Compostable Matter

Animals in Translation

2012-02-23T12:57:00.000-05:00

Okay. This was actually stunning news to me. Squirrels remember where they bury their nuts.

I read this in Temple Grandin’s book “Animals in Translation”. Ms. Grandin is a Doctor of Animal Science and professor at Colorado State University, bestselling author, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior – and a person with high-functioning autism. Much of her academic work centers on her belief that autistic people and animals view the world similarly – for example both see EVERY detail; both think in pictures rather than words. Her general technique is to observe how she herself thinks and behaves in a particular situation – and when she sees an animal behaving in the same manner she deduces that they are thinking similarly.
For example it is apparently a proven fact in the world of animal behavior that ants use landmarks to find their way to and from a place. When taking a trip for the first time when an ant walks by a potential marker such as a gray stone it will stop and look back at it. Grandin does the same thing when she is driving an unfamiliar route. That is because, unlike non-Autistic people, she cannot imagine what the landmark (e.g. a red barn) would look like from the other side. Likewise ants.

Makes sense to me – or at least I can see it from her point of view.

As you might expect this means Grandin feels that animals are more intelligent than most of us would give them credit for – hence the squirrel/acorn thing.

For years it was thought that squirrels buried acorns randomly in the fall and were just as haphazard in their springtime retrieval of them. Then, through careful observation, it was noticed that they actually recovered the vast majority of them. It was then hypothesized that the little tree rodents used odor of the oak fruit to locate it. But if that were the whole story then the squirrels would just as frequently dig up the cache of other of their brethren as their own. But they didn’t. Somehow they remembered where their own nuts were. Pretty impressive when you think that, based this time upon my observations, an average tree-rat probably buries several score of acorns. (She says six hundred.)

Grandin avers that they do it by “triangulation” – “the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline, rather than measuring distances to the point directly (trilateration). The point can then be fixed as the third point of a triangle with one known side and two known angles.” (wiki)

Unfortunately she does not provide anecdotal autistic evidence (as in the ant story) or any other kind of proof for her assertion of the squirrel’s geometric acumen – which, if true, clearly outstrips that of any human being.

Of course historically the fluffy gray tree rodents have outsmarted humans for decades and/or we have underestimated them

So perhaps the apparent look of bewilderment that frequently comes over the face of a squirrel as it rushes around our yard in search of its cached crop of nuts is not caused by an inability to recall where the acorns were buried but rather stunned surprise at remembering the combination, opening the lock, and finding an empty safe deposit box.

This could become the case this year because of the warm snow-less winter that we are experiencing here in CT. One result of the abnormally mild winter is the multitudinous murders of crows that should have migrated through our neck of the woods – but instead have remained for multiple months.

Crows also are acorn-caching animals. But more importantly they are also opportunistic eaters with a self-serving imagination that allows them to believe that the nuts they are harvesting are ones that they have planted. (I am imagining this last bit of crow rationalization – but from my perspective it’s a lot easier to believe than the whole squirrel triangulation thing. I mean really – would you trust a crow?)

The bigger problem for our squirrels this year however is going to be the absence of triangulating landmarks. After the acorns fell from our oaks Marsha and I had a couple of other large trees and a two Roses of Sharon taken down. Had we realized at the time that this foliage might have been variables in the squirrels’ geometric calculation we undoubtedly would have waited until after the nut burying season to lop down the lumber. But we didn’t. So we didn’t.
Who knows if the tree rodents used this now-missing flora as “known points at either end of a fixed baseline” – but presumably they have a backup plan. Or can develop one quickly.

Temple Grandin says that intelligence is the ability to come up with a new solution to a novel situation. In one town the handicapped sidewalks were designed with one ramp per flag – that is at a four-corner stop there would be eight flags and eight ramps, each ramp leading into the crosswalk. The seeing-eye dogs were taught to lead their person down the ramp into the crosswalk. Then, to save money, the town began putting the ramps on the corner – four way stop, eight flags, four ramps. Thirty percent of the dogs continued down the ramp into the street and attempted to cross diagonally – not a huge surprise. However seventy percent walked down the ramp, turned right (or left), walked to the crosswalk, turned left (or right) and crossed between the white lines – the first time that they encountered the new configuration!

Okay squirrels – show us what you’ve got!

They cannot text...

2012-02-19T11:35:00.003-05:00

...because they have claws, and no opposable thumbs.

6:30 am,
"caws" come from all directions –
crows planning their day.

Signs of Spring - Too Soon

2012-02-08T14:35:00.003-05:00

Haiku based upon a conversation with a Connecticut native whose traditional sense of seasonal change is being thrown off this year by the winter that never came and a non-hibernating, dead skunk she encountered that morning on her drive in to work.

First sign of spring is
not crocus, not daffodil
'round here it's road kill.

It Takes a Worried man

2012-02-06T17:09:00.002-05:00

I am a worrier. And like most good practitioners of this agonizing art I stress best with respect to things that I cannot do anything about. Right now I am fretting over the effect that our currently non-existent winter, followed by an early spring, followed by an existent winter, could have on the perennial plants that should, at this time of the year, be hibernating under frozen ground and several feet of snow.

It is early February with weather that feels more like early March. This was preceded by a January that also felt more like early March. And a similar December and November. We did have some snow on Halloween weekend, and five inches one day in January but that has been it. Temperatures have been above normal.

The finches, cardinals and juncos that normally would be all over my sunflower and Niger seed feeders are off somewhere in the wild dining on their “natural sources of food”. The squirrels are here at the feeders in abundance – person-supplied fare apparently being their only “natural source”.

The crows, which stop here briefly on their migration from Maine to the Mid-Atlantic to chow down on fallen acorns, are, as we speak, stalking across the front lawn. By now the fruits of my oak trees should have been long ago buried in fluffy white stuff. And the crows should have been long-gone before Christmas. But they’re not. That they are still finding acorns seems numerically impossible but obviously isn’t.

In early March of an ordinary year I would impatiently begin raking back the accumulated leaves of the cold season looking for the first tiny burst of green popping up through the thawing earth. Even then I would worry about prematurely exposing them to the still-possible winter elements, but my eagerness would overcome my fear.

Now, since we have been in virtual March all winter-long, I am wondering if I should cover them up even more and keep them totally in the dark as to what’s happening climatologically. I’m having fever dreams of the over-eager bulbs and buds beginning to bloom and Mother Nature (or global warming or whatever) deciding to zap them with three months of ultra-extreme winter compressed into one week. I can actually hear the noise of each over-extended sprout splitting in the sudden blast of bone-chill – a literal cold snap.

Or the toasty trend could continue, maybe even accelerate, and my over-wrapped plant babies could fry in their cocoons.

Maybe it is best to just let nature take its course – que sera, que sera. After all, these perennials and their ancestors have a lot more experience with this sort of thing than I do. And they didn’t get to survive this long by making dumb decisions.

Besides, there are lots more frightening things to panic about – POTUS Newt and FLOTUS Callista for example. Then again that might be too scary for even an inveterate worrier like me.

Multiple Choice Haiku

2012-02-03T13:10:00.001-05:00

Frequently Mars and I come upon one of our gray squirrels sitting upright on its haunches at the top of the topmost branch on our flowering crab tree and staring Zen-like into space. My mind, which is always active although not necessarily full of thoughts, cannot believe that the brain of the tree rodent is not equally busy.

Multiple Choice Haiku

What do squirrels think,
perched in tree-top Buddha pose?

(a) Food. Food. Food. Sex. Food.

(b) Really, it’s nothing!

(c) Where IS that acorn?

(d) All of the above.

(e) None of the above.

Short Life of a Snowflake

2012-01-27T14:27:00.005-05:00

I am constantly on he lookout for accidental poetry in everyday life.

The middle line of the following haiku was uttered by the morning meteorologist on one of our local televisions stations the other day. I was reading the newspaper so I didn't catch the context, but the words came through loud and clear.

No one cares about
the short life of a snowflake
when they're shoveling.

They're Ba-ack!! (At Least for the Day)

2012-01-24T16:46:00.002-05:00

The squirrels in our front yard are really quite entertaining – one just took a flying leap and is currently clinging desperately to the suspended cage that successfully protects the sunflower seeds contained within from such airborne assailants and others of its ilk.

However, that hanging cafeteria and the four other (non squirrel proof) diners that Mars and I operate are really intended as BIRD feeders – restaurants for the finches, juncos, cardinals, blue jays, titmice and sparrows that hang out in Connecticut during this cold part of the year, and as additional (multi-colored) amusement for us.

But this has been an unusual winter in our neck of the woods. We had an “unprecedented” snowstorm on Halloween weekend, which (because of the leaves on the trees and resultant falling branches) resulted in a week-plus of electrical outages. Since that late autumn fluke there have been no more frozen flakes, at all – until the first half of this past weekend.

Because of this dearth of winterly precipitation the avifauna were able to find their natural food sources well beyond the time when they normally would have switched over to person-provided provender.

But now, for Saturday only:

Birds are back in town
snow-driven to our feeders –
foul weather friends.

Emptiness in the Desert

2012-01-18T13:07:00.007-05:00

Our daughter-in-law and son who live in Santa Fe, New Mexico gave me a copy of Terry Tempest Williams’ collection of essays “Red – Passion And Patience In The Desert” for Christmas. The book argues for the spiritual effect of being in the desert, and for the need therefore to preserve that land in its pristine state. I agreed with most of what the author said – but then again, she was pretty much preaching to the choir. Mars and I are devotees of the desert.

In 1998 we went to the Big Bend part of Texas. It was our first time in that part of the world, but not our first trip to the dry, barren land of the southwest United States. Six years earlier we made the first of what was to become (at least) annual treks to the high desert of northern New Mexico and in 1997 we visited the Sonoran desert in southern Arizona. The barren land of Big Bend is the Chihuahuan – the largest of the North American deserts.

Clearly something about the wasteland was drawing us back. Actually it turned out to be nothing.

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
(T.S. Eliot “The Wasteland”)

It was about half way into our 1992 trip to Santa Fe and Taos that we realized that the dry brown dirt that covered our hiking boots was actually the substance of the desert. Having grown up on Lawrence of Arabia and other desert movies, we both had expected sand – which we now know is what makes up the wilderness of southern New Mexico (White Sands), but not the HIGH desert.
Our first desert hike was at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, NM. The paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe were what had spiked our interest in New Mexico, and Ghost Ranch was where she had lived and created most of those pieces of art. As we drove on to the property we could see a tall phallic sandstone pillar sticking up amidst the other red rocks that stood above the scrub brush desert floor.

“Wouldn’t it be cool it we could climb that!” I said, with no intention of actually doing it if it was even possible.

The omnipresent erosive winds reshape the soft stones into replicas of the objects of everyday human life. This one is called Chimney Rock. And we did go to its top – “simply cross the arroyo and follow the trail 1.5 miles up the ridge”, 6,500 feet to 7,100. It turns out things actually are that accessible in open land like this.

No one else was on the trail – although to this day I insist that I saw a woman in a diaphanous white dress dancing across the top. And there was nothing around us to keep us from making the climb – no over demanding workloads, no overbearing bosses, no over burdensome rules. There also were no guardrails on the footpath that snaked around the outer edge of the natural monument – nothing to hang on to but the panorama of the Piedra Lumbre basin, and the belief that if we both wanted to do something then it was the right thing to do.

“You learn sooner or later to find an equilibrium within yourself; otherwise you move…. Emptiness in the desert is the fullness of space….” (Red – Passion And Patience In The Desert)

Big Bend National Park is about the size of the state of Rhode Island – but with a handful of buildings one of which, the visitor center, which was a one-hour drive from the park entrance through which we drove. We’ve been there twice. The Park’s website has a section called “How NOT to die in the desert.” – the bottom line of which is “remember that YOU are responsible for your own safety. Plan ahead and stay alive!” We took our h2o, our snacks and our snakebite kit – plus our sense of excitement and awe.

There are “trails” in the preserve – Chimneys, Devil’s Den, Lower and Upper Burro Mesa Pour-off, Mule Ears, Panther Path, and others - but no clean, clear paths with blue paint on tree bark to guide a northeastern suburban hiker. The view from any spot on these hikes is one of being in the middle of 800,000 acres of remote desert, devoid of anything except ocotillo, mesquite, cacti, lizards, tarantulas and snakes with (in most places) no cell phone reception – and being able to see to all four borders and beyond. In all our individual hikes at Big Bend we never passed another trekker.
“They are short on water and, as a result, short on green. Green recalls pastoral comfort, provides a resting place for the eyes. It is a landscape of extremes.” (Red – Passion And Patience In The Desert)

In this land of unremitting khaki and brown Mars and I did find verdant things – two times. It wasn’t easy.

Once was along the banks of the Rio Grande River in Santa Elena Canyon and further up the river (via Canoe). In a small pond within the rocks was a stunningly large garden of deep green ferns - hanging down from the "ceiling", growing along the walls, and spreading out onto the ground for as far as the water could feed them.
The other patch of Eden was a small bamboo jungle next to an abandoned limestone trading post with a copse of trucked-in, totally out-of-place palm trees – the remains of an unsuccessful attempt in 1910 to establish a hot springs resort in the area.
On our first visit to Big Bend, as part of an Elderhostel educational vacation, we met a self-trained paleontologist named Ken. He was a surveyor by vocation who had come to the area about a decade before on a job assignment. It was his maiden voyage to this part of the world and he never left. He was, I believe, married at the time. He became obsessed with the paleontological possibilities of the area with “one of the most complete pictures of a prehistoric ecosystem known anywhere on earth.” – and the solitariness to pursue that fixation The deserts can do that to some of us.

We went on a “dig” with Ken who, somewhat like the avaricious gold seekers in the movie Treasure of Sierra Madre, was unwilling to allow us true amateurs to actually lay hands on any of the precious bones that we came across. (The desert can do that also.) The next day we visited the retired yellow school bus jam-packed with osteo-relics that was his museum. Google now shows that the collection has moved to a less mobile building.

In 2000, on our second trip to Big Bend, we were led on our Rio Grande canoe trip by Taz, a muscular woman of about thirty years who was river-guiding and living with her boyfriend in yet another abandoned school bus on a piece of available land without water or electricity. Taz had been traveling around the world, but the arid land of western Texas seemed to reel her in also.

But it didn’t have that effect on everyone. One morning while I was enjoying a private moment with pre-dawn cup of coffee outside our hotel in the town of Lajitas a tourist from Dallas who, it quickly became clear, had been dragged there by his wife interrupted me. It was as dark as I have ever experienced with the only light coming from the waning moon and the small light bulb over the front entrance to the guesthouse. He stood a few feet away but I really couldn’t see him that well in the murkiness.

“You know I just don’t get it. The appeal of this place. I mean there is NOTHING here! Not even a tree.” He told me as we waved his right arm into the blackness.

Either you got it or you didn’t. Ken and Taz got it. We did too.

However, not being given to extremism, Mars and I returned to our leafy, grassy homestead and resumed our New England centric lives with all of their real and imagined obligations – but we return to the southwest desert at least once a year, every year since.

At one time I assumed that the sense of peace and belonging that we experienced in the dry arid land was a direct function of its stark contrast with our workaday lives in the east. Now I realize that, like Ken and Taz but to a lesser degree, we were simply going home. We just didn’t live there yet.

“In sacred places, something gets done to you that you have been unable to do for yourself." ("Chasing Francis" by Ian Morgan Cron)

Santa Fe Shadows

2012-01-16T14:14:00.009-05:00

Desert sun creates
an alternate universe –
Santa Fe shadows.

Life at the Playscape

2012-01-15T16:36:00.000-05:00

Even though it started out badly, this is turning out to be a very good winter for the squirrels that reside at the Meehan homestead.

On the last weekend of October a snow-laden limb from our Magnolia tree flopped over and severed our connection to our street’s electrical power grid – the very same grid that had already ceased to operate that afternoon. At about the same time a large Oak branch containing one of the tree rat’s larger condominiums (aka “dray”) crashed to the ground. And the bough on our Flowering Crab tree that held our three principal bird/squirrel feeders broke off and crashed to the earth. Several trash bins full of other lumber also tumbled into our yard.

As part of the first wave of our cleanup, Marsha and I retrofitted the seed cafeterias to one of the remaining offshoots of the decorative fruit tree, and rested the broken end of the severed limb atop one of the other remaining branches in order to provide a bit of nearby shelter to our guest diners. Within hours the now homeless refugee rodents were drowning their sorrows in pouch fulls of sunflower seeds. And we were off to the town’s well-heated Community Center where, along with our Hartford based health club, we spent our waking hours during the weeklong blackout.

Ironically we had tree work scheduled for our yard on that Monday. Realizing that the planned work would have to take a backseat to emergency jobs they now had to do I called the tree company and, asked if they could please make a quick stop and prune back our Magnolia so as to eliminate the possibility of another power wire takedown.

I also told them to leave the flowering crab – which had been on the original order as a “check it over and assess” – alone. A week or so later, after we had our electricity back, an out-of-state subcontractor for our arborist dropped by while we were out and (a) cut back the wrong parts of the Magnolia and (b) carried away the fallen branch that Marsha and I had so carefully set in place.

The yard pets seemed unfazed by these arboricultural errors. Marsha and I however had come to like the new form of entertainment provided by the broken limb playscape. Birds gathered on the dead branch, chattering away as they waited their turn at the dining table.

Squirrels, sometimes performing as a group, ran in a continuous nose-to-tail cycle across and up and down the fallen branch – abruptly changing direction in perfect unison through a series of rapid-fire, gravity-defying maneuvers impossible to execute in three dimensions, and equally difficult to describe in 2-D words. When doing their solo acts the bushy-tailed rodents leapt fearlessly from their new playground perch onto our latest “squirrel proof” feeder – which up until that point had largely lived up to its name.

This alleged squirrel foiler is made up of a square-sided plastic tube with several feeding holes, surrounded by a separate metal cage with leaf shaped decorations. The cage is attached to springs. The tube is not. When a squirrel latches on to the outer enclosure, it drops down and its ornamental leaves cover the apertures on the immovable plastic feeder. Amazingly this Rube Goldberg contraption actually functions as advertised. The squirrels' weight does indeed force the metal shell down so that its doors shut tight against the plastic-lined feeding holes on the interior tube. The little rats still climbed up onto the feeder and gnawed away at the metal (unsuccessfully) and plastic (successfully) but quickly became frustrated and returned to the ground where they were humiliatingly forced to feed on the castoffs of their much lighter feathered dining companions.

But now, apparently fired up by the easy access provided by their new “shelter”, the squirrels hurled themselves at the beleaguered feeder with such frequency that at pretty much any time during the day one of the tree rodents was either on, or in mid-flight on its way up to the feeder.

And they stayed on it longer when they got there.

What the squirrels finally figured out, possibly under the influence of the playscape induced adrenaline, was that once they gnawed away enough polyethylene to make the food portals larger than their covers, the sunflower seeds simply tumbled into their greedy little mouths.

And we figured out that if we wanted this traveling circus to continue its performances, then we needed a new playscape. Fortunately one of the large branches from our copse of arborvitae cedars had also been damaged during the surprise snowstorm.

So with a little pruning-saw action, and some long distance dragging, the birds and squirrels had a newer, even better (because it had foliage) “shelter”. Marsha decorated it with shiny red, blue and gold ornaments for the holidays and I verbally stopped the arborists from removing it when they finally came to perform our originally contracted work and to properly prune the Magnolia.

Our house wires are safe from our timber. And, as the real cold weather settles in, our birds and squirrels continue to find new ways to enjoy their playscape – and entertain us. Not only is it going to be a good winter for our squirrels, but hopefully for us too.

Signs As Subject Matter

2012-01-12T16:27:00.005-05:00

"I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter."

Roy Lichtenstein

Santa Fe Light

2012-01-05T14:19:00.016-05:00

Santa Fe, New Mexico is not the same as any other place on earth. It even calls itself “The City Different”. Some say it is the altitude – 7,000 feet. Others say the attitude – sometimes called Santa Fe Style. I say it’s the light.

The sun really doesn’t shine all of the time in Santa Fe. But it sure does seem that way. This is, of course, because the source of this city’s natural light – a red circle with groups of rays pointing in four directions – is in fact unlike that of the rest of the world.
This icon is a sacred image to the Zia Indians of New Mexico and is one of the official state symbols appearing on its flag and its newly designed license plate.

Like so much of southwestern iconography the Zia Sun is rich in both Christian and Native American beliefs – the result of the attempted “forced conversion” of these indigenous peoples to Catholicism by the Spanish in the 17th century. And the adaptation of these Catholic credos into beliefs and practices which allowed this new externally imposed ideology to exist alongside but not replace their existing worldview. Today they say that they still practice both religions.

The shape of the Zia Sun is that of a Christian cross. Yet the four arms refer to: the points of the compass (north, south, east, and west); the seasons of the year (spring, summer, autumn and winter); the periods of each day (morning, noon, evening and night); the seasons of life (childhood, youth, middle years and old age); and, the sacred obligations one must develop (a strong body, a clear mind, a pure spirit, and a devotion to the welfare of others) – the pillars of Zia culture and religion.

The landscape of “The City Different” is imbued with the same all-encompassing luminescence. The thick walls of a traditional adobe house absorb the sun’s four-pronged radiation and transfer it gradually (like a time release capsule) to the interior. And the coldest day in Santa Fe still contains a sense of warmth – like the heat of the outdoor hot tub at Ten Thousands Waves Mountain Spa still permeating our bodies as we walked back to the changing rooms in wet bathing suits and thin cotton kimonos on a twenty degree, starlit night.

Similar to the Zia Sun, Santa Fe itself is a blending of contradictions which just don’t seem that way unless you think about them – like the commonplace appearance of “The Virgin of Guadalupe” in seriously secular settings, such as serving breakfast coffee on hand-printed hot pads.
And the subjects of every day life, and their silhouettes, which present themselves as objects of art to even the most amateur of photographers. (In fairness it should be pointed out that to a stranger the “objects of every day life” in Santa Fe sometimes can be as atypical as the light that illuminates them.)

It has seemed this way to Marsha and me since our first visit to New Mexico in 1992, and it has continued thus through our most recent trip over this past Christmas holiday.

We look forward to some day being permanently different

Evanescences

2011-12-31T16:55:00.013-05:00

Through the snowy night

flakes paw at our windowpanes,

melt to nothingness.

Snowflake photos taken by Wilson Bentley (1865–1931) from wikopedia.com

Collective Nouns

2011-12-31T16:26:00.016-05:00

A crowd of crows,

a cacophony of caws –

murder plus mayhem.

More info on collective nouns at http://www.rinkworks.com/words/collective.shtml

Photo from nationalgeographic.com. Click on photo to enlarge

An Escher of Squirrels

2011-12-15T13:25:00.007-05:00

I am etymologically confused.

A squirrel’s nest is called a “drey” (with an “e’)– although I suspect most of us just call it a nest. A group of squirrels is called a “dray” (with an “a”) – or, alternatively a “scurry”. Most of us would designate such a gathering as a bunch. I myself would dub them an “escher” – based upon the behavior of the most recent octet of Sciuridae Sciurus that inhabit our native suburban wild animal refuge.

The derivation of the word dray (or drey) has something to do with carts without wheels, and nothing to do with tree rats. But “scurry” does make some sense. According to my IMac’s dictionary, as a verb scurry means “move hurriedly with short quick steps” and as a noun “a situation of hurried and confused movement”. And scurrying is what a squirrel does when it moves across my yard to/from the front border oak tree that is the entrance/exit ramp for the elevated superhighway of branches and wires that the little gray rodents traverse on their various individual commutes throughout the day. But they only seem to scurry when they are traveling alone.

In a group setting the little tree-critters move fluidly and confidently – like a live, light gray, furry M.C. Escher drawing.

(Click photo to enlarge)

Maurits Cornelis Escher is perhaps the world’s most recognizable graphic artist – best known for his morphing tessellations and “impossible structures” that fool the viewer’s eye.

A tessellation consists of a shape repeated over and over on a single plane without any gaps or overlaps. “Previously, tessellations were created with rather simple shapes. Escher distorted and manipulated these simple shapes to resemble things such as various animals. In his “Metamorphoses” series, the tessellations “morph” into changing shapes or even leave the plane such as in Reptiles. In this lithograph, reptiles seem to be following a continuous cycle in which they “enter” an image of a drawing of a tessellation and then come out of the drawing, walking back around it to the same entrance point.” (NBMMA)

(Click photo to enlarge)

And this explanation is actually less confusing than the drawings themselves. So try this. Escher creates impossible objects – 2-dimensional illustrations that could not actually be constructed in three dimensions.

The squirrels, when performing en masse, move in a continuous nose-to-tail cycle across the lawn, and up and down the trees – abruptly changing direction in perfect unison through a series of rapid-fire, gravity-defying maneuvers impossible to execute in three dimensions, and equally difficult to illustrate in two – a hyperactive tessellation.

In other words, an escher.

Aftermath

2011-12-14T13:54:00.001-05:00

An unprecedented late October snowstorm damaged scores of trees in our state. Our hometown’s Physical Services department collected these fractured limbs, chipped them, and took them away. Last week, in the parking area for our town wilderness area, I discovered where some of them had gone.

Aftermath

Snowstorm ravaged trees
cook in steaming compost mounds,
scent of smoky pine.

Ivy Covered Walls

2011-12-08T11:22:00.004-05:00

We pathologically inveterate gardeners frequently find great pleasure in doing things that other, more normal, people might find less fulfilling – for example pulling back the ivy.

Our residence is surrounded on two and one-quarter sides by beds of the ground creeping, wall climbing green-leaved woody plant. They came with the house when we bought it thirty-plus years ago. I have never tried to evict them but I suspect that even if asked nicely, with a promise of a good new home, they would refuse to cede their stake in the earth. And actually I wouldn’t want them out of here – the ivy is, in its own way, perhaps the most entertaining plant on our property.

On the ground they keep a low profile – a totally unobtrusive, pleasant change of texture and color between the green grass and the gray concrete house foundation. But, unlike other groundcovers, Araliaceae Hedera has higher aspirations – and, like the gray tree squirrels that also inhabit our property, has the climbing ability to achieve them.

One of the surfaces it likes to ascend is the brick chimney that adorns the north side of our abode. Not having been smart enough to experience ivy covered walls during my collegiate years I’ve always had a secret admiration for the old money, academic ambience of that look.

Not so the appearance of sinuous vines clinging to the gray vinyl siding that covers our house on either side of the smokestack, as well as the remainder of the building along which the ivy beds lie in wait. And even worse the tendrils that insinuate themselves under the synthetic resin shingles and creep upwards between that surface and the Tyvec that covers the outer walls of the building. Still worse – occasionally one of the ivy leaves makes its way into our family room, which, being a former breezeway from the house to the garage, sits directly atop a concrete slab.

Ground cover is good. Undercover is not.

Mars and I have visited North Carolina and seen the way that runaway Kudzu vines gradually encompass and ultimately bring down abandoned buildings so that all that is left is a stack of leafy vines in the shape of a homestead. This is not going to happen here on my watch.
The fortunate thing is that, for whatever reason – exercise, fresh air, Zen concentration, catharsis (or all of the above) – vine ripping is one of my favorite gardening activities. (It’s probably not a good sign that my horticultural proclivities tend toward the destructive rather than the nurturing. Or maybe it’s just a guy gardening thing.)

Anyway, the other day Mars noticed that another ivy leaf had invaded the family room. It was a sunny, unusually warm (55-60 degrees) December day, and I for some reason had a surplus of nervous energy to burn.

Say no more! I was on that job like white on rice.

The routine is the same each time that I do it. Wearing leather gloves because of one long ago barehanded incident with a vicious bee that was apparently taking a break in the vinage I crouch down and peel back the self-bundled creepers to reveal the tail end of the camouflaged climbers. Then I grab the ascending offender and rip downwards, with luck releasing its death grip from the side of my house

Some ivy remains attached to the exterior surface with its Velcro-like tendrils. Bare hands are called for in order to pry it loose with my fingernails. If that fails then I leave it in place hoping that it will fall off after it dies and dries up. Mostly it doesn’t.

During all this grunt work my body is perpetually crouching down and standing up as I move sideways along the perimeter of my house. And periodically twisting itself pretzel-like beneath or between the branches of the shrubbery that also provides decoration along the foundation. Some of these are pricker bushes – and they hurt. I use my anvil pruning shears to cut away some of the vines that have bunched up and to take out my anger at the vines that refuse to leave go of their perpendicular places. Most of these cuts are done blindly as I feel my way through the interlaced ivy.

The effort takes about thirty minutes. My legs are stiff from the constant raising and lowering, and if I am fortunate I have not severed any fingers with the pruners or encountered any feisty honeybees. I’ve worked up a moderate sweat, even on the 55-degree days, and my nervous energy is dissipated.

People who pay other people to do this stuff just don’t realize all the fun that they are missing.

Photos of kudzu covered house from http://www.jjanthony.com/kudzu/houses.html.

Haiku Traffic Signs

2011-12-02T11:36:00.003-05:00

A friend sent me this link to a NY Times article about the placement of some unique and artistic traffic signs. "Safety warnings, in the form of haikus, are sprouting up on sign poles around the city. Submit your own haiku, and we'll post the best."

Here is my submission:

Trying to compose

a haiku while motoring
I spaced and crashed.

Passages

2011-11-27T12:48:00.001-05:00

Passages

The crows settle in,
the girl on the swing is gone,
the tree carries on.

Welcome to the first meeting of the B.B.B.F.F.B.F.

2011-11-23T16:32:00.002-05:00

"Good evening everyone. And welcome to the first meeting of the B.B.B.F.F.B.F. – the Burning Bush Best Friend Forever Benevolent Fellowship.

"I apologize for the cold, dark accommodations but being as we are an advocacy group for an officially declared invasive plant and therefore of necessity an underground organization we will be holding all of our gatherings in this abandoned root cellar at an undisclosed location on the once active Wilkus Farm property.

"It is especially fitting that we meet now as this is the time of year when Euonymus alatus compactus is in its glory – displaying its spectacular red fall foliage for all to see, putting to shame those other pretenders at autumnal flamboyance such as Hosta, Bloody Geranium, Ferns, Switchgrass, Blue Star and Peony.
"I ask you – is this ostentatious exhibition the behavior of an invasive? (One of Connecticut’s Top ten in fact)

"And I answer, as any intelligent adult would respond (while lying on my back and pounding my hands and feet on the ground) – “No! No! No! No! No! No!”

"So what is an invasive anyway? To me it is something that (a) silently sneaks into an area, (b) blends in with its surroundings, then (c) slowly and insidiously takes over.

"Does BB meet those criteria? Here is what the DCNR Invasive Exotic Plant Tutorial on state.pa.us says about it.

"(a) 'Winged euonymus was [intentionally] introduced into the USA from northeastern Asia about 1860 for use as an ornamental shrub. [It did not arrive furtively on the underside of a wooden shipping pallet nor did hide in the hold of a tramp steamer and crawl onto shore.]

"(b) This shrub is one of the great beauties of the autumn season. [Admittedly though the rest of the time the BB lives in relative anonymity.] It is best left unpruned although it can be cut back if you have space issues. The shrub is not at all fussy about soil requirements (except for excessive wet areas) and it has no significant pest problems. It also transplants very easily. It is truly a maintenance free shrub. [It can be seen in at least two or three yards on every street in Wethersfield.]

"(c) While it behaves well in suburban areas, burning-bush planted near woodlands, mature second-growth forests, and pastures can be a problem. It has escaped from cultivation in the Northeast and Midwest, notably in Connecticut, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. The earliest evidence of naturalized populations of winged euonymus in eastern Pennsylvania dates from the 1960s. Today it is found with increasing frequency in moist forests throughout eastern counties.'

"But whose fault is this alleged infestation? Do the little BB seeds tiptoe in the dark away from their suburban homes and into the surrounding woods? I don’t think so!

"Seeds do fall rather prodigiously near the base of the plant, leading to more little BB’s clustered around the mother bush. Other BB seeds are spread by birds, which are attracted to them by their nutritious, fleshy, red covering. Seeds dispersed this way germinate easily and spread rapidly.

"But whose fault is this? Can the BB help it if birds of all feathers are fatally attracted? (“Don’t blame me for being beautiful.”) It’s just a simple evolutionary device for preserving the species. It’s the birds that go overboard.

"B.B.B.F.F.B.F. says 'B.B.N.B.B. (Ban Birds Not Burning Bushes)'”.

Gardening is not just good for the plants

2011-11-21T15:45:00.002-05:00

As a gardener I try to follow the advice (spoken in a thick Italian accent) of Phillip, a longtime professional and amateur horticulturalist, and former member of my garden club – "Always leave room in the bush for the birds to fly through." However, as a gardener, I also like to position my perennial plants close to each other – really close. It is the way that nature spaces things, and I do like that less-structured look.

Growth happens, and several times a year Phillip's Rule Number 1 needs enforcing. Once again I realize:

Gardening Is Not Just Good For The plants

Pruning back tangled stems –
Nothing exists in the world
But what’s being done.

The Beauty in Ugliness

2011-11-14T11:26:00.002-05:00

Much of the pizazz in this year’s gardens was supplied by three ornamental sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) that Mars potted and placed on each side of our garage door and near the edge of our family room flowerbed.

The recent pre-Halloween snowstorm decimated them and so, as part of the après storm cleanup I removed the vines from their containers. Some came out easily, one did not. I took my fork-tongued hand weeder and wedged it into the potting soil, levering up the reluctant vine. To my surprise I unearthed what looked to be a deformed sweet potato.

This evidently is not stunningly unusual – at least according to the forum on gardenweb.com. The starchy tubers apparently are edible and easily propagated. Unfortunately I learned this information after I had added mine to the ugly plant portion of my compost pile – from which it is now too late to retrieve.

My mind however was more attuned to the aesthetics of my discovery rather than the gastronomic. I tried to photograph it in a way that improved its appearance – while at the same time trying to figure out a way to write about the ugly vegetable. I thought perhaps something about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave wherein the shadows represent the imperfect world, and my spud (in this instance) the realm of reflected reality – except the silhouette was better looking than the real thing.
I went inside and Googled “beauty and ugliness” and found lots of links to local television “special reports ”on the “ugly truth behind the beauty industry” – as well as one interesting blog from a Canadian designer who spent time in India and returned questioning her long held artistic assumptions. The piece was entitled “The beauty in ugliness, the order in chaos.” – the first part of which also happens to be a great middle line for a haiku. – which got me to thinking

Oft, in gardens too,
the truth behind the beauty
lies buried in dirt.

Dream Weaving

2011-11-08T15:48:00.003-05:00

Mars and I recently underwent an 8 day and 8 night electric blackout due to an unprecedented late October snowstorm. The heavy wet snow accumulated on the leaves that were still on the trees, causing branches to fall or bend down on power lines. Our magnolia took down the wire connecting our house to the power grid.

We found warmth during the day at our health club and the local community center. We spent nights in our 45-50 degree bedroom hunkered down under multiple quilts in our warmup suits, socks and ski caps.

On one of those mornings we were lying in bed trying postpone the inevitable return to the cold air. While trying to recall her previous night's REM sleep fantasies Mars uttered what became the middle line of the following haiku .

Where do they all go,
the dreams I don't remember?
Am I living them?

Badge of Honor

2011-10-24T15:44:00.003-04:00

For fencers (of the sword fighting type) the traditional badge of honor is the “dueling scar”. For gardeners (of the do-it-by hand type) our mark of merit is the “raking blister”.
I know a little bit about dueling scars because our son Bram is a fencer. He began taking lessons from a series of local college students in his early teens. Knowing nothing about the sport he and I went to a match in which his very first tutor, Dom, was competing. He was fencing sabre. (There are three types of fencing “swords” – the other two being foil and epee). In sabre fencing the target area (the part of your opponents body that you can touch in order to score a point) is everything from the waist up – including the head. During Dom’s first bout, his opponent lunged and stuck his weapon through Dom’s mesh facemask. It did not cause a dueling scar, but I got the concept.

Unlike dueling scars which (a) were actually sought after by upper-class Austrians and Germans involved in academic fencing at the start of the 20th century and (b) are permanent – raking blisters are both unwanted and temporary. No matter how much gardening work I do during the spring and summer, I never (in all of those activities) press enough tools against the base of my thumb to develop a callus.

As a result, even with thick leather gloves, after about forty-five minutes of drawing and dragging leaves across my front yard the wooden handle of my large plastic rake has generated a small but painful bubble on my right hand. I take a break and put on a bandage which will stay there until I complete the remaining thirty minutes of yard-cleaning later that day.

In the interim I will proudly and publicly display my gauze-covered wound and look for the knowing smiles of other similarly tourniquet clad brothers of the rake.

Meanwhile, in Santa Fe New Mexico, our son the fencer will blow the leaves off of his crushed stone front lawn – raking not being an option on that surface.

It’s too bad that he doesn’t have that choice. Everyone deserves their own badge of honor, and I would much rather see him with a bump on his hand than a scar on his cheek.

Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam

2011-10-22T14:41:00.002-04:00

Mars and I were Philosophy majors in college – 2/3 of the ones in our graduating class in fact. So to our minds the “dream argument” is not that strange a thing to think about. This argument (also known as "Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly" (莊周夢蝶 Zhuāngzhōu mèng dié)) claims that we have no way of determining conclusively at any moment whether or not we are dreaming. Hence, it is possible at any given time that we are dreaming.

But even if I had not had this kind of formal training, what happened to me early this morning still would have made me wonder what was really going on.

At 4:00 a.m. I dreamt that I was verbally roused by Mars (“Hey Jim!”) from a dream in which our Financial Advisor Chris was encouraging me to lie down in a human body sized plastic “Relaxation Egg Bed” that was located in his office and intended to bring his clients to a state of calmness. I was there because a former work associate (Sandy) had asked me, in an earlier nighttime vision, who managed our investments.

When I looked over at her, Mars was deep in hibernation.

Unnerved by this abrupt awakening – even though I know knew it was all imaginary. I rolled onto my side thinking “I am not getting back to sleep” – until I opened my eyes and saw 6:16 a.m. on the clock. At which point I realized that the last two hours of perceived wakefulness was most likely just another REM fantasy preceded by a dream that at 4:00 a.m. I dreamt that I was roused by Mars.

Or not.

{4:00a.m. {“Hey {Egg {Sandy} Bed} Jim”} 6:16 a.m.}