RECLUSE, WYOMING

            Tim, bless his darlin’ heart, spent considerable energy this sodden and blustery week perusing weaving websites on my behalf. He researched harness looms (haven’t mastered the rigid heddle yet), raw wool (spinning and dyeing my own yarn is still a ways down the road), and organic yarn sources. He sent me several links featuring beautiful traditional and modern rugs and tapestries. One could—and does!—lose a lot of time clicking from one to the next, and the next, and the next. Not to be outdone, I connected with Yarn Barn of (Lawrence) Kansas; Stitch ‘n’ Frame out of Urbandale, Iowa; The Woolery in Frankfort, Kentucky; and the used-book site Alibris to find a must-have out-of-print volume entitled Finishes in the Ethnic Tradition by Suzanne Baizerman and Karen Searle.

            No wonder many of our gardening clients and neighbors think we’ve left town, died, or both.

            The link in my inbox Saturday morning opened to Crazy Woman’s Navajo Weaving Supplies. I admire Navajo rugs and blankets, but what resonated in my heart was the contact address. She lives on Hidden Hollow Road in Recluse, Wyoming.

Recluse, Wyoming (courtesy GoogleMaps)

            I glommed onto the idea of Recluse. I visualized a small log cabin on its own private track, called Go Away Gulch Lane, or some such. A cloistered existence has always sung siren songs to me—as long as it’s plumbed, electrified, near a large body of water, not subject to harsh winters, and fully funded. I do have a few standards, after all.

            GoogleMaps’ satellite pictures injected a dose of unwelcome reality into my cozy imaginings. Tucked into the otherwise empty northeast corner of the state, Recluse looks to be a cluster of about 12 buildings in a wide-ish spot on Recluse Road, unceremoniously plunked down in a taupe ocean of raked-gravel-like harvested fields. A precious few algae-green patches erupt into the brown, but I bet they’re densely populated (relatively speaking, of course) with zealously guarded borders.

            Extremely well named, Recluse lies about 200 miles north-northeast of Casper; 200 miles northwest of Rapid City, South Dakota; 225 miles southeast of Billings, Montana; and around 150 miles from the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park—the part lacking access roads.

            Then memories of the time Tim and I drove through eastern Wyoming on our way to Mount Rushmore poured in. We stopped along the absolutely featureless stretch of I-25 between Cheyenne and Casper to look at some big-horn sheep and the still-visible ruts etched into the stony ground by covered wagons filled with hopeful settlers on their tortuous way to Oregon in the 19^th century. I read Willa Cather: stories of pioneer women driven insane by horizon-to-horizon treelessness and incessant wind sprang to mind. I would have joined the sisterhood of Looney Lucys for sure. I started to cry.

            That evening, in Casper, Tim and I had our one and only serious fight.

            Because everything goes faster these days, Lucy was creeping in after only seven hours. No wonder Cate Loetscher, proprietor of Navajo Weaving Supplies, calls herself Crazy Woman. She’s certainly made of sterner stuff than I am.

Oak Island, NC (courtesy GoogleMaps)

            Looking at the blessedly blue and green GoogleMap of Oak Island made me think maybe things aren’t really so awful here. It’s certainly a textbook example of being careful what one wishes for, with a soupçon of the devil one knows is better, yadayada.

            Take a minute from frenetic preparations for the holiday season to be truly grateful for all you already have and are. It may not offer all the delights of Recluse, Wyoming, but grace and happiness reside there nonetheless.

            Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                    Kathy

FILLED WITH COLOR

            Tim and I got some hard news this week. A very dear friend and long-time client received a diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer. It somehow feels appropriate—if “appropriate” is even close to the right word—that this body-slam should come in the fall, when a transitioning world puts on its gayest and gaudiest dress before fading into grey.

            In southeastern North Carolina, the deciduous trees don’t put on much of a show most years. Except for the maples, reds are muted, browned. Tulip poplar and sycamore leaves turn bright yellow for about ten minutes before their edges go crispy, and they’re on the ground.  Occasionally the sweet gums spark multi-hued, but dull purple is much more common.

            This is not to say the landscape’s gone bland. You just have to take the time to look.  When I did, I found shards of rainbow all over the place.

           

            Red pentas blazing in a windowbox.

 

            An orange sweet pepper, possibly the last of the season.

 

            A yellow-yellow black-eyed susan petal, still hanging on.

 

Yellow-orange tarragon flowers dug from a friend’s house last Saturday.

 

 

 

Chartreuse new growth on ‘Alabama Sunset’ coleus.

 

New green baby iceberg lettuce leaves.

Metallic blue Viburnum tinus berries.

 

 

 

True-blue mealycup sage, one of my favorite flowers.

Yellow-eyed lavender asters hugging the ground.

 

 

Velvety violet Mexican bush sage.

 The magnificent magenta of an ‘Alabama Sunset’ leaf.

Even if you live where sugar maples blaze all October long or where bougainvillea blooms year-round, comfort—and joy—can be found in nature’s saturated colors, even when the world dips into shadow.

Gratitude for what we have is so important. Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                        Kathy

STAYING THANKFUL

Little Golden Books' "God is great..."

  Learned in Sunday School:

“God is great, God is good.

Let us thank him for out food.

By his hand we all are fed,

Give us, Lord, our daily bread.”

A round sung at Girl Scout camp:

“For health and friends and daily bread

We praise thy name, oh Lord.”

The blessing I grew up with:

“For what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.”

For the irreverent:

“Good bread, good meat,

Let’s eat!”

Aunt Bethany in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag

Of the United States of America;

And to the Republic for which it stands,

One nation, under God, indivisible,

With liberty and justice for all.

Play ball!”

*****

Let the battle begin!

            I don’t get it.

The hype for the annual Black Friday consumer orgy started early in the week here, whipping bargain-hunters into a salivating, rabid frenzy before the advent of wee-hours door-busting trophies, sleep deprivation, and atrocious behavior. Today, on Black-and-Blue Sunday, they retire to lick their wounds and behold with glittering, avaricious eyes the loot wrested from the fray before dressing for church.

            It’s like a session of Congress played out on a national scale, a grab-fest with every Beanie Baby and i-Phone for himself.

            And would somebody please enlighten me as to what treasure there could possibly be at Wal-Mart to provoke gunplay?

           

            In my mind’s eye, I picture the woman on the afternoon before she pepper-sprayed rivals for first whack at the super-cheap towels, sitting at her laden dining-room table, surrounded by family and friends, piously giving thanks and counting her blessings. Do you think she didn’t really mean it? Or was she just not paying attention?

Not a pretty picture of America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. More like the Land of the Me and Home of the Depraved. What’s the matter with us?

Days like this, it’s comforting to go outside and tend the garden, where I’m the only fool and reasons for gratitude abound.

 Nursery, holding area, infirmary, 
laboratory, spirit restorer

Last weekend, for example, I spent a few hours rearranging, culling and neatening on the south side of our house, which serves as nursery, holding area, infirmary and laboratory. When Hurricane Irene threatened in September, Tim relegated the baskets of cucumber plants hanging on our front porch there: we never got around to putting them back up. As I picked up one basket to dump it, I stepped on what I thought was a pine cone. When I stooped to toss the ankle-turner into the woods, however, I discovered a pine-cone-sized cucumber, unmarred by pickleworms, nestled in the ivy. Too bad I’d flattened it. Looking closer at the basket, I uncovered another fruit, and then another. What a nice November surprise! Added to my dinner salad, they tasted a little bitter. After weeks of unaccompanied lettuces, though, I enjoyed the change.

Four varieties of lettuce

(Why only lettuce? Because I try really hard to eat only what’s in season. Despite temptations at the supermarket, cukes, tomatoes and green peppers shall remain terra incognita until next summer. Fortunately the lettuce plants given me by my friend, Christine, are doing very well.)

Again, last Monday, while mucking around in the raised beds, pulling out past plants and fluffing up the soil for the clover cover-crop, I found… wait for it… potatoes, including the largest individual dug this year. The seed eyes went in the ground back in February; the main harvest took place in early May. Here we are in November—a mere nine months after planting—with another five ounces of spuds. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.

2011's last potatoes?

Apparently, in addition to my talent for growing miniature veggies, I also have a gift for very late maturing ones.

 Gardens provide inspiration for gratitude wherever you look. Out in our yard, the aromatic ‘Copper Canyon’ marigolds (Tagetes lemmonii) that quickly dominated any space given them are blooming their cheery golden hearts out as we round the corner into December. Seventeen or so of the 80 ‘Granax Hybrid’ onions sown on the sixth of November have pushed up hair-like sprouts. I figure if I leave them alone until next fall, I might get a few bulbs bigger around than my thumb. The ‘Fragola d’Bos’ and ‘Mignonette’ alpine strawberries transplanted around Halloween shrugged off the two light frosts we’ve had so far: ‘Fragola’ is even flowering, silly thing.

'Copper Canyon' marigolds 

(Tagetes lemmonii)

brighten late November

Besides flowers and fruit, the fall garden offers sweet-smelling, slightly damp soil; a quiet place to hear birds’ comings and goings, and breezes lifting leaves; surprising tiny intricacies and beautiful color schemes sported by insects encountered there; sun warming bent backs, the ground cooling hands and knees; and—perhaps most important of all—the peaceful, literal grounding that comes with a sense of oneness with the earth, and the sure knowledge that some things are bigger and more permanent than petty human madnesses.

"For what we are about to receive,
make us truly thankful."

I’m going outside to soak up some of that inspiration now, and suggest, if you’re able, you do the same. We’ll come back into our houses and lives more thankful than when we ventured out to play in the garden.

Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                Kathy

A WORD ON WILDLIFE

            As we prepare for our annual stuff-yourself-until-you-spew holiday, let’s take a minute to be grateful for the other creatures that are part and parcel of the improbable miracle of life on this insignificant rock that spins around a mediocre star in the indifferent infinitude of space.

            How about that for putting things in perspective? Whether we admit it or not, humans are not the ultimate rulers of the universe. (Personally, I’m extremely grateful for that.) Clever and adaptable, we nonetheless exhibit a hard-wired self-destructive streak that I fear will render us the merest blip on the radar of the cosmos. Meanwhile, the crocodiles and the cockroaches soldier on, too busy surviving even to laugh at the pretensions of Homo sapiens.

           Sorry—did I say all that out loud?

 

Clear-cut Fitzgerald backyard, 1998

What I mean to address is ameliorating the loss of wildlife habitat that is one of the most serious negative by-products of unbridled development, right up there with water-table depletion and degradation. In Brunswick County, NC, back in the day of real-estate hubris and liar loans, housing tracts and golf-course communities sprang up like toadstools. The “developers” clear-cut woods, filled swamps and concreted over ever-increasing percentages of maritime, estuarine and wetlands environments. I truly understand the primal urge of humans to live near water—after all, I’m part of the problem, having moved here myself from somewhere higher and drier. But there is such a thing as taking responsibility for what our arrival destroys.

Take the idea of garden-as-habitat. It is not a new one. Perennial marketers have pushed whole groups of plants as butterfly and hummingbird attractors for years. Lots of us maintain birdfeeders and hang houses for our feathered friends. Four-footed natives show up too: just putting out birdseed is enough to make squirrels and raccoons appear.

 Alas, along with the cute critters we encourage come the ones we don’t. Bambi and Thumper help themselves to our roses, vegetables and anything else that takes their fancy. Snakes slither in on rodent, amphibian and insect patrol. Foxes, feral cats and dogs, possums, the occasional bobcat and other omnivores cruise their habitual territories even though our houses and yards now occupy the land. Tim and I have seen trees rubbed barkless by itchy, parasite-plagued bears. There’s even a black panther rumored to prowl the neighborhood of Midway Road.

As ex-urbanites realize they are not alone on their out-of-town properties, it helps to remember two things: 1) the wild creatures were here first, thus rating some accommodation; and 2) most are nocturnal, so frightening-for-all face-to-face confrontations are rare.

            So, you ask, what can I do to further peaceful coexistence? Replace a bit of the habitat your decision to relocate eradicated, I reply. Okay, you say. How?

Dense plantings provide shelter



Well, creating wildlife-friendly environments boils down to the presence of two things: shelter and sustenance. Shelter includes nesting or denning sites and materials, and protective cover. For example, Tim and I have the great good fortune to live adjacent to a heavily wooded vacant double lot. (I shall be heartbroken when the owners or their heirs finally build.) Our own densely planted back yard enhances both privacy for us and habitat for critters. At the far back of our property we planted an ill-considered and difficult-to-control eleagnus hedge flanked by flourishing Leyland cypress. Moving toward the house, another, formally clipped hedge of dwarf yaupon hollies broken by an arbor overgrown with Confederate jasmine encloses the flower garden. When we first moved in, we hung birdhouses in our oaks and on the decorative post-and-rail fence. In the ensuing 12 years, vegetation subsumed them all. So chez Fitzgerald, shelter needs are met.

Resident mockingbird
defending his turf



I have to smile when I see “houses” for toads, bats, butterflies, carpenter bees and ladybugs for sale. Our toads live under the outdoor shower, or beneath the floorboards of our screened porch, along with gorgeous Miss Scarlett, the scarlet snake. The carpenter bees fashion their own nests in the back of an untreated wooden bench on the deck. The bats, ladybugs and butterflies take care of themselves. The desire to control where creatures domicile reminds me of the bluebird experts’ canon: boxes of certain dimensions with apertures exactly one-and-one-eighth-inch round set five feet off the ground and facing southwest are critical for bluebird survival. Oh, yeah?  How did they manage all those millennia before the bluebird experts evolved?


          Sustenance means food and water, including treats you provide and replenish. I spend a part of every Saturday stocking caches of birdseed, suet, peanuts, hulled corn and catfood—that last for Petey and Pauline Possum, Rocky and Rhoda Raccoon and their families. But we also maintain plants with edible fruits, nuts and seeds. We have a weeping yaupon holly that the resident mockingbirds defend against all comers, including entire flocks of cedar waxwings come January and the north-bound robins every February and March. After perfuming the whole neighborhood for all of November, the aforementioned eleagnus’ berries ripen in early spring, just in time to sustain migratory birds and to the delight of our regiment of squirrels. (I’m out there too, foraging away: the fruits are delicious as long as they are very red and soft when you pop them in your mouth. Otherwise, prepare to pucker.)  

Red buckeye,
Aesculus pavia,
in spring

The rodents love the nuts from our buckeye (Aesculus pavia). In April, there’s a three-way race—rodents, avians and me—for the serviceberries (Amelanchier x grandiflora) when they ripen, and again in May and June for the strawberries I planted as groundcover. I bow out of the contest for the fruits from the two crabapples (Japanese Malus x sargentii and Southern native Malus angustifolia). They’re just too darn tart for those of us with taste buds.

And then there’s the annual skirmish for whatever appears in the vegetable garden.

Fitzs' flowers in June 2003

              Our flower garden has something blooming as much of the time as possible for the nectar dependents: bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. An annual sowing of sacrificial host plants for the larvae, a.k.a. caterpillars, of many butterflies and moths—like fennel, parsley and dill for yellow swallowtails, passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) for Gulf fritillaries, butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa and A. incarnata) for monarchs, and tomatoes for Carolina sphinx moths—ensures the presence of the beautiful adults. 

Leave seedheads standing
for winter sustenance
(shown: Liatris spicata)



Even when nothing is in flower, I let the seedheads of gayfeather (Liatris spicata), coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea), black-eyed susans (perennial Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii and annual R. hirta) and crape myrtles stand for the finches, juncos and nuthatches. (A dumb joke: Whaddya get when you cross a nuthatch with a blue-footed booby? A boobyhatch, natch.) Sure, it looks like I’m just lazy about fall cleanup, but there’s a reason for that. If the litter in your garden isn’t slimy (like frost-blasted canna lilies and impatiens) or diseased (black-spotted rose leaves, for example), leaving it in place for the winter provides food and shelter for small birds and little animals as well as a soil-enriching mulch.



A source of water is appreciated at all seasons. Tim ran a quarter-inch dripline with a two-gallon-an-hour emitter on the end of it into our birdbath, so it fills every time the drip zone comes on. Another often-overlooked yet crucial aspect of sustenance is to refrain from pesticide use, particularly broad-spectrum formulations that kill everything they contact.

Auto-fill birdbath



The print materials and website of the Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program of the National Wildlife Federation offer lots of helpful suggestions as well as a protocol to have your property certified as an official Backyard Wildlife Habitat (see links list at right).

 

Keep in mind that every ecosystem is more than the mere sum of its parts. Precisely because Homo sapiens occupies the top of the food-chain ladder means we have the greatest need of all the other rungs. Let us embrace our dependence and be thankful for them.

Thanks for dropping by. Y’all have yourselves a pleasant and peaceful Thanksgiving.

                                                                                                                                              Kathy

     P.S. -- For the blog-lore-challenged (such as myself): Tim tells me if you click on the pictures, they get bigger, the better to see the details. To get back to the text, click on the "back" arrow. On my Google toolbar, it's at the top left of the page. I tried it. It worked.