Little Signs of Spring #3 (For Mama)

Morning Bouquet-On My Porch (For Mama)

Though she’s been gone for over 22 years, not a day passes that I don’t think of Mama.   Most times it’s the simplest things that trigger my memories—hearing a mockingbird sing or seeing  the dogwood tree illuminated by the morning light.  Or a vase full of the wildflowers I just picked—Mama preferred them over the store bought kind.  Although they never knew her, my children are so like her—dreamy and artistic, yet down to earth and plainspoken.  She would adore them. 

I’ve wondered a lot about where our souls go when we die.   People talk about their loved ones who have passed being in heaven, but really the Bible doesn’t say that we go straight to heaven when we die.  Years ago, on Ariel’s birthday, we were in Duke Gardens when we saw a wood thrush on the path ahead.  It didn’t fly away as we approached, but cocked its head and sang, looking straight at us.  Then it started hopping down the path, looking back at us as though to say Follow me.  So we did.  The wood thrush led us for quite a ways, hopping and looking back, before finally flying up away into the sweet spring morning.  It was a magical moment, made more so by the fact that it was Ariel’s birthday.  I must admit, my first thought was that the soul of my mother was temporarily housed in that wood thrush’s body.  After all, wood thrushes were one of her favorite birds. 

Who can say?  Is it so far-fetched to believe that our souls may reside in many different places before the day comes when our spirits rise to be reunited with our Maker?  And I know, for sure, my Mama would want to spend most of that time flying.  She couldn’t walk for the last five years of her life, so I love to imagine her soaring up far above our earthbound selves or perched singing in her beloved dogwood tree.

So I talk to all the birds I see, just in case, and chase the black cat that skulks about our property stalking birds.   I watch as the birds fly into the firmament, gazing at them until they disappear.  I listen to the wood thrush at dusk, singing its sweet but slightly melancholy song from the highest forest trees.  And I smile, thinking of Mama and relish the thought that she’s singing for us, that’s she’s flying through the clouds.  Waiting for the day that we fly, too.

Happy Mother’s Day to Mama.  And to all Mamas, near and far. 

And to all Mamas in this world…or the next.

Little Signs of Spring #2

Maple Seeds

(I called them “whirly birds” when I was small.  Who can resist throwing handfuls of them into the air to watch them twirl their way to the ground?)  Country Dew has a great post on them here.  She called them “dibbas.”

Little Signs of Spring #1

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Lilacs

(To Tom: I’m so glad I married you twenty-one years ago.  Though the journey has been hard and we are weary, I’m grateful to have taken the journey with you.  And I hold fast to the belief [and I hope you will too] that the best is yet to be.  Happy Anniversary.)

Friday Fact: When the Sky Smiles

 

(Photo from http://www.atoptics.co.uk/.  Check out this site–lovely pictures and descriptions of wondrous atmospheric phenomena.)

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Once again, Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man and I were talking at supper, when he told me about another wonder one of his co-workers had seen.  (There are many advantages to working outside!)  A few weeks ago, it was a huge cloud of dragonflies.  This time, it was an upside down rainbow.

“An upside down rainbow?”  I said.

“Yeah,” said Tom.  “He got a picture with his cell phone.  I saw it, but it was so blurry, you couldn’t really see much. “

I smirked.  “Oh, sure.  And I suppose he also got a shot of Bigfoot walking underneath? But it’s blurry, right?”

But I decided to check it out anyway.  So I googled  “upside down rainbow.”  And, to my surprise, there is such a thing.  Except that it’s not really a rainbow.  It’s called a circumzenithal arc.  And, though it is rare here, it is supposedly more common than rainbows in the far north.

Longtime readers may remember my post on sundogs.  Well, circumzenithal arcs are the result of the same phenomenon—sunlight refracting off the hexagonal ice crystals in cirrus clouds, usually late in the day when the sun is low, especially when it is cold.  The position of the colors in a circumzenithal arc is opposite that of a rainbow, with the red at the bottom and the blue and violet on top. 

So, my apologies to Tom’s co-worker for my skepticism.  He was fortunate indeed to see such a rare sight.  I have definitely put circumzenithal arcs on my list of sights I want to see before I die.  How lovely to see the sky smiling. 

Friday Fact: The Wondrous Whirring of Many Small Wings

 

(All pictures from www.princeton.edu)

Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man and I were talking at supper last night when he mentioned something he’d heard on NPR, on Fresh Air (with Terry Gross).  “Did you know that dragonflies migrate like birds?” he said.  “And that they fatten up before migrating, just like birds?”

I stopped in mid-chew.  “No…that’s amazing!”  And just like that, as we ate our flounder, my Friday Fact was born.  When Tom mentioned this, I remembered a conversation we’d had at supper about two months earlier. Then, Tom had told me about a friend of his at work, a very masculine tough guy, who had related his experience to Tom with the awe and wonder of a child .  He told Tom that he was driving down his driveway in Linville Falls when, suddenly, he encountered thousands of dragonflies flying in front of his truck in a cloud so thick he had to stop.

Scientists have only recently developed the technology to study the migration patterns of dragonflies.  (The problem was making a transmitter tiny enough not to weigh down the flying insect).   Only about a dozen of the approximately 400 known dragonfly species in the United States and Canada are known to migrate.  The most prevalent of these is the Green Darner dragonfly (Anax junius), which is the one they have primarily been studying.

Martin Wikelski, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University is leading the study. He follows the dragonfly migration with the help of tiny transmitters, weighing .01 ounces, glued (with eyelash adhesive!) to the dragonfly’s underside.  He carries a receiver that picks up the transmissions, but because they move around so much, he has to follow and track the dragonflies in his airplane.

    (Dragonfly with transmitter)

What they have found so far is that the migration of dragonflies is very similar to that of birds.  Like birds, they migrate in the fall.  “The dragonflies’ routes have showed distinct stopover and migration days, just as the birds’ did,” said Professor Wikelski.  “Additionally, groups of both birds and butterflies did not migrate on very windy days and only moved after two successive nights of falling temperatures.” [This means a cold front is moving in with a tailwind that will aid their flying]  “We saw other similarities as well, which makes us think that dragonflies find their way south using natural landscape features, such as seacoasts and large rivers.”

And, like migrating monarch butterflies, the dragonflies migrating south will not be the ones making the return trip.  It will be their offspring flying back north in the spring.

Another interesting pattern was discovered by a birdwatcher named Frank Nicoletti who was studying hawk migration when he noticed that the migration of the dragonflies coincided with the migration of juvenile American kestrels.  The thick clouds of migrating dragonflies made it easier for the inexperienced young falcons to catch their dragonfly meals, so the insects are an important food source for the migrating kestrels. 

And, of course, I just had to know where the Green Darner dragonfly got its name.  Just as I suspected, the name came from its resemblance to a darning needle (the big one used to mend holes in sweaters and socks).   In fact, one of its nicknames is “darning needle.”  Apparently, some parents used to tell their children to be careful not to let the dragonfly get near their mouth because it might stitch it closed with its darning needle! 

Hmmm.  So that’s what parents mean when they say, “Darn that kid!”

Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man Takes the Scenic Route

One of the things I like best about living here in the mountains is the fact that even the most mundane of tasks, like going to the grocery store or going to work, becomes exciting because no matter which route we take, it’s the scenic route.  And I will never, ever take this for granted.   It’s a good thing that the country road we go into town on is not a busy one because I’m always stopping just to gaze,  slack-jawed with awe, at the beauty of these hills.

In that vein, I present the photographs of Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man–my husband Tom.  All of these, except the sunsets, were taken either on his way to work or at his jobsite.  He is a carpenter, and we get up early, so we get to see every day the wonder of the early-morning light.

About the one below:  Tom said he loved that the fence looked like a music staff and the headlights, like bright notes on the staff.   (Tom’s a poet, too.)

First of all, the house you see below, behind the corn snake,  is NOT our house.  It’s Tom’s worksite.  As a matter of fact, Tom says that our ENTIRE HOUSE would fit inside the great room of this house.  I guess that’s why they call it a great room.  Anyway, this is a corn snake.  Isn’t it beautiful?  The poor little guy was stuck on some adhesive that they were using in the drainage system.  Tom and his co-workers rescued him and let him go.  He was kind enough to pose for a few pictures before he slithered away.

This was taken on the same worksite.

The shot below was taken back in October from the same worksite.  Tom has been working there a long time.  It is a very, very large house, so there’s lots of custom trim to do (he is a trim carpenter).  I think he’s starting to feel at home there.  Very soon, they’ll probably give him his own room.  In fact, the house is so big, he could stay there and they might not even know he was there. 

These amazing sunset shots (below) were taken when Tom was driving back from taking Ariel to Chapel Hill.  I am somewhat alarmed to know he stopped his car in the dark on the side of a major busy highway (where people drive like maniacs)  just to take a picture, but, golly, these are lovely shots. 

Thanks, Blue Ridge Blue Collar Man!  I’m so glad you have such beauty in your every day life and that you stop to capture it so we can see it too.

When is Enough Fluff Enough?

Ariel, my daughter (aka Lucky Pennies), was recently home from college when we took a walk up on the ridge above our house.  Though we’ve taken this walk hundreds of times, I never tire of it because there’s always something new to see, whether it be a new wildflower blooming in summer or the way the winter sun renders trees into silver filigree.  I was breathing hard, trying to keep up with Ariel (she has developed bionic legs, I think, from walking so much in Chapel Hill) when my eyes caught a shimmer in the slanted, late-fall light.
 
Whoa Nelly!  It was a lovely milkweed pod, fully burst and wondrous in its silky glory.  Fortunately, I’d remembered my camera so I clicked and clicked.  Bionic Girl looked a little restless, tapping her Bionic foot.
 
I finished and we walked on.  “I think that picture might be good for my blog,” I said.  Then I remembered that I’d had at least two posts with the radiant feathery seedpods of  bull thistles. “Or would that be too much fluff?” I thought aloud.

 

Ariel thought for a second.  “Yeah, you’ve had a lot of fluff on your blog.”

 

I looked at her sharply. “Are you saying my blog is fluffy?”

 

“Yep, I’m sayin’ you’ve already exceeded your fluff quota.”

 

“But those were bull thistle pods.  These are milkweed…” I whined.

 

“Fluff is fluff.  And you’ve had…enough.  Enough fluff stuff.”

 

Well.  Okay, Miss Lucky Pennies.  Enough fluff stuff, you say?  Gosh, you didn’t have to be so gruff and rough.   I feel rebuffed.  I’m in a huff.  You think you’re so tough.  Well, I’ve had enough of your guff.

 

So there, Bionic Girl.  It’s my blog and I’ll post fluff if I want to. 

 

 

Here are a couple of other sights we saw on our walk, which did meet Ariel’s Non-Fluffy Seal of Approval:

The old log cabin up on the ridge:

A buckeye butterfly in the grass, torpid from the cold.

 

So, what do you think?  Enough fluff stuff?  

 

******Edited to add:  I did want to assure everyone that the above conversation was entirely light-hearted and playful.  Ariel was referring to all my pictures of pod fluff, not my writing.  She and I both love words and playing with words, so our conversations often involve teasing and wordplay.    So I never wanted to give the impression that Ariel was being critical of my blog.  She has actually been very encouraging, so she was just joking about the fluff.   At least I think she was.  Right, Ariel?   :-)  ******

Friday Fact: Imagining a Mistletoe Mission

 

I thought it an appropriate time of year to talk about mistletoe.  Down in eastern North Carolina, where I grew up, it was a Christmas tradition with a lot of folks to shoot mistletoe down from the tops of big trees (usually oaks), where it was growing.   If I remember correctly, we used shotguns, so it was an art to shoot it down cleanly without busting it up into unusable pieces.   Some people would hunt and shoot down great quantities of mistletoe to sell to florists and at farmer’s markets.

The derivation of the word “mistletoe” belies its romantic reputation.  It comes from two Anglo-Saxon words: “Mistel” from the Anglo-Saxon word for “dung” and “tan” from the word for “twig.”  Translated, mistletoe would be something like “dung on a twig.”  This stems from the fact that much of the mistletoe that grows in trees comes from seeds contained in bird poop that sticks to tree branches. 

Also belying its romantic reputation is the fact that mistletoe is a parasitic plant.  It sends a special root-system called haustoria into the tree branch to suck nutrients from the tree.  Sometimes it even kills the plant on which it’s growing.  But it’s not all bad. The berries  provide food for birds and other animals.  Mistletoe has also been studied in Europe as a possible treatment for cancer.

There are a number of theories about the origin of the custom of “kissing under the mistletoe.”   The Druids believed it to be a sacred plant, a panacea for all ills, including infertility.  Supposedly, the Druids would cut it down from an oak with a golden sickle (rather than a shotgun!), taking care not to let it touch the ground.  They believed that it lost its miraculous properties if it touched the earth.  In ancient Rome, mistletoe was regarded as a symbol of peace.  There are stories of enemies who, when meeting under trees bearing mistletoe, would lay down their arms and embrace. 

I like that idea better than kissing.  If only the Druids and Romans were right in their notion of mistletoe as a miraculous plant of peace!  We could go on a mistletoe mission to hang it everywhere, in all the strife-torn places of the world.  We could all do our part as mistletoe missionaries—to bring about a mistletoe miracle of peace on earth and goodwill among men.

Friday Fact: The Risky Business of Being a Beaver

 

While hiking this summer, we came upon this beaver-gnawn tree next to the trail.  The National Park Service had cut down the tree, rightly determining it to be a hazard to passing hikers, but kindly left the beaver-sculpted part.  The lake where we were hiking abounds with busy beavers, so you see these lovely little wooden tables everywhere.

So, it got me to thinking: Do beavers ever get crushed by the trees they fell?  Or are they the Paul Bunyons of the rodent world?  Well, as it turns out, beavers get flattened on a regular basis.  Apparently, it’s not true that beavers know where a tree will fall—they actually have no idea.

The myth of beavers as lumberjacks was perpetuated by the fact that many of the trees they chew down are by the water.  Trees that are beside a body of water tend to lean out towards the light, so they will almost always fall that way.  So beavers stay safe.  But once they are in dense woodlands, beavers are in more danger.  Wildlife researchers find squashed beavers on a regular basis.

They also find thick forests full of trees where the beaver has chewed completely through the base of the trees, but the trees are still standing, held up by the branches of surrounding trees. I am intrigued by the image of a whole forest of suspended trees, held up only by each other. 

But I do feel for the beaver.  All that work—for nothing.  I guess that’s where the term “busy as a beaver” comes from. 

Of Golden Leaves and Golden Light

One last look at autumn…

I took this photograph on Thursday morning.  The happy, blue-sky, blue-birds-singing, Care-bears-cavorting look of it belies the violence of the weather that morning.  In fact, the wind was blowing so hard, I had to brace my whole body to try to keep the camera still.  The snow blowing sideways into my face stung so painfully, I had to squint my eyes.  And my hands were so cold, I could barely operate the camera buttons.  But it was worth it.  What you can’t see quite clearly is that the rows between the Christmas trees in the field were filled with golden leaves that had just been blown off the trees.  And you will notice that the rainbow’s end was in the field.  So I couldn’t help but think that, for once, there really was a golden treasure at the end of the rainbow.

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Below are a few pictures I took  a couple of weeks ago when Tom and I had to go on a little business roadtrip.  As always, we mixed business with pleasure by taking the Blue Ridge Parkway.  These were taken at my very favorite time of day–early morning just after sunrise. 

And, finally, here is a shot I took in the evening about a month ago as we returned from a walk up on the ridge above our house.  The late afternoon autumn sun illuminated the side of the mountain, bathing it in a wondrous golden light.   Glory be.