Life Away from the Lens

I swore I would never be a woman who lived her life behind a camera lens.  I wanted to live in the moment, experiencing life as it occurred. 

I achieved this goal until I received a Nikon that captures moments up close and from considerable distance with clicks of a silver button.  Using that telescopic lens, I could see fine details my unaided eye used to see as blurs.

After I got the camera, I went to Valle Caldera in New Mexico where I saw dark objects miles away. I couldn’t tell if they were cattle, horses, or elk, but when I maximized the focus, I counted every tine on those elk antlers.

Power is dangerous, and this camera gave me power to see detail at amazing distances. The trade-off was it limited what I saw. Despite this disadvantage, I found myself behind the camera watching my granddaughter play while I snapped photo after photo.

I traveled across the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming, watching bits of scenery through that vision-limiting lens.  Through the peep-hole, I watched a grizzly follow a buffalo calf in Yellowstone and took a wonderful close-up.

Despite these pictures to show loved ones, I sense I missed out on something I can’t retrieve.  A recent trip without a camera drove this message home.

We traveled through Hill City and Norton on our way to Sidney, Nebraska, right after a dense snowfall.  Weather channels predicted a blizzard, but Mother Nature fooled the prognosticators, delivering snow that, due to its beauty, should be its own coffee table photo collection. 

North of Wakeeney, I realized we would drive through miles of winter wonderland Kansans rarely see. Despite my intentions to capture 1000s of great snow scenes, I misplaced my camera.   Without it, I focused only with eyes and memory, but I saw the big picture. 

Field after field looked as though thousands of pastry chefs had frosted them with elegant seven-minute frosting. Contours plowed into the fields looked like meringue crests while Dairy Queen swirls capped posts and bushes.

Not only were fields and ditches works of art, but trees and poles sported Currier and Ives snow decorations. It looked as if a giant dabbed each branch or pole with a pointed brush. We happened to drive through this as the morning sun took aim and set fire to all those ice crystals.  I didn’t have enough breath for so many “Aha” moments.

I ached to wrap my hands around that missing camera.  I’ll never see so many miles of stunning snow again.  On the other hand, because I didn’t have that lens to focus and that button to click, I saw every bit of beauty surrounding me.

I had forgotten how a lens keeps the photographer from being part of the scene.  I appreciate this reminder even though I wish I could share these scenes with others.

Majestic Vistas Right Here in Kansas

Riding a train through the Rocky Mountains, I met an archeologist.  When I heard about all the interesting places in Mississippi, Wyoming, North Dakota, and the Southwest where he had worked on excavations, I asked if he’d been on digs in Kansas.  His swift response, “I drove straight across Kansas,” echoed the thinking of so many people who travel across our state and never see the landscape’s true beauty.

Anyone driving across Kansas on Interstate 70 or on Highway 50 or 54 gets an abbreviated view of Kansas.  To follow only those routes across the state makes it understandable why some folks call this “flyover country.”

However, anyone who practices William Least Heat Moon’s art of traveling “blue highways” knows there is a good reason why Cheyenne, Sioux, Pawnee, Arapaho, and other tribes fought to hunt and live on this land.   Travelers journeying north of the Interstate will see vistas stretching for hundreds of miles and recognize the majesty before them.

Depending on the time of day and the season, these panoramas appear in pastel or dancing psychedelic color.  To live on one of these high plains plateaus would mean to live in an ever-changing color scheme.  Dawn’s light would create an entirely different view than that of noon or dusk and all variations in between.

People who live here don’t realize that few Americans see views that Kansans see daily.  It is easy to take our vistas, our sunrises, and our sunsets for granted when we see them day in and day out.  It is easy to think we can always drive to a hilltop that overlooks pasture, river bottom, and eroded draws occasionally interrupted by a silo on a farmstead or a rural community’s elevator piercing the horizon line.

Last weekend, I drove to Logan to take a painting class.  Following the map’s up arrow across our region provides amazing views regardless of whether I head north of Ellis, Wakeeney, Grainfield, or Goodland.

From a hill south of St. John’s Church, in morning’s clear light, I saw elevators miles away in Plainville, Zurich, and Palco.  Around another bend in the highway, I ascended a hill overlooking the elevators of Bogue and Nicodemus as well as the spires of the Damar church with miles of fields and pastures in between.

Between each tiny community marked by elevators and church spires, I saw tawny wheat fields, green alfalfa patches, and  chalky erosions to remind me ancient seas once covered this land.  Every now and then, a lonely tree interrupted a wheat field or pasture while snaking lines of green highlighted waterways carving the plains into pieces of a whole.

I never reach one of those vistas that I don’t think of the lyrics from” America the Beautiful,”

 “O beautiful for spacious skies, 
for amber waves of grain, 
For purple mountain majesties 
Above the fruited plain! 

To drive across Kansas without taking time to enjoy one of the million dollar views that inspired lyrics like those in “America the Beautiful” is to cheat oneself of a blessing that comes with traveling Kansas.

Jenny Wren

            Kids love to find a word that gets under the skin of a brother, sister, or enemy.  This word often gains its power due scatological or other socially inappropriate connotations.  For me, the word troglodyte carried great import.  If someone were a troglodyte, he or she was a knuckle scraping Neanderthal.  What could be more insulting?

            Imagine my surprise to discover a word I secretly called my worst enemies and frequently thought my brother was part of the scientific name of one of my favorite birds, the house wren (aka troglodytes aedon).

            How we come to love certain birds and animals creates the some of the stories that make up our lives.  I learned to love little wrens because of my grandmother.  She loved her wrens so much she made efforts to offer clean, cheap, attractive housing in her backyard apricot tree every spring. To reward grandma’s efforts, a little wren family returned spring after spring to enjoy her shady rental where they sang and darted about her yard as they raised that season’s nestlings.

            At that point in my life, birds were just birds, but because Grandma said, “Oh, listen.  There’s my wren,” so often I learned to recognize its song. Due to her reminders, the perky, streamlined wren shape engraved its outline in my brain.   However, to an adolescent girl, they were still just birds as sparrows and grackles are just birds.  However, because grandma loved her little wrens and I loved grandma, I sat under that apricot tree many summer evenings to help her spot them as they flitted about her yard hunting supper like three-year-olds dashing after candy-filled Easter eggs.

            At the time, I didn’t realize what a lovely gift grandma had to share.  Now, decades later and missing Grandma, I too wish to have wren nest nearby—not only for the memories triggered, but also for the joy of listening to their cheery tunes or their saucy scolding and the pleasure of watching pure energy zip from one branch to another or from one flower pot to another.

Last summer we spotted a wren family living in a cavity of a nearby tree.  However, distance and thick branches made them hard to see. This spring I hoped to view them more often so I hung a wren house in a protected area near the back patio.  I hadn’t expected immediate success, so it thrilled me to discover a pair of wrens, maybe the same pair from last spring, found my real estate offering satisfactory and moved in to start a family.

            In no time, I could peek out the backdoor window and spot them searching to devour insects in the flowerpots decorating the back porch.  I placed several planters around the edges of the porch to brighten up my evening contemplations, not realizing the containers of petunias, Johnny jump ups, moss rose, geraniums, herbs, and pansies would draw insects that would create a regular food mart for hungry wrens.

            Not only did they find the flowers pots a boon, they also discovered patio lights draw insects by the gazillions.  It didn’t take the little pair long to find a perch on the watermelon sign hanging directly under the light where they could sit and eat with ease--patio dining at its finest. 

            The wrens busy themselves morning and night.  Each morning we hear them competing noisily with a thrasher whose family lives in a nearby cedar.  Each wants to establish territorial boundaries with song.  Perhaps warring nations should take a hint. 

            So how did a charming little bird that looks or acts nothing at all like a Neanderthal get the scientific name of troglodytes aedon?  I decided to check out the dictionary to see if my childhood definition was wrong.  It wasn’t.  Caveman is one definition of troglodyte.  However, the term also means hermit and cave dweller. 

            Some scientists in the past must have noted these little birds’ fondness for nesting in cavities of trees, fences, and logs--hence troglodyte.  I have to think that person had a sense of humor when he or she named a darting, brown flash of song in the image of a scruffy, knuckle scraping cave dweller.  “Troglodyte” will never have the power it had in the past to cut to the quick with three syllables.

           

Jelly on the Bush

            I’ve heard some folks refer to cattle as hamburger on the hoof.  With this reference in mind, the past few weeks have had me salivating as I think of all the luscious jellies out there still on the bush.  Yes, each of those fragrant bee-attracting blooms is a bit of jelly still on the plant, and I can’t wait to harvest the fruits and heat up the kitchen.

In the past few weeks, this year’s currant bushes sported lovely, fragrant yellow blooms that promise tasty currant jellies, while hundreds of chokecherry bushes blossomed out this week hinting of savory, rose-red bliss.  Unfortunately, the sand hill plums flowered early enough that a frost damaged many of their blooms.  Despite the damage, I hope to harvest some fruits for the jelly pot.

I’ve kept an eye on the wild grape vines nearby, but I can’t tell whether to develop a hankering for wild grape jelly or not. Grapes are a bit difficult to predict because the plant can set little clusters, but dry conditions can shrivel them before they become raisins.  In addition, birds love wild grapes so it’s a contest to see whether I can pluck these from the vine before my feathered neighbors eat them first.

 I did have currants last year, but I also had free range chickens that quickly dashed any hopes of beating them to the currant harvest.  I’d eyeball the deepening color of the round fruits each day, and by the time they reached picking perfection, my 30 some walking egg factories had gobbled them down.  I felt lucky to find a few to toss in my salad by the time the chickens finished their dinners.  This year I am down to three chickens, so perhaps I’ll get a bowl full of currants for jelly making.

Because a combination of an early bloom and a late frost wiped out all hopes of summer jelly making last summer, I have watched this year’s plants with an eagle eye. Barring insect or hail damage, this year’s jelly making prospects look good.

Currently, no pun intended, scores of empty jelly jars occupy my jelly pantry.  Each jar is a silent testament to my failure to harvest a single chokecherry or sand hill plum last summer.  If there were wild grapes, I never found enough of them to amount to a pot of simmering purple brew.

My goal this summer is to harvest bowls of currants, buckets of chokecherries and hopefully grapes, with a pan of sand hill plums added as each fruit ripens at the right time.  I intend to create a little magic with some simple ingredients such as Sure Gel and sugar added to my boiling fruit juices.  At exactly the right time, I intend to pour the resulting ambrosia into my empty fruit jars, seal them, and let them jell up.  Then I plan to stack the results in front of my west kitchen window and let the setting sun shine through them until it looks like a cathedral stained glass window instead of my normal kitchen window.

After I enjoy the visual effects, I’ll share the goodies with family and friends all through the winter as we savor reminders of summer on our toast and biscuits.

Jack Rabbit Coming Down the Road

            Having learned to drive in southern California where merging with rush hour traffic was a driver-ed mandate, I relish our area’s slow-paced traffic.

            Despite their often wash-boarded condition, I like driving country roads. Even more, I like walking them early in the morning or late in the afternoon where I frequently walk several days in a row without seeing a vehicle.  Lack of traffic is a joy of country living.

Recently, however, I found another kind of traffic livening up my country rambles.  I usually take a dog along, and whichever beast accompanies me prefers to travel the weedy ditches to rambling down the road. This is no surprise as each one has had varied success at flushing a pheasant, a covey of quail, or a cottontail from the brush. 

            Not too long ago, the big yellow dog and I took our afternoon walk.  We’d had a recent snowstorm so wind-driven drifts formed modern art style geometric sculptures on either side of the road.  Tucker gleefully jumped into these drifts, sinking up to his chin and then biting at the snow as if it were a giant snow cone set out to cool him down after his exertions.

            One such drift had formed over wind-driven tumbleweeds.  Taller and wider than other drifts, it offered a challenge my big, yellow dog couldn’t resist.  He pounced. Immediately, two cottontails exploded waist high in front of me, feet and tails flailing like whirling helicopter blades. 

Both were close enough I could have touched them.  My wide eyes spotted their equally wide eyes, and all our hearts nearly burst at the same time.  One of them did a basketball player “hover in the air” move with a little kick.  Had I thought fast enough, I could have grabbed him.

            Totally surprised, I jumped straight up, which certainly would have pleased my high school basketball coach.  As soon as I landed, Tucker bolted ahead, close on the bunnies’ tails.  They, having escaped more than one coyote or bobcat, split, leaving my oaf of a dog to decide which one to follow.  Their gambit worked, leaving him to shake his head in confusion and head my way, where I stood trying to figure out what just happened. 

            When I told my husband about this, he said he’d seen coyotes hunting in pairs to take advantage of this exact situation.  The trailing coyote obviously reacts faster than I do and captures one of the fleeing bunnies to provide that day’s calories. 

Just this week, the big yellow dog provided another hair-raising adventure.  We took a late afternoon walk on a balmy day.  Meadowlark trills and gentle breezes lulled me into an altered state, so it’s a good thing a water truck didn’t barrel along.  I might not have noticed.  Any way, my feet moved of their own accord while I existed on some other plane. 

Suddenly, I heard a stampeding herd heading my way.  I jerked my eyes up to find myself directly in the path of a racing black-tailed jackrabbit with Tucker close on its tail. Mesmerized by a scene from the late fifties or early sixties, I watched the chase until Tucker pooped out and returned to me. 

This intrigued me.  I can remember my dad hunting jackrabbits when we visited Kansas in the early sixties.  On these hunts, he would tell us about rabbit drives of the “Dirty Thirties” when he was a little boy.

In my mind, these were creatures of the past, perhaps a not so distant past, but still the past.  Here was my dog chasing the past down a country road.  Once again, the unexpected occurred as I exercised on lonely, dirt road.

I may not have to worry about merging vehicles out this way, but I’ve decided I’d best pay attention.  It appears that cottontails and jackrabbits might cross my path when I least expect them.

Hope vs. Hopeless

                My mother used to tell me, “Don’t count your chickens until they hatch.” Most of the time I listened to her as I grew up.  I wish I would have remembered her words this summer.

                Earlier this summer I wrote about looking forward to ripe, luscious tomatoes in such huge quantities I would be turning into blts,  canning, freezing, and dehydrating until I was exhausted, and my cupboards and freezer were loaded.  I should have waited until I had those ripe, healthy tomatoes in hand before dreaming such big dreams.

 I still have fifteen thirsty tomato vines.  However, they have not come close the reaching their potential, and when they did produce, their fruit was not healthy.  Much of it rotted before I could harvest it, and what didn’t rot attracted grasshoppers by the gazillions.

Part of successful gardening is preparing the soil and continuing to monitor moisture and fertilizer needs through the growing period.  I tried my best to work in the very best aged chicken manure and to water early in the morning so I didn’t let molds or fungi get a start in my garden. 

  The plants look wonderful, so I guess I did something right.  What isn’t wonderful is all the empty blossom ends.  Where small fruits should be growing and ripening, I have desiccated blooms.

 

As I visit with other gardeners, I have learned I am not the only green-thumb turned black.  Apparently, the weeks of triple digit temps have taken their toll on other gardeners’ hopes as well.  Like me, they nurture fruitless vines and tall, leggy okra with no pods. 

I can’t decide if it is time to say enough watering and weed pulling or do I give these plants a second chance to produce a fall crop.  I hate to waste precious water if there is no hope, but I hate to give up if there is a chance to pick some salsa makings by late September or early October.

I suspect this is the quandary many farmers find themselves in, only on a much grander scale.  When do you say you’ve used enough resources without reward.  I guess my answer for today is to give those darn plants two more weeks.  If I don’t see little green fruits by the first of September, there won’t be much chance of a late harvest.  

Mom is right, as usual.  I shouldn’t count my tomatoes until they are in the basket or, better yet, turned to salsa in the canning cupboard.

                 

Hedge Apple Cure for What Ails You

“Hedge apples, direct to you!  Placement of hedge apples around the foundation or inside the basement is claimed to provide relief from cockroaches, spiders, box elder bugs, crickets, and other pests” reads a headline of an Internet site I recently found. 

Why would anyone want hedge apples, I wondered.  Aren’t they those ugly green fruits that look a lot like a green brain?  As a matter of fact, I discovered green brain is another term for hedge apples along with Osage orange, hedge balls, monkey balls, and horse apples. In no time, I learned more than I ever thought I needed to know about these weirdly formed fruits, and now I want to share it with you.

What set me off on this quest to learn more about hedge apples was another of those odd occurrences that sometimes happen at our place.  I found a hedge apple source near my daughter’s house.  Somewhere I read that hedge apples repel insects and other pests, so I decided to check it out.  Holding sources, even unremembered sources, accountable provides an important life mission for aging English teachers.

I brought three of spicy scented, oddly textured fruits home and set them on the patio to dry out.  (I had not read the Internet site yet where I would learn they work best in their fresh and naturally moist condition.)  The next morning as I hopped in the car to head to work, I noticed the disappearance of one hedge apple.  In a hurry as usual, I chocked it up to the big yellow dog, who does occasionally entertain himself with balls and other round shapes accidentally left in the yard.

  

That afternoon, I returned from school to discover the disappearance of all my hedge apples.  A mystery lover from way back, I was on a quest.  Where were my hedge balls?  Even though they do not stink, they do not smell like anything my dog normally finds interesting.  In fact, he usually does not like spicy, fruity smells. I know.  I have tried to get him to eat leftover fried apples.

My next thought was a wifely natural.  Maybe my husband tossed them out, not recognizing my new experiment in natural pest control.  Some of my experiments have turned out poorly, so he might not identify a good experiment when he saw it. 

Before he arrived home from work so I could accuse him of tossing my experiment, I find the remains of the green blobs.  Nothing about their new state resembled a ball, an orange, or a brain.  Something had removed them from the porch step to an area underneath a nearby cedar.  Once that something had the hedge ball where it wanted it, it exploded it into a thousand microscopic pieces.  Putting that mess back together would confound the most determined crime scene investigator.  

            That night I explained the situation to my family and showed them the mess.  My husband automatically blamed it on squirrels. I thought maybe he was taking the easy way out since it is easy to blame messes on squirrels at our house, but he said he sees exploded hedge apples like that all the time under hedgerows in the country.  Still wondering about it, I spent some time in cyber space, looking up hedge apples.  What I found was more fascinating than the actual fruit itself.

            The Osage orange, native to eastern Texas, southeast Oklahoma, and southwestern Arkansas, happens to be the tree that sprouts hedge apples.  Since humans cannot eat the fruit and few animals (except squirrels, I guess) depend on it, I wondered why we find so many Osage orange trees in Kansas, a much drier and cooler climate than its native region.

 A little more reading answered that question.  Strong, powerful thorns arm the branches of this tree, and prior to the discovery of barb wire, ranchers and farmers would plant these trees around a quarter or a section of land. Livestock could not penetrate this “living fence.”   That explains all those hedgerows in eastern Kansas.  The trees will grow all the way into Iowa, so  many old farmsteads have these unusual “fences.”

Unlike some other introduced species that prove to do more harm than good, one might consider the tree an actual boon.  The tree itself tolerates poor soil, heat, and strong wind (sounds like a Kansas tree to me).  In addition, it transplants well and resists disease. 

Not only does it share these desirable traits, it also produces a very durable and beautiful wood.  I once saw a lovely garden bench made of Osage orange.  The orange, yellow, and brown tones of the wood combined to set that bench apart from the ordinary.  It was as much art as utilitarian.

 Due to the wood’s strength it can be used for fence posts, insulator pins, furniture, and archery bows.  Some go so far as to claim this the best wood for archery bows.  In fact, the French name for the tree, the bois d’arc, means bow wood.  If it grows so well under difficult conditions, maybe we ought to look into planting a bit more of it in western Kansas.  We could become the bow capital of the world.

Back to the fruits of this tree, my experiment proceeds.  Based upon my sources, I expect to find relief soon from the annual box elder bug invasion.  Spiders who hoped to share the house this winter will have to look elsewhere for lodging, and the crickets will have to find somewhere else to practice their obnoxious tunes.  After all, one Internet site offers this natural pest repellent at a $1.50 a hedge apple plus shipping.  The ad says to buy plenty for now and to freeze some for later use. 

If I can learn to love the odd smell of these ugly fruits, I may be onto the solution for the annual fall in migration of unwanted insects.  When you see a box elder bug swarm leaving my house, you will know it works. 

   

Words about Nature

   

As one year ends and another is about to begin, I like to take measure of the previous year and see what stands out in my mind.  This past year, I focused on learning more about the out of doors, especially the Great Plains, and in the process I read and reread a number of good books.

            A good book and a friend’s encouragement started me writing columns, so I thought I might share some of the titles and thoughts made me think about life and nature.  The book that made me realize I could write about the obscure items in nature like mulberries and dead trees was Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac.

He journaled his daily experiences with nature, and then his entries were anthologized in the Almanac.  It is one of those wonderful books a reader can mine many times and still find rich gems he or she missed in a previous reading.  I now make a point of reading Sand County Almanac a couple of times a year to remind myself of what happens when a great observer is gifted with an eloquent command of language and understanding of classical literature. 

Aldo spent hours in the field honing his eye.  He must have spent hours reading classical texts to hone his ear because he writes like a poet-- not a boring, pedantic poet,  but a poet who makes nature dance boldly across a blank page.  In this book, science and art merge.

Anyway, you get the point.  I like this writer.  Another writer who describes the Great Plains vividly is a local gal, Nebraska author Willa Cather.  Take time to read or reread My Antonia.  Her descriptions of the Nebraska prairie in the last century come alive through the eyes of Easterner Jim Burden and immigrant child Antonia Shimerda.  Though we cannot relive that era or see what they saw, we can view that window of time through the lense of Cather’s writing.  When Jim talked of the trails across the prairie disappearing with coming civilization, it made me consider what we have gained and what we have lost.

Cather writes of a bygone time, whereas deceased environmental writer Edward Abbey wrote about issues we address today. His concerns for protecting natural settings such as Utah’s Arches National Monument and the tamed Glen Canyon focus on the dangers of industrial tourism.  He, too, writes eloquently about the land and developing a land ethic in Desert Solitaire.  Abbey will challenge the thinking of those who prefer to enjoy nature through a car window.  He wanted his nature with its harsh beauty and accompanying discomforts. 

For a bit of schizophrenic land ethic writing that delves into the past and present, try N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain.  He interweaves yesterday and  today in a book that defies conventional structure.  Through stories of his ancestors and his own life, he fashions a fascinating tale, a story of remembered earth.  His Native American point of view of the plains provides a rich look at our world.  Each of us has our remembered earth, and sharing his story may help us with our own tales.

If you are looking for a little irreverent humor and some great descriptive writing about our own region, find time to read Robert Day’s The Last Cattle Drive, which is set in Hays and thereabouts.  He perfectly describes a Kansas thunderstorm, and he captures the beauty of Kansas sunsets. You can decide what you think about his characters and their relationship with the environment.

These are only a few of books that caught my attention this past year , making me think about my own land ethic.  For now, I will leave you with the thoughts of one last writer. Norman Maclean speaks to the rhythms of the heart and the rhythms of nature, which in his book A River Runs Through It are one and the same. “Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over the rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are words, and some of the words are theirs.” 

By reading thought provoking books, I discover their words and make them my own.  Through these writers, I learn to value the essence of nature and land and know I am part of it.  Just as the words are ours, so is every raindrop, sunset, and floating dandelion seed, each one a treasure.

Garden Surprises

     

One of the joys of planting tomatoes in the cool spring months is the anticipation of juicy red-orange globes and crisp, green peppers. In May when I yearned for a garden tomato, I imagined seeing them traveling from garden to kitchen via an extra wide apron. Once there, I would slice the tomatoes evenly and lay them out like a prized card hand.  To enhance my artistry, I envisioned peppers neatly seeded and cut in even strips presented alongside those perfect tomatoes.

            Since I moved to my limestone hilltop, I find myself happy to have vegetables to harvest.  Who cares about unblemished skins and symmetry? Due to our rocky soil, my husband built me a raised garden and lugged in bushels of dirt to fill the bed of railroad timbers.  Until this year we’ve had several mishaps that left me with nothing to harvest and a longing for the lush gardens I grew when we lived across the Bridge to Nowhere.

            It didn’t look like this spring boded much better for my plantings.  I lost one tomato plant and three pepper plants, including my jalapeno pepper plant, to some unknown ailment.  They simply wilted and died.  Then the wind tried to carry off the remaining five tomato and two pepper plants. 

            I guess their survival proves the adage that “what doesn’t kill you, strengthens you,” because despite losing several branches and innumerable leaves, they not only lived, they seemed to enjoy taking a regular beating.   By late June, scads of little tomatoes formed on my masochistic plants. 

            While the tomatoes took off with little encouragement from me, the peppers had a strange obstacle to overcome.  Through the previous fall and winter, I had done a little on-site composting, putting peels and shells and what not right onto the garden.  As my tiny little pepper plants grew, strange weeds that looked a lot like potato plants kept sprouting all around them.

 Initially, I kept pulling these intruders like weeds until I realized what I had done earlier.  I never imagined that placing potato peels in the garden would function like cutting up seed potatoes and planting them.    Yep, I was growing potatoes O’Brien right in my little raised-bed garden.  Eventually, I left enough sprouts to see what would happen in that kind of soil and pulled enough to let my peppers grow.

By mid-July, I saw that we would have a tomato and pepper harvest. We would have more than a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, barring destructive hail or other catastrophes.  I next hoped the harvest would be sufficient to make homemade salsa.  That is where I am today as I begin the second week of August.  Over the past few days I picked enough ripe tomatoes and peppers to make a batch.  It is upstairs right now, bubbling and simmering its way to edibility.

Eating fresh produce is reward enough for any gardener, but there is something especially nice about picking fresh vegetables and bringing them into the kitchen where you work a spell and turn a few tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, and jalapenos into a unique salsa recipe.

While I enjoyed watching nature work her magic as she made my garden mature into edible delights, I enjoy even more looking at the western sun backlighting a counter full of jeweled light.  Each jar of salsa shines with all the richness of my garden more intensely than any stone I could find in a jeweler’s display.  If the salsa lasts, these colors will warm me inside and out this winter as I plan next year’s garden and next year’s salsa.

Psychedelic Garden Guard

                In the past week, I met a new neighbor in my garden.  Apparently, this blue/green juvenile racerunner lizard moved from his burrow or wherever his last digs were and into my 12 x 18 foot raised bed garden.  Our hilltop is too rocky to support an in-ground garden, so we had to create our own little haven for tomatoes, peppers, onions, and okra.  Mr. Psychedelic must like the bugs that visit the Salsa in the Makings Ranch, and he is hanging around to dine.

                Since I was already on my hands and knees, digging up weeds, this little character’s swift, reptilian movements alarmed me into a faster than normal, dizzying leap to my feet.  After all, we live on a sunny, rocky hilltop that translates into perfect snake habitat.  It is best always to be on the lookout since they live here too.  After my brain settled and my eyes focused, I realized the new garden guard was a cute little racerunner lizard.

                Once I tossed the weeds out on their ears and the loosened the soil around my salsa-in- the- making, I did a little racing myself to the computer to see what I could find out about my new friend.  He’s a six-lined racerunner, apparently in his juvenile stage since he has so much green and blue about his person.  He is about 9 inches long with his tail taking up twice as much of his length as his body.  All of this sounded correct, but I could not get the little guy to hold still long enough to take the measurements that the herp site I checked indicated were his stats.

                On that same site, I learned the reason I could not catch this fellow is that he can run 18 miles per hour.    I gave up any ideas about races right then and decided he was the winner of any potential contests because I know I can’t run 18 miles per hour even with a bear chasing me. 

                While I have spotted a few lizards out here before to keep the toads and snakes company, I haven’t seen one of these.  A friend tells me that this is a sign of a healthy environment.  I hope so since I live in it too.  What I also learned is that we have the perfect situation with our rocks and sandy soil for this species.  I hope this means I will see more blue/green lizards with long tails sunbathing on my hilltop.

                While our environment seems perfect with all the sun, rocks, and sand, these little guys do have to be on the alert.  Hawks and owls, which we enjoy in abundance, feast on lizards as well as rodents.  It helps that racerunners can run 18 miles per hour, and they have a nice little one-time trick of shedding their tail and leaving it wriggling to deceive their prey while they find a rock to hide them.  This tail does regenerate, but not swiftly so it is probably good for one get away a season I am guessing.

                It is good to know the neighbors, so now I know a bit more about my garden lizard, I hope I see him with his long tail intact often.

For Love of Wildness

Recently I read a book titled For Love of Wildness by retired Game Warden Terry Grosz.  I wish I had read it years ago to better help me understand my husband’s love for his work.  This time of year, I need a good reminder of why he chose his profession and why he continues to devote so much time and energy when it isn’t always appreciated by others.

            Starting in September and lasting into January, the lives of game wardens and their families cease to be their own.  These law enforcement officers rise before dawn and come home to supper long after dark.  When they aren’t working with landowners and checking hunters, they are teaching one hunter safety class after another to the next generation of hunters.  Like any good teacher, their work doesn’t begin or end with the actual class.  They spend hours organizing materials and speakers to create a quality learning experience for students who must sit through more than ten hours of rigorous coursework.  Following the class, these officers spend another hour or two finishing the paperwork for the class. 

Many times, these men and women miss their own children’s activities so they can ensure safe, quality hunts for future hunters. Over the years, I have sat down to many a meal with a table full of game wardens, and not once have I heard one complain.  I won’t say that their spouses are quite as goodhearted, but after reading Terry Grosz’s book, I realize the title says it all, for love of wildness.  These individuals believe in something bigger than themselves and their families, and they do everything in their power to guarantee that anyone who wants an ethical and legal outdoor experience has the chance to have one.

Not every country offers this right to its citizens.  It is because of farsighted conservationists and good planning on the part of state governments that Americans can experience nature through hunting and fishing.  It would be nice to think that everyone respects the laws and rights of others to have a fair chance at legal game, but tain’t so.  Probably never has been.  My great-grandfather was one of the first game wardens in this state, and he dealt with market hunters.  Talk about abuse of resources.   

As daylight hours shorten, the workday of local game wardens lengthens.  As each new season opens, they rise to meet the early hunters and stay up to put the late night hunters out of business.  Most of their business is done with respectful, law-abiding folks who appreciate the resources Kansas has nurtured.  But on occasion, someone gets it into his or her head that he or she is entitled to more of the state’s resources than the rest of us.  On other occasions, folks get it into their heads that landowners’ rights, no trespassing signs, and no hunting signs don’t pertain to them.

I have to believe these people don’t understand the work conservation officers do to make sure landowners are willing to allow hunting to a cross section of the public.  This is a constant public relations effort. Spouses of game wardens who answer many of these calls have a unique insight into the work their spouses do to keep the system running smoothly.  Unfortunately for landowners and game wardens, this is often frustrating on many fronts.  One of them is a matter of abuse.  Some people don’t obey signs, they don’t take care of fences, they poach.  The list goes on and on. 

Another frustration is the fact that in a few counties, the judicial system apparently doesn’t understand the delicate balance worked out among landowners, hunters, and wildlife law enforcement.  When a landowner complains justifiably, game wardens work their tails off to protect a landowner’s rights so he or she will continue to let legal hunters on their land.  Too often these cases are apparently perceived as trivial and get dismissed or receive minimal fines. 

Once again, I have sat a table with a group of good men who spent long hours trying to do the job they are hired to do only to find out that the case was dismissed or received minimal credence.  What do they tell the folks who made the effort to call in a poacher or a trespasser? 

One thing I have observed about the game wardens I know is that they don’t let these frustrations get them down.  They do believe in something bigger than themselves or they wouldn’t keep doing what they do.  There are easier and safer ways to make a living that guarantee more quality family time. 

Without this cadre of committed law enforcement officers the rest of us might not enjoy the sounds of migrating cranes, ducks, and geese.  Seeing a deer in the wild might be an experience reserved for those well off enough to travel to a national park.  These officers have a love for wildness, and they live to make sure that others have an equal chance to share that love. 

Published first in the Hays Daily News as a Country Ramblings Column—reprinted in numerous papers throughout the state and country.

Frustrations of a Chicken Lady

Dollops of color bobbing over the pasture and yard make me smile.  These feathered punctuation marks pecking and scratching their way from one end of our property to the other are every bit as good as a tail-wagging dog to greet me at the door when it comes to making my heart sing.

  Listening to their clucks, chirps, and squawks as they celebrate a tasty grasshopper or a successfully laid egg thrills my ear just as much as a saucy zydeco tune makes my toes tap and my hands clap.  These are a few reasons to explain why I am the chicken lady even though it means breaking ice and shoveling paths to the chicken house in the winter or finding someone to look out for them when we go on vacation.

Even cracking their eggs each morning for breakfast or to bake a cake reminds me why I love free range chickens.  These yolks are so firm and orange-yellow they don’t compare to an anemic grocery store egg.  When we have guests who have never seen a “happy chicken” egg yolk, they marvel at the difference. 

Lately, we’ve had some chicken stress on our hilltop.  This summer a redtail hawk family threatened my flock, but they soon learned to take shelter when they heard that unique scree or saw those lurking shadows from overhead.  After surviving that threat, something more insidious invaded our neighborhood, considerably diminishing my bright flock. 

We tried calling in this critter, assuming it was a coyote.  If it is a coyote, it is particularly wily and does  not respond to a champion coyote caller’s expertise.  We finally jailed the flock in their covered pen and set live traps, thinking we might lure the creature in with the thought of all those chicken dinners waiting on the roost.  Nope, we caught a bunny that wandered through the door. 

So far, this creature has outwitted us, which reminds me of a fox that once raided our chicken house to the tune of twenty-four hens before we finally nabbed it.  We desperately tried everything that year, including putting trimmings from our haircuts and pouring the contents of our toddler daughter’s potty chair around the boundaries of the chicken yard.  We locked the flock up behind a high fence and still that fox found its way over the fence to snag chicken after chicken.  It gave me a new understanding of the old adage about a fox in a hen house.  Nothing is safe.

I still don’t know what is preying on my girls, and it makes me sad to put them under lockdown when I know how much they love to roam through the grasses pecking and scratching their way to chicken bliss.  However, until we find the culprit that would leave me with empty egg cartons, the ladies will have to spend their days waiting for kitchen scraps and layer ration in a chicken yard protected on six sides by predator-proof fencing.  We did learn something from that fox.

Fragance of Memory

Memory triggers include anything from seeing childhood toys, hearing remembered tunes, or smelling scents that punch start buttons on mental videos of our past that loop repeatedly.  Each spring when lilacs bloom, I get two weeks of scent prompts that start those mind movies rolling. 

Lilacs figure into my earliest memories.  I haven’t checked with my mother, but I am an April baby, and I suspect lilac fragrances wafted into my first home to imprint on my infant brain.  Every time I smell lilacs, I think of sunshine and gentle breezes mixed with motherly and grandmotherly love.  For some reason, I also think of freshly laundered whites hanging on the clothesline surrounded by sweet scented lilac blossoms.  Grandma’s gone so I can’t ask her, but I wonder if she didn’t have a lilac border near her clothesline.

When we moved to Southern California, I was nine. Lilacs became a memory of springtime rather than an expectation.  Despite the delicate appearance of lilac blooms, these plants bloom best after an extended cold spell so they aren’t SoCal friendly.  To give you an idea of how well these plants handle adversity, New Hampshire selected lilacs as its state flower to represent its citizens’ resiliency.  By moving to a gentler climate where citrus, avocado, and palm trees grow in backyards, my family sacrificed the joy of old-fashioned lilacs.

As one might expect, absence made my heart grow fonder.   Imagine my thrill the year my mother visited Kansas in April to return with a lilac bouquet.  I longed to open a window to smell that sweet scent or stand at the clothesline, pinning heavy, wet laundry in a straight row while blooming lilacs assaulted my olfactory sense.  Instead, I sniffed those bedraggled blooms every time I walked past them.  I suspect my mom saw me in the kitchen more than usual until those pale purple blooms picked from Grandma’s lilac border turned brown .

I am not the only lilac lover in America.  Drive through any older neighborhood or down country lanes past old farmsteads to see towering lilac hedges that make privacy fences unnecessary.  Despite the fact that these plants bloom only two or three weeks each spring, the dense, green shrubbery offers occupants plenty of shady seclusion. 

Easy to grow, lilac hedges can last hundreds of years.  According to arboretum.harvard.edu, someone, circa 1750, planted possibly the oldest living lilacs in America at the Governor Wentworth estate in Portsmouth, NH. To build on this history, note that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington wrote about growing lilacs in their gardens.

When this unique spring fragrance tickles noses, it not only jogs personal memories, it also tells a story about America and hardy folks who brought their lilacs wherever they settled.  Ask a neighbor with a lilac hedge to share lilac suckers so you, too, can make memories and continue this American story in your own yard.

Old Cemeteries

            

Fields green up, trees leaf out, and the road beckons--time for a little road trip.  Nothing beats a spring day in Kansas for a cross-country tour.  While cruising, I scan the horizon, my eyes seeking unusual architecture, landforms, or interesting old cemeteries.  This region always rewards me.  I will undoubtedly find a tumbling stone house or barn, some wind or water-formed landscape, or an old cemetery surrounded by aging cedars, an old fence, or sometimes just a fenced off section of pasture.

            These old cemeteries intrigue me, both the ones set off in a pasture or those on a hill overlooking dwindling Kansas towns.  Often times lilac bushes or cedars surround them, and one wonders what happened to the folks who planted them.  A casual glance reveals no local town sites or farmsteads that might explain these old resting places.  If I dug out an old map of the region, I would find some reference to a community no longer in existence.  These cemeteries remind me of the hopes and dreams of those who came to settle and populate the plains.  Instead, those folks simply became a part of the plains.  Someone cared enough to set their little plots off with trees and bushes that distinguished their resting place from the vastness of the prairie.

            Generations of our family lie on a hill overlooking the Arkansas River outside of Ford, Kansas.  Even as a little girl, I found a mystery and a peace when I joined my grandparents on their treks to care for the graves of their loved ones.  I loved traveling up the old, sandy road to the entrance gate.  Prairie grasses waved on one side and wheat often waved on the other.  At the same time, my eyes could follow the railroad tracks leading out of Ford, and I could count the elevators lining the tracks.  

            Once at the entrance, we passed through a natural archway of cedars and wild rose bushes.  It was a portal to a different world for me.  Once on the hill overlooking the Arkansas our grandfather would tell us of his childhood on that river.

He swam, fished, skated, trapped, and hunted down there.  It sounded like heaven to our little city-kid ears.  Grandpa confided he had once skated all the way to Dodge and got back just at dark.  What an adventure!  We had to get permission to ride our bikes to a  shopping mall only blocks from our home.

A feeling of freedom permeated the place.  Obviously it was quiet.  Only meadowlark songs and wind soughing through the grasses around the graves and the elms planted around the outside border of the cemetery interrupted our thoughts.  If we got close enough to the pump house or storage shed, we could hear the creaking and stirring of tall, old cedars surrounding those small buildings. 

Occasionally we spotted a ground squirrel to chase and once followed one to its home under a headstone.  This chase led to our next treasure, a sloughed off snakeskin.  Childhood adventure could not get better than that. 

In this cemetery prairie and civilization met.  Buffalo grass carpeted the entire enclosure with a few stands of blue stem interrupting here and there.  Wild flowers appeared unpredictably, changing color and form with the season.   Multi-colored asters, prickly poppy, poppy mallow, and gaillardia were among the flowers I recognized.  In addition, what appeared to be a form of wild snapdragon bloomed profusely among the tombstones.

With varied luck, some families attempted plantings of irises and peonies around the markers of their loved ones.  Some graves had profuse stands of domestic flowers while others areas of the cemetery were entirely native.  As a child, I found it interesting to find planted flowers on country hillside.

            As an adult, I find the native portions of the cemetery the most interesting.  Our family graves tend to be in the wilder, more native part of this country cemetery at the crest of the hill where most of the rainwater drains away.  It seems fitting that the loved ones who taught me to love this prairie rest in the more natural section of the cemetery. 

I continued the family tradition of taking my daughters to decorate the family graves.  Their grandmother and great-grandmother told them the same stories I heard as a little girl about wandering ancestors who found a home on the Arkansas River at a common place to ford the shallow water. There these newcomers began a lodging house and livery stable and ran a mercantile store.

In the town of Ford, we still find the old lodging house bordering the highway that runs through town.  The livery is gone and the mercantile has tumbled down.  What remains are the markers on the hill that tell the story of hopeful people in an undeveloped land. By visiting this hill, we celebrate their lives and dreams and tell their stories to our children and grandchildren.

Every time I spy one of these little cemeteries interrupting the prairie, I want to stop and read the stones.  I want to wander through the native grasses surrounding the markers.  What tales could these folks tell about dreams that flamed up and then died just as the towns disappeared from the landscape, letting the native grasses return to cover the plains.

These peaceful interruptions on the prairie are a little reminder that my visit here is not permanent.  The grasses and wind will be here long after I am gone.  Knowing this helps me put my time in perspective. Each moment is a gift, a fleeting gift.  These little journeys remind me to appreciate it.

        

            

Humans, Nature, and the Food Chain

The simple act of camping-- pitching a tent, cooking over a fire, carrying water, falling to sleep to night sounds, awakening to bird calls announcing the crack of dawn--puts a new perspective on human survival.   Camping in grizzly country where humans are not at the top of the food chain builds on that perspective.

It seems to me that normal everyday existence is pretty sanitized.  Our environmentally controlled homes shelter us from the elements, sometimes to the point that we can go a long time before we realize it is snowing, blowing, dripping, or roasting outside.  Most of us go to the grocery store for our food supply, purchasing meat in tidily wrapped packages that provide no hint of the animal or the habitat that provided the juicy tidbit in our grocery cart.  The produce aisle is a veritable feast for the eyes with artfully arranged carrots, potatoes, apples, and other delectables once again leaving no hint of the earthy home that produced them.

Once we enter grizzly country, that sanitized existence becomes elemental.  We are part of the habitat. Signs repeatedly caution campers to take care while performing common daily rituals.  Since hunger is the usual draw for the bear, campers are warned to keep food in protected boxes or high out of a bear’s reach.  In addition, campers learn it is unwise to sleep in the same clothing in which they cook or eat.  In fact, that clothing shouldn’t remain in or near the tent.  The simple act of brushing teeth becomes critical because, believe or not, the scents and flavors of modern toothpaste attract bears before and after its use.  Campers learn to brush and spit far from their sleeping quarters.

The Park Service provides long lists of survival tips for those visiting griz habitat, but the bottom line is the fact that in grizzly country, life is not sanitized.  It is elemental.  Humans have to think frequently about the consequences of their actions. For a few, it could be the difference between eating or being eaten.  So why is this exciting?  Because suddenly, we are more aware of everything around us--sights, sounds, smells--we are in tune with a world we often tune out.  All the sudden, we realize how little control we actually have over the world we live in.  It is that lack of control, that realization we are a small cog in a big wheel that is going to go on with or without us, that makes us relish every moment breathing in mountain air, listening to the rushing stream, counting uncountable stars.    

  

Country Gastronomic Blessings

Instead of counting sheep to fall asleep, I count blessings until my eyelids slam shut.  On nights when sleep doesn’t come readily, my list grows more creative as I run out of obvious items to tally.  One item at the bottom of a long list of life boons is not just thankfulness for food to nourish my family, but for knowing the origins of my meals.

In 1930, 3 out of 10 Americans lived in urban areas.  According to a recently published article, 8 out of 10 Americans now live in urban areas.  Both urban and rural living have positive qualities, but I suspect more rural  than urban residents understand  the origin of their food as it travels from field and pasture to factories, warehouses, semi-trailers, and grocery markets.

As a rural school teacher, I quickly realized students who didn’t live on farms knew someone who did.  Most town kids have grandparents or aunts and uncles who produce grain or beef for the market.  Many spend time helping with harvest or participating in agriculture-related 4-H projects.  I don’t know that I ever had a pupil who didn’t know that hamburger once looked distinctly cow-like before it was ground and packaged for sale.  Western Kansas children certainly know what wheat looks like before it becomes bread--even if they don’t know all the milling steps in between.

On a different note, I have friends teaching in urban schools who share crazy stories about what their students know about how food becomes food.  A friend from a big city shared a story of her student who thought potatoes grew on trees.  Another teacher told about a primary student who explained that you put the carton in front of a cow’s mouth and then raise its tail like a handle so the cow will spit the milk into the carton.  If that is what truly happened, I’d have to quit drinking milk. I can’t imagine how this child would explain hamburger…

Often, these urban students have no concept about meat production.  They think their hamburgers and chicken strips originate at the grocery store.  While kids who help produce meat the family eats suffer heartache at butcher time, they also know the care the animal received and what it ate as it matured.  They aren’t detached from their dinner.

Even though western Kansans often see cattle in pastures, fields of waving grain, and good-size truck gardens, staying involved with food production on some scale is a great reminder that food production isn’t easy or magical. Now is the perfect time of year to dig up a little plot or fill a few patio containers with rich soil and plant two  each of tomatoes and peppers,  some onion bulbs, and a couple of basil plants.  A pizza garden is a great reminder that food we love doesn’t start in a package or can.

Towering Sunflowers Predict ….

        

Folk wisdom, especially weather-related folk wisdom, captured my attention when I first learned the saying, “Red sky at night—a sailor’s delight and red sky at morning—a sailor’s warning,” from my grandmother.  I have tried over the years to determine whether or not her wise words consistently ring true, but so far--no verdict.

            I am still out on the woolly caterpillar stories, too.  I can’t capture enough of them to determine whether or not they sport more fur during colder winters than they do in warmer winters.  In fact, I can’t remember from one winter to the next exactly how furry the little guys the year before were.  Surely, scientists possess some statistical measuring device that would permit me to analyze this phenomenon more precisely, but I haven’t found the catalogue that sells this instrument to the public.

            Despite my confusion about red skies in the morning and woolly caterpillars, I do have an experiment of sorts going on right now.  Several years ago an unremembered someone (if I could remember, I would give credit) told me one can predict the amount of snowfall the following winter by measuring the height of sunflowers growing in road ditches.  The ditch part is important because rain provides their only moisture. 

            Road ditches around here get mowed fairly regularly, so I had to find an alternate experiment site.  We have a fenced-in area we don’t water or mow, a perfect spot for my experiment.  

            One might wonder where the plants come from in this odd little test.  Well, this area lies about 12 feet from our bird and squirrel feed. As the greedier birds fly over or the full-pouched squirrels dash across to tease our geriatric dogs, they drop some seeds. As a result, we have a yearly sunflower garden through no effort of our own.

            Over the last few droughty years, calling it a garden would be an exaggeration.  It sported a motley patch of dry grass and abbreviated sunflower plants that raised one or two blooms only a mother could love amongst the hardy, barely-above-the- ankle plants.  This year, however, led to new heights for those lucky seeds deposited there.

            I kept regular records of our rainfall, though I didn’t need to.  I could look at the sunflowers sprouting higher every day to know we had more moisture than these plants knew what to do with.  As the plants eventually grew taller than I, I knew I had a major experiment going on. 

That unremembered weather maven I mentioned earlier told me that you can tell how much snow you’ll have in the winter by the height of the sunflowers in the summer. Eventually, a few of these plants towered a good foot over my head, so I calculated and got around 84 inches of snow over the winter.  Hmmm. . . .

 Remembering the winter of 91/92, I recall having over 128 total inches of snow, snow that began in October and continued without break through March.  This winter hasn’t been anywhere near that intense, so I think either that weather maven is all wrong, though I can see some sense in such a prediction (if you have a wet summer, you’ll have a wet winter) or…

Punxsatawney Phil is correct.  We have a lot more winter coming, owing us at least another 48 inches of snow by my calculations. . . .

            

4th of July--Firefly Big Love

For the past week, folks who love aerial explosions have enjoyed once-a-year bliss, which they share with anyone with the good sense to get outside and enjoy the show.  Even though we live three miles out of town, we are on a hilltop, and the whump-whump-whump of exploding aerial display sounds from town carries up the amphitheater-like rise to announce each brilliant blast.

 

We’ve enjoyed ruby, sapphire, emerald, and diamond jewels as they hang for a moment in circles, ovals, starbursts, and sparkling sprays above town and then fade into the dark sky.  What I have been reminded of as I spent the last few days enjoying these man-made light shows is that nature produces her own small-scale light show through late June and July. 

Beginning at dusk, a jillion fireflies become visible as they weave in and out of trees, across pastures, through gardens, and along the creeks flashing their little lights as they look for mates.  While the science behind this natural luminescence is pretty astounding, just watching them is more amazing.

Children love these nighttime creatures and run laughing and giggling as they try to catch them to put them in glass jars to create lanterns.  Watching adults remember when they too ran after these hard to capture blinking lights and laugh along with their children.  Everybody has a firefly story to tell—the one that got trapped on the windshield wiper and blinked the family’s way home on a dark night. The fireflies placed on a family’s address numbers where they temporarily lit up the address.

 Some kids take their fireflies to bed where they get out of their glass jail and turn a bedroom into a fairyland.  We once had a lone firefly in the house who blinked his way along the baseboards in my bedroom, driving me crazy wondering  what was making that intermittent bright light in my room.  I finally found myself crawling along the baseboard to discover what made that light.  Imagine my surprise—and maybe his-- when I got brave enough to touch the lonely firefly who somehow ended up inside instead of outside.

Firefly watching is part of my summer schedule.  I plan in at least thirty minutes an evening to sit outside and watch these little guys weaving their summer magic to the rhythm of a locust and frog symphony.  I wondered last night if the fireworks on the 4^th of July confuse them and make them think there is some BIG LOVE up there in the sky. Once town quiets down after the big celebration, you’ll find me sitting in the dark watching nature’s own tiny firework show and making memories that will bring a winter smile.

Fireflies Looking for Love

            Fireflies Looking for Love

            A certain studied posture made famous by actor James Dean, a flick of a hand through one’s hair, extended eye contact, and a lingering second glance suggest that one human is attracted to another.  Researchers have written entire books about the indicators humans use when they want to hook up.

Not surprisingly, other species’ signals read just as obviously or more so.  Around here, we watch the spring strut where male turkeys fan their tails and rattle their feathers to attract  hens.  In a few remote spots, one might catch a prairie chicken booming to catch the eye and ear of his ladylove. A person sitting outside on a summer eve  will hear neighboring frogs trilling and croaking love songs to woo their ladies.

On  summer nights, love is everywhere, even in the fire flies flitting about my backyard.  Recently I discovered that these insects’ blinking lights flash in a search for romance.  These light then dark then light firefly lights that so intrigue me have everything to do with their intent to propagate and nothing to do with my delight in their on again, off again bulbs. A timely Internet article helped me understand how fireflies control their little strobes.

 

The article mentioned their ability to glow involves the chemical nitric oxide, which also helps control the human heart beat and memory. I enjoyed discovering fireflies and I have something in common than living in the same location.   I was also intrigued that of the two hundred species of fireflies, each has its own signal to differentiate it from another variety of firefly.  Using their unique series of flashes, they attract an appropriate mate.  When female fireflies see a blink that sets their nerve endings on sizzle, they flash in response.

While I have enjoyed fireflies all these years, I didn’t realize all that night time Morse code had to do with reproduction.  It was one of those experiences I simply enjoyed and did not think to investigate.  In addition to learning that fireflies use this little light to look for love, I also learned they spend two years in a larval state, and they only have two weeks in their beetle /firefly stage to find a mate and propagate according to a Tufts University study.

 Two weeks is not a lot of time to find a good reproductive partner.  Learning this makes me feel guilty for those childhood years I collected fireflies in jars to admire in my darkened bedroom and for those years I let our girls do the same.  Even though we released our insects the next morning, we really diminished their baby making opportunities. 

This information has created a new resolve at this house.  Those glowing little guys can have their whole two weeks to find love and perpetuate their species.  From here on, I will not interfere in their romantic liaisons. However, I do feel a like I am invading their privacy when I sit outside enjoying their light show.