearly stepped on it, on every walk year-round I glance down at that point on the road, and step lightly. Perhaps I bring them into being by imagining them there. Happy summer solstice.

The Produce Stand

I don't know who owns this modest and remote little farm stand in a wagon; never asked. A few times I've seen a gardener working the dense, thick victory-garden plot just behind this wagon; don't know if that's the farmer. Tomatoes of several types, eggplants, pickle-type cucumbers, berries, onions, red and white potatoes, squashes (especially pumpkins, in season) are all sold here, but supply depends on what's ripe and whoever got there before I did. Also sells salsa and jam when appropriate. For cheap. I love this little vegetable stand. It's so midsummer in Missouri.

A Day in Franklin County Missouri

U.S. Senator Roy Blunt's "mobile office" hour for Franklin County was at Sullivan City Hall today. The room was filled (photo shows one-half of the room); about 50 people. We took turns talking one-on-one in a small room with the Senator's aide, a young woman who took notes about our concerns--5 minutes maximum.

Some people wanted the aide to come out and listen to us all, town-hall style, but "it doesn't work that way" and instead we each chose one issue to discuss with her and took our turns in line. I discussed with her the Affordable Care Act repeal (a done deal, I'm sure) and replacement (where is it?) and the fact that some rural Missourians this year had only one ACA plan to choose from, and we of Missouri are waiting for Senator Blunt (Republican) to do the ACA one better. Surely he can do better. Or the Republican Party told us so anyway. Meanwhile the people waiting made a video to send the Senator. Each attendee who wanted to stood up and spoke for up to one minute about the political issue that concerned him or her the most. Very eloquent people and an invigorating hour. BTW, Senator Blunt does not do town hall meetings. At all.

Thinking all the way about how much I love Missouri, I then drove to Washington MO and deli lunch at Farm to You: roast beef and cheddar on rye, sweet-potato salad and a Million Dollar Orange soda, and took a photo of a beautiful Missouri scene, but understanding better now that Missouri is its people.

Red State

That Missouri is a red state there is no doubt. But in case you need a reminder in your fridge, for $6.99 at a shop in Hermann, MO you can get a red Missouri-shaped cheese (there is no blue version).

Things I did and am still doing to keep 2016 from driving me nuts:

• discontinue satellite TV service. Bought a Roku for my one small TV and I watch selected YouTubes with it and nothing else.
• deleted my 7-year Facebook account.
• ended my newspaper subscription because it kept publishing, instead of news, "stories" about what might happen, or threatens to happen, or "reactions" to events, none of which are news.
• subscribed to enjoyable magazines instead.
• minded my own business.
• worked very hard.
• worked on changing my habits of thought.
• quit trying to control the future.
• visited a foreign country; very educational.
• deep breathing exercises.
• yoga.
• Pilates.

Winter Weather Forecasting with Persimmons

I stole these wild persimmons, but I agreed with myself, and don't you, that whoever makes the most effort to get them deserves them? It was only a few and for a good cause: cutting them open, then halving their brown, almond-like seeds to get a forecast of winter weather.

Last year I cut wild persimmons open expecting to see a knife, fork, or spoon shape and saw nothing like that, only seeds parked in their centers. This year I did more homework, finding that folklore enshrined in The Farmer's Almanac says the insides of persimmon seeds show either a knife, fork, or spoon. The knife shape indicates a winter with cold, knife-like winds ahead. The fork indicates a mild winter. The spoon indicates a winter with heavy, wet snow (the spoon resembles a snow shovel).

Slicing vertically in half a one-half-inch persimmon seed required a clamp and a very sharp knife, but I got the answer. Used a special lens to take the photo close-up so there'd be no mistaking it:

The Creepy Side of Spring

Suddenly I see sidewinding across the floor, at the threshold of the mudroom, two snakes, and say aloud, "Oh, for heaven's sake. Snakes in the house." While one soon vanished, this Prairie Ring-Necked Snake wasn't camera shy. The Ring-Necked and the black Rat Snake are the two snakes most common in the house, maybe having wintered in the fireplace I'd opened up the day before.

Snakes come in and out of my fireplace as if it were a nightclub. They are harmless and I let them be, but always do a double-take when seeing snakes in the house.

Then on a walk I see, on a tree cut violently short yet still bringing forth leaves, dense colonies of weird fuzzy purple vertical shoulder-to-shoulder parasites. A wildflower, I thought at first, but then got a closer look and saw it was pathology, utterly unfamiliar. At home I googled "purple parasites," "lavender parasites," "purple caterpillars" and finally, through an image, identified these. They're not animals at all, but--as close as I could get to an I.D.--Maple Spindle Gall (Eriophyes cerasicumena), the tree's reaction to an infestation of mites. These were generated by the plant; they're like tumors. There were no other examples in the immediate area and there is no Spindle Gall photo on the Internet quite like this one.

Spindle gall

"Cute Old Lady" and Other Missourians

Thought I'd collect as many as I could in one week when the owners were around to ask for permission. I'll keep my eye out for more.

The Dismal Science

"Hi, Galaxy," I said to my phone. "Call The Medicine Shoppe." A Walgreens recording answered. Figuring that Galaxy messed up, I myself dialed the Old Towne pharmacy I'd used for 14 years. Chillingly, the Walgreens tape answered again.

It was surreal. I'd picked up a refill three days before from the familiar pharmacists and techs in the drab little Shoppe that kept only one of each item on its shelves, and had a rack of greeting cards that I alone (I think) bought from.

I drove there. Medicine Shoppe #1390 has closed. All prescriptions were transferred to the Walgreens a quarter-mile away, the sign said. No chance to ask questions or say goodbye before the staff--a motley, earnest, totally sterling team of women whom I trusted with my life--dispersed--to where?

Walgreens welcomes "Customers of Medicine Shoppe #1390"

I'd shunned the Walgreens because The Medicine Shoppe ladies saw my husband through his two and a half years of fatal illness; they'd rented me crutches; they'd witnessed my weepings and ailments, phoned and argued with doctors and insurers, knew all my secrets, and had never, not once in 14 years, given me the wrong medicine. I saw them save their meds from floodwaters. My insurer tried to force me to fill prescriptions by mail and I refused. My loyalty is non-negotiable.

Closed now. Maybe bankrupt. Or not profitable.Could have been franchisee's retirement, corporate downsizing, or higher rent. Maybe unable to compete with the Walgreens, grocery-store, and Walmart pharmacies within a two-mile radius. Possibly new rules for Medicare prescription payments. But no goodbyes. The weirdest sort of shock and heartache. And they're all out of work. They call economics "the dismal science" for a reason.

Walgreens had a sign outside to welcome me. Things could be much worse. But I wanted to cry.

Mushroom Identification Challenge #1

Mushroom hunters eye every downed and rotted tree on every forested slope that has what looks like fertile soil (indicated by clusters of growing greenery), and the closer to water, the better. Poking around in the woods I saw no fresh fungi, and shrugged and trotted onward -- "guess there aren't any" -- when I was stopped short by this club-shaped white growth, about four inches long, on an old fallen log. It was fleshy-feeling, cool, dry, and fresh.

Mushrooms are I.D.'d more by their shapes and gills and stems and location rather than their size and color; size and color can vary with age or conditions. This bulbous thing had no shape, no gills, and no stem. Didn't have the mushroom handbook along. Didn't want to cut it and take it home; it was a protected area, and I had no knife or basket with me. So I took photos and at home enlarged and studied them, and downloaded and consulted a mushroom-I.D. app ($1.69 at Google Play, and worth it) I can use next time I'm in the field.

This is a Bearded Tooth (Hericium erinaceus), so fresh its beard hasn't had time to grow long and shaggy. Yes, it's edible, but I was not hungry, and it is good mushroom-hunter ethics to catch-and-release for someone else, or someone hungrier, to enjoy. Looks kind of like a coconut-covered Hostess Sno-Ball. Or a white bath mat.

Slice of Heaven Bakery

While passing by I saw this bakery in Valley Park, MO, and thought, "Why pass it by?" So I went in and it was the old-fashioned kind of bakery that doesn't serve $8 paninis. Decades had passed since I was last in a normal pastry bakery like this one. They had St. Louis Cardinals cookies (I guess we're in the World Series), kolaches, danishes, cakes, brownies, cupcakes, turnovers, doughnuts, and chocolate-covered Oreos, to name a few. I could have only one slice of heaven so selected a cannoli, a dessert I can't make in my own kitchen. They gave it to me in a small white box with a cellophane insert, just like a piece of jewelry in a presentation box. I am so glad I did not simply pass by.

Along the LaBarque Hills Trail

Just another waterfall photo taken on another intoxicating hike yesterday. I  haven't been able to hike all six miles of the LaBarque Hills Trail at the Young Conservation Area yet; after two and a quarter hours of walking I was about one mile short. So there's more to discover. But today it rained, and the trail isn't good if it's muddy, so I'll return there in four or five days.

Glassberg Conservation Area, 400 Acres, Now Open; See It Here

The LaBarque Watershed’s new conservation area is now open to the public: 428 acres with 1.5 miles of easy to moderate hiking trails and good signage, a 3-acre fishing lake called Buder Lake, and Meramec River bluffs from which to view the Pacific Palisades. Formerly residential property, then acquired by the nonprofit Wild Canid Center which never got the funding to build on it, now, thanks to the Glassberg family, it belongs to us all. It opened at noon October 30. I was there. Here is my 7-minute video tour, the first ever, to peek at until you can get here and enjoy it yourself.

Fishing and hiking are encouraged, but camping, biking, and horseback riding are not allowed, dogs must be leashed at all times, and hunting is not yet permitted, but with hunters in the surrounding area you’ll look smart in your hunter orange. Wear hiking boots, bring water. There are no facilities.

The new Glassberg Conservation Area is located in northwestern Jefferson County on Highway FF, and practically across the road from the Young Conservation Area that protects a long section of LaBarque Creek. See you in the Conservation Areas!

Enticing Local Eats, Eureka, Mo.

Eat locally! These signs at two different eateries in Eureka are not 200 feet apart. I haven't tried either delicacy. Do you dare me? Or, better, drive to Eureka, Mo. and try them yourself.

Osama bin Zombie

We firearm enthusiasts of Missouri's rugged Jefferson and Franklin counties are a fun-loving group that likes to get together, talk about and try out firearms, and practice shooting, and later sit in rockers on the porch as the sun sets trying to figure out how to gig frogs without a boat, but mostly we shoot at bulls-eye targets, and now and then we do stacks of cans, license plates, and plastic bottles, and shotgunners shoot at skeets. But I had left over from the days when the gun club met at my place, this one last zombie poster, at one time hilariously funny and now just tasteless and outmoded. So this was our belated good riddance to our country's old enemy. In the photo my friend Morris sets up a juice jug for more target shooting. Morris has a .22 rifle with a mag that holds 25 rounds. Big fun!

Scared to Grill? Who, Me? Nahhh....

Grilling is counterintuitive: You don't put the food on while there's fire? You wait until the flames go out? I finally accepted this as a reality and chose this year to acquire grilling skills. I have had $10 tabletop grills whose bellies burnt through on the first use; no good. Can't lift the propane tanks for gas grills. My best previous experience was with a cast-iron hibachi, so the next step up was the Lodge Cast Iron Portable (sort of; it weighs 35 pounds) Grill. Followed the step-by-step "be a grilly girl" article in the latest issue of Taste of Home Healthy Cooking magazine: Get self-lighting coals. Pile them in a pyramid. Don't skimp. Light. Light. Light, darn it! Why won't they *#***@* light? (Tuck a sheet of newspaper underneath those coals, girlfriend!) Oil the grill so food won't stick. Go away for 45 minutes and return with food packaged in aluminum foil. Grilling seems to require lots of foil.

The magazine's recipe was for grilled corn with olive oil and garlic. In a cookbook I found the recipe for grilled potatoes with onions in a packet (not shown; they were cooking in the coals). Online were instructions to shape the beef patties with a small hole in their centers. This way you can ascertain when they are cooked through. To keep fat from dripping and flaming fat from charring the meat, cook in a disposable aluminum pan until the last few minutes; then move them directly onto the grill to get that smoky taste and grill marks. The corn is that "butter and sugar" bicolor cultivar so popular and good they almost don't sell anything else around here anymore.

While waiting for the food to grill, sit down, enjoy the beautiful Missouri spring day and perhaps a beer. I didn't have one because I now get plastered and loop-legged after a single bottle.

The result was not bad for a novice. Practice makes perfect. I see so many great grilling recipes and don't want to miss out. (P.S. The following week I grilled a flatiron steak, my first grilled steak, and wrote about it.)

Now I Ask You Very Confidentially,

Ain't he nice? Patrick's mowed my lawn now twice. He does it to perfection, doesn't cut any corners on these complicated, sloping grounds, uses a weed trimmer for those hard-to-reach places like beneath the hickory tree's hanging branches and around the satellite post, and today brought me a bag of blackberries picked on his farm. The bluebirds love him. Bluebirds can hunt only in short grass because they eat by pinning their insect or worm prey to the earth. Patrick is my neighbor's son, and he mows her lawn too, although mine's the bigger job, about an acre. He said next time he will bring along his own son.

"Will You Please Help Me?"

"If it's smart enough to find its way in, it's smart enough to find its way out," Demetrius used to yawn, whenever skinks, lizards, snakes and whatnot got into the house. But maybe not. The Broad-Headed Skink that crawled from beneath the dishwasher last month (see April 18th) lived here about 10 days. One afternoon I came home after a day out, and it was in the middle of the kitchen floor clearly waiting for me, and it looked up into my face with an expression that quite plainly said, "I want out. Will you please help me?"

"I will help you," I replied, and opened the porch door and tried luring it out there, but it would not go. (Yes indeed, this skink is missing part of its tail; it was that way when we met. Maybe that's why it was skittish.) Then taking the broom I very gently swept it, an inch at a time, over the threshhold and out onto the porch, and then out the screen door onto the concrete stoop, where for a moment it regarded the wide world it was about to rejoin. This let me take the photo. When the camera got too close, the skink ran away through the grass, to some secret lair where I hope it's much happier. Probably it now makes the rounds on skink talk shows, describing its ordeal among the aliens, and how it survived because God had a special purpose for its life, and so on.

St. John's Church, Mount Hope, MO

This gorgeous April day I found St. John's E&R Church of Christ, a 1905 country church along Highway 47. Although it's labeled "Mt. Hope, MO" it's technically in today's St. Clair in Franklin County. Behind it is Mount Hope Cemetery with a great vista, and some of the gravestones facing the vista (nice). The church looks fragile but it has a ramp so it must be in use. The windows are covered with wood painted a beautiful soft green. The unlovely outhouse is separate, as it is in all good classic wooden country churches.