Spring in Kansas

Wow. I knew it had been a while since I posted, but I had no idea it's been almost 2 months! No wonder blog entries are floating around my brain constantly these days: I haven't given myself a good chance to clear them out lately.

Be that as it may, I have to write and celebrate the beginning of spring.

Of course, I'm in Kansas, so the first rule of thumb is that spring in Kansas is capricious, to say the least. A week ago Wednesday it was 76 degrees F.; last Saturday we woke up to 12 degrees F.; yesterday it was 85 degrees F. I am SOOO glad for our heated and air conditioned house. Sometimes I think it's amazing that any plants or animals can survive this land of extremes.

Saturday was especially humorous, since I woke up to the return of deep cold outside, then shortly thereafter found the first tick of the year...unfortunately crawling on my head. Presumably I have one of the cats to thank for that gift.

Truthfully, I've been talking to the weather gods for the last several weeks, asking for colder temperatures for a while still. I really hate early springs, since they are so often accompanied by the heartbreak of a late, killing frost. The weather gods have not been listening to me however...except maybe for that brief sop to their conscience at the end of last week. I gave up begging yesterday. Something in the air got to me...and I've suddenly turned a psychological corner now, where my mind and body are screaming, "It's spring! Get outside and get busy! Grow, plants, grow!"

Of course, also typical of Kansas, after 2 years of major moisture (literally record-setting last year), the skies have turned off and we've had almost no moisture at all for the entire winter. Things aren't critical yet, but I'd sure be happy to see a few days of heavy drizzle. Given the lack of rain, my first tasks this spring have ended up revolving around watering, as deeply as I have the patience for.

That's not all bad, as it gives me a relaxing time to see what's coming up. Crocuses, both established and newly planted last fall, are in full bloom. Tulips and daffodils are in various stages of leaf emergence, while the grape hyacinths are just beginning to peek through. (The latter is surprising me, because I remembered grape hyacinths as being one of the earlier spring bulbs.) Summer phlox, some of the salvias, and the hairy phlox have all developed healthy new sprouts and it's time to cut back whatever remains of last year's foliage.

I'm really curious to see what has made it through the winter. I planted late last year, especially in the back courtyard, so I don't know how well established many of those plants were before winter's cold and dry hit. We've also had an overabundance of hispid cotton rats, thanks both to that record-setting moisture last year and to the fact that I'm leaving the tall grass tall. The cotton rats are not a problem as far as invading the house goes, but they sure do eat a lot of vegetative matter.

The lilac leaves are beginning to open, which seems terribly early to me, and the buds on the Callery pears are swollen, fuzzy and showing promise of white.

The final switch into spring fever came last night, though. We had the sliding door open in the kitchen, enjoying the warm evening air. Sitting at the table I first heard migrating songbirds overhead, then the first of the chorus frogs singing in the draw. Future freezes or not, spring is here for the year.

Fragmentation and Mosaic Building

Sometimes a theme seems to repeat itself time and time again in my life, knocking at my mental door saying, "Notice me! Notice me!"

I've been having one of those times over the last few weeks, and the theme that keeps repeating itself has been that of life breaking, things breaking, ecosystems breaking...and the restoration of functional, even beautiful, objects and lives through rebuilding, creating mosaics, and puzzling together the pieces.

Tonight I finished reading Pinhook, by Janisse Ray, a short book subtitled Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land. In it, Ray is telling the story of Pinhook Swamp, an important natural connection between the great Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia and the Osceola National Forest in the panhandle of Florida. There has been a push in recent years to purchase the "land" of Pinhook to complete this connection (in the human, legal "world", that is) and thus to restore a large natural area to some semblance of integrity and intact functioning.

Ray tells her story, ironically enough, in fragments: chapters, with interspersed sections of paragraphs that give ecological or social commentaries. These interspersed commentaries become almost like a voice-over in a television documentary, or like a learned professor pointing out the deeper significance of what we're reading.

Pinhook is a tale of an ongoing attempt to heal fragmentation in our natural world through repurchase and restoration. Terry Tempest Williams' Finding Beauty in a Broken World, which I read recently, explored the effect of fragmentation on prairie dogs and humans and looked to mosaic as a metaphor for healing that fragmentation.

Fragmentation and rebuilding has been appearing in my fictional reading as well. Broken for You, by Stephanie Kallos, is a fictional narrative that explores healing human brokenness through a mosaic of new human ties. Olive Kitteredge, by Elizabeth Strout, builds a portrait of a woman through the mosaic of stories showing how she has affected other lives around her throughout her lifetime.

Bringing all of these themes of fragmentation and rebuilding together into Prairiewolf's and my lives as we settle further into our "new" environs, our days are increasingly being made beautiful through a mosaic of old and new friends, and our land is becoming increasingly healthy (hopefully!) through a slow restoration of the mosaic pieces of native prairie flora and fauna.

Fragmentation of the old. Rebuilding, restoring or simply building something totally new from the pieces of the old. Life mimics art; art mimics life. And so it goes.

The Richness of *Now*

"Somedays I live more fully than others."

That thought was drifting lazily through my mind this morning as Prairiewolf and I snuggled together, enjoying an early Sunday morning. I could see the full moon shining brightly through the trees outside the window, the bed was warm and cozy, Prairiewolf's breathing was steady and deep, the house was quiet. Becker was asleep beside the bed, the cats were curled at our feet.

Days when I notice such simple pleasures become especially rich, and I realize how truly lucky I am.

If I stop and take a few deep breaths, it's amazing how many such moments are packed into each day. Right now even qualifies: I'm sitting at the kitchen table, typing. It's dark outside and Prairiewolf has just gone up to bed. Becker is lying beind me; Strider (our 2 year old English setter) is standing beside me, encouraging me to pet him while I type; T.J. (our older, orange cat) is sitting on one of the other kitchen chairs, watching me and Strider; while Ranger (our young, black kitten) has just skittled in to join us and liven things up a bit. Currently Ranger is trying to balance himself on the narrow wooden back of T.J.'s chair, egging T.J. to quit being such a "chair potato" and play with him.

It relaxes me and soothes me just to notice these quiet moments and daily details and to encourage myself to sink into them...so I don't understand why it seems so hard to do this on a regular basis. Entire weeks can go by where I forget to stop and simply be totally present in the current moment.

However, I guess I shouldn't question it too much, I should just sink back into relaxation and appreciation of this current instant in time. I'm content and happy in these moments - and that's an amazingly rare gift in this day and age.

Best Reads of 2008

Today I received the e-mail from Watermark Books with their employees' lists of "Best Books Read in 2008". It sparked my curiosity, so I got out my list of books from this year and thought back over them. (In 2003, I started keeping a list of books I read in the back of my journal.)

I read 9 fewer books this year than last year. That's not surprising, as my life was busier this year, with volunteer activities and gardening, than it was last year. My general feeling throughout the year has been that the books I was reading weren't as memorable as last year's books, but when I started thinking of them one by one, I realized I had actually read quite a few gems.

Here are my favorites from among the 38 books that I remembered to write down:

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.
While I was reading this book, my feelings were that I really liked and admired the first section (eating), but felt that the second (praying) and third (loving) sections were too self-conscious. In dipping back into the book occasionally, when it has been referenced in conversations or in other books, I have found that it actually contains many good thoughts for me to chew on. (Pun somewhat intended.)

Sky Time in Gray's River by Robert Michael Pyle
I love the subtitle of this book, "Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place." Pyle writes of his home, and the people, plant and animal communities around it, in southwestern Washington. The particulars are very different from my spot here in southcentral Kansas, but sense of being embedded in the human and natural communities is very similar to what is so important to me. Two quotes from this book sum up the feelings that resonate in me as I read it, "I live where I do so I can look out or walk outside at any time and instantly be within 'nature'," (p. 6), and "I know of no better way to get to the heart of a place than through its phenology - the progression of the seasons as told by its animal and plant appearances," (p. 110).

Walking the High Ridge by Robert Michael Pyle
Sky Time... was so good that I ordered and read another book by Pyle. Walking the High Ridge is essentially his autobiography, especially as concerns his love of the environment and of writing. It fascinated me to read how this naturalist has been able to turn his passions into a way of life that not only supports him, but also allows him to awaken an answering awareness of and passion for nature in others.

Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore
I wasn't going to include this book in my list originally, but as I glanced through it, I realized that it's been speaking to me a lot this year. I've fought depression frequently throughout my adult life, and these past 2 years have been particularly difficult in that regard. This book both encourages the reader to "mine" such difficult times for ways to enrich your life and to live your life more deeply. One quote I particularly cherish, "The soul is fulfilled by the ordinary." (p. 298) As I write this, I'm looking outside at a particularly beautiful sunset filled with deep peach and coral clouds against a teal sky. The black silhouettes of the trees against all this color are sharply still except for the movement of a few last sparrows heading to roost. Even at this moment, my soul is being filled with the beauty of this particular "ordinary" sight.

Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky
Not just a fast paced story with a particularly current conflict, this novel is gifted in catching and highlighting many of the paradoxical personalities living side by side in modern day Kansas...and probably in most small towns across our country.

Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Morag Prunty
Both a cure for any tendency towards believing in "happily ever after" and a cautionary tale to appreciate what you have in your closest relationships, this story really made me think about reality vs. appearances in marriages, our own ability to affect our happiness through our expectations, and other similarly weighty subjects. Yet the story was well written and enjoyable, not the "downer" it so easily could have been.

In Praise of the Unfinished by Julia Hartwig
This collection of poems is by a Polish poet who is highly celebrated in her own country, but this is apparently the first time her poems have been translated into English. I chanced upon this collection one day in Barnes & Noble and picked it up on a whim. It's wonderful.

Thirst by Mary Oliver
Another collection of poems, this one made it through a doubly serendipitous selection this year. First, I picked it up at Barnes & Noble on the same day that I picked up Hartwig's book, also on a whim. (Although in the case of Mary Oliver, I know and love many of her poems, so my "whim" was grounded in the knowledge that I was likely to like at least a few of the poems in the book.) Then, one sleepless night when I had been thinking about what I wanted to do next during my life, I happened to pick up this book and open it. The first poem, "Messenger," starts off, "My work is loving the world," and seemed like a direct answer to my thoughts. The words still tumble around and around in my head.

Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
In October, I wrote an entry about this book (and a lecture Prairiewolf and I attended by its author). It definitely rates on my "Best Reads of 2008" list.

My Antonia by Willa Cather
Another book that I blogged about after reading it this fall. Incredibly memorable, especially if you are a prairie person.

Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams
An interesting 3 part juxtaposition of mosaic building, studying prairie dogs, and visiting Rwanda. Just trying to decide what to write about this book puts me into a philosophical discussion with myself. An interesting look at both the best and worst in human nature.

A Simpler Way by Margaret Wheatley
This was recommended by a friend and is actually written for the business community. Without Kelly's recommendation, I would never have picked it up, but this book is excellent encouragement to reframe how we look at life and I'm very glad I read it. (I've already passed it along to another friend.) Instead of always looking for the one "right" answer, Wheatley proposes that we realize there are usually many possible "answers" to any one situation and suggests that we enjoy playing with life's various possibilities instead of constantly worrying about being "wrong." Life instantly becomes playful and creative, rather than feeling like one long exam which (in bad times) we feel we are flunking. A wonderful concept!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrow
A story of life on the island of Guernsey during World War II, this tale is told entirely through letters back and forth between a variety of different correspondents. It's heart-warming, tragic, historic, and uplifting all at the same time - an excellent read that left me feeling wistful but warm, certain that love and community go on despite tragedy and sometimes horrific circumstances.

I like this exercise of looking back over what I've read this year. I feel like I'm reconnecting with friends! What have your favorite reads been this year?

The Power of Focused Attention

There has been a sad news story that has garnered national attention and an outpouring of generosity lately: the plight of over 100 pit bulls found at a farm in Oklahoma, chained with little or no food, water, or adequate winter shelter. Four of the dogs have either died or had to be euthanized because of their poor condition. Volunteers are caring for the rest of them right now, but their eventual fate is still up in the air. Obviously socializing has not been a major part of their life, and unsocialized adult pit bulls are potentially very dangerous.

Buried in this morning's article, though, was a fact that I found as sad or sadder than the plight of these dogs: apparently in Oklahoma alone, over 100 pit bulls are euthanized EVERY DAY at animal shelters across the state.

It's national news when this number of poorly treated dogs is found in one site. It's business as usual when this number of poorly treated dogs is spread out daily across a state.

Sometimes I'm appalled at what we accept as normal in our country.

Black Cat Battles

Have you ever heard of a cat who is addicted to electrical shocks?

I think we may have one.

Our six month old kitten, Ranger, has developed a VERY frustrating - not to mention dangerous and expensive - habit: he loves to chew on electrical cords.

First I noticed that the adapter cord for the weather radio was in 3 pieces, with numerous other chew marks along it's length.

Next it was the adapter cord for the digital photo frame. It looked suspiciously like the weather radio cord...except, to be fair, it was only in 2 pieces.

The third casualty was the adapter cord for my new laptop. Ranger didn't actually get all the way through this one, just put enough holes in it that I felt much safer spending $100 to get a new one.

However, the most impressive incident was the night after Thanksgiving. That night he went for the big shock and chewed into the floor lamp cord. Single-mouthedly he was able to brown out the entire house, not to mention burning out the lamp and fluorescent bulb therein. He did not appear shocked at all by his experience.

Now we were not only irritated, we were beginning to get scared. What if he did this when we weren't home? He could burn the house down. That trick earned a night shut up in a cat kennel while we tried to figure out what to do.

We discussed our options which, frankly, weren't all that great. Hot sauce on the cords hadn't seemed to phase him. We could make him an outside cat, which neither of us wanted, or return him to the pound, which we wanted even less. We opted for throwing him outside when he got too rowdy.

Unlike most cats, he hates being outside. If big brother Becker is around, Ranger shadows him, rubbing fondly against his legs. Otherwise he tends to sulk under the potting bench, darting for the door the first time it opens.

This strategy seemed to be working for about a week. Then last Saturday, both Prairiewolf and I lost our internet connections almost simultaneously. Our first thought was that the internet had temporarily gone down. Prairiewolf's next thought was that Ranger had been under his feet briefly just a few seconds before. He checked the cords - sure enough, the telephone line between the modem and the wall plug was toast. This time it had only taken one chew zone and about 30 seconds. Ranger was obviously perfecting his technique.

On Sunday night I noticed him playing under the livingroom end table. Outside he went, but not before he had bisected the adapter cord for the telephone cradle.

The pound was looming closer. A night's sleep let us cool down a bit, so the next morning I took our problem to our vet. Unfortunately she had no words of wisdom for us. This was a "difficult problem with no easy answer."

But Prairiewolf asked a question in passing that got me thinking, "Do you think we have enough toys around for him to play with?"

We'd showered Ranger with toys when we first got him, but slowly they had disappeared...under furniture, broken, into that great pet toy heaven in the sky. I hadn't noticed their disappearance since Ranger played endlessly with our other cat, T.J. Then, too, he amused himself (and us) by doing gymnastic leaps and twirls off the sliding glass door after imaginary monsters. He had learned the fine art of unrolling massive streams of toilet paper across the bathroom floor and out into the hall, complete with multiple Braille-like notations along the t.p.'s entire length. He even made it a point of honor to never miss the fascinating sight of water swirling around the toilet bowl every time it was flushed.

With all that excitement, could he possibly just be bored?

I dug out the few cat toys I hadn't given him before. Most were batted around a bit, but didn't cause overwhelming excitement. Then I hung up the squeaky mouse on the elastic string. Ranger couldn't get enough of it. I watched him for several minutes, then went back to other chores, smiling to myself about his enthusiasm. A few minutes later I noticed a pitiful meowing coming from the laundry room doorway. When I checked it out, Ranger was perplexedly looking at his new toy, the elastic string stuck over the back of the door with the mouse decidedly out of his reach. I released the mouse and Ranger immediately set about conquering it again. A few minutes later, the meowing began again. Again I rescued the mouse. This went on for over an hour before Ranger finally got tired and let the poor mouse rest a bit.

The second go-around began a few hours later...but this time the mouse's harness wasn't up to the assault. Fifteen minutes into another serious round of pouncing, the plastic rod suspending the mouse on its elastic cord broke irrevocably. I tied the mouse around the door handle, but it just wasn't the same.

We have since gone out and splurged on more cat toys, looking particularly for squeaky mouse-shaped models. Most of the ones we could find on elastic cords didn't squeak, unfortunately, so we had to settle for more feline powered ones. I'm putting them out slowly, one at a time, being sure to keep a few back for novelty's sake.

I'm hoping we're over the electric cord phase, but I'm probably being overly optimistic. Keep your fingers crossed for us, please. And if you've ever dealt with this problem, especially if you've solved it successfully, I'd love to get your input. Both my preventive ideas and my patience are wearing thin, and I really don't want to test our electrical luck more than we already have, but Ranger is generally a charming member of our family and I certainly don't want to have to send him back to the pound.

As I finish writing this, Ranger has attacked his latest squeaky mouse and is busily conquering it as it "scurries" from room to room. I'm hoping against hope that the answer really is this simple.

People of Kansas

Several weeks ago, I was talking with a couple friends about Studs Terkel, the author whose specialty was to interview people from all walks of life and capture their thoughts and feelings in printed collections published as books. I've read several of his books, and there are several more calling to me.

Neither of my friends had read any of Studs Terkel's work, but they asked if I had ever heard of "Hatteberg's People"? I hadn't.

They explained that Larry Hatteberg was a reporter at one of the local television stations, and that he had been doing a series on people from around Kansas for years. It sounded a lot like Studs Terkel's work to them, but in a different medium.

This morning I finally got around to checking out their recommendation, and I'm hooked.

Here are two of my favorite interviews so far:

Harold Seipel has been the custodian and caretaker for Harper County Courthouse, one of the area's old courthouses, for 50 years now.

At 103, Martha Smith has the distinction of being the oldest librarian in the oldest library in Kansas. She's worked there since 1926.

These are lives lived deep and rich and embedded in their communities. They are almost the antithesis of modern life, but I have to believe they have important messages for us to consider about meaning and happiness and connectedness.

Prairie Wings

I took my two canine walking buddies, Becker and Sunny, out back through the pasture late this afternoon. It was a gray afternoon, but the weather had warmed to a reasonable level and there was little wind.

As we walked, an orange marker caught my attention. I'd been debating leaving the flags until next spring, but now I went over to the long piece of wire and pulled on it. The damp soil released it easily, so I started slowly working my way through the grasses, pulling up every one I could find. It would make finding the emerging plants harder in the spring, but if we burned, I wouldn't be stuck with lumps of melted orange plastic on almost invisible wires all through the healing grassland.

Prairiewolf, who was out hunting, called on the cell phone, so I stopped to talk with him, facing north as I stood with the dogs wrestling at my feet. A movement caught my eye, a flash of white.

It was a female northern harrier. Her rich brown plumage tended to melt into the background of the leafless trees above the grass, but the white rump patch marked her every movement. I stood mesmerized as she skimmed along, just a few feet above the tops of the grasses, dipping from side to side, floating a bit, then taking a few wingbeats and doing a sudden abrupt turn-about to float back the way she'd just come. Every once in a while, she would hover for a bit, raising my hopes that she was about to stoop on a cotton rat in the grass, but she never did. They must have been taunting her, though, with brief glimpses or tempting rustlings, because she kept patrolling the same area over and over, sure that there would be an unwary tidbit for her if she was just persistent enough.

For a while I sat in the grass watching, my head at the same height as the seedheads of the silver bluestem. It made it harder to see her from far away, though, so eventually I abandoned that perspective and stood again.

Some neighbor teenagers pulled their truck to the back of their property and started target shooting, distracting my attention. By the time I looked for the harrier again, I couldn't find her, so I resumed my walk, pulling flags as I went. I caught a glimpse of her twice more, but never for long. I hope she feasted bountifully today; she certainly fed my spirit well as she shared time with me, however briefly.

Better Than A Garage Sale

Back in early August, I read a particularly intriguing post on Musement Park, one of the blogs I enjoy looking in on when I get a few minutes to browse the web. It was on freecycling, an updated form of passing on things you can't use to other people who can.

It took me a couple months, but I finally researched freecycling a little more and signed on to the local group. I'm hooked now.

The mission statement of the overarching organization is relatively simple and quite self-explanatory:

"Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community."

Here in Wichita, it works like this: You sign up with the local group, which is simply a Yahoo group. Besides requesting your e-mail and so forth, they ask that you make a VERY short statement explaining why you are interested in joining the freecycle network. (Note: I had to rewrite my statement about 5 times to get it short enough. Brevity is obviously of great value here.) The moderator takes a look at what you've said and, assuming you haven't written that you intend to rip off everyone you contact, admits you to the group. There is a series of "rules of the road" to read through, and you are off and running.

So far I've used the site to pass along 3 rather large items (a desk in need of repair, a sink and a gun cabinet) that were way too good to throw away, but hardly enough to hold a garage sale for. In all 3 instances, I had multiple responses and the hardest part was choosing who to reply to. Each time the item was gone in short order, best of all to someone who really seemed to be able to use it.

No money is ever involved. This is simply a process of gifting someone else with something they can use which you, for one reason or another, no longer have a use for yourself. I have seen everything from kittens, puppies and animal supplies to used magazines to furniture to clothing to food to building supplies to garden plants listed, and I've been a member for less than a month. It's almost worth a "what's the oddest thing you've seen offered - and taken" sort of article. At the very least, it's addicting to watch the continual parade of stuff.

Give it a try! You might be surprised what you can pass along...or find.

Coyotes and Red-Tails and Owls, Oh My!

Now that most of the leaves are gone from the trees and the cold weather is creeping in, I'm noticing a return of the major winter predators to our homestead.

Last Thursday was a particularly interesting day. When I took our puppy Sunny for an energy-release walk out in the back pasture, I noticed coyote scat (droppings), both old and new. Three sets of scat, to be precise. I'm assuming the coyotes have moved in to feast on the hispid cotton rats and other rodents that are making such glorious sets of runways through our grass back there.

On our way back to the house, I looked up to see a pair of red-tailed hawks in the trees of the draw. We had a pair that seemed to nest in the area late last winter, so this may be the same pair returning. I haven't seen them for most of the summer; I'm excited to have them back.

Last of all, that night we heard a pair of great horned owls calling to each other from the draw. We've had barred owls in the area ever since we moved in almost 2 years ago, but this is the first time we've heard great horned owls.

About 2 weeks ago, I found the mutilated body of a barred owl in our front yard. I didn't examine it too closely at the time, because I didn't want Becker going back to it and helping me "dispose of it" in his own special way. When I went out the next morning, sans Becker, to take a closer look, it was gone. I suspect the coyotes feasted on it somewhere during the night.

At the time, I was trying to decide how the barred owl had died. It was obviously wounded around the face in some way, based on the raw flesh that I could see (and the facial features I couldn't see) from about 30 feet away. I was concerned that a neighbor might have shot it but, without looking at it more closely, that was pure speculation. Other thoughts that crossed my mind were that it had been hit by a car at night, or that it had somehow misjudged a stoop and collided hard with a guidewire on the telephone pole nearby. Now I suspect that it was a victim of the great horned owls moving in.

One of these days I'm going to collect some of the coyote scat and dissect it to see what animals they are feeding on. And I'll keep my eyes peeled for owl pellets, both so I learn where they are roosting and so that I can learn what they are feeding on too. Meanwhile, I'm just going to enjoy the sight of red-tailed hawks soaring during the day, and the sounds of coyotes howling and great horned owls hooting at night. More interesting layers in the ecosystem that is our slowly recovering yard.

It's FeederWatch Time!

One of my favorite wintertime activities is feeding the birds. I feed year 'round, but the birds use the feeders more and are more visible in the winter, which makes it even more enjoyable. In a way, feeding birds takes the place of growing flowers during this quiet season of the year.

Many years ago I joined Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's FeederWatch program. It's a coordinated "citizen science" data collection project, keeping track of trends in the birds that come to people's feeders all across the country.

To help make it manageable but relatively consistent from site to site, FeederWatch traditionally has had each feeder watcher observe and record bird activity carefully for 2 consecutive days during each 2 week period during the winter months, beginning in November. Now, with online data reporting, you can do 2 consecutive days each week, if you so desire.

So that's what I'm aiming for this winter. Last week was my first count period. As usual, by watching closely, I noticed birds that I hadn't seen this winter coming into my count area. Last week it was a yellow-rumped warbler, a spotted towhee, and a female red-bellied woodpecker. Today, the first of my 2 day count period for this week, I "netted" a pair of Carolina wrens and a mockingbird. Plus I noticed a small flock of cedar waxwings just beyond the courtyard hedge that is my official count boundary.

I've seen all these birds before in our yard, but this is the first time I've noticed them at or around the feeders this fall.

Because of the online data reporting, I received feedback last week that I'm seeing unusually large numbers of white-crowned sparrows for this early in the season. That's rather fun to know. And because of more carefully monitoring the feeding birds, I noticed 2 abnormalities in the immature white-crowned sparrows last week: one with a wound on its side, and one missing its tail. I saw the wounded one again today, looking like the wound had healed quite a bit, but I haven't seen the tailless one since last Tuesday.

Most of all, the FeederWatch is just another tool to help keep me observing the wildlife in our yard, especially when it's all too easy to cocoon inside and simply try to keep warm. And it does a darn good job of that.

How Ignorant of Our Own Country's Wildlife Are We?

Before I shelve My Antonia, I have to comment on something I found deeply disturbing, a symptom of how disconnected our culture is becoming from our land.

First, however, I need to set the stage by commenting about how impressed I was with some of Cather's ecological observations. Given her writing in this novel, she would have made a fine ecologist* if that had been her goal. For example, she talks about elderberry like this, "The elder bushes did not grow back in the shady ravines between the bluffs, but in the hot, sandy bottoms along the stream, where their roots were always in moisture and their tops in the sun."

Another ecological observation that impressed me was her description of a prairie dog town....

"Sometimes I rode north to the big prairie-dog town to watch the brown, earth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nests underground with the dogs.... We had to be on our guard there, for rattlesnakes were always lurking about. They came to pick up an easy living among the dogs and owls, which were quite defenseless against them; took possession of their comfortable houses and ate the eggs and puppies."

At another point in the story, Cather has Antonia and Jim stopping by a prairie dog town to explore a bit....

"...Antonia suggested that we stop at the prairie-dog town and dig into one of the holes. We could find out whether they ran straight down, or were horizontal, like mole-holes; whether they had underground connections; whether the owls had nests down there, lined with feathers. We might get some puppies, or owl eggs, or snake-skins.
The dog-town was spread out over perhaps ten acres. The grass had been nibbled short and even, so this stretch was not shaggy and red like the surrounding country, but gray and velvety."

These are very accurate descriptions of prairie dog towns, including a couple of their "companion" animals, burrowing owls and prairie rattlesnakes.

However, in the introduction written by Marilyn Sides, an author and senior lecturer in the English Department at Wellesley in Massachusetts, Sides refers to Cather's descriptions of the prairie dog towns in such a way that it is obvious she doesn't have a clue what a prairie dog or prairie dog town is. She is commenting on the almost total lack of a Native American presence in this novel when she writes, "The only truly original inhabitation seems to be the prairie dog town, which may allude to a kind of Indian pueblo (in 1916 Cather had toured the pueblos of Taos and the ancient pueblo ruins of Mesa Verde)...."

Not only did Marilyn Sides not know what prairie dog towns are, but the editing staff of Signet Classics evidently didn't know either. Prairie dogs are keystone species in the prairie ecosystem. They are part of the prairie lore and mythology of this country. How do you comment on a book, even a novel, about the prairie and not have the faintest idea what a prairie dog is or how and where they live? Especially when the author is describing so many of the prairie animals and their habitats in such straightforward but beautiful prose?!

It's long past time that we include studies of our local and national wildlife and our ecosystems in our basic education system. Kids don't get out and explore wild areas like they used to 50 years ago, so that sort of basic knowledge is literally being lost. While teaching 1st graders about rainforests is theoretically fine, I think it's far more important that they learn first about the native plants and animals that live around them. There's time enough for understanding rainforests after the kids learn prairies and deciduous forests and American deserts.

It's time we all learn our natural neighbors and neighborhoods again.



* Note: The science of ecology, with its understanding of communities of plants and animals that are dependent on each other for existence, was not widely recognized until many years after Cather wrote.

Revisiting My Antonia

I read My Antonia many, many years ago. I wasn't impressed. The very likeable hero and heroine didn't get together, for reasons my adolescent heart just couldn't fathom. Not much else mattered...at least as far as I remember my long-ago reaction some 35-40 years later.

Fast forward to several weeks ago. Wichita was participating in The Big Read, and Willa Cather's My Antonia had been selected as the book for all of us to explore. Having a few more experiences under my belt, I decided to give it another try. Not only were there several interesting sounding public discussions being offered, but Willa Cather has a reputation as the first major prairie author, and I've been somewhat obsessively reading prairie writers as I reacclimate to life in Kansas.

I loved the book. I understand now why Jim and Antonia would never have been happy together - they had different dreams and different needs for their lives. Furthermore, although Jim's life was much more successful in terms of typically lauded actions (he became a top lawyer for a national firm in New York City, married to a socially prominent and rich woman), I suspect it is Antonia's life that was ultimately richer and more satisfying. She may have remained in Nebraska, married a farmer, had a physically hard life and become "nothing but" a farmer's wife and mother to a passel of kids, but her happiness and pride shines in her eyes and in the eyes of her family when Jim finally visits her after 20 years away. In a loveless marriage with no children, his life suddenly seems rather empty...at least to me.

However, it is Cather's descriptions of the prairie as it is being settled that really sunk into my imagination. Cather herself moved from Virginia to Red Cloud, Nebraska, when she was 10 and she lived there for about 12 years before heading back east. She arrived in 1883 and left in 1895 after graduating from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, essentially spending her entire adolescence in this half wild landscape. I feel like she offers me a rare moment of time travel back to see what the prairie looked like before so much of it disappeared between the hedgerows and under the plow....

"...this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it."

"Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it as tall as I.... The little trees were insignificant against the grass. It seemed as if the grass were about to run over them, and over the plum-patch behind the sod chicken-house."

"As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."

"I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass."

"The road ran about like a wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide and shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbon across the prairie."

"Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellow leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver trees in fairy tales."

"All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day. The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death - heroes who died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day."

Towards the end of the novel, Cather speaks through Jim as he returns to Nebraska after many years away...

"I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modeling of human faces."

My psyche resonates to that statement. I think the lands we come to know well in our lives will always be a part of us in a deep and timeless way. The prairie obviously touched Cather's soul. Her gift was (and is) to share that experience with the rest of us.

Attempting to Begin Restoration Effort Assessments

During this recent growing season, I've tried to keep track of the species that I've identified growing throughout our entire 10 acres, keeping separate lists for the area east of the draw, west of the draw and for the back 5 acres. It's not a terribly scientific undertaking, in that I haven't done transects or any other statistical sampling method, but I have done my best to identify what I've seen.

[One disclaimer here: I'm identifying plants based primarily on wildflower guides (of which I have 6 that I use). That means that I may be misidentifying unusual species as more common ones. Then there's the issue that if the plant isn't blooming or seeding out, I'm probably missing it altogether. Sedges, especially, have been tough for me. I know I have several species of sedge scattered throughout the yard, but I have no guide that makes me feel at all confident about identifying even one of them.]

Recently I started reading a classic on prairie restoration, The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook. The authors in this book caution that there are few good remnants of tallgrass prairie left, therefore most restorations will begin with land that has been compromised in one way or another. So one of the first topics they cover is how to begin assessing what you are starting with, as a basis for deciding how to proceed with the restoration and for figuring out whether your restoration attempts are moving you in the direction that you want to be moving.

One of the assessment tools they talk about is called the coefficient of conservatism (C or CoC, depending on the source). This is a number from 0 to 10 that is assigned to native plant species based on, in essence, their weediness and desireability within a high quality prairie. A rating of 0 is a widely distributed, weedy species in no need of conservation; a rating of 10 is a rare (possibly endangered) species found only in high quality prairies.

Last spring, Brad Guhr (of Dyck Arboretum) kindly forwarded a list of the coefficients of conservatism for plants species found in Kansas. Last night I used this list to figure out the mean CoC for each of the 3 areas on which I've have been compiling lists. My statistical methodology, for anyone who should happen to care, was simply to look up the coefficient of conservatism for each of the species that I had listed, count the total number of species on the list for that area, then divide the former by the latter.

Using this method, the area east of the draw has a mean CoC of 2.21; the area west of the draw has a mean CoC of 2.31; and the back 5 acres (the area we burned this spring) has a mean CoC of 2.64. That puts all 3 zones firmly in the "Who the heck knows what to do with this plot" category. Seriously. Although, of course, they phrased it a little more elegantly in the book.

So far, the worst plant I've found on this site is Johnson grass (Sorghum halepense). Based on their coefficient of conservatism, the best plants I've found are spring ladies' tresses (Spiranthes vernalis, CoC 8), narrow-leaved milkweed (Asclepias stenophylla, CoC 7), white prairie clover (Dalea candida, CoC 7), and leadplant (Amorpha canescens, CoC 7).

Plus as I started reading this book, I found one big positive for our site that I had never considered before: the soil is basically intact. It has never been plowed, nor has it been subject to massive erosion or reshaping. Given that plus, I'm determined not to use the "Roundup the whole darn mess, plow it up, and start fresh with seed that you buy or collect" method of prairie re-establishment.

So for starters our negatives are
1) overgrazing,
2) introduction of exotics,
3) lack of burning for years,
4) overgrowth of shrubs, young trees, and weedy species, and
5) small site size.

As I read, I feel like I've been on the right track. So far I've been keeping grazing off (at least for now), burning, using Roundup selectively, and overseeding with desireable species. Especially in the area we burned, I know that quite a few species showed up this year that I didn't see last year.

It's reassuring to know that my instincts have been reasonably good so far. Now if I can just keep threading my way through this continuing maze....

"Insects and Gardens"

Before I quit posting for the day, I want to recommend a great book for anyone who wants to learn more about insects - or for anyone who gardens.

The book is Insects and Gardens by Eric Grissell, and it is a wonderfully readable book that discusses, often humorously, the roles that insects play in our gardens and our yards. The pictures are phenomenal too, making my photos look like the amateurish attempts that they are.

For anyone looking for Christmas gifts for a gardener or a budding naturalist, I can't think of a better gift to add to your Christmas list!

The Flying Confetti Garden, Part IV

The last insects that I'm going to highlight from my "aster collection" are a pair of bees that are often mistaken for each other - the bumble bee and the carpenter bee. They are about the same size (which means big, about 1" or so) and both are colored black and yellow. There's a straightforward way to tell them apart, though.

The bumble bee, the more "well known" of the two, has a hairy abdomen which is very visible in this photo.... Bumble bees generally nest in the ground in abandoned rodent nests, where a queen bumble bee creates a small colony of workers over the course of the summer. Reproductive males and females are raised in the colonies at the end of summer, and it is only the fertilized young queens that survive the winter to start new colonies the next year.

The carpenter bee, on the other hand, nests in unpainted or soft wood and has a generally hairless abdomen, which is easy to see in this photo. Carpenter bees eat out straight holes into wood, then create a few cells all in a line that they pack with pollen and nectar before laying 1 egg in each cell and capping it. Carpenter bees are often considered pests because of these holes that they create in the trim around porches, doors, railings, etc., but they also nest in dead trees and other wood.

Male carpenter bees, which do not have stingers (egglayers), are particularly noticeable and frightening at certain times of the year, as they zoom back and forth protecting their territory, waiting for females to come along so they can mate. Without stingers, their buzz is much worse than their "bite", but they certainly can be startling and rather disconcerting.

Both carpenter bees and bumble bees are important native pollinators. The photo below of a carpenter bee shows pollen dusting its head and body, pollen that will go along with the bee to the next flower where it can cross pollinate that flower and help create the next generation of plants, as well as the next generation of bees.

With honeybees having so much trouble these days and their populations seemingly in steep decline, native pollinators such as bumble bees, carpenter bees, syrphid flies, butterflies and so forth are all the more important. In some ways, I feel like my asters gathered all of these important insects together to reassure me that diversity and flexibility is the name of the game, at least in nature.

The Flying Confetti Garden, Part III

Syrphid flower flies, jet-winged skippers, little bees with full pollen loads, graceful painted ladies, even black and yellow garden spiders.... That's a good start, but there are many more insects hovering around these seemingly magnetic purple blossoms on the asters.

As the butterflies swirl off the flowers and around me, obviously the painted ladies are not the only butterflies that I see. Here is a black swallowtail who came to nectar this fall, showing obvious signs of having lived a long and adventurous life. Notice how worn out his wings are, almost transparent, and how he has lost one of his beautiful swallowtails.

Sometimes I don't see the actual insect that used the asters, just the remnant that shows me it was there. This shed cicada case is a perfect example. Of course, the cicada wasn't drawn to the aster blooms, just to the stems that it could cling to overnight as it made its final metamorphosis from a digging, underground nymph to a clearwinged, flying adult.

Another insect that probably wasn't drawn to the flowers (or at least not to their nectar) is this katydid, perched jauntily on top of the aster. Katydids eat vegetation, sometimes including the petals and buds of flowers, but they are rarely considered pests like many of the short-horned grasshoppers are.

There is one more pair of insects that I noticed on the asters, but they deserve a post all of their own....

The Flying Confetti Garden, Part II

Continuing on with my enjoyment of all the insect life drawn to my aromatic asters (Aster oblongifolius) this fall, the most obvious insects that I see on the vivid purple flowers are the butterflies. As I walk by, it's their drifting flight that swirls around me and brightens the very air I'm passing through.

While I've seen several different butterfly species drawn to the asters, the most common butterflies I see nectaring on these flowers are the painted ladies. It's not uncommon for my 3' diameter aster to have a dozen or more painted ladies on it at any one time.

Apparently painted ladies live on five different continents, making them the most widespread butterfly on Earth. They can't survive freezing temperatures, so the only adults to live through the winter months are those in the south. In the spring, they migrate northward, occasionally even outpacing the monarchs!

Not surprisingly given their large distribution, the hairy/spiny caterpillars of the painted ladies are generalists, eating thistles, mallows such as hollyhocks, legumes and other plants. Occasionally they occur in such numbers that they become noticed as pests. (I doubt, though, that most people able to identify the caterpillars as painted ladies would be quick to destroy them, even if their hollyhock leaves were getting eaten to a nub.)

As these colorful butterflies descend on my asters, I can easily watch the "ladies" daintily unfurl their tightly rolled tongues and sip nectar elegantly through their straws...

and sometimes I have to witness the end of their graceful lives.

Funny, when the black & yellow garden spider catches and eats a grasshopper or wasp, she seems like a heroine, but when she captures and eats a painted lady, her reputation as a villainess jumps immediately to mind.

No matter what she's eating, the black and yellow garden spider is gaining protein for her eggs, next year's black & yellow garden spiders. Hopefully her prey, the graceful painted lady, has already left progeny to give us next year's painted ladies too. Nature's balance is often difficult to watch objectively, but it's worked for millenia. For our own good, we might be a little less quick to judge and a little slower to interfere in the balance of life.

The Flying Confetti Garden, Part I

The asters have been beautiful in my front garden this year. First the New England asters (Aster novae-angliae) bloomed, joined soon after by the little bargain-bin Lowe's asters (Aster x) that I got for 50 cents last year and stuck in just to see if they'd make it. Just as all of those were beginning to fade, one of the aromatic asters (Aster oblongifolius) started in, and as it hit full bloom, it was joined by the second aromatic aster, which is only now beginning to dim. Looking back over my photos, I've had almost 2 months of aster blooms this fall.

Almost more spectacular than the asters themselves are the insects that are attracted to their blooms. For weeks now when I walk by the asters, a cloud of butterflies and other insects flies into the air, then settles back down again. I feel like I'm surrounded by brightly colored, living confetti!

About 3 weeks ago I spent several hours trying to capture close-up shots of the insects feeding on the aromatic asters. Here are a few of them....

This little bee has full pollen baskets, although she seems to be busily collecting even more to pack in. It always gives me a little thrill to see the pollen baskets on the hind legs of bees. I have no idea why, but I love them. (For scale, the blooms in all of these photos are actually about 1" in diameter.)

To the right is a syrphid fly. These little guys are colored to look like bees or wasps, but they have no stingers and can cause no harm to humans. The adults feed at the flowers, while the larvae are great predators on aphids, making this a very beneficial insect to find in your garden.

I think this little bee to the left is a leafcutter bee, although I'm not completely sure. If I'm right, this is the insect that cuts circular shaped pieces of leaf from roses, green ash and others. It uses the pieces of leaves to line its nest cells. The cells are packed with pollen and nectar and a single egg is laid in each cell. The insect overwinters as a pupa in its cell and emerges in the spring. There is one generation per year. Leafcutter bees do generally cosmetic damage to some leaves, but are important pollinators - a function that is increasingly important as honeybee populations continue to decline.

To the right is a skipper, a common relative of moths and butterflies that rarely seems to get noticed. If you look carefully, you can see the straw-like mouth coming out of the front of the head and curving down into the flower. This species always carries its wings in this "power jet" formation.

I have many more photos of insects from this aster, but time is running away from me for now, so I'll have to add more later.

The Big Freeze Has Arrived

As I write, the ground is covered in silvery frost, the green leaves of the perennials are looking bruised, and the water in the buckets is covered with a not-so-thin layer of ice. It's 29 degrees F. on the breezeway. The first hard freeze of fall has come.

I'm ready. I've enjoyed being out in the garden and the prairie tremendously over the spring, summer and early fall, but I'm beginning to crave cozy days inside, watching the birds through the kitchen window.

I still have a few outdoor projects to finish before I feel like I've put the yard "to bed", so to speak. There are about 100 daffodil bulbs, 100 crocus bulbs, and 20 tulip bulbs sitting on my kitchen counter that need to be planted. I need to harvest the sweet potatoes (if the cotton hispid rats and voles have left me any). I need to do a final weeding, to catch the winter weeds that have suddenly sprung up in the last couple weeks. Last of all, when people start raking their yards, I need to gather leaves, chop them, and put another layer of mulch on the flower beds.

Meanwhile, the first white crowned sparrows and Harris sparrows have shown up in the last week, the green ash have completely lost their leaves, and the natural world is glowing gold with tinges of orange. "It's a most wonderful time of the year."

Exploring the Salt Mines

Normally I seek out sunlight and green, growing things, but every once in a while circumstances take me in the opposite direction. Today was one of those days.

With a group of friends from Clearwater, Prairiewolf and I visited the Underground Salt Mine Museum in Hutchinson. It's only been open for about a year and, like so many locals with their own area tourist sites, we hadn't been to see it yet.

After a slightly daunting safety film, we gathered our courage, geared up and headed down in the hoist. The tour guide was knowledgeable and humorous, while the mine itself was spacious and amazingly pleasant - cool and even temperatures, moderate humidity, and fresh-smelling air. The walls even glittered as the lights reflected off the salt crystals in them!

After a trolley tour during which the guide pointed out geological features, remnants of mining activity from the '30's and '40's, and a variety of features of the mine, we went on a self-guided walking tour, examining the mining equipment, watching videos about the mining process, and learning about some of the interesting items now stored in the hollowed out mining galleries.

Coming back out of the mines, the thought we all seemed to experience at once was disbelief at the amount of activity occurring deep below the seemingly undisturbed surface we were driving over.

There was much more to see than I'd realized, and it was a fun and informative adventure. If you're ever nearby, I'd recommend taking a couple hours to check it out. You'll never look at road salt and table salt in quite the same way again!

Suddenly Seasonal

We left for a weekend trip to San Antonio last weekend and were gone for 4 days. It was late summer when we left...and fall when we returned.

The green ash trees had gone from "streaks" of yellow in their green canopies to "streaks" of green in their yellow canopies. Seemingly overnight, many of the honeylocusts had simply changed with no prior notice, also from green to yellow.

The weather had gone from the mid-80's, requiring the air conditioner, to the mid 50's, requiring the furnace.

Most disconcerting was the apparent disappearance of Charlotte, our newly adopted Argiope spider. For a few days before we left, she had refrained from rebuilding her web across our kitchen sliding door, then she moved away from the door to a spot on the siding about 3 feet away. When we got back from our trip, there was no Charlotte to be seen, but there was a brown ball firmly attached to the siding where she'd been hanging out. Her egg sac. Next year's black and gold garden spiders.

I looked for her body but didn't find it, so I decided that a bird had probably eaten her.

Then just 2 days ago, I spied her! She had moved way up to the eaves, more than 2 stories off the ground at that point on our house. I can't see her now unless I go outside and squint upwards, preferably with the binoculars firmly glued to my eyes, but I'm glad she's there. Who knows? Maybe she'll gather enough energy to lay yet another sac of eggs, ensuring even more garden spiders next year.

Meanwhile, each day brings more signs that summer is wrapping up and winter is fast approaching. I love the clear blue skies, crisp air, and bright fall colors, but I'm not 100% sure that I'm ready for winter yet. Ready or not, it's coming. Then, before I know it, I'll be noticing signs of spring. The rapid cycling of the seasons brings bittersweet poignancy to my heart these days, but thankfulness, too, that I'm lucky enough to notice and revel in it.

Where the Wild Things Are [Or Should Be]

On Monday night Prairiewolf and I had the opportunity to attend a talk given by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder.

This book has been creating quite a stir in the environmental education community since it was published 3 years ago, so I was vaguely familiar with it. I hadn't, however, read it. Louv's lecture was not only interesting, it encouraged me to pick up his book so that I could delve deeper into his research and findings.,

(Note: I've just started reading the book. Most of the following commentary is based on his talk, his "sermonette" as he called it, and on my concerns and observations.)

Louv has been able to pinpoint a phenomenon that many of us, working with children and nature over the years, have noticed. He's gone further, then, to solidify our growing unease into a coherent theory of a radical change occurring within our culture.

That change, to paraphrase Louv, is the growing alienation of our children from nature.

The need of most children to play outside has basically been an accepted part of childhood throughout human history. In fact, for most of human history, all of us, adults and children, spent a great majority of our time outdoors, interacting with the natural world.

It's been such an accepted part of human behavior that no one has thought to study it...or has even thought much about it at all. Until suddenly it's not occurring anymore.

It's still not studied a great deal, for the simple reason that no one stands to make a great deal of money out of proving that children - or any of us - need to be out in nature. However, the studies that are being done show that free play in natural settings not only develops physical muscles, it also develops creativity. Free time in nature helps children deal with stress and helps them learn self sufficiency. Perhaps most important of all, it grounds them to the natural world in a deeply satisfying way that serves to nurture them throughout their lives.

While they may learn facts and interesting information, often about large animals halfway around the world, watching nature on TV is ultimately alienating if it is your primary exposure to the natural world. It sets nature off as "other". Watching a tree's limbs wave on a screen is very different from being up in that same tree, hearing the wind rustle the leaves around you, feeling it ruffle your hair while the branch below you sways as you look out over the surrounding landscape from your hideout deep in the middle of that tree canopy.

Louv has all sorts of data from various studies to back up his concern and his hypothesis, but those of us who have been lucky enough to experience this free exposure to nature in our childhoods can viscerally sense the loss to children who are unable to have these same sorts of experiences.

One other point that I think is very important to make.... It's tempting to point the finger at TV and other electronic devices as the culprits, or even to vilify the children themselves for being too lazy to get up off the couch or floor and go outside, but the problems are much more multi-faceted than that. Where are the children supposed to go play if they do go outside? Our yards are sterile and there is almost no open space left free around our cities. Our litiginous society makes us scared to let other people's children play on our property, and our overblown fear of strangers kidnapping our children makes us afraid to let them out of our sight. We've become dangerously scared of "germs" and "bugs", to the point where we're willing to poison ourselves in a vain attempt to delete natural bacteria, insect and spider populations from our lives. We're even scared to let our children get dirty because "people" might think we're bad parents!

We live in a free country, but we're caging ourselves and our children in a vain attempt to make life "safe" and we're impoverishing ourselves and them in the process. (Of course, that opens many discussion areas beyond this, but I'll save those for another time.)

Even if you can't take the time to pick up Louv's book and read it, I urge you to look around you with the thought of where you would play if you were a child. I think a connection to the wild ultimately makes each of us a little more human.

Spider vs. Wheel Bug: Battle of the Predators

Not that there was much battle about it. Charlotte won, "hands" down! The wheel bug was still alive and literally kicking when I took this photo, but she didn't last long.

Charlotte feasted on her for at least 24 hours, after moving her back to the center of the web.

The interlocking strands of the web of life fascinate me, especially when I get to observe them firsthand...and literally. Why would anyone simply kill off any bugs and spiders they see, rather than get to watch all of this real-life drama right under their nose?

A Bold, Beautiful, Benign Brand of Spider

As I was trying to learn the exact species name for "Charlotte," I came across some other interesting and fun facts that I thought I'd share.

As a starting point, I'd recognized her as a black and gold garden spider (the common name I knew) in the genus Argiope. As I understood it, Argiope spiders were the ones who wove the zigzag pattern into their webs. I was also quite sure that she was female, based on her size and the relative rotundity of her abdomen.

As is often the case, things were a little more complicated than that.

Charlotte is indeed female. She is an Argiope aurantia, also known commonly as the black and yellow garden spider, the writing spider, the yellow garden spider, the corn spider, and a lot of other similar names. These spiders are common around gardens, homes, and open, sunny areas in much of the U.S.

Males of this species (and many other spider species) are much smaller and more slender than the females. In this species, the male finds his way to a female's web at about this time of year. There he lurks around the perimeter, sometimes building a smaller web on the outskirts of the female's web or just nearby. He carefully plucks and vibrates the female's web, ready to make a run for it if necessary, to let her know he's there. After mating, the male usually dies or sometimes is eaten by the female for the extra protein to supply her eggs.

The female then constructs from 1-3 egg sacs of brown silk, each about 1" in diamater with a narrow neck and containing from 300-1400 eggs, which she suspends near the center of her web. She protects the egg sac(s) as long as she is alive, but she will die with the first frost. The eggs hatch that same fall, but the spiderlings remain dormant in the sac until spring, when they exit their sac and disperse. There is one generation per year.

Believe it or not, the bright yellow and black coloring of these spiders actually serves as camouflage in the open, sunlit areas where they usually build their webs.

Black and yellow garden spiders are neat housekeepers, rebuilding the center of their web every night. Actually, when I saw her, Charlotte was working on her web in the early morning hours, just as the sun was coming up. It was fascinating to watch the reconstruction work. As you can see in the photo to the left, first she ate the old web strands, then she would spin the new. Just in the short time I watched, I noted her producing 3 different kinds of silk: the sticky single strand used to make the spiral, a fine strand (presumably not sticky) that makes the cloudy center of the web (the part she's eating in the photo), and a heavy multi-strand silk used to make the zigzag pattern. Add to those the heavier nonsticky strands used to construct the radials and the strands used to make the egg sacs, and Argiope aurantia produces at least 5 distinctly separate types of silk.

Each web has a "free zone" between the central hub and the sticky catching spiral. With only the non-sticky radial lines in this area, the spider is free to move back and forth from one side of the web to the other through this area.

The zigzag pattern woven into the web is called the stabilimentum and is a common feature in the webs of spiders who leave their webs up during the day. At least 78 species of spiders build similar structures in their webs. Since webs with a stabilimentum catch as many as 34% fewer insects than those without, it is thought to be a warning to birds to help them avoid flying through the web and ruining it. Another theory is that it serves as further camouflage for the waiting spider.

Black and yellow garden spiders are important predators on grasshoppers, among other flying insect species. They can catch and eat insects up to twice their own size in their webs.

At the same time, they themselves are eaten by wasps, birds, lizards, and shrews. Their egg sacs are also preyed upon by many other animals, including birds. In fact, one source reported a study showing that 19 species of insects and 11 species of spiders besides A. aurantia emerged from A. aurantia egg sacs.

Last, but certainly not least, black and yellow garden spiders are considered generally harmless to humans. They are very gentle, only biting upon extreme provocation. Their bite usually produces an area of sore, itching swelling that subsides after a couple days. (Note: Individual reactions to any insect or arachnid bite may vary due to individual sensitivity. I would hardly recommending provoking any spider into biting, if it all possible!)

This is a fun type of spider to watch during late summer and fall, when they are the most easily noticed, although not everybody is lucky enough to have their own Charlotte hanging just outside their kitchen door!

Charlotte's Web

"I saw a spider sign her web today."

That's the line that's been singing in my head ever since yesterday morning, when I was allowed to witness a black and gold garden spider rebuild the center of her web.

I first noticed that she'd come to share our home last week, when I saw her in the remains of her web, hanging outside our kitchen sliding door. As I went in and out, she scuttled away to hide in the grill cover that was lying nearby.

When I came down to the kitchen the next morning, her graceful web was spread all the way across the moving side of the sliding door, with the center at nose height. I debated moving her, then decided to let her stay. It's been a little inconvenient, since we can't use that door for now, but being able to watch her daily activivies has been enjoyable. Another up-close-and-personal learning experience for me.

Besides, just seeing her there makes me smile.

As usual, I've done some web research to augment what little knowledge I had about garden spiders. Most of that I'll share in a later post. For now I just wanted to share these photos. The one above is of her weaving the signature into her web. (I was a little surprised - the silk of her signature is spun as multiple strands at once, so making the zigziag actually took her very little time.)

The photo to the left was taken immediately after she finished her daily masterpiece, having "assumed the position" in which she spends her time waiting for her next meal to present itself.

Oh, and by the way.... In my web research, I learned that another common name for this species is writing spider. There could hardly be a more appropriate name. Perhaps I should name our housemate, Charlotte.

Dueling Texters - A Tragicomedic Modern Event

Our nearby little community of Clearwater, Kansas, had its annual Fall Festival a couple weeks ago. The weather was lousy, but turnout seemed better than I expected. As usual, I've at least glanced at articles about the event in the local paper, not really expecting to find out anything useful, but curious to keep learning about our newly adopted hometown.

A photo of 4 teenagers standing under a picnic pavilion roof, intently focused on something in their hands while rain poured down in the background, caught my eye in last week's hometown paper. Reading the article, I don't know whether to laugh or cry....

It seems that attendance at the Fall Festival has been traditionally good for the elementary age and younger set, as well as for the adult crowd, but attendance by the middle school and high school age group has been declining for many years now. In a move of sheer brilliance, the game organizer changed the venue to include lots of different video games and...(wait for it!)...text messaging competitions. The local phone company donated 5 cell phones - one for the judge and 4 for the contestants, preset with judge's phone number. The first of each round of 4 contestants' to text the message, "Let Bygones Be Bygones.", to the judge's phone won. After those "qualifying rounds", there were texting duels in a bracket tournament.

I am in awe of this inspiration for increasing young adult attendance at the Fall Festival. I am also LMAO (to quote my son) at the picture of intense teenaged concentration captured by the paper photographer. At the same time, I'm deeply saddened - is this what our young folks are most entranced by? At the peak of their physical prowess, as they are developing neural pathways that have to stand them in good stead for the rest of their adult lives, it is video games and cell phone texting that draw them into competition and some semblance of communication and participation in community life.

The next few decades could be very interesting. I just wish I were observing from the outside, not roped in as an automatically involved participant in this large scale human development experiment.

Sunny Days

Well, we've gone and done it again. Our household has increased by one - this time a sweetheart of a little English setter puppy whom we've named Sunny.

There's not a lot to say, except that Prairiewolf and I are like kids in a candy shop when it comes to cats and dogs. We never seem to be able to get enough!

Becker's being a great "big brother" and taking little Sunny under his wing...that is, unless she tries to eat his food or take one of his precious sticks! Then she gets told in no uncertain terms that she's the new kid on the block and not approved for those privileges as of yet.

The cats are less than pleased with the new addition. Ranger isn't scared, but he expresses his displeasure by standing at the door to Sunny's crate and growling at her. Of course, he also curls up to sleep in Prairiewolf's lap while Sunny sleeps 6" away on his chest!

It will take us a while, but life will settle back down to its (new) normal rhythm soon.

And I'm taking a sacred vow to myself to stay away from animal shelters, litters of puppies and other areas of temptation...for at least another 6 weeks or so!

Putting Experience in Perspective

I don't normally write about political stuff in my blog, but I have to put up some interesting comparisons tonight.

Sarah Palin, McCain's pick for vice presidential candidate, was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, for several years and has been the governor of the state of Alaska for less than 2 years. This is the sum total of her major political experience.

Compared to Kansas, according to the Rand-McNally atlas that I have (which lists 2000 census numbers)....

City Populations:

Wasilla, Alaska: 5,469

Mulvane, Kansas: 5,155
Abilene, Kansas: 6,543
Pratt, Kansas: 6,570
Augusta, Kansas: 8,423
Haysville, Kansas: 8,502
Wellington, Kansas: 8,647

So Abilene, Pratt, Augusta, Haysville, and Wellington are all bigger than Wasilla, Alaska. That gives me some perspective on her mayoral experience.

The population of Alaska is listed in this atlas as 626,932 people. The comparable figure for Kansas is 2,688,418. So Kansas has roughly 4 times as many people as Alaska. And she's been the governor of Alaska for less than 2 years.

Oh, by the way, Alaska may be the biggest state in terms of land mass, but it is Number 48 in the 2000 census in terms of population.

Based on the response being reported in the national news media, obviously this "vast" experience on Sarah Palin's part has many Republicans thrilled beyond measure, but the thought that this level of experience would be guiding us in the White House should John McCain become incapacitated scares me immensely.

And this choice of a running mate is supposed to give me confidence in John McCain's ability to lead this country competently?

What's That Gold Stuff Tickling My Nose?

It's allergy season. There's pollen everywhere.

The goldenrod is blooming....

But WAIT!!!!

Is it really goldenrod that is causing the problem? It gets blamed all the time. Even my father refuses to have goldenrod in the garden because it "causes his hayfever."

The flower color is gold, but aren't flower colors designed to attract insects for pollination? Why would goldenrod put out the energy to grow golden flowers if it was scattering its pollen to the wind for pollination?

The truth is that goldenrod pollen is too heavy to be carried by the wind. Goldenrod DOES rely on insects for pollination. Instead of producing huge quantities of pollen to scatter widely, goldenrod spends its energy producing flowers that attract those insects.

On the other hand, there are basic green plants growing all around, usually in disturbed areas, that are busy producing green flowers right now. Those unobtrusive green flowers (that I'd be willing to bet you've never noticed) are putting out massive quantities of pollen, because insects don't notice them either.

What are these drab green plants? We know them by the name "ragweed," if we know them at all. They don't care if we know them, and they don't care if anyone notices them. The wind takes care of their pollination needs, and our noses and sinuses are often our only awareness that they exist.

Here's a closeup of giant ragweed flowers beginning to bloom. I've really become rather intrigued by their exotic "Japanese-pagoda-goes-green" looks.

Part of the reason I'm noticing them so much these days is that we have a bumper crop of giant ragweed in the Beyond. It towers a foot or more above my head as I walk the paths, and I've taken many interesting pictures of insects hiding in its foliage.

Luckily I'm not allergic to ragweed pollen. In fact, as I watch the flowers form, ripen and eventually morph into ragweed seed, I'm smiling. Ragweed seed is very high in protein and an excellent wildlife food. Our gourmet breakfast bar for wildlife will be open and wellstocked when winter's cold comes calling in a few months.