Mother Nature’s Trick on Fall Lovers

Mother Nature must’ve guffawed til her sides ached as she read scores of first day of fall memes flooding the internet. How ironic that fellow lovers of colorful leaves, cozy sweaters, pumpkin patches, and simmering soups wiped dripping sweat from brows in 90 plus temps on the cusp of our favorite season. For folks who’ve eagerly awaited brisk mornings and hoodies, last week’s sultry heat didn’t just set us back; it wilted spirits. Don’t worry, though. We’ll recover as soon as morning thermometers hover in the thirties or low forties.

It’s interesting to read friends’ posts during this hinge between summer and autumn. It doesn’t take long to know who loves frosty winters, pastel springs, simmering beach-weather summers, and my favorite-- fall. When I scan Facebook, I see clearly why some of my friends and I connect. We love this time of year that others see as a harbinger of doom.

We love nature’s colors as foliage morphs from green to yellow, orange, bronze, and crimson. We love gunmetal grays that dominate skies this time of year. We love native grass hues as they switch off chlorophyll production and turn on dormant mode. We love watching birds stage in voracious hordes in preparation to migrate. We love those crazy cricket serenades that foretell dropping temperatures. We love high school football games with its scent of freshly buttered popcorn.

We love knowing hunting seasons have begun so our freezers will soon be full of freshly harvested game. We love standing over the stove to stir soups that smell of onion, garlic, tomatoes, basil, oregano  as they simmer and perfume our homes. We love kneading flour, yeast, eggs, oil, and water into crusty breads we’ll bake, slice, and toast with cheese to eat with our soup or chili. We love others who understand our quirky fixation with this time of year.

I understand why some dread this season. Daylight shortens. Calendars mark the beginning of regimented activities, the end of lazy days at the pool, the last days of garden production, and the beginning of paying a rising winter heat bill. Despite recognizing others’ distress, I can’t help but wake up smiling when the autumnal equinox tells me summer is over. It means my favorite birds, sandhill cranes, will soon return, winging and singing their song across russet and golden fields on their way to New Mexico’s playas. I’ll hear their ancient cry and imagine elk bugling in the background though I know that hasn’t happened across our state for nearly a century.

My fellow autumn lovers are nesters, folks who love snuggling tight at homes with loved ones. This season appeals to those who savor each diminishing sound as cooling nights shut down summer’s harsh decibels. This begins a time of introspection and contemplation. Summer will return for those in mourning. For those of us celebrating its end, ignore the heat and brew a pot of cider. Raise your mug to toast golden days ahead.

Control: An Illusion

Control: An Illusion

Humans are funny creatures. Some imagine we control much that happens in our world. Because technological advances during the last two centuries eradicated small pox and put men on the moon, it’s easy to buy this idea. Believing we direct our lives makes us feel safer. However, anyone who lives in Kansas understands our species doesn’t control of much of anything but putting satellites in orbit and operating a remote that allows us to picture what weather might do. With that little button and functioning electricity, we can react to nature but we can’t regulate it. Recent weather has made that abundantly clear.

Though memory tends to be short, few of us have forgotten the multi-year dry spell that parched ponds, streams, and rivers into dried mud, shriveled prairie grasses to sere curls, and decimated trees. Watching evening news programs offered no comfort. Grim-faced forecasters highlighted maps of nearly every Kansas county in bright colors that confirmed what we saw daily—we suffered extreme drought.

In reaction, town councils voted to restrict watering while individuals opted to place rain barrels and other systems in yards and fields to capture every bit of moisture available. Gardeners promoted drought resistant plants and xeriscaping to manage a non-existent resource. Appliance and hardware stores marketed low-flow washers, toilets, faucets, and showerheads to conserve water.

Amazingly, in only a few months, the scenario has changed. Instead of facing a water shortage, businesses advertise sump pumps and dehumidifiers to waiting customers. Home improvement departments that promoted fixing foundations weakened due to dry conditions now publicize efforts to prevent leaky basements. Ironically, area residents must figure out how to channel water away from properties rather than to them.

Our ancestors faced similar issues. Where do you build a town? Those who build along a creek, river, or stream in dry years, have easy access to drinking and household water. Heck, enterprising sorts might build a mill to grind grain or produce electricity to light homes.

One wet season changes everything. Overnight, residents who prided themselves on wise planning and convenient services find raging torrents sweeping houses from foundations or eroding roadways. Such experiences have occurred far too often in the last month. More than one first responder team has recently rescued folks from cars or houses. 

Not only do storms that tint the radar in shades of red, pink, and purple dump deluges on saturated soil, plunging temperatures alter those molecules into baseball-size ice chunks. Heavy winds turn such projectiles into artillery that shatters glass, pulverizes siding, shreds crops, and convinces anyone living through the assault that Mother Nature knows how to wage war. Goodland residents will stay busy repairing and rebuilding property for months after this latest weather event.

Over a single summer, Mother Nature has reminded us life can change overnight. Ponds overflow, rivers surge over banks to wipe out roads or flood communities, and wind-driven hail shreds siding and splinters glass. Pressing a remote’s on button provides a preview of the show to come and sometimes offers time to prepare ourselves for the result. However, it doesn’t control what’s about to happen. Neither do we.

Continuing a 100 Year Legacy

Who doesn’t love a birthday party, especially one celebrating 100 years of existence? Kansans, in particular, are primed for this special blowout since we  live in the Central Flyway. As a result, we directly benefit from the centennial of the Migratory Bird and Treaty Act and its later companion, the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act (aka the Duck Stamp Act). In general, waterfowl hunters and birders profit most, but every Sunflower State resident can appreciate migrant birds winging across our skies or landing on nearby waterways and refuges.

In a century, hunters and other conservation efforts have protected and managed migratory species so that we expect to see cranes, geese, ducks, and other transient waterfowl. That wasn’t always so. Because so many market hunters decimated populations to sell either meat or feathers, populations suffered. According to one source, “As many as 15,000 canvasbacks were shot in a single day on Chesapeake Bay during the 1870s.” 

When concerned hunters noted declining numbers, they contacted legislators. In response, Congress passed the Lacey Act (1900) and the Weeks Maclean Act (1913) that prevented transportation of illegally taken game across state lines, spring waterfowl hunting, and migratory game bird marketing. Soon after, the Migratory Birds and Treaty Act (1916) strengthened initial efforts.

Unfortunately, lack of funding made it difficult to enforce these laws and support President Theodore Roosevelt’s refuge system. Some might consider it ironic that hunters stepped in to meet this need. I ask who better to identify this concern?

To complicate matters, waterfowl populations declined from 100 million to 20 million during the DustBowl drought years. Franklin Roosevelt sought solutions from the Beck Commission. Their response was to conserve more habitat. Unfortunately, inadequate finances left planners with empty coffers.

Ducks Unlimited explains that FDR appointee Jay Darling was an avid duck hunter and a conservation-minded editorial cartoonist. As head of the Bureau of Biological Surveys (eventually the US Fish and Wildlife Service), Darling supported and designed the first Federal Duck Stamp in 1934. It depicted a pair of mallards. Initially, that stamp cost each hunter $1.00. Like most expenses, this one has increased. The 2016 edition sells for $25.00. Fortunately, 98% of that fee directly supports habitat development. Since the program’s initiation, sales exceed 700 million dollars. According to the Federal Wildlife Service, the result is more than 5.7 million acres of conserved habitat.

Not only has does this act support waterfowl conservation and management, it also encourages wildlife art. Artists compete annually to display their efforts on this collectible stamp. Depictions include Darling’s first two mallards to mergansers, wood ducks, Canada geese, and now trumpeter swans.

Thank goodness, hunters protected this resource and funded habitat development. However, you don’t have to hunt to enjoy the results. You can view waterfowl at any of our state refuges and lakes. Collectors can haunt auctions and antique shops in search of stamps, decoys, and other ephemera. Photographers can combine Kansas sunrises and sunsets to perfect shots of transient visitors. Gourmets can explore endless recipes for delicious goose or duck dinners. Only lack of imagination limits possibilities.

That said, non-hunters as well hunters can support migratory bird populations by buying a Federal Duck Stamp online, at the post office, or local sporting good outlet. In a little over a 100 hundred years, responsible hunters/conservationists have made sure these species continue to thrive.

Follow That Sign to Shake-up an Adventure

While I’m not much for adventures that involve crowds, loud noise, or frenetic activity, I enjoy out of the ordinary explorations. We unexpectedly hit the magic button on our latest road trip and found ourselves looking through several families’ no longer needed treasures and eating Indian tacos. Even better, a Shoshone grandmother prepared our food under blue Wyoming skies. While we ate, we enjoyed visiting with her husband, a tribal artist whose work hangs in offices and homes around the world. 

The key to our unplanned side trip was a garage sale sign stuck along the ditch of a road through a reservation. Once we spied the invite, we said, “Let’s see what they’ve got.” The irony in that comment is that both of us are over sixty and have plenty our own loot we could sell and not miss. Despite knowing we have dust collectors decorating our home, we can’t help but inspect what other people have spent a lifetime acquiring. Heck, who knows when you’ll find a petrified dinosaur tooth or a Made in Occupied Germany teacup?

While we didn’t find dinosaur dental work or rare porcelain, we did find aged buffalo horns, an antique hunting knife, a heavy chef’s skillet, local literature, and homemade Indian tacos made by a professional.

Over decades, I’ve learned garage sales are perfect places to sample local foods. In Northwest Kansas, I’ve bought German bierocks, hertzen, spitzbuben, and Bohemian kolaches. You know when you see the “homemade” sign, you’re in for a treat. There’s something about a woman serving her family recipes that makes her put her best work into what ends up as food for gods.

The lesson learned on this journey was that women everywhere share this  tradition. The silver-haired elder shaping a dough ball before frying it in hot oil was every bit as proud of her traditional food as women in Ellis, Rooks, Rush, Russell, and Trego Counties who tempt taste buds with mouthwatering fare. As she swiftly formed  an oval, the cook explained she could never make her recipe in batches that served less than 80 people. With that kind of practice, it’s no wonder forming those discs looked so easy.

I like making fry bread myself, but this woman’s was better than mine. As I listened to the bread sizzle on the camp stove, I told her how I mixed my simple ingredients. In a flash, she identified two ways to improve my recipe. Ironically, one of those was the addition of butter flavored Crisco to the flour mixture until it crumbled like pie dough before adding liquid. She also let me know my use of milk  darkened and hardened my product. After seeing her golden results, she’s right.

We ate under mid-August rays, savoring chili, lettuce, tomato, and cheese –topped fry bread and discussing Indian art, native colleges, and garage sale bargains. By the end of our meal, we knew one another’s names as well as our preferences for serving this traditional staple. 

Following our instincts and turning into that garage sale was the best part of our expedition. We may not have found an ancient fossil, but every time I make fry bread I’ll smile and recall this chance encounter where I learned to cook from an expert.

A Turkey Thanksgiving

It’s the time of year when turkey producers dream in dollar signs. In a few months, their products will be bagged, tagged, and on sale in the frozen food department of area grocery stores. Cooks in charge of Thanksgiving dinner will be saving tasty recipes picturing birds roasted to golden perfection and surrounded by a platter of colorful accompaniments. Diners who prefer wild turkey to farm-raised stock are eyeballing native flocks to see where they feed daily and roost at dusk. While humans plan their upcoming feasts, camouflage –toned Rios and Easterns are living in the minute, enjoying a banner grasshopper crop.

This spring’s ample rains nurtured fields, yards, and ditches full of cultivated plants and weeds, favorite hopper foods. Hungry, leaping insect hordes explain why roads, fields, and yards in our area appear animated. If you ramble around your yard or a nearby field, you’ll rustle up at least a hundred prickly-legged characters who spring shoulder high from the ground and dangle from the fibers of your shirt or cling to your hair. It’s enough to make a finicky person gyrate like a 70s disco dancer.

Recently, we visited friends in the country who share their property with a number of hens, gobblers, jakes, and poults. It’s a thrill to drive up their road and spy ungainly birds wandering over pastures and into the farmyard. If it isn’t mating season, it’s eating season and these walking drumsticks have big appetites. You can count on watching them scratch and peck at any seed or insect in their vicinity. This year, grasshoppers reproduced like crazy, so plenty exist to fatten feathered foragers.

Since my friend and I enjoy gardening, I hoped to check out her little oasis. She quickly apologized, explaining how hoppers had decimated both her vegetables and flowers. I understood exactly what she meant since I had stems in my own flowerbed sporting well-gnawed leaves that looked like poorly woven fish nets. As we stood outside lamenting the sad fates of our spring dreams, part of her turkey flock wandered near, heads bobbling up and down as they gobbled grasshoppers.

In an area with so many delicacies to choose from, those poor birds struggled to decide which bug to eat first. Once they swallowed their prey, they intently moved on to the next crunchy critter. In a matter of minutes, they wiped out more than my friend and I might have squashed in a day of smacking and stomping. We quietly cheered on this squad of hens and mostly-grown poults. In the distance, gobblers worked the edges of a field, leaping into the air like a hovering  basketball rebounder to snag an escaping hopper.

Perhaps some of the turkeys I watched this summer will end up as the main course of a Thanksgiving dinner. Whoever enjoys that banquet should know that turkey scored a feast that lasted for months. In fact, area gobblers heading to roost struggle to attain lift off with their stomachs full of once-leaping protein snacks.

Swallows Attack Lawn Dart Teams

What’s more fun when families get together than some friendly rivalry? Our most recent gathering enjoyed some spirited lawn dart competition where daughter proved she could aim and hit the mark every bit as well as her dad, uncle, and husband could. Her victories weren’t the only surprise during this adrenalin generating family feud. A nearby swallow nest packed to the brim with fledgling young flew right into the middle of their game.

When the participants set up the perimeter lines and target zones, they considered the swallow nest situated on a pole high above our fence. After some discussion, players decided their activity wouldn’t disturb the young family. Their play extended far beyond the area where mom or dad traditionally flew out of the nest, scolding trespassers.

During the first game or two, this distance appeared satisfactory. However, as noise levels increased, the tuxedoed parents grew ever more agitated and flew closer and closer to those carefully lining up their darts with the target.

  

Those of us sitting in the observation seats on the patio had a clear view of the increasingly irritated birds. At first, they swooped above our players’ heads by a good foot. When the focused team members ignored their shrill cries and frantic flutterings, the birds’ trajectory dropped til they cruised inches above the competitors’ hair or scalp, depending on which player they targeted.

In a further effort to appease angry swallows, the players moved their field of play over as far as they could without being in the busy street. Unfortunately, hostilities had escalated to the point that nothing the humans did satisfied the birds. The black and white torpedoes plunged right above my mom’s head, riffling silver hairs when she walked out with a water pitcher to refill their birdbath—something they’d accepted all summer long.

By the second night, we thought the birds’ emotions had settled and they’d gotten used to having extra humans in the yard. Nope! They ordered a backup crew. Instead of the two swallows who’d dive-bombed the games the night before, six birds performed acrobatics directly above the players as they focused their concentration to place weighted darts inside a yellow ring on their opponents’ end line.

Players and audience tried to figure out where these extra attackers came from. We had only one swallow nest in the yard though we had seen other birds flying about the neighborhood. While we puzzled this mystery, lawn dart competition continued til we celebrated a victor.

After our guests left the following day, we noted they weren’t the only ones absent. Our swallow family had exited as well. That offered a huge hint as to the source of the extra attackers.

We knew the babies were nearly grown. We’d seen them peeking out the bird house opening and then making awkward, short flights as their parents taught them to hunt nearby insects. They must have been more mature than we realized and emerged from the nest fully capable of joining the parents’ attacks on nearby humans.

As family gatherings go, this was a good one. It was great to see one another and to see a nearby bird household in action as well.

When Faking It Isn't a Bad Thing

When Faking It Isn’t a Bad Thing

All of us have attended weddings and marveled at beautiful bouquets a bride and her attendants carried down the aisle. Those of us who enjoy flowers appreciate well-designed arrangements that brighten the sanctuary. Then our roaming eyes note the corsages and boutonnieres that mothers, fathers, grandparents, and groomsmen wear. In the past, brides were at the mercy of their mother’s garden or a savvy florist for these bridal necessities. Every blossom was freshly cut and arranged  just before the wedding. Nowadays, wives-to-be visit hobby stores to select realistic silk flowers that hold color and shape before and after their nuptials.

Like all new trends, this one got off to a slow start and guaranteed a bit of snooty commentary among guests with old-fashioned sensibilities. However, manufacturers realized the potential for these everlasting blossoms and tweaked their product until it’s impossible to tell whether you’re looking at someone’s garden glory or a fake. Who hasn’t slyly fondled a silk plant or arrangement to see if it’s the real deal? It doesn’t take much imagination to see why this market succeeded while others didn’t.

I’ve discovered that weddings aren’t the only place silk flowers are lovely to look at and affordable. Folks who live in deer country are discovering they can design colorful flowerbeds that brighten their yards and last all summer for the same price they’d pay for garden shop plants.

For readers who’ve never dealt with a determined doe or buck with an acquired a taste for tulips, daffodils, geraniums, and daisies, the gardener fights a losing battle. Those wily critters can leap high fences, gobble tender leaves and blooms, and exit before you can ask “Whitetail or muley?”

This summer, I’ve watched several does mow neighbors’ and my healthy plants to stubble, so I’m familiar with their sneaky strategies. Nothing frustrates a green-thumbed dreamer more than going to bed knowing their prized plant is about to flower and coming outside the next morning to find sheared  stumps it its place.

A nearby resident figured out how to deceive the local herd and still enjoy a colorful yard. As I walked past their waist-high fence week after week, I noted delicate iris, hyacinths, tulips, daisies, and daffodils. After seeing these always perfect flowers, I wondered why their blooms lasted so long. Curiosity overcame me until I wandered close enough to examine their garden more closely. Yep, they’d torn a page out of a bridal magazine and loaded their bordered beds with silk plants. Apparently, they didn’t buy cheap stuff because this greenery looks real.

I’d loved to have seen the face of the deer that bounded over that fence to sample that first fibrous petal. If I didn’t relish the act of potting tiny sprouts  and nurturing them as they grow into lush, leafy foliage filled with swelling buds, I’d be the silk plant aisle’s best customer. Those deer would need a mineral oil dosing to clean their systems out after they’d invaded my fake jungle.

                                                                                                                                               

The Battle Is On

The Battle Is On

Those who’ve read my column for years know I love hummingbirds. Those miniature bodies with needle-like beaks that zip through air emitting the spirited hum of an old-fashioned Singer sewing machine mesmerize me. Usually, I hear before I see their torpedo-shaped torsos flitting by at supersonic speeds. I love watching them dart to and from their feeders or from blossoms dangling over the edges of hanging baskets. What’s not to love, right?

The answer is ants! If you attract hummers, these insects soon follow. Since they are social by nature, they arrive in droves. You never get one or two. An endless parade of narrow- waisted, strong-jawed pheromone -using communicator s from every colony in the vicinity troops up tree, wall, pole, or whatever supports that bright bottle of sugar solution.

Usually, birds and bugs co-exist, eating sweet syrup daintily like red hat ladies enjoying a tea party. However, the other day, an iridescent broadtail swooped to the red plastic blossom inviting it to dinner. Upon arriving, it swiftly backed off and hovered before racing away.

I watched, thinking it would return. When it didn’t, I inspected the feeder hanging from a shepherd’s hook. I soon realized why my little buddy’s appetite vanished.

Miniscule ants by the thousands had marched up that pole and found their way into the mixture. Like desperate drunks, they drowned their sorrows and themselves before floating to the top of the bottle. Still-living relatives escaped out yellow and red flower-shaped feeding stations. That little hummer must have thought the Invasion of the Body Snatchers had arrived.

If that green fellow had lingered longer, he’d have reported to his friends that an awkwardly acrobatic older woman was doing a hootchie-cootchie dance. I couldn’t find a finger hold on that feeder that wasn’t covered two or three layers deep in ants. Every time I touched glass, plastic, or metal, eight-legged Huns raced up my hand onto my arm.

This emergency called for desperate action. A scum of dead creatures requiring disposal drifted at the top of the bottle, so I went for the big gun: a water hose with power sprayer. Taking enough time enough to douse myself from head to toe and muddy the soil beneath my feet, I drove the invaders from their castle. At last, I could antlessly lift feeder from hook.

Hundreds of carcasses washed down the drain as I cleaned the bottle before refilling it. I had to think of a way to discourage the families of these dead creatures from repeating the behavior that destroyed their companions. Thankfully, Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

I scrounged until found a lid built something like an angel food cake pan. I filled the top with water to discourage future sugar-crazed kamikazes from polluting my hummers’ carb supply.

So far so good--the sugar solution remains bugless. However, I worry that the natives swarming about my feet as I refresh the bottle are plotting to overthrow the crazily gyrating gramma who thwarted their feast.

A Good Thing Turned Monster

Wallace Stegner suggests specific landscapes speak to a person’s heart, and he’s right. Many have a favorite place that roots the spirit. Plants have a similar effect, and that preference is genetic at my house. Mom and I love clematis blossoms. We can’t grow too many or take enough photos of those blooming in our flowerbeds.

We’ve found we can cultivate them in western Kansas if we nurture them tenderly. That says volumes because this plant succumbs easily to heat and drought, natural elements of Kansas summers. Ironically, a wild species thrives in Wyoming’s cool mountain air and takes on kudzu-like characteristics, wrapping prolific tendrils around fences, trees, and anything else that holds still a moment too long.

Four Easters ago, I gave my mom two plants, one purple and one white. She tucked them in soil east of her front door and watched them twine up metal porch poles. That first summer, blossoms were sparse and plants stunted. The next season, they decided to showoff and bloomed prolifically as they advanced toward her guttering. Despite the resulting fuzzy seeds, sometimes called old man’s beard, her plants didn’t spread. In fact, the opposite occurred.

The third year, only the white vine re-sprouted. Her purple variety didn’t survive. Despite our disappointment at losing the deeper-hued plant, its companion compensated. At one point, Mom had 50 saucer-sized, white blooms climbing toward heaven. To support the extra weight, she added a chicken wire frame.

After watching her success, I planted clematis near my back porch. This year it flowered for the first time so I can expect hordes of blossoms next spring. Like mom’s plant, the seeds haven’t spread. Until I visited Wyoming during the summer, I thought this was unfortunate. After seeing what happens with unchecked clematis growth, I’m delighted our plants haven’t reproduced.

In central Wyoming’s Wind River Range, wild clematis fills river bottoms and takes over yards of anyone naïve enough to try to domesticate it. When I view the acres of green vines climbing logs, trees, bushes, fences, and bridge foundations, I see how it got its folk name--virgin’s bower. I might not understand the virgin part, but left to its own devices, this plant forms shady tunnels big enough provide napping space for several classrooms full of students. Less lethargic children could play hide-n-seek for days in these green grottoes and not find all their playmates.

In one familiar yard, previous owners turned this wild vine with delicate yellow blossoms loose along their fence. Once they realized its capacity to overtake everything in its path, they wrenched woody stems loose from metal fencing and considered that a closed episode. Imagine their surprise to discover  hairy seedpods had blown about their lawn and took root the next spring. Instead of an orderly row of trailing creepers clinging tightly to chain link, baby vines sprouted and spread across two lots.

Once I saw this favorite plant growing unchecked, I was glad the cultured clematis growing in mom’s flowerbed and mine hadn’t reproduced. Despite having lovely flowers that succor bees, this plant growing out of control is a monster that becomes too much of a good thing.

Old-Fashioned Gramma’s Garden

Lots of us dream about accomplishing something that makes others shake their heads in wonder. My funky lifetime wish has been to grow an old-fashioned gramma’s flower garden full of purple, blue, and pink larkspur and bachelor buttons; orange, red, and yellow Indian blankets; lavender cosmos; yellow and white daisies; and multi-color hollyhocks. Despite lifetime efforts and lots of money spent on seeds, it’s taken me 40 years and aspringtime of gentle, well-timed, ample rains to make my dream come true.

The irony of this beautiful flowerbed makes me chuckle. I left town and abandoned it to Mother Nature’s care for weeks. During that time, it had no encouragement. No weeding, no fertilizing, no thinning out plants, no early morning sitting on the paving stones dreaming about the pretty bouquets I hoped to harvest and  display in my kitchen window. Apparently, dirt and seeds enjoy benign neglect because I drove up after that absence to spy thriving pinks, purples, blues, lavenders, whites, yellows, oranges, and reds spilling over garden borders and waving wildly  in evening breezes. They were everything I’d hoped for all the years I’d planted store-bought seed and carefully tended previous endeavors.

So, the next irony in this story is that girlfriends gave me hollyhock and larkspur seeds a few years ago. I then harvested bachelor button and Indian blanket seeds that I’d planted two summers ago and sprinkled those among my friends’ gifts. None of this year’s crop came from miserly garden shop packets. Nope, these were homegrown. Two fellow gardeners and I collected dried pods from previous years’ growth, separated the tiny seeds, and then saved them in paper bags to share.

The hollyhocks, bachelor buttons, Indian blanket, and larkspur took a year to gain a solid foothold in my yard. Last summer, I had scraggly, hesitant blooms--nothing like the towers of frothy color dancing boldly under this spring’s sun. In addition to the rain helping, I suspect good old Kansas breezes had something to do with the expansion of my plantings. A few seeds blew south and started new growth. Then stout southerly winds tumbled the majority of them north across our driveway until they landed in a bed of wood chips. Imagine my surprise to see them take root and grow.

By allowing nature to take its course, I ended up with stunning flowers in places I didn’t sow them. Initially, I thought I’d pull the unplanned starts, but I’m glad I didn’t. Not only do I have a new bed of larkspur and bachelor buttons outdoing itself on the other side of the drive, I have hollyhocks in places I never expected to find them. They proudly belong.

Perhaps letting Mother Nature do her thing in the sowing and watering is the secret to a successful old-fashioned, Gramma’s garden. That saucy anthropomorph has done a stellar job  taking seeds friends gave me, multiplying and then tossing them in the wind, and raining on them to show me how to get the job done. I’m going to help her out by harvesting, drying, and passing on these tiny power packs of beauty to my daughters and my friends.

A Window to the Past

Not long ago, I wrote an article about my interest in stained glass and shared photos of windows at Cottonwood Ranch in Studley. Several people said they wanted to know more about them. This topic is a mystery in progress, but I have more to share thanks to Don Rowlison, ranch curator.

The first Pratt settler, Abraham, an English entrepreneur first immigrated to Kansas in the late 1870s. He bought 160 acres along the South Solomon River, where he occupied a dugout. Despite the rustic conditions he faced in Kansas, he saw possibilities and returned to England where he convinced his oldest son John Fenton Pratt to return with him. Once here, John bought 160 acres of his own property from the Kansas Pacific Railroad on the north side of the river. Both men continued living in the underground home until the mid-80s when brother Tom helped them construct a single- roomed native stone structure on John’s property.

Along the way, the elder Pratt consolidated the towns of Skelton and Carl into Studley, named after a landmark in his native England. Then he established a lumberyard and ran it in addition to the agricultural endeavors he shared with his sons.

Due to the closing of the cattle trails and opportunity created by the 1883 depression, these men created a Yorkshire-style sheep operation. Through the mid-1880s, they replaced south-aligned sod buildings with native stone until they completed the traditional English structures and fencing visitors now observe at this historic site.

As the family became more successful, the ranch house developed from a single room stone structure to a lovely Victorian home with a parlor, dining room, kitchen, bath, and multiple bedrooms. To enhance its prairie presence, John or Jennie Pratt ordered four stained glass windows from the Studley lumberyard.

Those who have visited Cottonwood Ranch today know that they hung one window in the dining area, one called Lavender and Lace on the north side of the  kitchen, another larger design titled Buttons and Bows above their then-modern tin tub, and a still striking oval design  in the guest bedroom.

John was a meticulous record keeper and recorded when he ordered his windows from his father’s lumberyard. A researcher familiar with the records and era speculated these were shipped from Chicago, perhaps from the Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogues. That information is uncertain; however, John’s books indicate he frequently bought from these merchants.

We know the name of the designs in the bathroom and the kitchen.  Thanks to John’s records, we know the bathroom glass cost the handsome sum of $7.87. The delicate oval window visitors see from the front porch was more dear. According to his accounts, Pratt valued it at $16.83.

These prices seem cheap by today’s standards, but according to a site detailing 1896 wages, Kansas laborers averaged $2.50 per day. I’m guessing pay was lower in western Kansas where this ranch is located. Even at the stated daily wage, a person would have to work half a week to buy the less expensive product and six days to purchase the lovely oval design. Based on the windows installed in his house, raising sheep was profitable for John Fenton Pratt.

It’s worth a trip to Cottonwood Ranch to view these lovely art forms and to visit with Don Rowlison who has an encyclopedic understanding of this family and their role in Kansas history.

Mosquitoes and the Food Chain

I spend considerable time in Northwest Wyoming where growing populations of grizzlies and black bears remind me humans are not the dominant species in the Greater Yellowstone Eco-system. Every year a hiker or hunter runs into a creature that thinks Homo sapiens are a food source. Prepared individuals have their bear spray or weapon close at hand to fend off such unwanted attention. Unfortunately, locals tell stories about those surprised by these beasts who don’t survive the encounter. Such tales set a nervous person on edge, but recent news reports about insect-borne damage and disease make me realize these mammals aren’t humans’ worst nightmare.

It’s bad enough to think about a colony of termites silently chomping their way through the wood supports in your home, wreaking havoc. I know an individual who bought an older residence and began remodeling only to discover millions of these tiny creatures digested his studs and supports into a holey mess. Even if homeowners find these insects in time to prevent massive structural damage, they’ll pay a pretty penny to destroy the colony and then fund maintenance treatments to keep future invaders away forever.

In another creepy-crawly story, a family we know recently discovered bed bugs hitchhiked home with them from their workplace. Fortunately, they caught the infestation early, but again it was a financial drain to wipe out these uninvited bloodsuckers. Just thinking about them makes me itch so I’m sure those fighting them directly suffered worse mental tortures.

While the mammals and bugs I’ve mentioned inflict horrific damage, newspaper stories from around the world inform us that nasty as they are these aren’t our worst fears. Aedes mosquitoes, known in the past because they transmit yellow fever, also carry the Zika virus and produce nearly as many headlines as current political candidates do. Scientists first identified this disease in the Zika Forest in Uganda in the 1940s. Since then, it has spread to multiple continents, most recently including South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Southern America is on the radar.

In most cases, this disease related to dengue fever and West Nile virus causes unremarkable symptoms such as mild headaches, joint pains, and reddened eyes. In many cases, victims don’t even know they contracted it, or if they do, a Tylenol handles their complaints. In worst-case scenarios, the pathogen passes through a mother’s placenta to her fetus, causing microcephaly, a condition resulting in intellectual and motor disabilities. Concerns about this life-altering issue are affecting fertile women’s travel plans and attendance at the upcoming summer Olympics in Brazil.

When I read about young mothers delivering infants affected by this virus, I realize my fear of bears is over-rated. After all, in bear country, I have control. I carry pepper spray any time I’m in their territory and know if I use it correctly, the spritzed critter will race away. At this point, humans can also manage termite and bedbug infestations even if it puts a whammy on bank accounts and sets imaginations on overdrive.

Unfortunately, civilization hasn’t won the mosquito wars. We still battle malaria and yellow fever, and now we know these winged destroyers transfer a virus that humans can pass to their unborn with disastrous results. It’s beyond humbling to acknowledge something as small as a mosquito owns the top of the food chain.

Custer, the Gilded Age, and Trains

I recently read Terry Mort’s Thieves Road: The Black Hills Betrayal and Custer’s Path to the Little Big Horn. This text investigated the effects of the American Gilded Age on Custer’s world, which made it different from many that explore this historical icon. The research focused heavily on post-Civil War American finance rather than on Custer’s personality or that of his fellow officers. Detailed information about the transcontinental railroad and resulting American progress brought to life how this era influenced the development of the West, including Kansas.

I told a friend I’d read this book and mentioned the term Gilded Age. She promptly asked what that term meant. It came to life via Mark Twain, the famed author who published a satire about the period following 1870 to the new century. His book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today made fun of social issues of the time. Poking the bear as only he could, Twain prodded American sensibilities for sugarcoating serious concerns with a thin gold covering.

More than a century and a half has passed since those days so we must recollect that while America emerged reunited after the Civil War, it was a country with enormous debt. The nation’s finances were tied to the gold standard so a wobbly economy put a hold a most financial and business advancement. Shrewd businessmen with names such as Gould, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, Stanford, and Vanderbilt are still recognizable today. These enterprising fellows put the gilded in the term by investing heavily in railroads through selling stock to desperate job seekers whose lives depended on Western opportunities.

The impoverished government couldn’t aid the railroads financially, but it had an enormous amount of land to give companies selling bonds to fund track building across a vast continent. That incentive allowed entrepreneurs to either give or sell cheap town lots and farmland to those willing to migrate to the region. Early Kansas benefitted due to these booster promises. Many towns across our state began as barren railroad property, which soon filled with folks expecting to produce goods they could ship East on the same trains that delivered them to their new address.

Towns such as Dodge, Hays, Ellis, Wakeeney, Hill City, Logan, Phillipsburg, and Norton are direct results of Eastern robber barons’ dreams. One of those men left his mark in several places in Kansas. Jay Gould, a New York speculator tied to Boss Tweed of the famous Tammany Hall scandal, took control of the Union Pacific Railroad during the 1873 financial crisis. Making informed and competitive decisions, Gould revamped a failing system that then succeeded because of shipments to and from recently recruited farmers and ranchers.

Because of his impact on the region, Harlan, Kansas, in the North Central part of our state named a then prestigious university in that community Gould College. Today, you can find a plaque that marks this institution’s former locale. In Ellis, Kansas, several local property owners examined their real estate abstracts to find Gould’s signature as the first to transfer railroad property to private possession.

This book about how the railroad and the Gilded Age cost the Sioux the Black Hills and, subsequently, Custer his life aided my understanding of how my ancestors became part of the rush to develop communities across Kansas. Every time I cross metal rails now, I’ll thank those men who were looking out for their own bank accounts and not my relatives’. Their desire to create wealth offered my ancestors an incentive to leave Canada, England, and Russia for these Great Plains.

Masochistic Flowers

Take a close look at a rose bush, clematis vine, or slender columbine stalk. You’ll see perfectly formed leaves that bugs can chew to look like fishnet stockings in a feeding or two and fragile blooms that appear as if they’d unravel at the seams during high winds. Anything this delicate looking ought to frighten new gardeners. Not so. My mom has tested these three species and discovered they like abuse. In fact, they thrive on it.

For the last five decades, Mom has grown lovely roses in yards in two states. Her plants are always healthy and bloom profusely through the summer. Last year, her plants continued to produce huge, scented blossoms into mid-November when a visit from Jack Frost nipped them and ended the display. In this case, she feeds the plants regularly. Then in late February or early March, she grabs her clippers and takes out any stored up winter aggressions on those thorny stems. When she’s done, stubs of the former plant remain. By May, it’s clear the roots enjoyed this shearing as they produce hordes of new shoots that soon sport lovely red, white, and pink flowers she can enjoy on the plant or cut to put in a vase to perfume her house.

Mom’s green thumb includes more than roses. This last summer, Mom’s showy clematis overtook much of her front flowerbed draping itself over surrounding plants. Unsure of how to handle this issue, last fall she grabbed her shears again and took after those dry stems, cutting the vine back like a pedicurist trimming too-long toenails. All winter long, she worried that she might have gotten carried away and killed her favorite spring harbinger. Imagine her delight when she saw new growth earlier this year. Triple that emotion to describe how she reacted when she came home from a short trip to find over fifty saucer-sized blooms climbing her trellis.

Not surprisingly, cutting back that aggressive clematis also benefitted the yellow columbine growing in the area in front of Mom’s treasured vine. Last year her Colorado flowers were two feet tall. This year, they’re at least six inches to a foot higher. And she didn’t fertilize them. This growth is the result of receiving more sun along with abundant spring rains. You’d think towering, long stemmed blooms would succumb to some of the “breezes” we’ve enjoyed lately. Not these guys. We had a doozy of storm the other night and by sunrise, those yellow flower stood at attention to welcome those bright rays.

I tend to garden cautiously, but after seeing the results my mom gets by energetically trimming her plants and then not worrying about what the weather does to them, I’m going to change my ways. I’ve concluded that plants are like feet and hands. Anyone watching a pedicure or manicure for the first time would swear the technician was abusing the client during the process of softening and pushing back cuticles and dealing with calluses. In reality, anyone who’s enjoyed such services knows the treatment feels great, and like my mom’s treatment of her garden, produces lovely results.

Orioles—Guest or Pest

For those who have computers and are on Facebook, join local photography sites to see what’s going on around our state. You won’t be sorry. Right now, a slew of oriole pictures--Baltimore, Bullock, and orchard-- fill scroll bars daily. Based on the shots I’m seeing, Kansas is currently inundated with these pretty birds. I love the digital captures of these saucy black and orange avians as well as stories about them that photographers post.

If you aren’t a birder or someone who loves one of these obsessed individuals, you may not have a clue about these colorful birds other than the fact you saw a streak of orange and black flit through nearby trees. In addition to their eye-catching plumage, they build quaint nests that look like small brown bags. While harder to see when trees leaf out, once foliage drops in the fall, you’ll see these burlap sack shapes dangling from bare branches. As a child, I love spotting an oriole nest and imagining what it would be like to begin life swaying in Kansas breezes.

These distinctly marked creatures migrate to Kansas each spring to feast on insect, nectar, and fruit as well as raise their young. One of the reasons photography and birding sites fill with these creatures’ likenesses is that May is their peak nest building time. They’ve completed long journeys from as far away as South America, and now they’re ready to weave those clever nurseries for their young.

The Baltimore sub-species is the most brightly colored with the male’s deep orange contrasting sharply against black feathers. The Bullock tends to a more yellow hue while the orchard is a russet tinge that camouflages more easily than its vivid kin. Based on the pictures posted online, these are the common Kansas visitors. Residents of Southern states claim a few more varieties for bird watchers to add to life lists.

In addition to being lovely to look at, orioles sing beautifully as well. Because they are so attractive and their songs brighten humans’ lives, many folks invite these birds to their yards. Nailing or propping half an orange in a nearby tree is a good way to lure one onto the premises. They are also fond of grape jelly served up in a fancy store-bought feeder or in less stylish jar lids nailed to a board. Based on cyberspace anecdotes, these feathered friends keep homeowners running to the grocery store to buy more of this sweet stuff. One birder in an oriole-dense community in Eastern Kansas reported that their local Aldi’s recently ran out of grape jelly. Once the store got a new shipment, the jars flew off the shelves into the hands of oriole buffs.

Buying scads of Welches is one thing, but sacrificing fresh fruit to this creature is another. A friend has a small orchard, and he’s not nearly as fond of orioles as these people putting pictures online. He’s battled aptly named orchard orioles for several years as they peck damaging holes in his ripening peaches. I have to confess that would frustrate me too. Their brilliant coloration and their lilting songs wouldn’t make up for the ruined hopes for luscious peach pies and cobblers I had as I watched blossoms open each spring.

Like all things on our blue planet, orioles are good and bad. Enjoy their coloring and their song, but protect your fruit trees from them. More than anything, sign up for some photo pages so you can enjoy their visits in other people’s yards.

Bridges of Western Kansas

Combine past information with storytelling and you get history, which both entertains and provides examples of actions that improve lives. Kansas has had thousands of years of learning how to set up functional communities. At least 155 years of those include practice establishing permanent towns operated by local and state governments.

During post-settlement years, The Great Depression delivered hard lessons as well as some of the greatest infrastructure progress our citizens have experienced. As people directly involved during those years pass and families lose sight of their personal involvement, I worry about disappearing knowledge and landmarks that told us how the Works Progress Administration improved Kansans’ lives. For those interested in this subject, a drive down local roads uncovers cleverly engineered monuments to a program designed to stimulate the economy and create beautiful yet functional structures utilizing native resources. During that Sunday cruise, explore city parks, blue highways, and rural lanes to look for old WPA bridges.

In many regions, locally quarried limestone adds decorative elements that building crews don’t achieve using traditional concrete and rebar construction. For those who enjoy connecting the past to the present, it’s interesting to visit these sites and examine them closely. Those who investigate these historical constructions find imbedded markers establishing the year WPA funds and local labor produced them.

One of the greatest strengths of this federal program was that it depended on local resources, natural and human. Those who know their regional geology can identify the origin of stones used to build the bridges. Marci Penner’s The Guidebook for Kansas Explorers helps to identify the types of limestone construction travelers view as they explore different counties in our state.

Even sightseers without that resource or another like it will recognize that different quarries supplied material used during construction. Ellis County’s light colored Fort Hays limestone clearly differs from grayish toned material found Phillips County. A short trip to view Graham WPA sites frequently reveals the use of green rock.

In theory, history should make us wiser. If that’s true, why hasn’t our state taken advantage of lessons provided during one of the most difficult times Kansans faced? Those hard years proved we could build a skilled workforce that used native material to create functional and beautiful bridges across creeks, rivers, and draws that drain our watersheds. Such efforts stimulated local economies then. Why wouldn’t they do the same today?

When I hear people complaining about a lack of jobs, I wonder why elected officials don’t steal a page from history books. They could train and hire native-born engineers and construction crews to use resources at hand to build necessary infrastructure. To retain jobs, locals could maintain those structures.

Make a point of visiting these monuments to hard work and initiative before it’s too late to see them. Contact legislators to ask what it would take to reinstate such programs. With foresight, Kansans could better utilize resources and support local companies willing to specialize in building and preserving functional bridgework. We’d be taking care of our own in more ways than one, a trait our ancestors would recognize.

Enjoying Somebody Else’s Garden

I know people who insist on creating original landscapes in their yards. They either begin with a clean palette and scrape their property down to bare earth or they buy homes in brand new subdivisions where all the dirt is recently backhoed and then leveled by earthmoving mega-machines. Once these individuals draw up their plans and plant accordingly, they have designer yards that draw the eye to appealing areas throughout their lot. This is one way to create beauty around a home. Another is to enjoy what previous occupants have planted and work around the property’s history.

Since I was a little girl, I’ve enjoyed investigating other people’s gardening talents. My great grandmother lived near Buckner Creek in Southwest Kansas where she cultivated irises, peonies, and black berry canes someone had tucked around her house before she moved in. As a toddler, I examined her bearded irises and thorny berry plants from a nose to petal point of view. Somehow, I understood these mature plants had lived in this place longer than Grandma had. I also got the idea that they connected her and me as well to whoever optimistically planted them in a land of little rain.

Because of those early experiences, I’ve always loved moving into homes with already established plantings. Lovely wild rose bushes with once a year yellow blooms, peonies, poppies, purple and bronze iris, naked ladies, and lilac borders graced our first bungalow built in the early 1900s. Their cycles of scented blossoms brightened that yard for decades and continue to do so two owners later.

We were only the second residents of our next home, but the couple who built that house transplanted iris tubers and lilac starts from their family’s original homestead into their new yard. In addition, they’d added rose bushes, purple phlox, and blue flax to enhance the native prairie flowers that surrounded them.

One of the attractions of our most recent real estate purchase was the pretty yard surrounding the house. That owner landscaped with new plantings to increase the curb of appeal of her property, but she also incorporated old-fashioned poppies, peonies, daisies, butter and eggs, day lilies, and violets that add a nostalgic touch to the yard. While I love the roses and shrubbery this gifted gardener chose to border the house, I most enjoy the plants she transferred from her farm and other people’s flowerbeds.

What I like best about plantings passed down from the generations who first turned these prairies into homes is that they connect us to real people who longed for reminders of where they came from. They were dead tired from just surviving, yet they made time to turn up flowerbeds around their homes. Even more telling, they shared precious water with rootstock or seeds they either ordered or carried from more settled regions of America and Europe.

Drive by any dying community or abandoned farmstead and you’ll see remnants of lilac borders, iris or peony beds, and poppies that now escape confinement. The humans who planted them are long gone. Equipment they left behind rusts in weedy yards that come to life each spring with improbable lavender, pink, and bright orange blooms that fleetingly tell stories of those who came before.

People of the South Wind in the Land of Extremes

My brain collects trivia the way a magnet attracts iron filings, so just hearing the word Kansas means I immediately associate it with the tribe that gave the state its name. Anthropologists and historians would call them the Kansa, Quapaw, or Kaw people—otherwise known as the South Wind People. When this Siouan language-speaking group migrated from the Ohio Valley, they first settled in Arkansas and later crossed into what is now Kansas.

In 1724, a French explorer first documented a Kaw village near what is now the site of Doniphan in the eastern part of the state. In 1804, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery traveled up the Missouri and recorded the presence of this now abandoned village, whose occupants relocated on the Kansas River. While few citizens of the Kaw Nation remain in Kansas today, the state’s name serves to honor generations of native people whose families once farmed and hunted the place we call home. These People of the South Wind had to be a sturdy bunch to make their lives in this place.

You don’t have to be here long before you realize that the term South Wind People is apt. A single drive across a landscape punctuated by bent and twisted vegetation tells anyone paying attention that the prevailing wind and master sculptor of these cottonwood, elm, locust, and hackberry trees comes from the south. 

If you stay long enough to watch local news channels or read papers, you find headlines detailing massive fires roaring out of Oklahoma onto central Kansas prairies. Prevailing southerly gusts whip grass fires into monstrous tidal waves of flame devouring everything in their path. We know these infernos existed long before scholars documented these events. Such  blazes explain why this landscape was essentially treeless. Wind-driven conflagrations contained tree growth except along waterways until humans controlled most of these burns. The recent Medicine Lodge fire reminds us that south wind extremes aren’t always manageable.

Just a few weeks after reporting about out-of-region firefighters who loaded their gear and headed away from home to help control the fires in Southern Kansas, newsfeeds were busy again. This time, the Weather Channel lit up like a Christmas tree as analysts predicted massive rains driven by what else--gulf moisture pushed north by southerly winds. Forecasters stayed busy updating audiences with reports of up to 9 inches of rain in just over 24 hours. Overnight, dusty waterways turned to raging torrents while homeowners hurried to seal leaking roofs and basements.

Kansas demographics change over decades and centuries, but one truth remains. This is a land of extremes that often blow in on a south wind. That same breeze that twists and bends our trees shapes those of us who grow to love this place. It makes us tough souls who slap our hats on a bit more tightly and roll up our sleeves to clean up whatever messes those gales deliver. We too are people of the South Wind.

A Sea of Purple

Spring is upon us in all her splendor, including this particular season’s signature sea of purple washing across people’s yards, over city park acres, through roadside ditches, and even spilling into farm fields and pastures. These tiny blooms set among frilly leaves welcome warming temperatures every year, but conditions this season seem especially suited to its growth. Commonly called henbit, this vegetation sporting tiny orchid-like flowers blends cheerfully with dandelions that brighten green lawns and irritate those who hate weeds. For some reason, this North African/Eurasian immigrant has outdone itself in the last few weeks.

As the days grow longer and more greenery unfurls in our area, a pinkish-purple carpet has overtaken what should be verdant lawns in every town I drive through. I know there are people like my mom who hate this invasion into their well-tended grass, but I’m inclined to forgive these tiny buds their trespasses and welcome them to town. Once I researched this relative newcomer to the plains, I found it had practical uses to match its eye-catching appearance.

Henbit or Lamium amplexicaule L. is member of the mint family. Although a member of Lamiaceae or mint clan, henbit doesn’t smell or taste like some of its more refreshing relatives. It comes by its common name because chickens love to eat it. Apparently, cranes and storks enjoy it as well because people in some regions of the country identify it as cranesbill, heronsbill, and storksbill. In addition to hens enjoying this gourmet treat, hummingbirds love to sip its nectar.

 For humans with exotic tastes, this plant is a perfect fit. Homo sapiens can dine on cleaned stems, flowers, and leaves harvested from unsprayed fields, raw in salads and smoothies, sautéed like kale or spinach, or brewed into teas. The plant said to taste either like kale or mushrooms is rich in iron, vitamins, and fiber, all positives for health enthusiasts. With such recommendations going for it, it’s surprising grocery stores don’t stock it every spring.

The explanation why these nutritious greens aren’t available right next to the kale at the local market might have something to do with the species ability to reproduce. A single plant can produce 2000 seeds a season, which makes me wish I had a savings account that offered such returns. Those who have planted one or two mint plants in the garden soon discover that these reproduce themselves much as cottontail bunnies do. Begin with two and after a couple of seasons, hundreds inhabit an area. This particular cousin to wintergreen, catnip, and spearmint apparently excels in this department. A drive through town confirms this.

The failure of this plant to thrive in the open market may have something to do with its negative qualities. I’ve already mentioned how easily it spreads. It has even more downsides. According to one source, field infestation results in diminished yields in small grain crops. In addition, authorities explain that it hosts disease-causing nematodes and fungi in soybeans and other cultivated plantings. Just reading this makes my skin crawl. Those aren’t advertisements to encourage this little plant to make itself at home on the prairie.

While henbit’s pretty flowers might capture a winter-dulled eye, and a gourmet diner may thrill at the idea of eating something picked from the wild, I’m thinking my mother may be right again. Perhaps this non-native species requires less tolerance. I’m sure chickens can find something to eat that doesn’t encourage nematodes and fungi.