Big Sky Country

I drove downstate among thunderstorms and rain generated by enormous thunderhead clouds, storm cells, the most dramatic I've seen, yowza, and realized they were so impressive because I was on a plateau and could see horizon to horizon -- as I don't at my home in the hills. Pelted by rain that covered my car like a tarp I stopped in Phillipsburg, Mo., home of the World's Biggest Gift Shop and waited for someone to bring me my gift. With God all things are possible, right? No, really, next door was a huge candy store where I bought cheddar popcorn and coffee, in line with my standard on-the-road menu of junque. And greedily ate it, and watched the clouds.

The Basics

Here in eastern Missouri we had an easy December 2014, with one or two snowfalls, but are having a ridiculously easy January 2015 with, like, no snowfall (only some rain and a token bit of sleet), no ice storms, no below-zero temps, and highs regularly in the 40s and 50s. It's not the January thaw, because January never froze. Another good sign: a Yellow-Shafted Flicker at my feeder, on his way north. We can now take walks at 4 p.m. and be back before it's dark, enjoying January sun and shadow unmitigated by foliage, and scenery we're usually too cocooned to see, like this simple view -- this tallest tree is a sycamore--taken while walking Doc Sargent Road. Everyone I know is pleased. Do I speak too soon? Should I knock on wood so writing this won't hex us? 

The "Do Anything You Want" Day

Last night it rained two inches and I loved getting up this warm sunny morning because rain means good foraging in the woods for you know what. I had tea and checked my horoscope: "Your celestial bank account is so full, why don't you spend some of it? Do exactly what you want; you can afford it." Another horoscope said I'd find romance.

7 pounds of wild edible

Much encouraged, I, baker of irresistible scones and biscotti, satisfied my desire for a scone pan by ordering one online, then took basket and scissors into the hot, humid woods emerging with seven pounds of tasty, heavenly-smelling pink and yellow Laetiporus sulphureus cut from a single downed tree--for eating, it must be obtained very fresh, as soon as possible after rain!--then divvied it up and drove to town to see the chiropractor who fixes my neck. She said she liked fresh wild mushrooms, so I gave her a pound of the choicest. Seeking my romantic prospect, I then lunched at an Italian place: Salad, pizza and red wine. Delicious and I ate the whole pizza myself. Outdoors it was suddenly freezing cold and windy.  Back home I cleaned and sauteed my share of Laetiporus, and then worked for a while, because I enjoy my work. At 4 p.m. I drove 15 miles to a Trader Joe's parking lot for a rendezvous with a fellow forager to whom I delivered a bag containing three fragrant, intoxicating pounds of you know what ("Here's the stuff, man") because I'd scored much more than I could use. And then in the store bought two squat little pie pumpkins and pumpkin-cranberry scone mix. Dear neighbors and friends: Scones are in your near future.

On the drive home I received $2.99 per gallon gasoline and  a golden and purple sunset. Took a photo of my old, crippled outdoor picnic table, now set among gemlike autumn colors. I understood that my romance was with this wonderful world. And food.

And the day's not over yet. . .

Sole Picnic

On my screened porch, on a brawny picnic table built on the spot because assembled it wouldn't fit through either door, is where I serve most summer meals, but another picnic table, much older, waits patiently in the shade beneath the twin giant oaks, its paint pummeled off by at least 15 years of rain and snow, its joints rotting. About every other year I nail, C-clamp, or wood-screw its raggedy pieces together, hoping it will last one more year as a buffet table or a stand for my cast-iron grill. But this summer I hadn't hosted a buffet nor had I grilled. Patient as ever, the shabby eyesore looked appealingly toward me each day while I refused to consider risking splinters, wasps, or the ticks and chiggers teeming in the taller grass around it, but most of the time it was beneath my notice.

Today was the day, a perfect September day, about 78 degrees, sunny, with cotton-ball clouds in a vivid sky, the grass recently cut; and almost everything is still so intensely green I thought, "The earth is covered with plants."(A marvelous fact.) As I gazed at the decrepit picnic table I suddenly understood it, and loved it, and set my dinner out there: a bowl of jambalaya, a flaxseed wrap, and a beer.

Usually I picnic in the open air away from home, doing it a pleasant number of times during this mild summer, but today I woke again to how amazing it is that I can cross the lane, sit down, picnic in my own Missouri yard right in the mainstream flow of life, "bugged" only by a very small wasp which drowned in the jambalaya.

The planks in the grass are the last surviving pieces of a cold frame Demetrius built in 2002.

Be Good to Yourself

When peeper frogs sing (March 12), crocuses bloom (March 13), and I plant turnips and arugula (March 17) is my favorite time of year, and giddy with cheerfulness I chose as my mission to do something nice for myself, but then came the questions: Get a Subway sandwich? Go to the gym? Manicure hands so winter-dry that the knuckles bleed? And driving up "the strip" I saw an Auto Zone. Inspired, I stopped and bought what I truly needed for a happy spring: New windshield wipers. Hearing the clerk explain all the new exciting windshield wiper technology was by itself worth the price--but I also got the wipers and installation, after which we tried 'em out. My old wipers streaked the windshield like grease on a glass pan. The new wipers opened a whole world of clarity--sweet! Miraculous! What better way to celebrate spring than to see it clearly? $34 is cheap for such a long-lasting thrill.

Then I bought my sandwich, telling the sandwich artist that the sandwich was beautifully made and leaving a good tip, and went to the gym, and had a manicure and left a good tip, and have never been so happy about being good to myself. So you be good to yourself. The old-time pagans feasted at this time of year. Feast and celebrate any way you can.

The Nest

I fitted out one room to live in and keep warm in while propane prices do whatever they want; just leave me out of it. I will NOT pay a petroleum dealer $1200 for 200 gallons, which is less than half a tank, so I'm conserving. The cabin's thermostat is in this room; it's set at 55. One of my electric space heaters keeps the room at 60 degrees, while the rest of the house is 40-some degrees and due to get colder as tonight's temperatures shrink to 0. Since I turned the thermostat down 48 hours ago the furnace hasn't kicked on even once. I sit on the futon propped up by multiple pillows and work, or watch The Weather Channel, and at night sleep in my wonderfully roomy new brown sleeping bag. Note the Weather Channel's map of how propane prices in the Midwest have risen in one week. Is that a stone fireplace you see in the room, to the left? Yes. Beautiful and nonfunctional. More about the fireplace soon. I'm lucky to be able to make a comfortable nest. There are people with families, seniors, and houses much draftier than mine, or no houses at all, or whose tanks are at 0 and don't have a choice.

Free Chives

Last night the Arctic winds howled as I have never heard them. They tore some of the plastic off the windows and shredded it. They kept me awake. They forced the temperature way down. A human being can do nothing except think about hot soup, a favorite soup. With a sandwich if possible.

I chose the simple recipe "Shrimp Soup DeLuxe" from Twelve

Months of Monastery Soups. Fresh chopped onion, olive oil, shrimp, some dry white wine, white pepper, a bit of milk. . . and a half cup of mixed fresh herbs as the final touch. Fresh herbs in January? Yes! On a slope near the lane, hidden just inside the woods, clumps of chives grow every winter. I don't know where they came from, or why, because they grow nowhere else on the property, but they come in very handy. I cheated and went out and bought parsley for the soup, too. But the chives were free.

High Water

My Weather Radar app forwards National Weather Service warnings by making the smartphone shriek and vibrate. It's been issuing flood warnings for this area since Sunday's heavy rain. This was taken where LaBarque Creek empties into the Meramec River -- the flood's peak, if it doesn't rain again today. A foot or two higher and the water'd crawl up over Highway FF as it did in '08, when all my three possible routes home, including the Interstate, flooded and the National Guard turned us back and I couldn't get home for four days. When the water gets up about this high I try not to leave home (which I'm grateful is on high ground). Flooding is a growing problem as more land is developed and paved. Jeff County Highway W is under water -- don't plan on going there.

Threatening Sky

In our corner of eastern Missouri we're all still so shell-shocked by the tornadoes that tore a concourse off the airport last year and flattened Joplin last May that dark skies here unnerve us, just a little. People drive faster, heading for home. I've found out, traveling out west, that you have to live in a place for several years to be able to read its sky. But there's nothing like the ink-and-indigo colors of a Midwestern storm about to unzip the firmament and unleash torrents of rain, which are then pulled into silver ingots by the wind. An Iowa painter named Grant Wood, in some paintings, captured this kind of Midwestern sky and the strange sunlight often paired with it. Facing southeast on Highway F about 6 p.m.

Cloud-of-the-Month Club

People talk about storing their music and photos in "the cloud," about sharing their files in "the cloud" and getting "cloud certification" in"cloud architecture." They explain that "the cloud is software as a service." And today, in the city, I saw the mighty cloud that they must be referencing. It was 102 degrees Fahrenheit in the parking lot where I stood, and within an hour the sky was raining and booming and steam rose from the sidewalks. July in Missouri? You betcha!

July Morning

With temperatures around 100 humid degrees at noon here in Missouri, the only time to go walking is before 7 a.m., when it's only about 80 degrees...down by where Doc Sargent Road intersects with F, right next to LaBarque Creek, it was all gold light this morning, with platinum mist and silver dew.

Storm Damage

This is not Joplin, far from it; it's home. Top of a tree torn off last night about 3 a.m. and fallen into the yard. I was asleep, then woken by roaring winds. Took glasses and moved to the living room which has fewer windows, and where I have my emergency bag all packed, and fell asleep there. Didn't hear this tear, nor did I hear it fall, not 15 feet from the house. I'm sitting tight waiting for a set of three consecutive tornadic storms to pass through within the next two hours; they promise that this is among the last of them tearing up Missouri from west to east. Everybody's jumpy and worried during this amazingly bad tornado season.

March 26 in Missouri

They say here, "If you don't like the weather, wait 24 hours, and you'll see how good it was." Hamster-sized snowflakes fell today. Thursday was a mildly sunny day, about 70 degrees, a great day for walking and climbing...I enjoyed the tiny buds on trees, small mayapples and wake robins springing from the forest floor, and looking for a jack-in-the-pulpit. I told a friend, "It should always be early spring." Then last night it got cold. Nothing on the ground this morning. But 5 inches of freakish snow on the ground by 7 p.m. It covered up my daffodils, violets, hyacinths. I baked chocolate chip cookies; what else could I do?

Too Tough and Ugly to Say "Welcome"

As I recall, only three recycled things existed before "recycling" as we know it came to be: returnable glass bottles, tire-tread sandals, and recycled-tire doormats. Look in Lowe's all you want but you won't find these weighty, classic mats too tough and ugly to say "Welcome" but able to take horrible four-season daily outdoor punishment, will clean gunky bootsoles, will not float away during floods -- they're too durable. My old one (left), bought at Dickey Bub's, $5, the last one in stock, haven't seen one there since, began to fall apart this winter after six or seven years; the metal pincers finally rusted through and released tire chunks which began to migrate into lawnmower territory.

Living in the sticks and gas prices being what they are I buy most things online now, but the problem finding this item was: What's it technically called? A tire-link doormat, an outdoor tire-link mat, a recycled-tire mat, a machine-shop mat. . .anyway, I found one made in Pennsylvania, USA, about twice the weight of the old one, with rug-like "pile" on top, $14.95 and $10 shipping. Always pleased to buy USA-made items.

A Little Snow

We've had three snows so far, the deepest three inches just the other day. In eastern Missouri these are called "snowstorms," and the people in charge call out the snowplows and MoDOT and the national guard, while I sit snowed in telling my employer, "Sorry, I'm snowed in," until the plows scrape off and salt Highway F. A few inches of snow here is big scary news and folks run out and stock up and the weathermen tell them to stay home, and the schools close, and people huddle at home until it passes. I'm originally from Wisconsin and also used to live in Syracuse, New York (also known as "Siberacuse," where 18-inch snowfalls were common), so I laugh and laugh.

Tenting Tonight

When the normal dwelling just can't hold all that's in your mind and heart; when the usual bed is like your own miniature sweat lodge; when the days are dry and cool and getting cooler; when the moon is big; when you just have to crawl into something and hide...very fortunate and privileged that I have the property on which to do this. I keep this section of meadow mowed just for this reason. Also makes a great deer bed when I'm not using it.

Turkeys in the Mist

The August morning I took this photo it rained again, just enough to bring forth steam from the earth, and to my surprise this brought the wild turkeys out. Usually they visit only at dawn and dusk, and they have a favorite place to hunt, which is the old rotting coldframe that was so well made that seven years later I am still unable to tear it down.

Cloudburst

On an August afternoon, when it'd been over 90 degrees every day for a solid month, and was pushing 100, it rained for a solid fifteen minutes, then it rained for another fifteen minutes, hard, with the sun shining. Dodging the huge raindrops I ran outside seeking a rainbow, but didn't see any. But from my porch, where I and the camera could stay dry, I saw my birdbath and bird feeder bathed in sun and rain.

Jack Frost Lives!

Jack Frost's icy renderings of trees rival those visible through the window in this photo -- taken in the garage, which has single-pane windows. The sun was melting Jack's artwork and I had to shoot quickly! It's been decades since I've thought about Jack Frost. Back in Wisconsin, windows seemed full of his ice paintings, and we sang at least one song about him. But the Disneyfication of life, and a move to Missouri, elevated Frosty the Snowman to first place as the embodiment of winter. But that doesn't mean Jack's out of business. Frosty is winter's peasant; Jack is its poet.

Rural Rainbow

This morning, another miracle: