Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Magic Hour April 24, 2013

A light rain at twilight, a glowing rainbow, slate clouds in a silver sky, a full pale moon.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Silent Running and Yellow Irises April 22, 2013

Today is Earth Day.

There are many many, perhaps a hundred, yellow irises blooming in my front yard.

I planted them there 15 years ago after discovering their unblooming fronds peeking  up all around in the woods behind my house.  There had been a house here many years before, I know at least 60 years from the age of the glass soda bottles I have found buried in the ground.

I dug up the irises and put them in a sunny place and the next year, I had flourishing plants with yellow bearded blossoms. For the ancient Greeks, Iris was the goddess of the sky, the personification of the rainbow. She carried the caduceus, the emblem now of medicine.

I have never ceased to marvel at the astonishing renewal of life after such a long time.

There was a film in 1972 called" Silent Running" in which the future earth had become barren of flora and fauna and the only existing ecosystems were in pods attached to large space ships.  The order had come down for an astronaut to destroy the existing plants.

Tonight on the Rail Trail there is to be a Silent Run in honor of those who suffered or died in the Boston Marathon, so this morning I silently walked the Rail Trail in my own memorial along with a woman with a tiny dog dressed in a red and white pinafore and a woman walking backwards who said, "It's easier on your knees and it makes you stronger."

Snakes , Cooters and Bluebird Eggs April 20, 2013

John and I took James to find some wildlife.  James will be four in June.  He just took off running across the field.  It is a good thing that John is a runner too. (He ran the Outer Banks marathon the year before James was born.)
We came upon Andy, a person I see at times out walking.  He had opened a bluebird house and was photographing the eggs inside.  John lifted James to see the three blue eggs nestled within..

In the wetlands there were big cooters resting on logs.

And then we saw a six foot long snake twisting with elegance through the murky waters.  It was perhaps a brown water snake, perhaps a water moccasin. A man coming by with his tiny dog said that all snakes can swim.

For some Native American tribes, the snake totem indicates Wisdom, Healing and Transmutation.  The appearance of a snake may be telling you of change and creativity coming in your life.

The Biophony Symphony April 20, 2013

My quiet morning walk on the rail trail was interrupted by the blasting shrill alarm from a business on the other side of the woods to my right, then to my left an unmistakable bird call imitating perfectly the alarm.
A few years ago, an alert observer in London noticed that a blackbird was making ambulance and other sounds from the traffic in his neighborhood. Anthrophony intruding on biophony

Biophony is the symphony of animals in their environment, the name coined by Bernie Krause who has spent his life studying the sounds of birds in their natural habitats.  He observed that the calls from birds and animals are orchestrated like the different instruments in an orchestra.  Their frequency, tone and rhythm
are not random. (Dawn Stover, The Best Science and Nature Writing 2010).

That evening, John and James were spending the night with me.  I could hear James crying a little at bedtime. Boofa joined him with the same mournful cry.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

April 16, 2013 The Miracle of Walking

I am walking in this cool Spring morning on the banks of the wide, rock strewn Congaree, dozens of turtles basking in the sun, Indian Pink (spegelia  marilandica) in full bloom all along the way, it's flowers like trumpets, spectacular red on the outside and yellow in the inside.

Miraculous creatures are walking and running along beside, in front of and behind me.  It is a celebration of the breathing of air, the perception of eyes and ears and skin and the moving of muscles and bone.

Yesterday, at the Boston marathon, a bomb killed 3 people and injured 170.  There were amputations
of legs.

How dare they.

April 14, 2013 At Long Last

The baby Flycatcher chicks are here.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

We Are Here Living on Turtle Island April 13, 2013

This was the kind of day you dream about in rainy, chilly winter nights.  I spied a big river cooter on a log in the wetlands. He slipped gently back into the water. Another joined him and I watched them swimming below the surface.  It is said that the Great Spirit created earth by placing it on the back of a turtle.  Contemporary Native Americans sometimes call planet earth, "turtle island".  Symbolically, the turtle can manage difficult situations.  Many North American tribes have turtle clans.
The name, cooter, may come from an African language word, "kuta"which means turtle.

The Southern River Cooter is an edible freshwater turtle.

There is a story in one of Lillian Hellman's autobiographical books where she was living in a cottage in the country with a pond full of turtles.  She caught two to cook for supper, put them to simmer in a big pot on the stove in the kitchen and went to bed.  In the morning,  she rose  to find the pot tipped over, the turtles gone with only a turtle trail through the mud back to the pond.

Here is a recipe for Turtle Stew from the Baton Rouge "River Road Recipes" (71st printing of 1997):

3 lbs turtle meat                                    2 bell peppers, chopped fine
3 Tbsp oil or lard                                  1 cup sherry wine
3 Tbsp flour                                          6 boiled eggs
1 lb dry onions, chopped                      Red pepper to taste
2 cloves garlic, minced                          Salt to taste
2 number 2 cans tomatoes                    4 bay leaves
1 can tomato paste                               8 whole cloves
boiling water                                        1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 rib celery, chopped fine                     1 Tbsp sugar
one bunch green onions chopped fine
1/4 lb butter
1 lemon, sliced

Parboil turtle meat. Make a brown roux of fat and flour. Add onions, garlic, tomato paste, and tomatoes. Cook slowly 20 to 30 minutes. Add to turtle meat. Add enough boiling salted water to cover meat. Boil down. Add celery, green onions, peppers, wine and seasoning. Cook covered over high heat for 30 minutes. Mash egg yolks; chop whites. Add to thicken stew. If stew gets too thick, add water. Cook slowly for about 3 hours. One half hour before serving add lemon slices and butter. To increase amount, add 1/2 pound turtle meat per person.  Serves 6.
Hoo Shoo Too Club, Baton Rouge, Louisiana














Wednesday, April 10, 2013

April 9, 2013 Sounds of Cicadas

It is a beautiful humming, a love song, a summer song heard through open windows on warm nights, humming to a baby in a rocking chair on a porch.  I don't know about the 17 year cicadas (this is their year) or the 13 year cicadas. I just know that they are always here in the warm weather and I heard them today at the lake at Sesquicentennial  State Park.

In some places, the farmers plant crops when they first hear the sound.  The Japanese have a song about them commemorating the end of summer:  Tsuku-Tsuku Boski. In Greek myth, Tithonus is granted immortality by Zeus and turned into a cicada. Unfortunately he is not granted eternal youth. Birds and squirrels and human beings eat cicadas. They can be deep fried or stir fried.

I took the Loop trail which is 3.5 miles and is actually a sand road which begins and ends at the log cabin.
The ranger told me the good news, that architects are visiting Hunting Island preparing for the building of new cabins on the far side of the lagoon in 2014.

The Chinese believe that the cicada's shedding of its shell symbolizes stages of transformation leading to enlightenment.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Sakura, sakura April 8, 2013

We are walking under the Yoshina Cherry trees. They have been in full bloom for a week, floating pink clouds. A breeze comes and the petals fall on the path in rivulets.

Everywhere in the grass are violets and another tiny purple flower.
Here is what is blooming:
The purple red bud
crab apples
cherries,
the catalpa with pink/mauve grape like clusters of flowers
green buds opening on the dogwoods
pansies
daffodils
tulips
Japanese magnolia (the end of its blooming)
the purple periwinkle like ground cover in the woods
The oaks are getting yellow/green new leaves
azaleas
wisteria
lavender and pink phlox
red tips flowering
jasmine
violets
the tall flowering tulip poplar

Big bumblebees are droning everywhere.

It is Spring at last
How fortunate we are to be here at this moment on this planet.

Spring Break at Pawley's Island April 1,2,3, 2013

Hanna is driving us down , Sergay and Liza in the back seat. I am riding shotgun.  The children see dinosaurs and an upside down chicken in the clouds.
We have a picnic lunch outside of Greeleyville at a small park.  It is a beautiful day.

In the mornings, I walk the wide beach. I meet a man with two big red/brown dogs. He says they are litter mates and their parents are a dachshund and a coon hound. They look like giant dachshunds.
I meet a lady with two Portuguese Water Dogs, the kind Ted Kennedy had and like the one he gave to the Obama girls.
There are few shells, many marooned jellyfish and one starfish.
We swim. We bike. Sergay and Liza try to run down seagulls and sandpipers on the beach.
Sergay fishes on the causeway where there is a shelter with rocking chairs and we have pizza there while the sun sets.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Easter in the Woods and Fields March 31, 2013

I  have found another trail off the Cottonwood trail which curves around from the Highland Trail through a pine forrest. Boofa found a crushed green Easter Egg there and ate it with gusto.

Purple and white violets are popping up all over the grass. In the wetlands, green, green algae is moving to the surface in big clumps.  Grasses in the water are turning from brown to green. The fronds of the iris- like
water plant which will have purple blossoms later are  bursting from the water at least 8 inches.

There is a mass of polyester fill high up in a tree hanging from a limb which some small birds have confiscated for their home.

Old time Southerners like to plant forsythia (some call it yellow bells) and flowering quince beside each other so that now in the spring, they can enjoy the contrasting yellow and tropicana colors of the flowers.  At the entrance to the trail, someone has planted them together and now they are blossoming.