Everywhere, Endless, and Changing

I want so much to share the beauty I see, living out here--daily, my cup overflows. In the city, I got beauty at the museum or in individual plants or trees, and only in glimpses, so I moved and I stay so I can feast on the beauty that is everywhere and endless and changing. On my gravestone please write, "She loved beauty."  Or maybe this, from a North Country British gravestone:

The wonder of the world,
The beauty and the power,
The shapes of things,
Their colours, lights and shades,
These I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts.

(That wasn't written by a Londoner.)

Woke early this late August morning with a head cold returned in full force (darn, but that's life; I'll take it) and peeked outside and the sun was just rising, but I saw turkeys at the meadow's edge, and although it's not a bird-book picture of a turkey, the above photo is what I actually saw. And loved it.

Harvest

Garden vegetables get smaller as the hours of sunlight diminish now. You know how the girth of August tomatoes is much less, maybe half, of July's. These August jalapenos, small but fully formed, easily detached from the mother plant, and that meant, "Harvest Me." These little emerald beauties are hot as #&!*@!!#. I can never predict how hot a homegrown hot pepper will be.

The word "harvest" comes from Anglo-Saxon and is related to the German "Herbst," meaning "autumn." I am not ready for autumn but harvest is fine by me. It's also guaranteed in one of the most beautiful sentences in the English language: "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

Growing in a Micro-Climate

Missouri's in the temperate zone, but in some dry rocky south-facing sandstone glades that get a lot of sun, cheerful in the huge long drought grow cacti like these prickly pears (opuntia humifusa). I haven't seen any other type of cactus in this area. What's a "glade," you ask? A rocky outcropping amidst woods or grassland. Our glades here are sandstone. The cacti grow in just-right areas only a few feet square called "micro-climates." This one's on the sunny side of the road. The opposite side, chilly and shadowy, is an entirely different ecosystem, supporting temperate plants and creatures and moss and no cacti.

I find cacti on the edges of woods here, at the base of dry south-facing sandstone formations, and on the edge of my south-sloping gravel driveway, where prickly pear plants like shoe soles have persisted for years despite being snowed on, frozen (they turn purple), stepped on, bruised, and run over by cars. If not, they produce frilly yellow blossoms and plum-like fruits. Always get a pleasant sense of wonder when seeing  these wise and witty-looking desert entities way up in the Ozark foothills.

All Play and No Work

Coming round a bend from walking in a park in town I saw this dramatic huge air balloon collapsing in the baseball field. Turns out a sudden course change required the captain to land somewhere open and flat, along with 8 passengers he referred to as "1800 pounds of passengers," and I ran over to ogle it like everybody else, especially tons of kids comin' outa nowhere. After the balloon drooped to the ground it still had air in it so the captain recruited the kids to roll on it end to end to press all the air out, and they sure enjoyed that and of course I have video (34 seconds) of kids rolling on it and screamin' with joy on a summer evening in Missouri. And the captain, in the red shirt, said it was much easier than just him doing it.
The travel basket looked very small for 8 people and a third of it was taken up by 4 tanks of propane fuel, 400 lbs each. After the kids deflated the balloon, two adults folded it and the captain called a truck to pick up the basket and passengers. Golly, all this excitement and novelty and it was only the second day of my annual "All Play and No Work" week. I'd just been fishing with my bff Carmel and then to a church ice-cream social with Ace and came to the park to walk it off, and now this.

One Form of Deer Repellent

Friends down the road keep two gardens, a flower garden including tall sunflowers we never see around here because deer snap 'em off leaving four-foot stalks, and a vegetable garden. Both gardens are fenced. That's the only way for hobby gardeners to get homegrown produce to the table, because otherwise all we grow is deer munchies. They bite the tops off tomato plants too, especially during this summer's drought when nothing but gardens got watered. Can't blame them for wanting juicy greenery. Friend's husband found this skull, of a buck with only one antler, in the woods and decided to stake it in the center of his vegetable garden -- even though it has wire fencing. It has golf balls in its eye sockets. I think he means it to strike fear into the hearts of deer, who, if they only turned around, could see plenty of other nice grasses and leaves to rip and pulverize with their amazing one-inch tubular teeth with razor-sharp edges. It's also a form of folk sculpture.

Brown Eggs, Subtracted, Alas

Farmer Bob's "Brown Eggs" truck at its usual roadside spot at 11 on Wednesday had no canopy or patio chair and the cardboard sign saying "Brown Eggs" was stowed in the pickup, and as I approached Farmer Bob got out of the cab and I said, "You sold out all your eggs already?"

Farmer Bob said, "The health department says I can't sell eggs on the roadside any more." His eggs weren't refrigerated and they have to be. So he wasn't selling eggs, just telling every customer that skidded to a stop nearby, cheerfully expecting to purchase henfruit, that they could buy his eggs at his house on Highway B. By my reckoning that's 15 miles and out of the way of most of his regulars. Sad because seeing his one-man business on the roadside was a bright spot in my rural day and I daresay it was a bright spot for him too.

You needn't be French to know eggs come out of the chicken with a protective coating ("bloom"), and dont need refrigeration until they're washed, but I guess they don't know that here. Farmer Bob had zucchini to sell, though. I selected one, and he gave it to me free. I hugged him because I don't think we'll meet again. Joylessly I drove into town to the gas station, my next errand, and vacuumed out my eggless car.

Why We Should Protect Missouri Streams

Taken at the "beachfront" of a LaBarque Creek tributary with no official name, sometimes called "Sandy Creek" or "Robinson Creek." Deeper and wider than the LaBarque, people at the party were floating on it, boating on it, jumping off the dock into the water (squealing with joy all the while), sunning themselves, playing with their kids and grandkids, swimming in it pretending to be water dragons, and sitting beneath umbrellas on shore drinking a beer, all without fear of polluted water or the deadly currents that sometimes take people who are swimming in the Meramec, the temperamental river that the gentle LaBarque Creek empties into. I was so happy I was at the picnic, about a mile from my house. This is the sort of land being saved for posterity by the Friends of LaBarque Creek organization.

The Labarque Creek, as it runs through the Divine property, has no stretch as deep and swimmable as this one. Because it changes its shape after big rains, once in a while there's a swimmin' hole.