Four Letter Words

Most of us have heard about four letter words. The minute you mention them, many immediately think naughty words. But this time of year, hope is a four-letter word. As is soil, seed, rain, bird, root, stem and grow. Four letter words-- every one. As I roamed about my yard planting hollyhocks, bachelor buttons, sweet William, zinnias, and other butterfly attractors, I kept thinking, I hope for moisture and that the hard little hulls I tucked in the earth would sprout roots and stems to unfurl skyward under warm, spring sun.

With the advent of t-shirt and shorts weather, I see people walking about area towns with a spring in their steps. All of us are tired of winter’s leafless silhouettes. We’re weary of seeing only sere grass and stick-like bushes. Our senses ache for hues of green and brilliant blossoms.

Even birds agree. Those not yet on the nest warble noisy courting songs, perform antic dances, and ruffle feathers, hoping to attract mates. Who can help but smile while watching such crazy expenditures of energy, knowing it’s one of those four letter words—hope-- that drives each of us to do all we can to make the most of these few perfect days of spring.

During a painting class I recently attended, students explained to our waterlogged Wyoming teacher that we need rain. Unlike us, she’s seen an excess of moisture recently, so she struggled to relate to our craving for wet stuff. While we enjoyed the mild temperatures and balmy days with her, she treasured 24-hour sequences that didn’t require use of snow shovels. She  wasn’t looking forward to the predicted rains and snow on her homeward journey. Despite her dismay at the weather reports, we were giddy, hoping precipitation might move our way.  

Without moisture, we look forward to more blowing dust, bare fields, dirty cars, as well as stunted vegetables and blossoms if we can garden in our communities. Rain brings optimism for green yards, wheat, and a harvest. Those clouds building on the horizon have no idea when they pass us by and sprinkle on another town what they do to those thirsting for water-laden droplets.

We’re so dry here that folks normally indignant when rain ruins their plans behave gleefully when they have to move track practice or outdoor picnics inside. Those of us wearing spectacles relish coming indoors from the sprinkles to wipe our glasses dry.

Not only have the few little dribbles we’ve received perked up spirits, they’ve also jolted dormant perennials into production. Bushes that were tawny canes days earlier have sprouted hordes of pale green buds. A wheat field behind my house turned lush blue-green and grew at least two inches in nothing flat. I should have set up a stop action camera on it. I’d have captured amazing footage of high-speed growth.

Yep, this time of year, four letter words rule. Dirt, bird, seed, rain, and hope are important elements of spring. I’m all for saying as many of those words as I can in mixed and unmixed company.

Sticker Magnet

If you saw our fuzzy white dog, you’d swear he was good for nothing but keeping the end of the couch warm and watching his food bowl. In reality, he’s a sticker patch super hero who aides Mother Nature in her efforts to make sure prickly seed producing plants of all kinds never die out.

Dudley looks and feels like a chenille teddy bear. His mom is a shih tzu and his dad is a mystery who created a much bigger son than one might expect from such a dainty mother. While our pooch carries his father’s oversize frame, Duds has his mom’s silky coat with a few curls and kinks added for effect. He also has hairy soles that would make a hobbit proud. This combination makes him perfect to collect any kind of burr or sticker nature produces.

Even though we keep our pooch groomed, any seed with a sharp projectile point that can tangle in his hair latches on. He comes in from a romp in the woods with burrs woven into his facial hair.  Every now and then one manages to migrate to his eyebrows where it twists and turns itself into a tight little horn-like knot. Yesterday, our wily pup came home from a frolic with a big ol’ porcupine egg of a sticker snarled in his ear hairs. His usually soft, floppy ears turned into a finger-ripping weapon when I ran my hand over them. After catching and confining him, we snipped those torture devices loose and sealed them in the trash so effectively they will never have a chance to take root and produce more sticker plants.

Not only does Dudley collect these objects on his face and ears, his body attracts them as well. During the summer, his hair is short enough that he doesn’t gather as many as usual. However, I have to perform a full body pat down regularly to make sure he isn’t packing spiky armor that ends up pulling hair and creating red welts. Every now and then, I find a nettle tucked into his doggy armpit, and he knows it’s scissor time again.

The one area of Dudley’s body   allow hair to grow its full length is his tail. That fine, silky mane he inherited from his mom forms a plume waving happy circles  behind him as he’s adventuring through bushes and weeds. It’s one of this pup’s charms, but unfortunately, when it’s loaded with burrs, it turns into a weapon as harmful as a medieval mace.  When he’s had an abundance of prickly attachments that need to be snipped, that once lovely furry flag looks moth-eaten.

Our pet is lucky to live with folks who regularly check him for tangles and knots caused by hitchhiking seedpods in the form of stickers, burrs, and nettles. Knowing how irritating these can be during the short time our pet suffers, I wonder how beasts in the wild that don’t have anyone to perform the necessary snips and trims keep healthy.

Witches Britches or Ghosts of Dinosaurs?

I wish I’d paid closer attention to my high school chemistry teacher. If I had, molecules and their pairings might confuse me less so I could better understand polyethylene and other carbon polymer products. Despite my lack of comprehension, the intricacies of molecular interactions interest the poet in me. Niggling thoughts waken me in the middle of the night and leave me wondering about the origin of the end product—plastic bags that punctuate my landscape.

. Every household has scores of these mostly white but sometimes clear or blue or other-colored sacks stuffed in funky cloth tubes purchased at a craft fair. Those without handmade containers cram theirs in a bigger plastic bag in the pantry. Though I have far too many of these objects, I find they’re great fillers when I want to mail fragile items or grab an easy lunch container in the morning.

Despite their practical uses, gazillions of them end up in treetops, caught on barbwire fences, or blow across acres of prairie like some wannabe tumbleweed. I don’t know if I can count how many of these ethylene polymer creations I see as I drive 35 miles to work each day. Thank goodness, I don’t live in a heavily populated region. Imagine the totals if I lived in an urban area.

Recently, I saw a bird nest constructed with shredded bits of someone’s old grocery bag. Its tatters fluttered in the breeze like celebratory pennants at a ball game. Another bag trapped by the branches of a prickly red cedar inflated and deflated with the wind like an artificial lung. It looked like some kid’s science fair project gone awry.

An English friend of mine tells me they call these objects witches britches in her hometown. That made my inner bard smile. The white bags caught on a fence or branch do look like a fluttering pair of old-fashioned bloomers. I had to mull a bit to think why someone would associate these with pointy hats and broom sticks. The only thing that made sense to me was that you never find these flapping on a real clothesline. They’re always in the wild, where one might hope to find a perfect storybook hag.

In reality, these containers are refined petroleum products. According to one source, it requires approximately 430,000 gallons of oil to manufacture 100 million bags. The source also stated that Americans alone use more than 380 billion of these products a year.

According to my calculations, that’s a lot of ancient dinosaurs, sea life, palm trees and other carbon sources that Mother Nature compressed into the energy that makes my car run and my house warm. Instead of seeing plastic sacks on the fence or blowing across a pasture, I now envision ghostly tyrannosaurus rexes, stegosauruses, triceratops, and a pterodactyl or two returning to haunt former homelands. Turning such a resource into common litter is a waste. I’d rather drive those drops of ancient reptile juice or use them to keep me toasty than to clutter my landscape. 

Knowing more about where these bags come from makes me appreciate the reusable bags my grocery store recently handed out to customers. Thinking about specters the size of dinosaurs helps me remember my cloth-like sacks when I go shopping.

When I forget, I plan to keep those laboratory-made bags corralled where they can’t catch a Kansas gust and haunt the countryside. I see no reason to invite nightmares into my life.