A Mint

Wild mint is fun to find and harvest. There's a type that's poisonous, with white flowers on tall stems, but roll a stem between your fingers, and if the stem is square -- you will feel how it's square! -- you can have free mint leaves. There are six kinds of mint in Missouri. Although this is ordinary "ground ivy" (Glechoma hederacea) it smells wonderful. I found it creekside, in the hollow of a tree stump, its tree gnawed down by beavers long ago.

 

I had made a favorite India-themed pink lentil soup, and the recipe recommends a garnish of mint leaves. In winter I do without. How lucky I am in spring to simply walk down the road, onto the path I cut, and there was my mint, presented artistically for nobody's eyes ever, unless I happened to seek it out.

Violets on Earth

I have not much to say today that springtime can't say for me. First, April has had numerous sunless days. After several sunless days, turning into weeks, of no visitors and no visiting, fewer phone calls because we're all in shock and can barely mumble, and all aware we are all in the same waterlogged boat, and this is real life -- a sunny day and noticing violets at my feet felt like spiritual sustenance. I don't grow these. They're 100 percent free random grace.

Happy Earth Day!

It's A Beautiful Day

Yesterday: Head spinning, so near exhaustion I dread writing an email, I decide I cannot work this week and tell the boss I'm taking the week off.
Today: Greet HVAC repair guy who arrives at the door two hours early and fixes the issue in 20 minutes.
Dress and equip for mushroom hunt; after fruitless hunting, shower and dress.
Drive townward for a car emissions test.
While waiting, walk a block and get a hamburger. Using their WiFi, I find two pleasing work-related emails and send an email requesting a check, and am assured that it is being sent today.
Buy vivid green blocks of rodent poison, the large bag of them, not the small.
It's May 15, the frost-free day for Zone 6, so I select three baby plants, two basil, one rosemary, and tell them, "You are so lucky. You will be loved."
Buy new windshield wipers, amazed to hear that nowadays they are sold singly, the drivers' side wiper longer and costlier than the passenger side.
Return DVDs Steve Jobs, Fahrenheit 451, and Dallas Buyers Club to the library, four weeks late because it took me that long to watch them all.
Buy a jar of Noxzema and two bags of ground coffee.
Pharmacy pickup.
Drop recyclables into a UPS box.
Obtain cash at ATM.
Pick up dry-cleaned winter coat, costing most of the cash.
Get a drive-through car wash.
Buy a dozen lovely brown fresh local eggs at the feed store where I have been served by the same guy for 20 years.
Buy fruit and vegetables at House Springs. Golden Delicious are the best apples. I did not believe that when I first heard it, because Red Delicious are so cloying. A beautiful drive on a day all wildly blue and green.
At home, inspect the bluebird box in the meadow. All of the chickadees have fledged. Removed their nest and cleaned the box for the next occupants.
Process newly bought fruit and vegetables for the fridge and freezer.
Dinner: Cream of asparagus soup, slice of black-olive bread, fresh corn on the cob.
Assemble all required papers and finish online the two-year car license registration, ordering the special "Don't Tread on Me" snake design I have always liked.
Good Lord, it's 9 p.m.

The History of Shredding

Like you, I have a need to shred. I have a small shredder, was told when moving here that it was necessary when one's trash can sits one day per week out by the highway, but ten bags or about 60 pounds was too many papers to shred, and I'd always jam the teeth with more paper than it could hold so the motor overheated and quit, and the teeth should be sharpened, and stores asked me to pay for shredding per pound, and pay an upcharge should I want to witness it, so I kept the bags in the garage.

This rainy weekend's spring-cleaning highlight (pity me! I didn't leave the house otherwise) was a free "community shredding event" at the community center. Pop your car's trunk and they grab your plastic grocery bags, dump the papers into the mobile shredder (a huge trash truck) and return the bags. I had half-hoped, at 8:30 a.m., for doughnuts and coffee, a string quartet and communing. I wondered how shredding came to be and why my parents never went to shredding events.

The paper shredder was patented in 1909 but the patent holder never made one. During World War II a guy put secret papers through his pasta-cutting machine, and so was born the shredder that sits unused in my mudroom. Only the government and military shredded their papers until the 1980s when we all began feeling personally very important and courts ruled that people were allowed to paw through your trash.

God's Creatures

A conservative was here over Easter talking about Jesus Christ when a wolf spider woke from its winter's nap and went hunting in my carpet, and the guy's eyes widened and he asked when I was going to kill it. I said, "Wolf spiders are harmless. No reason to fear. They don't bite. I never kill wolf spiders; they eat cockroaches (occasionally, a roach comes up the drainpipe here) and other bugs. They're not interested in you." He kept an obsessive eye on it. I tried to put him at ease saying, "You haven't got anything it wants." He urged me to kill it. I said, "It's one of God's creatures," and that shut him up.

The month of May means other "Thingz" are coming alive in multiples as millipedes wiggle-waggle across the linoleum like they own the place. I deposit them outside, with mixed feelings, because they belong out there but might also become some songbird's meal. That's the chance you take. Outdoors, after yesterday's heavy rains, beneath the garage door and a packing of wet leaves were lots and lots of worms, a sort of urban worm center, all wiggling and alive. Worms are our friends, and alive is beautiful! To me they looked like art.

Cliff Edge

Lilacs grow richly on the cliff edge -- and only on the cliff edge! -- and make quite a display for passersby on the highway below. During their brief springtime bloom, I get an armful or so for the house and porch and giveaways to the benighted who do not have lilacs. (How they got up here in a sand glade I don't know.) They rank with bluebirds and crocuses as one of my favorite things and one I will crawl onto a cliff edge for. Who wouldn't? As long as I can, I will, and I would grieve if I didn't.

This time the usual approach to the cliff edge was overgrown, already, with leafy understory junk shrubs and vines. Up a slope of tall grass with bits of sandstone gravel imploding under my treads, shouldering past an electrical pole, stepping over fallen logs and a patch of prickly pear cactus growing in a sandy microclimate one foot square -- never know what you'll find around here! -- keeping my balance, some lilacs were within my reach. The greater part of the display just swayed in the wind and laughed.

Lilacs are not Missouri native plants or even North American. They're from Eastern Europe and Asia. To whoever sneaked them over here, thank you, and I understand you completely.

Dogwood is Dagwood

Dogwood, seen here near the wilderness end of our lane, has no connection with dogs. Its original name is "Dagwood" and you won't believe why: The wood is tough -- legend says Jesus was crucified on a dogwood cross -- and the wood was used to make dagger handles and such, and so it was called "dagwood," and now we know where both the names "Dogwood" and "Dagwood" come from. Proves that life teaches you something new every day.

And those aren't white "petals," either. They are leaves called "bracts," and the corn-colored puff in the center of the bract is the actual flower, and don't that beat all. Photo taken about 7:00 p.m. on my new favorite day of the year: April 27.

Spring Sunrise 2019

Waiting, waiting. . . purple clouds in the east, the great Source color-mixing on its palette in real time, then adding some light, knowing we are watching. Light is a specialty. The work must be totally unprecedented. There can be no error, cannot leave a blank space or discard and start over, must differ from all before it, because this day is a gift specifically for the majestic Earth, and the sunrise its wrapping! And it has to be unsigned so everybody and everything has to guess who gave it. Everyone's answer is different. Everyone is at a different place to receive it. Perfect! I'm smiling. The artist hopes only that the gift will make us smile.

I have enjoyed the long, elaborate, poetic springtimes typical of mid-Missouri, with upsetting lilacs and startling bunnies and winds that invent their own kites, and hope this spring is another. Not only that, I love sharing the greenery and music of the birds and frogs with visitors from the north who travel in a day from their winter to our spring, and marvel.

Elfin Saddles

Shoveling beneath some rotted wood exposed some unusual mushrooms plump as cooked macaroni and about the same size and pallor, mushrooms I'd never seen before. They had elegant saddle-shaped caps with white piping, and grew in neighborly little clumps. They are casually called "elfin saddles." It's said that bugs and millipedes can hide between the lobes for a while, freeloading.

Turns out these mushrooms belong to the Helvella family, whose saddle-shaped caps are characteristic, and specifically the ones I dug up are Helvella leucopus. Quite common, and formerly considered edible, they have since been downgraded to "suspect" or "unknown," probably because there's no one left to tell us that when eaten they have no ill effects. Interesting discovery, though.

Hey Guys, Keep It Classy

Guys, when you are on a first date, these are the dumb ways you give away to your date that you watch lots of Internet p0*n. You:

• Rate women on a numeric scale from 1 to 10.
• Ask if we shave, and regardless of our reply tell us in detail about the amount and styling of hair you find acceptable.
• Declare that you hate and will never, ever use condoms, that you can't use condoms, they're really uncomfortable, etc.
• Have only one erogenous zone, and believe that women have only two.
• Never read books or magazines (We know that is because you spend all your leisure time watching Internet p0*n.).
• Complain that your PC runs really, really slowly (We know that's because your PC is full of malware and viruses from Internet p0*n sites.).
• Declare, and illustrate with finger-in-mouth gesture, that romantic comedies make you sick.
• Openly and shamelessly tell us, "I'm a single guy, so I watch p0*n, okay?" (If we watched p0*n to get our ya-yas, we would have class enough to keep it a deep dark secret, especially on a first date.)
• Ask if we squirt.
• Proudly announce that you do not own a suit. (We know that's because instead of going to weddings and funerals you stay home and watch Internet p0*n.)
• You took guitar or sitar lessons for a while, but not any more (because all your time is taken up).
• Ask when we were last tested for STDs. If we ask you, your answer is always "I know I'm all right."

Yes, Yes, Yes!

Which day of the year tops them all? On March 21, spring equinox: Joy! April 24 the hummingbirds return, on the dot, and I run around screaming 'cuz I just won the lottery of life? All of June, the most beautiful month? July 4, when we create loud stars in the sky like we are God? July 25, the ripest day with the richest night sky? Thanksgiving Thursday, everybody's holiday? On December 21, winter solstice -- and the days begin lengthening, oh thank you, God! There's the day the spring peepers awake and sing (depends on precipitation, and they began on February 16). Or -- the first crocuses. They aren't wild; they were planted. By us, maybe 15 years ago. Earliest recorded appearance: Feb. 6. This year: Feb. 25.

Rain ended, yesterday I trekked over the property to watch brimming waterfalls, see ferns unfolding, look at buds on trees, step ankle-deep in mud, breathe in the most delicious, cleanest, laundered spring air and whitest sunlight, cleaned up trash by the creek, checked the cabin roof bashed (whomp! whomp!!) by thick oak branches broken off by Saturday night's windstorm -- the roof is okay -- and then bent to clean storm debris from the lane and around the cabin. That done, I was about to photograph the wonders of some velvety little buds when I looked down and saw in the sunny sweet spot at the house's southwest corner, these!

They never fail! If I were a flower, I would be a crocus (from the Latin word crocatus, meaning "saffron yellow"). Crocuses are not just the promise of spring. They are the signature on the contract!

Smiling Lizard

I know May is here when a lizard gets trapped on the wrong side of the screened porch and climbs around on the screens all day trying to enter the blue and green world she can see but not get to. I then have a choice: Leave her there ("If it was smart enough to find its way in, it's smart enough to find its way out," Demetrius used to yawn) or help her out, but first, take glamour photos--of this lovely Northern Fence Lizard (Scleporus undulatus hyacinthinus) that seemed to smile as if it had a sense of humor about its predicament. After that I waited until she climbed onto the screen door, then I opened the door and tickled her until she dropped off the screen onto the stoop and went running, and I suddenly thought twice--about its needs, not mine--although it was too late, and said, "Take it easy. Birds can eat you."

Don't Look at These Dead Snakes

The fireplace's grille has been taped shut since 2013 because snakes were being born in the hearth, harmless blacksnakes and Prairie Ringneck Snakes, but every April into August, the (non-working) fireplace was more and more like a nightclub with snakes coming and going, and finally the situation breached my tolerance level. Averse to the "duct-tape" look, I taped aluminum foil onto the grille trying to discourage further breeding in the fireplace, and added more layers of clear tape as it came unstuck.

This week I peeled away all the tape because it looked ugly and my Easter guests would spend lots of time in the living room. I think six snakes are visible in the photo; there were a number of smaller ones, maybe 12 in all.

Tape isn't an ideal solution. The snakes die of dehydration. In July 2014 I found a live snake stuck to a loose strand of tape, clearly suffering, and videotaped its rescue in a post. In fact this blog has several snake appreciation posts. I like snakes, but they really do better outdoors, and some of my  guests who if they saw live snakes sidewinding through the house would never be my friend again.

Need Some Green?

Buds on trees are only tiny fists yet, and the grass isn't green, but the moss and ferns are. Just to provide us the relief of seeing some greenery. Fiddleheads that grow next to the double waterfall are about two weeks away.

Hawks are pairing; hawks hunt together only when they're choosing mates. Last night in the pink twilight two bats flew overhead and I was so pleased to see them. As I walked to the creek today to hunt fossils I heard a turkey squawking, and it didn't up and flap away as I approached, so it was probably in the process of finding a mate or mating. Turkeys visit my yard but they like to live farther up the lane, near my neighbor, because her house backs onto the woods while mine backs onto a steep cliff like this one.

I'm just going out now to chop tall dry weeds obscuring my view of the bluebird house. A few days ago I cleaned it out because they'll be nesting any day now.

Is This Pollution?

Knock me over with a feather, this little pool way back in the woods turns out to have all-natural soap suds. As you know, soap is made from plants. Running enough water over decaying leaves and logs releases "surfactants" like the those in your Joy and Suave bottles that lift and dissolve oils. The woodland surfactants form a near-invisible film on top of water, most of the time. But pool the rushing water and churn it in a cove or a tiny pool like this one, and do it for a while, and suds appear naturally.

Most times in unpolluted conditions these natural suds are 99 percent water and air and 1 percent surfactant, so foam appears only under exacting conditions, and cannot be used as soap. It's just for looking at. This foam is white, but it can be off-white or tan. So relax. Unpolluted spots on earth still exist!

Almost a Walk at Glassberg

The new Nikon came in a bag, not a box, and it looked and felt so flimsy, so disappointing, next to the (3x more expensive) 2004 camera it replaced, but compact and light, it has wireless capability, and even a socket for a tripod, which was what sold me, and a 20x zoom lens, positively staggering zoom power for a camera of that price. Furthermore, the 256MB memory cards for the old camera are scarce--256 GB is more common these days--and as a nature photographer I'd rather have 20x zoom than the old camera's 8x zoom.

So I took the new flimsy thing on its inaugural nature walk at Glassberg, or the Glassberg Family Conservation Area, 429 acres with three established trails to choose from. First I find that the camera doesn't even have eyelets for a neckstrap, only a wrist strap. It's like the horror of carrying a clutch purse all evening, or a water bottle all the way through a hike.

Rather too near the point at which recreation becomes diminishment (too much work! too much working out! too many phone calls!), the new camera gave me the motivation to at least walk as far as I could and try it out. And it took these photos, exclusive to springtime, of an unnamed brook that feeds into the mighty LaBarque, and a small lively swimming pool for tadpoles. I'd love to know what they're thinking. Next, after I spend a few days in bed: an attempt at night photography to capture the exclusive-to-spring meadow knee-deep in fireflies. The genius of Creation is in its excess.

Reason to Live, Reason to Love

I was so excited to have relatives visit; they rarely do. My parents are too old to travel, my aunts and uncles all passed, and I never knew my cousins, most of them much older. I have two sisters too classy to come here, one with Danish Modern furniture, the other an Easterner now. To be fair, Sister Danish Modern and her husband visited once, 14 years ago, and I taught her to shoot an airgun, there's a photo (on paper; this was before smartphones); but she must have been appalled by the bathroom, as anyone would have been up until its renovation in 2011. I visit them but they don't come here.

So my third sister, her husband, and my niece from Wisconsin visit once a year and I weep with happiness when they arrive and weep when they leave, believing they are the only people my age left who both know where I came from and care to stay in touch. And they like it here. It was Easter weekend. We dyed eggs and they brought me an Easter basket with a peanut-butter egg in it, and a plush rabbit. Weep again. Weep over Velveteen Rabbit and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, also starring a rabbit. We went to marvel over and fondle baby chicks at the farm store, and to see an 18th-century homestead, and hunted fossils, and explored the woods. They thought 50-degree weather was amazing.

Some Easter weekends fall too early for the redbuds to be out. Wild redbud trees in spring are a major reason to love Missouri (they don't grow in Wisconsin). I am so thrilled to share them with non-Missourians. They were nominated as the USA's national tree; they lost to the oak. They were nominated as Missouri's state tree. They lost to the Flowering Dogwood. Redbuds, I think, are glory incarnate. They bring me closer to God, the other who knows where I came from and cares to stay in touch.

The Ten O'Clocker

It happened again tonight: About 10 p.m. a car pulls up at my house. I'm sitting where I can't see it; I can only feel its vibrations through the floor; then the car door slams. I'm not expecting anyone. Nobody just "drops by" here on a friendly visit, not at 10 p.m.

This happened before, in November, on a Saturday at the same hour. Someone knocked at the screen door, then did it again, harder, rattling it, when I did not answer. I called out "Who is it?" and got no reply. I called out again; still no answer. To my horror, I was rooms away from my phone and saw that I'd left the door unlocked. Insulation blocked all but two of my windows so I couldn't see out or see the car. So I hid. The car left. After a while I triple-locked the door and found my phone and kept it near.

Then the car came back and whoever it was knocked again. I had no enemy unless you count a student whose creative writing described the use of firearms and car bombs, the first student in my 29 years of teaching who, that same week, aware of the penalties, grossly insulted his classmates, and when rebuked, replied very unpleasantly. This time I phoned 911. The deputy arrived 15 minutes later, but the car was gone. I hadn't seen it, or the visitor, so couldn't describe them.

Tonight, when I heard a car pull up unannounced and then a slam and a knock, I secured a certain item and accessories I now keep handy, and with a body hardened by fight training and judo crawls, lay low with my phone where I couldn't be seen, with the item trained on the door. I didn't ask who it was. I simply waited.

Prepare a Table

Golly, the prices on nice new redwood picnic tables that come in pieces and are properly drilled so I'd have a cat's chance of assembling them, and on state-park-quality weatherproof synthetic tables I could leave outside 365 (no longer eager to drag them into the garage every autumn); a chintzy plastic table, the only affordable kind, wouldn't last two years in our I-love-you-I-hate-you Missouri weather. But I'd like a table again beneath the twin oaks. I dismantled the old rotted one screw by screw, about two weeks ago.

Thought then to look up plans to build my own. There's a lot of wood in the garage, all sizes and shapes, much of it just fine, like 3 x 3 posts, and big sheets of pine and plywood, and hollow wooden closet doors, and braces, and other pieces I did target practice on, but most of them whole. It's been there unmoved for seven years. I hardly even saw it anymore. I'd need certain kinds of varnish, paint, power tools (with no electricity in the garage; I once refinished a door by flashlight). Demetrius bought the stack of weights in the photo, becoming for the first time in his life a crazed health nut when diagnosed with terminal cancer; he was so human. And he bought all the wood, too, because we were going to have a treehouse, and just because. This would have been my first carpentry project. Never handled a power saw in my life. Changed my mind. (My mind is my power saw.)

It occurred to me I could ask and pay someone to build a sturdy outdoor table using these available materials. So I did. It might get started as soon as next week.

Hope

Our worm farm was a failure. We did everything by the book. But when we dug into it, no worms, although we'd put lively squirming ones in with our bare hands. Lovingly. We loved worms; good for the garden. I said to Demetrius, "Some of them must have been male, some female." He said, "I guess they never met." Later I learned that worms are hermaphroditic, male and female both, but all the same they have to meet another worm or it's no dice.

Hope springs eternal. Lately I've wanted to feel more hopeful. Nothing serious, just a little down, despite trying everything to cheer myself at this best time of year, before it's buggy or hot, when all is potential. Owls call to each other. Hawks call to each other. Bluebird pairs hang around in the twin oaks for a day or so, but none have settled in my bluebird house as of yet. All perennial. All go on with or without me. I went to my favorite grocery store, quite a distance, to distract myself with produce, and there my eyes met a rack of seed packets. This was the answer. It was like pulling a lucky card from a deck.

So I weeded and dug up and turned a patch of earth 3 feet by 3, meeting some lively or indignant wiggler worms along the way, and finding perennial spring onions I'd forgotten about, and uprooting a whole aromatic handful to slice and throw into dinner. I raked furrows into the earth, and planted arugula seeds. It's the right time to plant, according to the packet: "two weeks before the last frost." Bunnies and deer don't eat arugula, because it's peppery. That's why I like it. There is no pleasure like seeing seeds you planted sprout. They do so no matter how moody we are.

Then I looked around some more and saw rebel grape hyacinths I didn't plant, I never planted, completely wild, blooming in the leaf-covered gravel apron, in very poor, rocky circumstances.