Favorite Books of 2007

The folks at Watermark Books published lists of their favorite books in 2007, which made me think that perhaps I ought to do the same. Since January 2008 is almost over, I guess I ought to do it now before it becomes too obsolete to be of interest.

I started keeping lists of the books I was reading about 4 or 5 years ago (in 2003). In 2007, I finished reading 47 books during the course of the year. Almost 1 per week, but far from the one-a-day that I think Prairiewolf suspects me of reading!

As I scan the list, I don't see very many books that I've read before. Only 4, and just 2 of those were mindless "comfort" books. Not bad, for a year's worth of reading.

Other categories, not including my rereads:

8 light, current fiction - mass market type
2 gardening books (cover to cover), about prairie gardening
3 other "reacquaint myself with Kansas" books
17 current fiction
4 memoir types, not including gardening/ranching/wildlife watching memoirs
4 memoir types with a gardening/ranching/wildlife watching focus
1 home remodeling book
1 book on world religions
1 book on ecology
2 self help/self education type books.

Here is a list of some of my favorites, in the order that I read them:

Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich: The idea that certain special objects somehow absorb vibrations from human spirit (esp. in a positive way), and that those objects can then influence other humans around them, intrigues me. And that's one of several interesting themes in this novel.
The World's Religions by Huston Smith: With clashes between various religious groups influencing global politics and even local mindsets, I found it educational to read this informative and positive guide to the various major world religions.
Prairie Erth by William Least Heat-Moon: One of the books I read to reacquaint myself with Kansas, this fascinating, in-depth examination of Chase County, Kansas, helps peel back the layers of culture, history, geology, biology, and so forth that have interacted to influence modern life in a central county of Kansas.
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen: Although the premise of the book (a young man joins the circus as a veterinarian during the Depression) didn't initially excite me, this tale was just plain engrossing. A good read.
Marley & Me by John Grogan: If you have a soft spot for dogs, especially if you've ever owned a less-than-perfect one that you loved dearly despite yourself, this is a "laugh out loud, shed a few tears" stunner of a good dog tale.
That Distant Land by Wendell Berry: A quiet look at connections between the people who populated a Kentucky community over the centuries, this series of stories manages to capture the sense of community that seems to be missing from so much of our modern life.
Buffalo for the Broken Heart by Dan O'Brien: Another book that combines the culture, history, geology and biology of a land, but in this case personalizing it through the telling of the author's struggles to live on his ranch in South Dakota.
Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy: A spot-on rationale for why it's important to use native plants in our landscapes, followed by an exceptionally interesting exploration of many of the different insects that can be found around our homes and yards.

Of course, I also have to admit to the guilty pleasure of loving to read Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series and J.D. Robb's .... in Death series, much as those are somewhat in the "junkfood for the mind" genre.

Last but not least, there were only 3 that I felt were a complete waste of my time. And I don't think that's too shabby for a year's worth of reading.

Wait a Minute and It'll Change

Yep, I'm referring to Kansas weather. I got back from a week's trip to Mobile, Alabama, last Wednesday evening. The next morning the temperature was 8 degrees (F) on our breezeway. Yesterday it got up to 65. This morning it is 23, with an hour's worth of snow and winds up to 30 mph (gusts to 35).

Weather like this, with big swings in temperature and unrelenting wind, is one of the factors that makes living on the prairie so challenging for plants, animals and people alike. I'm sure thankful for a warm, modern house. Huddling around a fireplace with freezing cold air leaking in every crack, as the pioneers would have been doing, just doesn't sound appealing to me.

As I look out over the landscape this morning, it's a study in tan and gray brown and white and dusty olive drab. I think that's what struck me most about being back in Mobile - everything was so incredibly green. And the folks down there were lamenting about the hard freeze they'd had the prior week. Apparently if I'd gone a week earlier, there would still have been salvia and many other flowers in bloom. Oh, well, even the deep rich green of the live oaks, azaleas, yaupon and camellias was refreshing to my more northern eyes.

Oh, one last observation.... On Sunday, when the temperatures got into the low 60's, I saw both a wood roach and a honey bee out and about. Living, active insects. Somehow that seems amazing for January 27th.

Mid-Winter Mulching

Who says gardening has to stop during the winter? Prairiewolf and I took advantage of a relatively warm weekend (highs in the upper 50's to low 60's) to push away the winter blues by working outside.

First we took our Christmas tree in to the recycling point yesterday and picked up some of the free mulch available there. What an excellent program that is! They evidently take a portable chipper around to each of the drop-off points and chip the discarded trees into mulch right in place. The trees don't have to be transported anywhere, saving time and money, and the mulch is perfect to put in shrub beds or under trees. My only problem is a desire to be piggy and take several truckloads of mulch home. Heaven only knows we could sure use it around here!

Today we finally got back to shredding the leaves we picked up earlier this fall. Our month's worth of snow and ice put us way behind the power curve on that project, but today we got another 10 bags or so shredded, and we moved the rest of the bags to the compost area so that they're not "decorating" the front of the garage anymore. In doing this, we discovered another challenge that the last month's weather has created: some of the bags have collected moisture inside them, and the leaves in those bags are almost impossible to shred using our current chipper/shredder. It clogs up. I'm not sure what our solution to this dilemma is going to be yet.

The last part of today's outside work was spreading out some of the (unshredded) leaves whose bags had disintegrated. When I tried to use leaves as mulch last winter, they quickly blew away in the wind, so this time I covered them with a light layer of shredded cedar to try to anchor them in place. Hopefully my little experiment will be successful, because this will make using all our "shredded brown gold" much easier.

I feel good about the weekend's accomplishments: the forsythia by the garage are tucked in with a thick blanket of fresh green mulch, the area nearby smells marvelously of recycled Christmas trees, the front of the garage is once more free of big black plastic bags, our pile of shredded leaves has almost doubled in size, and one big area of bare ground is resting under a trial layer of leaves and cedar mulch.

I think it's time to settle in with a seed catalog or two or three....

Black-Footed Ferrets in Kansas Again

Back in September, I ranted with frustration over attempts to control prairie dog populations in Logan County, Kansas, through a county-government-initiated chemical poisoning campaign (http://gaiagarden.blogspot.com/2007/09/did-i-miss-timewarp-to-1904.html).

On Christmas Eve, I read a follow-up to that story which made me feel much better. The landowners involved, who were already working with the federal government on a plan to re-introduce endangered black-footed ferrets to their land, were able to get a restraining order to stop the county government from doing any further poisoning.

Then on December 18th, 24 black-footed ferrets were actually released on the property involved. Hopefully it will be the start of a healthy rebalancing of the prairie ecosystem in that area, since black-footed ferrets are a primary predator of prairie dogs.

There are still lots of hurdles to get over. For example, they picked mid-December for the release date to allow the black-footed ferrets a chance to establish breeding territories before the spring mating season occurs. However, the winter months on the prairie are a strenuous time of year for any animal, and mortality may be quite high. (In fact, our last big snowstorm came roaring through just 4 days after the ferrets were released.)

Even if most of the released ferrets survive, it will be years before their numbers build up to the point where they truly keep the prairie dog populations in balance. On the other hand, there are other predators like coyotes and rattlesnakes who will be happy to help the ferrets control the prairie dogs, so all the work of rebalancing the prairie won't be left entirely to them.

I'm choosing to be optimistic about the success of the ferrets' reintroduction, because I have to believe that we can learn to work more effectively with natural processes, rather than always working against them. This is an exciting step in that direction.

Now it's up to the ferrets themselves. I must admit I'm feeling some anxious anticipation, wondering how they're doing. Unfortunately, this is one of those times when all the watchful worry in the world won't affect the outcome, whether for good or for bad. It's too bad my worrying can't help, though, because it's something I'm really good at doing!

'Though the Weather Outside Was Frightful,...

Wow. What a way to wrap up 2007.

Since my last post, life has been a whirlwind of activity, both wonderful and strange.

My mother treated me to a true English tea at Aunt Hattie's Tea Room on W. Douglas during the week before Christmas. Relaxing, delicious - a real treat! Strawberry soup, fresh cherry almond scones with lemon curd and Devonshire cream, cucumber sandwiches, a pot of hot tea for each...and that's just the beginning of the list of delectable goodies they put before us. I have to admit that we basically licked our plates clean.

The next day my kitchen was unexpectedly taken over by our good friends Flip and Shelley from Chicago. It was great fun to relax and watch somebody else work there. As usual, they coaxed fantastic food from my mundane equipment as we laughed, talked and drank our way through the day. I rather think my kitchen celebrates being used as it should be used each time they come to visit!

The object of their culinary take-over was the production of several decadent desserts to contribute to the annual Christmas extravaganza held by another of their long-time Wichita friends. We were graciously invited to the party as well, and that night Prairiewolf and I enjoyed a rich feast of food, beautiful holiday decorations, stimulating fellow guests, and the crowning enjoyment of excellent young Irish dancers accompanied by a live Celtic ensemble as they put on a poolside performance that won't be soon forgotten. It was truly a memorable evening.

With a snowstorm predicted for the next day, our son Qkslvrwlf decided to travel home a few hours early, and came in from St. Louis later that same night. As always, it was wonderful to have him with us again, although I wish he could have joined us for the Celtic music and dancing earlier. I know he would have enjoyed it tremendously.

Boy, the next morning we were so glad that Qkslvrwlf had traveled early when the sky opened up and the snow came in blinding, wind-driven veils of white. I think that storm was the closest I've ever seen to the white-out prairie blizzards that I've read so much about. You know, the storms where the settlers had to rig a line from the house to the barn, or they'd get lost as they tried to do their chores and end up wandering about until they froze to death.

Accompanying the heavy snow was thunder and lightning - thunder snow. Truly awesome.

Flip and Shelley joined us again that afternoon, despite the snowstorm (I believe Flip's words were, "I HATE Kansas weather!" as he walked in), and we continued our previous day's agenda of laughing, talking, drinking and eating, now further enlivened by the presence of Prairiewolf and Qkslvrwolf and by the addition of a few games to the mix. The only thing marring our afternoon - and it was a biggie - was concern about our daughter, Genie02, who was travelling up from San Antonio that day. She began hitting the snow around Oklahoma City, but luckily she's a good driver and the worst of the storm had blown itself out by the time she got near. So she got here safely and was able to join us about 7 o'clock, in time for a superb dinner of champagne chicken, smashed potatoes, Thai green beans, and chocolate chip cookies, cooked up by Chefs Flip, Shelley and Qkslvrwlf.

Flip and Shelley had to leave early the next morning to head back to Chicago for Christmas with their family, so Prairiewolf helped push them out of the driveway through the snow and got them safely on their way. Then the 4 of us, Prairiewolf, Genie02, Qkslvrwlf, and myself, settled in to enjoy the rest of one of the best Christmas times that I can remember. We put the tree up, finished buying and wrapping presents, had both sets of grandparents over to help us celebrate, enjoyed a Christmas Day meal that featured a wild turkey which Prairiewolf had shot last spring, experienced more unique weather in the form of snow mist, brewed some beer, and just generally enjoyed being together as a family for those few brief days.

My family and friends truly enfolded me and made this Christmas especially warm and full of love.

Both kids have had to leave by now. It was hard to see them go, but they are safely home and once more immersed in their own lives. I treasure the times we get together all the more for their brevity. Their love and support warms me even from far away.

Looking back on it, Christmas this year was memorable for family and friends, thunder snow and snow mist, Celtic music and dancing, delicious food, and much laughter and happiness. It's the gift of a feeling of celebration and love and joy that I wish I could somehow share with all the people on Earth. We could all use more of it in our lives.

Native Plants Do It Better

It's rare that a new (to me) ecological concept related to gardening and wildlife hits me upside the head, but I treasure it when it does. Reading Douglas W. Tallamy's new book, Bringing Nature Home, brought me just such a moment.

For years I have believed that gardening with natives was important, but I have allowed myself to become less single-minded about that belief, especially in recent years. I couldn't answer people's questions about why, for example, a native berry-producing shrub was better than an exotic berry-producing shrub if the birds liked to eat both types of berries equally. Instinctively I felt the native was better, but I couldn't produce the underlying logic to share with others.

Tallamy nails my missing logic in this book.

Every time a plant is described as "pest free", the nurseryman is saying that leaf-eating insects (and often other herbivores) won't eat it, usually because they truly can't eat it due to its chemical makeup. This means that the particular plant in question - almost always an exotic introduced from another country or from a different area of this country - is taking space, using nutrients from the soil, capturing sunlight...and adding little or nothing to the local food chains. In essence, it is a sterile placeholder, taking the place of other, native plants that can and do support diverse, healthy populations of native animals. Because the exotic plant is not getting eaten or controlled in any way, it can easily outcompete the locally palatable native vegetation, so when the exotic escapes into the wild, there is nothing holding back its takeover of local habitats and sterilizing them.

So right now I can practically hear the question going through your head, "Why would I possibly WANT insects to eat my plants? Won't that kill them?"

The simple answer is, "No, it won't kill them. Native plants evolved along with native herbivores so that both balance each other. Then, too, having native predators feeding on the native herbivores further keeps that balance in place."

Insects are one of the primary ways that the energy captured by plants gets moved up the food chain. They are the primary herbivores of many, probably most, plants; then they become the food for primary predators, from other insects to amphibians to birds.

If you love to attract birds to your yard, it's important to know that the energy and nutrients for bird reproduction are almost entirely based upon insect food. Berries in the fall won't do birds any good if there haven't been any birds produced earlier in the year because there were no insects available to provide the food and energy for eggs and young.

I can hear another question, "Japanese beetles are eating my roses to stubs. How can you say that insects won't kill my plants?"

Japanese beetles aren't native insects, and they are not acting "naturally" for our native ecosystems. Many major pest outbreaks are actually caused by alien insects or diseases introduced accidentally into our country. Like the alien plants they often come in on, these alien pests have no natural enemies and ravage unchecked throughout the countryside. Chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease and now sudden oak wilt are all examples of alien disease organisms; (Asian) azalea lace bug, soybean aphid and Japanese beetles are examples of devastating alien insects.

I've just hit the highlights of Tallamy's book here. He describes the concepts in much greater depth than I have here, plus he provides lots of interesting examples. He has also included a wonderful section about the different types of insects, including some fascinating and fun insect life histories. If you love to garden, especially if you love to attract wildlife to your yard, I highly recommend that you read this book.

Luck Comes in All Forms

We - all of us in the Wichita area - got really lucky over the last few days, especially yesterday. According to my rain gauge, we received over 5" of rain. We started yesterday with about 1/4-1/2" of ice on the trees and wires, but at our house the temperature hung at 32.1 to 32.9 degrees Fahrenheit all day. It wasn't warm, but it was just enough to keep all that rain from freezing as it hit. It was even warm enough to slowly melt much of the ice left from overnight.

Folks to the north of us and the south of us weren't that lucky. Oklahoma got hammered a couple days ago; north-central Kansas got it yesterday. I talked with a friend who lives in Holton, north of Topeka, and the entire town was coated in over an inch of ice, leading to massive power outages and major tree damage and loss. The face of the town will be changed for years.

Ice is such a good example of something incredibly beautiful that is also incredibly destructive. Wichita's turn came 3 years ago...and it will come again. Meanwhile I'm thankful for the luck that came our way, and mourning for the losses of those who were less lucky this time than we were.

Subtle Editing on Global Warming

We've lived in places - Topeka and Mobile - with strongly right-wing newspapers (supposed "left wing liberal bias in the media" not withstanding). The Wichita Eagle seems generally more balanced to me, but I notice that they do have a way of subtly influencing the news that I don't agree with.

Today's paper is a case in point. On the front page we have 4 local stories and 1 state story. Except for the story on the ice storm (which deserves front page coverage), all of the other stories are about on-going issues, any of which would have been sufficiently covered on page 4 or 5, and all of which will be forgotten in a year or two or three.

Buried on page 6A is a story about an issue that is probably signalling a major change in our world, about a warning bell of global significance. "Scientists Shocked by Arctic Ice Melt" is about the newly released report on the massive melting of the Arctic ice mass seen this summer. This melting is occurring much faster than even the most pessimistic computer model climate prediction. At the current rate, the Arctic may be ice-free at the end of summer by 2012. That's less than 5 years away.

This is a massive change.

Another fact from this article that startled me was that, according to NASA satellite data, the volume of Arctic sea ice at the end of this last summer was just half of what it was 4 years ago. Fifty percent (50%) of the Arctic ice volume gone in just 4 years.

So why doesn't this news deserve front page coverage? These are huge changes that signal a need to act decisively and rapidly before the process of global warming becomes irreversible. I think I found a piece of the answer in a couple articles I read recently. These articles talked about how the Coast Guard was going to start patrolling the Arctic as it was opened up for new shipping channels. The new shipping channels would shorten transport distances between certain cities - the Northwest Passage coming true at last.

Why worry about global warming if it's offering a profit opportunity?

"The love of money is the root of all evil." It's long past time for all the world's citizens, and for the American electorate in particular, to look at the proponents of each side in the global warming "debate" and determine who has the most personal profit to make from their stance. I can pretty well guarantee it isn't the scientific community.

Then it's time for those same citizens to take action to change our current course. The people making obscene profits from the status quo CANNOT be trusted to see the changes that need to be made and lead the rest of us to make them. Only the average informed citizen can remove these profit-mongers from leadership and chose leaders more qualified to lead us intelligently and carefully into the future. Let's do it.

My Favorite Part of the Season

My favorite part of the Christmas season began today - I dug out the Christmas cards and started working on them. Serendipitously, I received our first Christmas card for the year too.

I know that a lot of people dislike the time, effort and cost of writing Christmas cards, but for someone like me, who has moved around a lot throughout my life, it's a wonderful way to keep connected with friends from long ago. Our lives may have separated us years before, but I still love to hear what they and their families are doing.

It's wonderful how some people remain close friends, no matter how long it's been since you saw them last. When you are lucky enough to meet with them again, you often feel like you were never apart.

For the longest time I tried to write personal letters to everybody, but I finally gave up a few years ago. I'd get a few letters written, then get overwhelmed by other holiday activities and end up inadvertently pruning my Christmas card list. Prairiewolf now helps me. He writes a great Christmas letter, which I then print off. I try to add brief personal notes, then I address and mail them. Our success rate at getting out all of our intended cards has increased significantly since making this initially unwelcome compromise.

But even joint cooperation doesn't help when a major move coincides with the Christmas season.
With our move occurring at the end of December last year, I don't remember being organized enough to send out any cards...and I'm afraid that if I don't touch bases with a few of my usual card-buddies this year, they too may move and we'll lose touch completely.

What a loss that would be. There's my best friend from junior high in Panama. We've been in touch for almost 40 years now. (Yikes! Has it actually been that long?!) Then there's my college roommate (in touch over 30 years now). There are friends from our early married years, and from many of the places that we've lived. Now I'll be adding many friends from Mobile.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

Buffalo for the Broken Heart

I recently finished reading a fascinating book, Buffalo for the Broken Heart, by Dan O'Brien.

It was a random pick-up at the local bookstore. Something in the title caught my eye, then the jacket blurb made me look more closely. By the time I'd skimmed several pages, it went into my (admittedly oversized) "to buy" pile and made it safely home. Something about its promise made me pick it up soon thereafter; once I picked it up, I was hooked.

Buffalo is a quiet book. It's part personal memoir, part natural history, part cultural history, all interwoven into a well paced story that captured my heart and imagination. It's the tale of a relationship between a man and his South Dakota ranch, the Broken Heart. There's love and heartbreak, comraderie and loneliness in this book, along with beauty and unimaginably necessary daily gambles.

Having moved back to the prairie after several years in the longleaf pine forests of the deep south, I'm finding myself fascinated by the differences between the 2 places. I expected and was moderately prepared for the difference in vegetation and climate, but the differences in mindsets and cultural assumptions is surprising me. I find myself appreciating how the local history of a place infuses its people with a sense of identity that I'd never really noticed before, even people who move into an area rather than having been raised in it.

In Mobile, the people seemed to have a baseline identify still founded upon the old Deep South cultural identity of plantations, cotton growing, and the almost aristocratic society that it created. Entertaining was an everyday, gracious artform there, and the homes tended to be classic and richly decorated.

Here, the people seem to have a baseline identify still founded upon the "wild west", with its necessary independence of spirit and underlying rebellion. There's a mistrust of anything too "fancy", and a sense that cattle and farming are both intrinsically good and tragically fated to break people's spirit.

In Buffalo for the Broken Heart, O'Brien recounts how he (and countless other Great Plains ranchers) try to wrest a living from the prairie by raising cattle. As he describes it, it's basically a no-win situation, based on a disconnect between cattle and the prairie environment compounded by a disconnect between natural forces and the market economy. After almost losing his ranch (saving it only by taking a job elsewhere and sending money back, while a neighbor looked after it), O'Brien hesitantly decides to try running bison instead of cattle. It's an incredible gamble and an almost unbelievable amount of hard work, but he makes the commitment and describes both the joys and the fears of the process.

Our little 10 acres will never support a bison, but bison lived here 150 years ago and helped shape this land. There's even a depression behind the draw that I suspect may be the remnants of an old buffalo wallow. The descriptions of O'Brien's prairie lands, of how the cattle fought them and how the bison reveled in them, were evocative and haunting. I can picture bison on our land now in a way that I wasn't able to before reading this book.

I know where the past of this land has been. I wonder where its future lies.

Thanksgiving Weather

The kids left just a few hours ago, and I'm slowly working on finishing up the dishes and the other clean-up left from a wonderful 4 day hiatus with them. It's truly been a vacation getaway in the comfort of our own home! I will miss them tremendously, but I'm so glad that we had the long weekend together. It was wonderful.

I have an observational question, though. Why does the weather always seem to get bad over Thanksgiving week? Was the 4th Thursday of November selected for Thanksgiving because it always seems to signal the beginning of true winter weather?

Our first hard freeze was the day before Thanksgiving, and our first snow on Friday night. Saturday morning we woke up to a very winterish-looking landscape. It's been below freezing for every night since last Tuesday, and we barely got above freezing during the day

I guess winter is officially here. At least the snow was light and didn't come on the 2 heaviest travel days. Both kids travelled safely and are back to their respective homes now. Ready for Christmas, anyone?

Night Life

For some time now I've noticed unusual droppings each morning in the 2 platform birdfeeders out back. The droppings are cylindrical, with rounded ends, about 3/8 - 1/2" in diameter and 1/2 - 3/4" long, and made up entirely of the remnants of sunflower seed shells. I wasn't sure what had made them, although I had a sneaking suspicion it was a possum.

Then again, Becker, our German Shepherd, has been sprayed by a skunk twice in the last several months, so that was a possibility too. I didn't have a clue what skunk scat looked like.

So last night I rounded up a strong flashlight and decided to check out the feeders if I woke up at all.

I checked right before we went to bed, but all was quiet. We turned off the downstairs lights and moved up to the bedroom.

It was a pleasant night, so I left our bedroom window open. As I lay in bed reading, relaxing for sleep, I thought I heard a scrabbling noise, so I got up and shone the flashlight out back. Big and beautiful and bold, crisply marked fur lushly covering its body and luxuriantly flopping down from its tail over its back, there was a skunk rooting about in the grass between one platform feeder and the birdbath. I watched for a while, calling Prairiewolf to watch with me. The skunk didn't seem to notice the spotlight on its performance at all.

Prairiewolf went off to sleep while I, much too alert now to sleep, continued to read. Right before I turned the light off, I got up to check again. This time the skunk was gone, but there were 2 smallish possums on the back platform feeder. They immediately turned towards the light, and their eyes glowed strangely, but they didn't seem upset.

Thinking my mystery was now totally solved, and feeling vindicated in my orignial diagnosis about the droppings, I went on to sleep.

Sometime after 2 a.m., I woke up with my all-too-frequent, middle-of-the-night insomnia. Deciding to turn it to good use, I checked the backyard again. This time there was a single, very large possum on the back platform feeder. No skunk. No smaller possums.

Intrigued even more now, I checked again about 3:30 a.m. (still awake, unfortunately). The big possum was still on the back feeder, the skunk was drinking water from the birdbath, and one of the little possums was busily eating...what I finally realized was suet from the suet feeder, which he'd evidently knocked down out of the tree. (So that's why I occasionally find it on the ground and empty!)

My most recent check was at 4:45 a.m. This time the backyard was back down to one animal, the big possum on the closer platform feeder.

I am rather amazed at the amount of nighttime activity occurring in my backyard. A little appalled, too, to be honest. The possums don't bother me too much, other than the amount of bird seed and suet they are going through, but the skunk is getting to be a real issue, with Becker's seeming inability to learn how to leave it alone. And I sure don't want to surprise the skunk ourselves, when we go out to take care of the dogs or need to run out to the workshop after dark. Been there, done that, got the (remnants of) the teeshirt.

There's the rabies issue too.

On the other hand, the web research I did talked about how beneficial skunks could be: they eat (and therefore help control) rodents, snakes, insects and spiders, including black widows, for example. My instinct to get rid of the skunk is being tempered a little bit by understanding where the skunk fits into the workings of the local ecosystem. Emphasis on "a little bit."

It's 5:20 a.m. now. I've heard the first birds call, briefly, outside. I just checked and the backyard is empty. Time for another day to begin. I won't be watching the feeders and the birdbath with the same eyes today, however.

Highway Irony

Maybe I have a strange sense of humor, but I find it rather amusing that gigantic Cabela's, Bass Pro, and Gander Mountain shops are popping up all over the place, at a point in time when fewer and fewer people are even going outside, let alone actually fishing and hunting. It seems like every trip I take, I find at least one new, big, "hunting gear" store littered along the highway. They obviously seem to be doing well, so I have to assume that our collective ability to spend money while we pretend to be (in this case) rugged outdoorspeople is doing better every day.

I don't know why I find it so humorous; it goes right along with the large number of 4-wheel drive SUVs zipping around that have never placed even part of a tread on a gravel road, let alone really needed to use their 4-wheel drive capability.

The less wilderness and wildlife we actually have, the more we delude ourselves that we experience it. Viva le profit!

Seasonal Notes

Our habitat enhancement is paying off. In the last few days I've seen several cock pheasant flying into our front yard tallgrass area, while there's been a nicely sized covey of quail living in the back for months now. (The last time I saw them, I'd estimate there were about 15.)

The feeders are jumping with activity. I haven't been actually counting yet (I do my first Cornell FeederWatch count on Monday), but I've seen a nice variety of birds on a regular basis: pine siskins, red-breasted nuthatches, red-bellied woodpeckers, cardinals, blue jays, Harris sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, house finch, house sparrows, downy woodpecker, tufted titmouse, goldfinch, red-winged blackbirds, robins. Hairy woodpeckers and chickadees are rarer. And I've seen purple finch and rufous-sided towhees once so far this fall.

I was gone for a week, getting back last Tuesday. When I left, most of the trees still had their leaves; when I returned, most had lost them. It's amazing to me how quickly that change occurs.

Speaking of which, we've started leaf rustling - picking up bags of leaves that have been left by the curb. We tried to start running them through the chipper/shredder today, but it got mad about being neglected for so long and had to be taken to the shop for some coddling and intensive care treatment. I'm really looking forward to all of that great leaf mulch - I can't think of anything better to enrich the soil, hold in moisture, and keep the weeds down. Best of all, it's free!

I have to laugh at myself, though. The leaves that I pick up have been bagged and put out at the curb to be taken to the landfill, but I STILL feel very self conscious about picking them up and putting them into our pickup. It's really sad to reflect on how tame my version of "living dangerously" truly is!

With Thanksgiving almost upon us, it feels like we're totally immersed in fall now, and I'm starting to get hints of winter. I went out earlier one night earlier this week to cover some container plants that I haven't put in the ground yet...and it smelled like winter. The sky was crisply black, the air sparkling and snapping. It felt great, but I'm not sure I'm ready to move on to another season at this point.

Well, the weather waits for no one, so I'll just take what happens and make the best of it. Right now, the best feels pretty darn good.

Sterilizing the Sedgwick County Landscape

Boy, the people of Sedgwick County sure like to waste gas and time mowing and plowing. It must be a "religious" thing, or something. Sterility is next to Godliness, perhaps? Too bad God didn't understand that when he created a complex ecosystem on this planet.

The fields around here look like brown velvet. They've been plowed so many times in the last few months that any earthworm that might have ventured inside one of their boundaries must be mincemeat by now. But they sure look "neat"!

The vast majority of "country" homes in this county seem to be pretending to be mini-English estates, with manicured grass from one edge of the property to the other -all 5 or 10 or 20 acres of it. We looked at quite a few of these as we were trying to find a home here: restrictive covenants usually require that ALL of the land be mowed. One area even restricted us to 2 pets - cats and/or dogs - on the entire 6 acres. WHY would I want to move to the country just to have to spend hours of my time and massive quantities of gas money mowing, then be restricted to far fewer pets than I'm allowed even inside city limits?! And how barren and ugly those little neighborhoods are.

But the current crowning stupidity occurred yesterday. At the end of August, the county road crews mowed the ditches along the road we live on, along with the ditches beside most of the county roads in this area. It seemed stupid and wasteful to destroy all of that habitat to me, but I could see some justification in terms of keeping woody vegetation down. However, yesterday the county roadcrews came by and mowed again. Mind you, almost nothing had significantly grown in the last 2 1/2 months. There were a few grass seedheads and the grass had put on a couple inches or two of growth. The crews certainly accomplished nothing in terms of keeping woody vegetation out further or improving visibility along the roadside. Now, though, we have uniform 3" brown stubble for 15-20' on each side of the road...except, of course, for the beautiful "blooms" of roadside trash with which the local low lifes have decorated our countryside. It was evidently very important to showcase that trash for the rest of us to look at all winter long. We certainly just spent large amounts of county gas money and time doing so.

This weekend I learned, too, that parts of the Kansas hunting community are now blaming the lack of quail on turkey predation. Folks, wildlife needs food, shelter, and water just like humans do. When you plow and mow and spray the living daylights out of the land, you literally plow and mow and spray the "living" right out of the land. Just where in these "pretty" brown velvet fields and 3" deep roadsides are the quail supposed to live these days? On the 2" tall grass of those pretentious "English country estates"? And what are they supposed to eat - the beercans and leftover McDonalds' trash I saw along the road this morning? Bare fields and grass stubble don't harbor many insects of any sort for quail to feed on. Yes, by late winter the fields will have wheat growing in them, but where are the birds supposed to live until then? The roadsides won't grow up appreciably until April or May.

It seems to me that we were given this planet as our Garden of Eden, but here in Sedgwick County (and in much of the rest of the country) we are busy killing off the "undesireables", sterilizing the world, as fast as we can.

Unfortunately, sterilizing is a nonselective process...and we've really been pretty ignorant about understanding how the life systems on this planet work. Then, once we do begin to understand them, in this country we seem to condemn that understanding. I've come to believe we condemn it because it means we have to change the way we're doing things.

But that's a whole new can of worms to open. Suffice it to say that I'm saddened and angered by the attitudes of the people in this county towards the land that supports them. Surely we can do a better job of understanding and coexisting with the world around us than we are doing.

"Live Simply So Others Can Simply Live"

Live simply so others can simply live. I saw a poster with this sentiment, illustrated by a series of quiet drawings, that is haunting me. The drawings are almost all of things or activities that satisfy me deeply: a barn swallow flying, an open window with a plant on the sill, a pad of paper and pencils, a piece of fruit hanging on a tree, a guitar in a corner, a book with glasses laid on top of it, a bowl of steaming hot cereal, needle & thread & scissors ready to mend something, fresh baked bread on a cutting board with a knife beside it, a wheelbarrow with garden tools, a dandelion with a bee about to land on it.... Symbols, to me, of a quietly satisfying and deeply peaceful life.

Translating that "quietly satisfying and deeply peaceful life" vision into reality is turning out to be surprisingly hard for me. For example, Prairiewolf and I had a meeting with a home remodeler the other day. My desire for a "nice" kitchen is sharply warring with my "better" self, who wants to avoid waste by making do with what we have. After all, what we have is perfectly functional, just very tacky by current standards.

Live simply so others can simply live.

On NPR this morning, I heard a preview of today's Science Friday program, saying that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing even faster than scientists have been predicting. (The broadcast is at 1 p.m., so I'm going to try to remember to listen to it.) Every bit of energy I use, every item I buy is helping to contribute to those CO2 levels.

Live simply so others can simply live. What is my personal responsibility in this issue? Where do I draw my personal balance line? This influences my life in so many ways, from driving to clothes to volunteering to food consumption to remodeling our home to...topics of conversation between friends. In voluntarily simplifying, am I living by my ideals or unnecessarily restricting myself? Am I cutting myself off from "normal" society by simplifying?

Why does it feel like trying to live a simple life these days is so isolating? It seems like I ought to have more time to talk with and connect to others, but I find it hard to join in many of the conversations: "Look at this $500 purse I got for $250! I am so excited! I've been wanting one of these FOREVER!" or "We're going on a Caribbean cruise next month. We go at least once a year, and it's SO MUCH fun! Why don't you guys take a cruise with us?" I could care less about unnecessary, expensive purses or self indulgent cruises to nowhere with 3000 of your "best friends" crammed alongside you, but if I say so, the conversation comes to a crashing halt. Somehow, not caring about such things makes me weird and unAmerican, as does being interested in the environment or in affordable healthcare or in true education.

Do I have to travel a lot, drive a gas-guzzling SUV, love to shop for entertainment, wear classy or cute (i.e. relatively new) clothes, and live in an upscale house to be "worthy" in the United States? A lot of times it feels that way.

Live simply so others can simply live. It sounds so easy, but I'm really struggling with it.

Often I question myself as to why these sorts of ideals are so important to me. Why should I care? Why can't I just put this concept, and others like it, out of my head as "idealistic hogwash" and get on with "real life"? It seems like everybody else does, even those who think of themselves as quite religious.

I don't know the answer to those questions. I just know that this "idealistic hogwash" IS very important to me and to my life...and if I get labeled as slightly crazy? Well, there are worse things to be called. (Ironically, it's the "unworthy" label that bothers me more than the "slightly crazy" label.)

So I stumble through each day, making the proverbial mountains out of what other people consider to be molehills. Isn't it ironic that I welcome actual molehills in my yard (24/7 grub patrol!) while most people seem to consider them mountainous mounds of evil to be fought with the most toxic arsenal they can command?!

An Irruption Year?!

Judging from the recent additions to my bird-feeding population, this may very well be an irruption year.

Last week, a red breasted nuthatch started showing up regularly. It's still busily coming to and from its favorite feeder all day long.

Today I've seen 3 purple finches (2 female and a male) and a pine siskin too.

We were gone for 3 days over the weekend, so I have no idea exactly which day the purple finches and pine siskin showed up, but today was the first day I saw them.

Today was also the first day I've seen a goldfinch this fall.

A few Harris sparrows, juncos, and white crowned sparrows have been here for 2-3 weeks. Last week I saw a song sparrow and a couple white throated sparrows too, but they stopped in for a day, then seemed to move along.

It's shaping up to be an interesting year for bird feeding!

The Secret Behind One of Life's Enduring Mysteries

I have received wisdom. I have learned the answer to one of life's enduring mysteries. (Note: I have not TESTED this answer, but my source was pretty authoritative.) And so I'm going to pass this wisdom on, out into the blogosphere....

I now know why weeping figs, Ficus benjamina, drop their leaves.

Yes, I know this is astounding, but bear with me. If your fig has done this, it is not because you looked cross-eyed at it. It is not because you are a bad plant owner and it hates you. It is not because you spoke intemperately around it.

In fact, the only thing that probably happened was that you changed the amount of light it was receiving. Maybe you brought it indoors for the winter, or moved it across the room because it looked better there. Maybe you simply put up new curtains or took down the old ones. Or it may just be normal seasonal variations.

It turns out that weeping fig is especially quick to adapt to new light conditions. This is one of the traits that actually makes it a good houseplant. It adapts to the change in light by dropping about half of its leaves and putting out new ones that just happen to be completely suited to the new light situation it finds itself in.

As I learned, plant leaves can be adapted to either high light or low light situations. It has to do with how the intracellular structures with chlorophyll, where photosynthesis occurs, are arranged. Generally it can take a plant up to 6 months to change its leaves from high light to low light, or vice versa. Figs just do it fast, by dropping and regrowing them.

The key here is apparently to realize that the plant is somewhat stressed while it is changing out its leaves and to let it rest. Don't fertilize it. Be careful to wait until it is dry to water it, then saturate the soil completely and let it drain out. Don't let yourself respond like normal people do and say, "It's dropping its leaves. It must be dying! I have to save it by giving it extra food and water." You'll kill it with love, for sure, that way.

I'm so excited by this new insight that I'm ready to go out and buy a new Ficus or two. I left 2 beautiful big ones behind in Mobile, so I'm currently "without fig". It seems like a perfect gardening challenge for the oncoming winter months.

Observations of Fall

I saw the first white crowned sparrow at my feeders two days ago, and it's appearing all the time now. Winter is coming.

It's been interesting to see who's visiting the feeders during these days of natural plenty. (I put up a few feeders - mainly mixed seed and a suet cake - on September 20, along with water in the birdbath.)

A large family of cardinals, the young males looking patchy and as gawky as adolescents of all species tend to do, was among the first visitors, and they've been regulars ever since.

Blue jays. A couple house sparrows. A pair of red-bellied woodpeckers.

Today I saw a male hairy woodpecker.

And I've briefly seen a house wren flitting around the deck, although I can't say that it was drawn in to the feeders.

Few visitors yet, but I know that traffic will pick up as the season gets harsher.

Overhead, I thrill to the sight of crisp white gulls swooping silently south against crystal blue skies. (Do the gulls only fly on clear days? Or do they just disappear into the clouds and become invisible? They are so quiet that it's impossible for me to hear their passage; I just have to be lucky enough to look up at the right time, attracted perhaps by a bit of sparkle or movement in the sky.)

I hear killdeer cry as they wend their way southward, one here, one there....

The barred owls are becoming vocal in the late afternoon and evening again.

The sunflowers have shed their bright fall plumage and are industriously plumping up their rich, life producing seed heads. Dotted gayfeather blooms have faded from bright purple to dusty lavendar, melding back into the textured prairie tapestry. Heath aster is blooming, but its tiny white blossoms almost seem like a foreshadowing of snow and winter's quiet.

Unobstrusively speaking of winter too, the trees are beginning to shed their leaves. It's not a pretty leaf-drop this year. The drought is forcing it a little early, and the leaves tend to be brown and shrivelled. As I look across the landscape, the remaining stubbornly green trees are the only major remnants of summer left, despite our still-warm temperatures.

However, the big bluestem is turning rusty, the Indian grass is golden yellow, the seedheads of the switchgrass are airily puffed out, and all of their slender stems sway gracefully in the wind, outlined against the rich blue autumn sky. The remnants of prairie are especially beautiful right now, despite the dry weather.

It's fall, that bitterly sweet time of year.

The Pain of Knowledge

"There are things you can't get away from after you know them. It is very complicated to know anything.... Can you ever not know again?" (p. 151)

"[What is innocence?] ...just not knowing about something?... Is it innocent, as in a state of goodness or whatever, if you simply don't know about all those people in the Holocaust? Or is it just naive, stupid? What use is that kind of innocence anyway?...
Can you ever be made innocent again?" (p. 152)

Those two quotes are from The Accidental, a book by Ali Smith. They've been nagging at me ever since I read them.

They remind me of a quote I read many years ago about environmental knowledge. (I thought it was by Aldo Leopold, but I've reread Sand County Almanac lately and I was unable to find it there.) That remembered quote, roughly paraphrased, spoke about how a person who understood how the world worked ecologically would be living "in a world of wounds" invisible to others as they watched how most people treated the natural world.

I've often thought of that quote. Just this week, I've felt flayed as I came upon a cruelly shorn thicket of sunflowers that had enlivened our nearby creekside, reduced to 3" tall stubble, then shuddered as the neighbor later boasted to me about mowing it down because now "it looks so much better." That thicket was providing shelter and food for birds and other animals, as well as holding soil in place along the creekbank. Now it's a barren eyesore. Also this week, I've cringed as I've watched the local farmers plowing their bone dry, black-earthed fields in 30 mph winds. I've driven through the resulting dark clouds of topsoil, barely able to see through to the road ahead. The rich topsoil that feeds us, that took eons to form, is being carried skyward and eventually will be washed out to the Gulf of Mexico where it will join the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi. In this day and age of agricultural knowledge, surely these farmers know better than to treat their land this way. Surely they realize their farm's fertility is blowing away with that soil.

Are these people "innocent" because they refuse to learn about the environment or to accept the longterm consequences of what they are doing?

I don't think so. But while I don't think they can be absolved of their guilt, I can also understand their desire to try to remain ignorant.

So many times, knowledge hurts. Because of that knowledge, you become aware of a wound that you weren't aware of before. You feel like you should act, but what should you do? You are just one person and these are big problems. Now, suddenly, because of this new knowledge, you are different than the people around you, which causes more pain.

No wonder so many people choose willful ignorance over knowledge. They are trying to avoid pain, and that's a very human thing to do.

However, as I've learned the hard way so many times, trying to avoid a problem through running away from it only makes the problem worse. And eventually the pain will be that much worse too, because avoiding the problem only means that you lose the opportunity to solve it or that the problem becomes much worse before you're forced to acknowledge and solve it anyway.

Knowledge and pain. I always believed that "knowledge will set you free," that knowledge was a good thing, that it was desireable, that it was something that would make your life better.

I still believe that knowledge is good and that it will set you free. Now, though, I also realize that sometimes you have to work through a lot of pain to earn the freedom that knowledge promised.