winter thoughts

it's the end of december and the end of the decade and time to reflect on a few things. after working for 20 years on art-related publications, i find it almost impossible to write without an image or two to give it credibility.

the barn is well stocked with split black cherry firewood and the slender poles await the saw. those are the remains of the round corral that the cowbow manque' across the road built. when finally the big collapsed barn was taken down in september, several of us scavenged wood, as most of it was just being burned up in fires night and day. now we have a different view from the front of our house, a long view across the fields to the distant forest.

we're hoping that the shed on the right will collapse on its own, leaving only the shabby deteriorating house across the road. it has been suggested that the most useful future for the house would be to donate it to the volunteer fire department for practice.

the work i did this summer on nine different assessments for the huron river watershed's bio-reserve project was so interesting and i learned so much from the truly experienced scientists on the project. of the nine sites , only one area was really quite pristine and happily it is near here a few miles to the west on six mile road. most of it is wet forest, a flood plain along a winding creek, and there were almost no invasive species. we found a stand of endangered wildflowers, the brilliant blue closed gentian. we hope that the owners will be interested in preserving it with a conservation easement.

but the other eight sites were less encouraging. some were abandoned agricultural fields with solid monotypic stands of autumn olive, canada thistle, goldenrod or, worse, wild parsnip. some were second-growth forests with a ground cover of garlic mustard, which eliminates native spring wildflowers like trillium, bloodroot, and may apple. others were over-grazed and full of spotted knapweed. a well-established hardwood forest was flooded as the result of a large virtually abandoned housing development adjacent that changed the flow of water onto the neighbor's land, killing the trees and plants.

the organizers of the bioreserve project assured me that there were many promising sites among the 80-some surveyed; the degraded ones i'd seen were just a coincidental luck of the draw.

next year i'm planning to contact the four owners of the forest across the road, which extends all the way west to earhart road, to get their permission to do an assessment. my own informal look makes me think it's in pretty good shape. there is a stand of large beech, now relatively rate in s.e. michigan. now all we have to do is find the money to buy the 80 acres and build a small modern house well back off the road, keep the fields in cultivation, and put a conservation easement on it all. anyone want to chip in?

the bald-faced hornet's nest

This summer I spotted a large paper nest in the maple tree in our front yard. When it came time to write a short final paper for field biology, I chose it as my subject.

The bald-faced hornet (Also called Dolichovespula maculata in Dunn (255) is not a true hornet, but in the wasp (Vespidae) family, related to the yellow jacket, but with a larger body and black and white coloration. Its face is white, suggesting the name. They are social wasps, who form communities built on a caste system, consisting of a queen who is served by her sterile female daughters. With mouthparts for biting and chewing, vegetarian adults drink liquids and feed on ripe fruit; they masticate insects to feed the carnivorous larvae.
In the spring, a fertile queen builds a small nest alone, lays an egg in each cell, feeds the larvae, and a first generation of “daughters” is born. The queen keeps their ovaries from developing by aggressive behavior towards them in the “form of head butting and shoulder charging” (O’Toole 190) and they become workers who enlarge the nest, creating cells for the queen’s eggs. All she does from the time the worker generation emerge is lay eggs; the workers bring her food, defend the nest, collect wood pulp to enlarge the nest with many additional cells, and gather food and feed the larvae. The legless, grublike larvae signal for food by scratching on the walls of their cells and a worker will offer a tiny pellet of masticated insects, often mosquitoes or flies. There are reports of worker wasps snatching a fly in mid-flight. Farmers welcome the bald-faced hornets who live near cattle or horse barns.
When the adult insect emerges, she too becomes a worker. She seals off her cell, which has collected excrement, and it is enlarged it to make room for a new egg. The colonies grow all during the summer and may contain as many as 500 or more individuals. These become very aggressive if disturbed and each individual can and will sting repeatedly.
The nest has one entrance hole towards the bottom and is well insulated with several outer layers of paper to maintain an ideal temperature of about 86 degrees F (30C) If it becomes too warm, the workers will cluster around it and beat their wings to cool it down and bring in drops of water to moisten the cells; if too cool, the workers will perform an exercise, rapidly expanding and contracting their abdomens, and raise the temperature (Frisch 62).
Both the initial small nest and the subsequent large one are made of paper in the same way. The insects use their serrated mandibles to scrape weathered wood, often posts, fences, and telephone poles, for pulp; mix the pellets with their saliva and build the nest by stretching out each section, aligning the wood fibers for strength (Frisch 61). As they build, they use their antennae as calipers to measure the walls of each cell. A glandular secretion is added to outer surface; it hardens like lacquer to waterproof the paper (Wooten 126).
The elaborate nests are used for only one season; at the end of summer a generation of fertile females and males emerges and mates. The males die. The fertile queens overwinter in leaf litter or in the hollow of a tree; the workers become disoriented and die. The queens start construction of a new nest each spring.
 This seems like an extraordinary labor-intensive and elaborate system for insuring the continuance of the species. 

References
Dunn, Gary A. , Insects of the Great Lakes Region, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1996.
Frisch, Karl von, Animal Architecture, New York and London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.
Milne, Lorus and Margery, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1980.
O’Toole, Christopher, Alien Empire: An Exploration of the Lives of Insects, New York, Harper Collins, 1995.
Stokes, Donald W., A Guide to Nature in Winter, Boston, Little Brown and Co., 1976.
Wooten, Anthony, Insects of the World, London, Facts on File, Cassell Illustrated, 2002.

thomas jefferson and me, second version

By the time I was in high school, I was sick of Thomas Jefferson.

Our on-again-off-again relationship started the day I was born in the Martha Jefferson Hospital. The name does double duty, as Jefferson's wife and daughter both bore the name. Hospitals should be embracing, caring places, and feminine names seem appropriate. No one would want to check in to the Thomas Jefferson Hospital, that would be too intimidating.

As I was growing up in Charlottesville, down the hill from the famous house, the Monticello Dairy delivered our milk; special occasions might be celebrated in the dining room of the Monticello Hotel; I saw Gene Autry and his horse Champion at the Jefferson Theater; we had one set of cousins living on Jefferson Street and another on Jefferson Park Avenue.

My father named one of his hunting dogs Thomas Jefferson, even though he had no special love for the third president. "Everything in this damn town is named Jefferson; I can't beat 'em'; might as well join 'em." The handsome liver and white pointer was called Jeff, but my father added names at a whim and encouraged me to do so too. Jeff's official name grew to be Thomas Jefferson Washington Jackson Anthony Airpump Alonzo Anselmo Dynaflow Randolph DeMarkley Garbage Scow Henshaw. my friends in high school used to set us up by encouraging newcomers ask my dog's name.

In the 1950s, residents of Charlottesville were given free passes to Monticello to encourage us to bring our visiting friends and family as paying customers. My mother ferried them up in her big boatlike Buicks. She wasn't particularly interested in Jefferson either, but she liked the old-fashioned flowers in the gardens.

My father wouldn't go: "If I want to see Monticello, I can look on the back of any nickel."

I enjoyed going to Monticello several times a year as a child. I liked the clock that told the day of the week with canon balls, the mammoth bones, the polygraph that allowed the writer to make an exact copy as he wrote, the smokehouse smelling fiercely of hams, bacon, and hickory smoke, the wooden feedboxes for the horses, the circular stone ice house built into the side of the hill. The tour guides were genteel ladies from town, some of them my mother's friends. They had soft, gracious Virginia accents and reverently referred to "Mr. Jefferson," a local cliche that still goes on.

When I got a little older, I was taken in by what I learned at my old-fashioned school. Our own native son Thomas Jefferson was the greatest of all presidents, author of the Declaration of Indepedence, brilliant shopper who doubled the nation's real eastate with the Louisiana Purchase and sent local heroes Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their daring expedition. He was tall, handsome, red-haired, an accomplished architect and musician. Of course there were plenty of other stars in the firmament of Virginia history, but none shined so brightly or cast such a long shadow as TJ.

That's what we called him in high school.

And who was afraid of Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Randolph V? We all were; she was the formidable headmistress of St. Anne's School. She had excellent posture, flashing black eyes, wore her iron-gray hair in braids around her head and well-tailored suits. She was not a warm maternal presence but her school had a reputation for academic excellence. Many Yankee girls came to St. Anne's as boarders, sent to acquire some Southern polish and/or get away from whatever trouble they'd had with boys at home. I suppose Mrs. Randolph's impeccable Virginian name with that Roman numeral after it must have impressed a few parents. Her appropriate first name was Augusta; we called her Gussie behind her back.

And imagine this: my mother had a close friend who was Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Randolph IV: a kinder, prettier, white haired Mrs. Randolph, named Nancy. An artist of sorts, she painted stiff, lifeless oil portraits of my two grandmothers (those from photographs), my mother, and me. These are gathering dust in my barn in Michigan now; no one can figure out what to do with them.

At St. Anne's our history teacher did point out the inconsistency of TJ's status as a slave holder when he had written "All men are created equal..." etc., but she didn't dwell on it. And certainly no one mentioned the rumors about his relationship with Sally Hemings, which had started in 1802. In the '50s that would have been absolutely scandalous; impossible to imagine that the great man was fathering children with a slave, no matter that she was very pretty, only an eighth African, and the half-sister of his deceased wife Martha.

So when the biography Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History was published by historian Fawn Brodie in 1974, I eagerly read it; when the DNA evidence that TJ must have fathered Sally's youngest son Eston was published in 1998, I cheered. TJ finally came off his saintly pedestal and we saw that his feet were stained with Albemarle red clay. He freed Sally's sons but not Sally.

Recently I went back to Monticello. I looked forward to seeing the house again and restored vegetable gardens where the parking lots used to be. And i was curious to hear how the tour guide would handle the Sally Hemings question, if it came up.

The businesslike young woman pointed out a cabinet in TJ's library that was made by master carpenter and slave, John Hemings. She went on to say that this was the brother of Sally Hemings, who was the mother of six of Jefferson's children. No one commented and the guide moved us along into the study. Monticello was more interesting than ever and I was glad to see it all again.

It's unlikely that we will ever know anything substantial about the real quality of the relationship between TJ and Sally, as his children and grandchildren destroyed any pertinent documentary material. The book by Annette Gordon-Reed The Hemings of Monticello: An American Family is fascinating account of several generations of the slave family. TJ died in 1826. But in the census of 1830 she is listed a free white woman living on Main Street in Charlottesville. Where, exactly, on Main Street I'd like to know.

Since my mother's family in Albemarle County dates back to the mid-18th century, I wonder if I could find a connection, even though i knew we weren't related to TJ. Rummaging around in my mother's family tree, I found George Gilmer. He was TJ's personal physician and a close friend. In fact it was to Gilmer that TJ wrote from Paris in an often quoted letter of 1890, "I am happy nowhere else and in no other society, and all my wishes end, where I hope my days will end, at Monticello." Gilmer's great-grandaughter was my great-grandmother. This was as close as i could come.

Ironically, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather on my mother's side also at least knew Jefferson. Pierre Chouteau of St. Louis accompanied a group of Osage indian chiefs to meet the president in 1804 and another in 1806. But that is another story.

When i moved to Detroit in the '60s, we lived a few blocks off Jefferson Avenue; my son lived on Jefferson Street in Ann Arbor. When someone says, "Let's go to TJ's for lunch," I don't think 'Traffic Jam,' I think the old man has invited us. The blather on the new granola box reassures me that hemp is a fine, healthy ingredient and that TJ himself grew hemp. An ad for rare books on the back page of the New York Times reminds us that TJ was a passionate book collector.

I can't get away from TJ but now he seems like a truly interesting, inconsistent human being.

thomas jefferson and me

apologies to faithful readers--i can't get my word document to copy on the blog, even tho it has worked before. so i will attempt to rewrite it in a shorter form directly here.

who says there's no culture in northfield township?

plenty of plaid

                               macgregors in line for a tour of monticello


the american clan gregor society met last week in charlottesville, virginia, to celebrate its 100th anniversary. the red and green tartan was to be seen everywhere, though the hereditary clan chief, sir malcolm macgregor of macgregor, often wore the "rob roy" tartan of simple red and black (also known as buffalo plaid when associated with flannel shirts).  the mighty renegade rob roy is easily the most famous macgregor, perhaps the only famous macgregor. sir malcolm lives in the ancestral holding in perthshire, in western scotland. there is a project tracing the origins of the macgregors through DNA and the result suggests that the family actually originated in ireland a very very long time ago.

my mother was born elizabeth magruder, the surname being one of many variants of macgregor taken when the clan was outlawed by the english king in the early 17th century. the magruders of charlottesville (evelina's father) founded the american clan society in 1909; hence the festive gathering was held there. over 300 people attended from all over america. many of the older men wore kilts and the full kit that goes with them; ladies mostly made do with scarves in the tartan, though some had skirts, jumpers, or vests made for them. andrew asked what the average age of the attendees; my guess was 65.

we were very happy that my old friend from high school judy mitchell joined judith and me in charlottesville. for the banquet on saturday night, we dressed as formally as we could. judy mitchell is of the clan innes, so hers is that tartan. she came from maine, and kept us amused with her enthusiasm for it all. both judys were a little concerned that they were not 'real' macgregors, but they were welcomed very warmly.

the banquet was full of ritual, with lissome lasses dancing over the chieftan's sword, and sixteen pipers piping (sixteen is a lot of pipers, especially indoors), and bobbie burn's "address to a haggis" read dramatically. and incomprehensively in a heavy brogue. everyone got bits of perfectly acceptable haggis, served traditionally with neeps and tatties, and we sang the national anthem, and 'o canada,' and even 'god save the queen,' the best of the all and one i've never heard sung on these shores. with almost 300 people attending the banquet, i felt like an extra in a movie, just filling in the background with more plaid.

cousin ellen lovell donnelley, one of the many family members who constitute the whole virginia village of rapidan, invited local magruder descendants  for a special lunch at country club now assoicated with the old magruder family home 'glenmore.' here were about thirty of my relatives that i actually know. ellen lovell had specified in her will that some of her money be spent on a party after she died, but changed her mind and decided it was better to have the party while she too could enjoy it. there were virginia ham biscuits and less traditional salads and some very fancy desserts. this party was a highlight for me.

the handsome house from the mid-19th century is now part of an obnoxiously groomed upscale gated golf and equestrian community. i was glad to have a chance to see the house, as when i was growing up it still belonged to the family. my father took me there to work his dogs, hunt, cut our christmas trees (always a virginia white cedar) and i learned to drive there when i was ten, piloting his world war ii surplus jeep over its rutted farm roads, barely moving in low gear and four-wheel drive.

 

nice house, yes; glenmore was my great-great-grandfather's, just one of the two lovely classic virginia estates that got away (the other is edgemont), both purchased by yankees. the magruder family retains the right to visit the cemetery and so we did. the most evocative tombstone is the simple one of john bowie magruder, who was fatally wounded in pickett's charge at the battle of gettysburg.

john bowie was teaching latin when the war started and enlisted at once in the army of northern virginia. he was a good leader who was made a colonel shortly before he died, at age twenty-three. he was taken from the field to a union hospital, and there cared for by a doctor who happened to belong to the same fraternity. the doctor wrote the family describing john bowie's courage during his last three days and, as he was an officer, his body was returned to glenmore 'under a flag of truce.' my great-grandfather was his brother, whose leg had been amputated and thus could not serve in the army.

the slave census of 1860 lists 49 slaves at glenmore, among the highest numbers in albemarle county.

my interest in the civil war is limited, but to carry out judith and judy's wishes to see appomattox, the site of lee's surrender to grant in april 1865, we drove there the next day, with a stop at the nearby battlefield of sailor's creek. this was the last battle of the war, when 7,700 men, including 12 generals, all that remained of lee's army surrendered. sailor's creek is now a virginia state park in a quiet landscape of rolling hills. a very well informed young woman ranger described the battle to us (the only visitors) in vivid detail.

 

this small private house at sailor's creek was commandeered for use as a field hospital, treating both union and confederate soldiers, more than 500 of them in one day. the woman of the house described seeing piles of amputated limbs outside. when our contemporary civil war enthusiasts go out for civil war reenactments, who gets their legs or arms amputated? i don't understand the appeal of these exercises: surely war is hell and why so safely imitate it?

being in viriginia is always a bittersweet pleasure for me. i miss the mountains and the authentic old-fashioned accents of my parents' generation. at least the mountains will remain for quite a while.

bye bye barn

in december of 2006, the roof of the big old hip-roofed barn across the street collapsed. it had been neglected by the absentee landlord. shingles from various layers of roofing had fallen off; there were holes in the roof which was sagging more and more until a wet snow storm did it in. and gradually more and more of the barn fell apart.  it made me feel very sad. there is an organization that works to save barns in michigan, but it was too late for this one. the photo above shows the last part standing in mid-september 2009.

all we know of its history is that it would have been our barn, if we had lived here maybe 50 or more years ago. someone said it looked like an early 20th century structure, but i'm not sure. it was an integral part of a large working farm belonging to a family named sopp. next to it were two sheds, one for farm equipment and another of indeterminate use, and the concrete floor that was the remains of a milk house. we know that the pater familas living in our house committed suicide by hanging himself in the barn. there is a pleasant lady who lives on earhart that remembers this happening sometime in the late 1930s. she attended the little one-room school on the corner of six mile and earhart, and confirmed that the teacher at that school rented the bedroom upstairs in our house. from third to eighth grade she was the only child in her class. when she told me the year she was born, i realized that she is only ten years older than i am. yet her life as a child here in the country seems long ago and very different.

her son is part of the crew that has been tearing down the barn and sheds. fortunately, one of our friends in ann arbor came out and salvaged some of the lovely weathered barn wood to make a meditation hut in her yard. i hauled over some slender poles that had formed part of a round corral, recently built, to cut up for intermediate size firewood. i picked up a few rocks and an old rusted sickle. i've always wanted a sickle. as a good deed, i collected some dozen batteries that were lying around.

watching the process of dismantling the barn has sometimes seemed like a spectator sport, as neighbors out walking their dogs or strangers passing in cars stop to watch the bulldozer at work or the flames leaping up from the burn pile. almost all the lumber from the large barn has been burned, a lot of it at night, frightening one of our dinner guests. the crew of local guys doing the demolition job are friendly, jolly, always smoking cigarettes and willing to chat, and encouraging everyone to take away anything they like, it's less for them to deal with.

that pile above is the remains of the shed, which the irresponsible tenants renting the little ramshackled house had simply used as a place to dump their oversize garbage: several mattresses, old cans of paint, a broken rototiller, a smashed kitty carrier, some moldy horse tack, things like that, just to name a few. i didn't want to look too closely. the tenants left the first of september, without telling the absentee landlord, without cleaning out the refrigerator, and setting loose two large female domestic rabbits and 14 baby bunnies. other neighbors saw the little black lop-ears scampering under the house and called 'rabbit rescue'. two serious women arrived with live traps. they were suitably outraged; threatened to sue for animal cruelty. they went in the house, which was unlocked, to make sure no animals were abandoned inside, and reported that it stank to high heaven and was utterly trashed. people had been living there only a few days before.

 this is all that was left on september 25, and today even that is gone, up in flames or in a dumpster.

 the house is filled with fleas, bats are living in the top somewhere, and the well is polluted. the landlord isn't planning to try renting it any time soon. maybe we should be more outraged ourselves,  but mostly i am just happy that the rough-neck trashy tenants are gone and i don't have to look at the painful progressive collapse of a lovely old hip-roofed barn everyday. and, now we have a new vista from our living room across fields of soybeans to the distant forest.

remembering bill minor

my cousin bill minor (william faulkner minor, no relation to the novelist) of ivy, virginia, died on the 13th of august, 2009. he was 84. i wrote the following for his memorial.

Bill’s wide knowledge and love of nature, his activism, and his ability to write so interestingly about it, had an important influence on me. He was a wonderful writer in several genres. In the last years of his life he wrote some entertaining personal memoirs that evoke the outdoor-loving boy whose interests would grow and sustain him. they also remind us of life in an earlier time.

About sledding one winter in Cannel City, Kentucky, where he lived as a boy: “On that day the snow was unusually deep and light, and Merle Watson and I belly-flopped on our Flexible Fliers high up in the ridge and came zooming down through clouds of crystalline powder. Something—the angle of the light, the dryness of the snow, perhaps our age—made it unforgettable.”

“Early in the fall, wood, split and ready for burning, was piled on our back porch in two rows… By the time I was eight to ten years old I could identify the woods of white oak, red oak, hickory, ash, black gum, sassafrass and chestnut by sight and a few, like sassafrass, by odor.” He goes on to say that he had “a great deal of fun” when his father taught him how to split wood, as what was a chore for other boys was a joy for him.

In a longer piece on his Aunt Mary and Uncle Rob Cole’s house at 1108 Park Street in Charlottesville, he recalled the entrance hall: “To the right hung a large moose head over a coat rack, with and old Civil War vintage pistol hanging from one of the pegs. Underneath it was a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun…The most interesting place in the house to me in my pre-teen years was probably the bookcase in the back hall, which was filled with old National Geographic magazines. I pored over them so many times that I still remember the titles of many articles. They were crammed with articles on birds, insects, and other areas of natural history, in which I was very interested.”

These were among the chores he was given: helping to clean the house, weeding the flower garden, doing the grocery shopping at the downtown safeway, taking checks to the bank, mowing the lawn, snapping beans, peeling and canning okra, tomatoes, and peaches, making sausage and cider. and the important job of putting out the card to show the iceman how many blocks to leave. he caught black widow spiders for biology class, hit an endless number of golf balls, shot squirrels with a .22, held down a calf in the back of Cousin Robbie’s station wagon, and snuck in late at night by climbing up on the roof of the bay window and into his second floor bedroom. aunt mary didn't allow liquor in her house, but "occasionally there was a fair amount inside George, Robbie, and me."

In the ‘70s Bill wrote a nature column for the Syracuse Eagle-Bulletin under the pen name of ‘Senex.’ He chose to remain anonymous, he said, because he didn’t want “some damn woman coming up to me on the street and telling me I had it all wrong.” (It seems very unlikely to me that he would ever have gotten anything wrong, for he was a scientist with a broad knowledge of many fields).

Senex wrote about a wide range of topics: hawks, owls, salamanders, goldenrod, what you could see at the moment in your back yard, and environmental issues, like the dangers of invasives such as loosestrife. His articles were told from a personal but not pretentious or preachy point of view, full of information, enriched with photographs, sketches he’d made, or details from works of art. He often added poems and other literary references—I recall something from Shakespeare, and maybe John Updike. This would be relatively easy now with information on the internet so easily accessible, but Senex was writing well before he had computers at home. He enjoyed writing and no doubt the readers of the paper were fortunate to have his columns as a resource.

Over the last couple of years I worked with Bill in transcribing the surviving diaries of his Aunt Sallie, who raised him from childhood after his mother died. I’ll miss his cigarette-infused gruff voice on the phone: “Julia! Bill Minor here. I’ve found out one more thing to explain where Aunt Sallie must have forded the Rivanna…”

I too am writing down some of my memories of growing up in Charlottesville a decade or so after Bill, and I am active as a volunteer for various environmental groups in Michigan. I write a blog—Senex would have been a natural blogger, I think—often including what I’m learning about nature. All this is to the good, and I am thankful for Bill as a source of wisdom and inspiration, proud that he was my cousin (even if I can’t say how we’re related without looking way back on the excruciatingly complex Minor family tree), admiring of the way he yelled back at George W. Bush on television, and always grateful for the warm hospitality with which he and Maureen welcomed me into their home.

tree measurers, not tree huggers

here kim wells and i are measuring a large white oak on a bioreserve assessment site in lyon township, while lisa peshke took the photo. assuming kim and i can reach six feet each (our hands were touching on the other sides), the tree must be about fourteen feet in circumference. that's a big tree, but they come bigger: michigan's largest recorded white oak is more than eighteen feet in girth.

i've been on seven assessments now and each has been different. the biggest adventure was when three of us got lost, trying to avoid crossing an irregularly shaped wetland by heading for higher ground. we became disoriented and soon were off the map of the site we were to assess. we didn't have a compass but could see the sun getting dangerously low in the west. another was when the landowner had forgotten that we were coming and judging from the liquor on his breath at ten on a saturday morning apparently had been starting his weekend early. he got disoriented in his own forest, but the other volunteer pulled out his iphone and the gps saved the day. hi-tech can be useful

there are so many abandoned agricultural fields growing up in invasive plants to be seen everywhere driving around the countryside. the more i learn and the more i see, the more discouraging it is.

so, filled with the desire to keep learning, i'm taking a field biology class at the community college. i've had two previously, one on trees and one on winter field study, but this is taught by a new professor, full of enthusiasm and some different ideas. one requirement is that we choose a spot somewhere in the natural world to sit in each week for at least thirty minutes and write a field journal entry on what we observe. of course, this appeals to me very much.


if you look very closely you can see my chair at the edge of the swamp to the north of our hayfield. it will be interesting to see how this little landscape changes over the next four months. one of the most photogenic plants that i can see from my chair is the cucumber vine (Echinocystis lobata) also called the 'wild balsam apple.' it is in the gourd family.


the pod looks dangerously bristly but in fact the little prickles are quite soft. it's enough to just mimicing a scary look to keep a passing deer from taking a nibble. inside is a pulpy, slippery white lobed capsule that covers four large brown and white seeds. these are perfectly camoflaged to disappear into the damp melange of soil below when they fall. i know, because i dropped one and couldn't find it at all. this is another form of insurance that it will reproduce and not end up in the stomach of a possum or racoon.

looking on line, i found that the attractive seeds were used by the Oglala for beads. and that various native american tribes used the 'cucumber' itself and/or its roots for a number of medcinal purposes, from stomach troubles to reumatism to chills and fevers. the menominee called it the 'greatest of all medecines' and also considered it a love potion.

the cucumber vine is native and not in any way an endangered species, and i do wonder if its powers have been tested by the conventional pharmaceutical establishment.

my summer vacation: august in michigan

the tomatoes were ripening; in another week there will be quite a few. perhaps later in august it will be time to open the self-serve roadside stand. and plan lettuce and spinach for a fall crop.

there is a good-sized snapping turtle hanging out in the pond. my little camera can't do much to show it, but i am trying to learn to enlarge and crop. almost every morning there is a great blue heron on the pond and between the turtle and the heron the goldfish population is slightly reduced, as far as i can tell. but not enough to worry about.

jm and i have been riding our bikes around the neighborhood late in the afternoon and now that i am doing the natural area assessments, i look at fields in a different way.

this is a large field planted in soybeans on six mile down near earhart road. it's good to keep land in cultivation, otherwise the invasives move in. i will resist going on and on about canada thistle, autumn olive, reed canary grass, purple loosestrife, etc. my question is: when one invasive meets another, who will win out? i am keeping an eye on a swamp nearby where reed canary grass is competing with cattails (yes, some cattails are native, but there is an alien kind taking over).


we took ellie swimming in the mighty huron. there were some ducks around, and for fear that she might take off after them, we kept her on the leash for a while. this was at hudson mills metro park, one of the several attractive and interesting parks nearby.



penny invited me to go to the beach on lake michigan with her large, entertaining family. they'd rented a very large house for a week, so there was room for all. she assured me that if i came, i wouldn't have to be "nice, enthusiastic, or cooperative." that's an excellent sort of invitation. and who wouldn't have fun with penny?


and, for some intellectual content, there was jerry on the beach, reading "After Capitalism." i never found out what the book was proposing. i didn't ask. but i do wonder, slightly.


we spent a lot of time on the beach at south haven. the first couple of days there was a stiff wind out of the west, creating some waves to play in. this clan likes to go out and do things. i admire that. penny, meghan and i went kayaking (no photos, worried about the camera getting wet); the others went out in a speedboat for tubing and accompanied by a dinghy; there were lots of bikes and horseback riding and paintball were being proposed. i was interested in both of these, but when i heard that being shot with a paintball actually hurts, i could forego that.


here's corbie, riding shotgun in the speedboat on the day before his 11th birthday. katie was at the wheel. the "teenagers" would be tubing, but they were hardly teenagers at all, having at least graduated from high school.


we took this photo so that their parents would have something to see of their last happy hours, in case they all drowned in lake michigan.

corbett and patrick took off in the dinghy, following the speedboat, headed for open water. penny and i were stationed on the beach, ready to rescue anyone who needed rescuing, or who wanted to get out of hours of sun in the speedboat, as corbie did. two ladies in hats got to the dinghy before penny and i did, and they helped corbie get out. they had brought two little boys to the beach for the day. corbett was happy to give the boys a ride in the dinghy, perhaps more fun than their inflatable raft. the lake was calm that day.


and finally, on a different note,



this church, or ex-church, was a block from the rental house. alas, it is in very poor condition, which seems a shame as it has many interesting architectural details: the tower over the entrance, the little colonnade on the tower, the pattern of shingles on the roof, the round window with a flat bottom, some simple rectangular stained glass windows. i wonder what style this is? any ideas, you architecture mavens who read the blog? (i know, ms is out of the country now, but she'll be back).

as you can see, my summer vacation has been very interesting, as penny would say, and a whole lot of fun. penny told me when i left that i had been too nice, but it wasn't hard at all.

circumpolar

warning: this is another wildflower post, but only in part.

exactly a month ago today, our swedish friend ingrid treated jm and me to an excursion to a forest preserve outside eskilstuna. we rode our bikes until the path became too narrow, hilly, rocky, rooty, mossy, dark, and full of holes where trolls lurk (trolls don't like to come out in sunshine, so we didn't see any, nor did we see any other human beings).



we walked to a small lake, where ingrid spread out the typical and delicious picnic lunch of västerbotten cheese pie and some pickled herring and beer. i tried to ignore the water snake(s?) that was tacking back and forth between the reeds and waterlilies. we relaxed and indulged in some long-winded storytelling about people on our minds.


at several places in little openings in the forest were modest groups of small pink twin flowers (Linea borealis). these modest little blossoms are the one plant that the great botanist Carolus Linaeus chose to name for himself. he might have said that this plant was like himself: "lowly, insignificant, disregarded, and flowering for but a brief time..." (no citation for this given; is this an example of the Swedish dictum not to boast?)

there were several stands of them, so we picked one. the flowers have a very sweet, delicate smell.



the same twin flowers show up in my "wildflowers of michigan" book, as an indicator species of ancient woodlands. i've never seen them here--i suppose they must be further north. they are described as 'native.' this seemed puzzling until i found a reference online that called them 'circumpolar.' very good. i like the concept and the term itself.

but then, how many other things on earth are circumpolar, i wonder? evergreen trees, i imagine. seals? bears? deer? lichen? mosses? and much more. did the sami people from the polar regions of europe have contact across the ice with the inuit?

on our way back, we rode past a farm with dairy cows grazing in a field some distance from the road. knowing that ingrid is an expert in an archaic form of traditional cow calling, we encouraged her to give it a try. amazingly, the entire herd immediately came galloping towards us, about as fast as cows can run.

these were the cleanest cows i have ever seen, but then, they were Swedish cows.

as you can see, we enjoyed a perfectly beautiful summer day.

wildflower of the week

after feeling so discouraged about all the invasive species taking over the natural world, my spirits were lifted when i saw this stand of native wild lilies, called variously 'turk's cap lilies, Lilium superbum,' or 'michigan lilies, Lilium michiganese.' these are on the north side of earhart road, south of seven mile. the exotic red-orange flowers blaze through the surrounding greenery.

dangerous alien invader

this is a plant called wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) that has recently started to show up along the roadsides and in other areas in michigan, our garden for instance. it has attractive yellow flowers growing as high as four feet tall, and resembles other carrot family umbrellifera, like queen anne's lace.

but this is a dangerous plant, as its sap is highly toxic, containing chemicals (furocoumarins) that will burn and blister the skin when exposed to the ultraviolet rays of sunlight. (google it if you want to see some nasty second-degree burns on several websites). if you find it on your property, check various websites for how to eliminate it.


this is a stand of wild parsnip along six mile road, near earhart. judging from the bikes and toys in the driveways, it's likely that children either live or play in the houses nearby. i wonder if the adults know about the dangers of this plant? we expect everyone to be familiar with poison ivy, but this is possibly even more dangerous, and the flowers are attractive. once established, it spread rapidly.

should i tell the families what i know about this scary but pretty plant?

on the subject of alien invasive plants (those that have the potential to take over and dominate an area), it seems that before long the entire state of michigan and much else will be completely covered with garlic mustard, canada thistle, autumn olive, purple loosestrife, reed canary grass, wild parsnip, buckthorn, and various others too numerous to mention. it's downright depressing to see stands of wild parsnip all along pontiac trail now.

postcard from the british museum

to: CP and SS
june 29, 09


thinking of you when i saw this line-up of greek philosophers in the british museum.they represent, from left to right: socrates, antisthenes (a cynic), chrysippos (a stoic), and epicurus. these are all roman copies of greek originals, and it is impossible to know if they resemble their subjects at all. two of these portraits were found in the library of a roman villa on the via appia (i forgot to note which two), dating from the late second or first century bce.

what better evidence of the continuity of western culture: scholars and students still reading their texts and debating their relevance now more than 2,000 years later. will the academics of another 2000 years from now still be thinking about these guys, and will they be hanging photographs of sartre and simone de beauvoir in their libraries? will there indeed be any academics in the year 4,000? or even anyone left of our species? who can imagine it?

as our friend pk says, 'isn't it all interesting?'

warm regards, as always, j

postcard from salisbury

to: ms in a large metropolitan area
15 june 09

today we went to salisbury cathedral. it was completely built in 30 some years, from 1220 to 1258. in one book i looked at on english gothic architecture, it stated that the architecture of the cathedral may be too perfect, giving it a cold, impersonal feeling. do you think a building be too perfect? (or is 'too perfect' an oxymoron?)

and what about that modern baptismal font? could fonts be fountains? probably not. but why not?

thinking of you and art, love, j

postcard from london

to: anw and jhw
29 june 09

today at the british museum, still one of my favorites, i saw these items for sale in their shop. the text goes on about how grazia is one of the great ancient deruta ceramics centers of italy. and the pattern is ever so elegant and traditional. and if you'd like to buy a cup and saucer you'll be putting 110 pounds (about $160) on your credit card. so now you know not to put the deruta in the yard sale.

love, your mom

snapshots from my summer vacation: paris

i've always enjoyed paris but i have never been crazy about the eiffel tower. it suggests cheap rhinestone pins with matching french poodles, can-can girls at the moulin rouge, berets, and all the most cliched tourist concepts that apparently are still fresh in some people's minds. they sell well in the cheesy souvenir shops now lining the rue de rivoli. you'd think toulouse lautrec was still alive and you might pick up a painting by a young, up and coming impressionist in the place du tertre.

for a change, here are images from paris that might capture a more contemporary concept:




the windows of the institut du monde arabe, designed by jean nouvelle. on a sunny day, the openings (like the iris of a camera) shut down to reduce the light levels within; on cloudy days they open wide. in either case, they are also said to reflect the design of screens used in interiors in those sunnier parts of the world.

and, as a bonus, the institut has a rooftop bar and restaurant (quite pricey) with a view of notre dame and the seine and cafe (ground floor) with a cheerful handsome young syrian waiter who yearns to come to the USA for the music scene. alas, most of the exhibitions were closed, in the process of change.



determined to see some of the sights i'd never visited before, i took the metro to pere lachaise cemetery. i've never cared much for cemeteries and i didn't care much for this one, with its thousands of gloomy little temple-like family tombs, many very neglected. the biggest surprise was oscar wilde's tomb covered in lipstick kisses (click on the image for good detail). someone had left a stack of sheets with his witty sayings, including these: "america is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between" and "a little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

it's a bit difficult to find the tombs of the many individuals you admire, but i did find colette (an unattractive very new red granite slab: why?) and chopin and jim morrison. his tomb was the easiest to find, as you just follow the streams of young and middle-aged folks clutching maps and wearing 'doors' tee shirts. it's not much to look at.


do you remember the old-fashioned waiters in the cafes of paris? middle aged and elderly men in black with long white aprons who steadfastly ignored you and then had an annoyed, supercilious expression when you ordered your cafe au lait in perfect french and snapped "yes, of course, right away, mademoiselle."

here's an improvement: a handsome, cheerful waiter at the cafe danton, right at the odeon metro stop. i had my petit dejeuner there on several mornings and he was professionally smiling, efficient, and never needed to show off his english. he didn't even mind when i asked in perfect french (if only) to take his photo.

you know you're in the south when

people say "why yes, she might could come over tonight"

words of one syllable become two: ki-ids, gri-its, da-awg

the newborn triplets are named Mari Michael, Bailey Langston, and Jana Kate

Mari's name is pronounced with a dipthong: "Mae-ry"

okra pancakes and shrimp grits are on the menu

the evening meal is called supper

"meat and three" restaurants are very popular

at a "meat and three" restaurant, the sides include collards, fried green tomatoes, and hush puppies

among the bbq restaurants we enjoyed in three days in alabama and mississippi were Johnny Ray's, Little Doey's, Sonny's, and Dusty's.

my name is pronounced without the 'l': Joo-ya (I kind of like this; it does take me back to Ole Virginny)

and you know you're in the southern apalachians when the red clay dirt stains everything.

when a billbiard on the interstate advertises "the best turkey calls in the business"

may apple and wild geranium

back by popular demand: native wildflowers of the week at frog bog farm

may apple (Podophyllum peltatum) the flower appears below the leaves and will make a small yellow fruit, said to have an aroma of guava with hints of papaya and strawberry. there are recipes for may apple jam and jelly, one suggesting that "a tart, subtle, exotic" flavor results

wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) the seed pod will be sharp and pointed, giving the alternative name of crane's bill. and speaking of cranes, a pair is nesting in the swamp and we often see a single crane, probably the yearling of the pair.

and introducing a new category: invasive plants of major concern

garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata): this is a pernicious weed that is spreading rapidly throughout southeastern michigan. it is a threat to all native wildflowers and tree seedlings, as it can completely dominate a forest floor in 5 to 7 years. it must be pulled and the plants bagged and put in with household garbage (not composted). it is in the woods along the road at frog bog and clusters of it have infested the edges of the dirt road for about a mile to the west.

photo to come

where were we?

perhaps this is an occasion for another contest: where were we?

i've seen grass-covered mounds in Kyong-ju, South Korea; in Gamla Uppsala, Sweden; and Chillicothe, Ohio...but these are in Moundville, Alabama, south of Tuscaloosa. we stopped for a look on our way driving from Atlanta to Starkville, Mississippi, with Marcia and Oded.

Moundville was a large Missisippian Culture fortified town of about 1,000 inhabitants, occupied from about 1000 to 1450 a.d. it was one of the largest cities in North America at the time, and about 10,000 people lived in the surrounding area. There are thirty-two mounds arranged around a central plaza.
the largest mound is about 58 feet high. archeologists think that the highest ranking clan probably occupied this. apparantly later in the centuries, the area ceased to be inhabited and became a sacred site. but i was frustrated by the lack of information about this. which points to the importance of label and brochures and visitor's guides.


unfortunately, the museum was closed for renovation. it houses some remarkable objects found on the site. without much context for these mounds, it was hard to visualize how the area would have looked. we were almost the only people there and in fact it seemed a little melancholy to me, just these grassy mounds set in the open.


oded and marcia, wearing her 'boot' and on her high-tech rolling scooter. marcia had surgery on her foot and can't put any weight on it for six weeks. we went to atlanta to help to amuse her, but they were perfect hosts and amused us instead.

more to come soon on our adventures in southern cuisine...