BAMBOOzled

I can grow things.  Let's be very clear on this.  If it requires a tractor, a plow, perhaps a combine or baler, I can grow it.  I can plant it, grow it, harvest it, store it, haul it, you name it.

If it requires dirt, and can be nurtured with a hoe and a hose, I can grow it.  I can plant it, grow it, can it, pickle it, jell it, dry it, freeze it, cook it, and feed a small nation.

If it lives indoors and has to be tended to daily, it's dead. If it likes artificial light, it's dead.  If it requires special water and food in little packets, it's dead.

Until I met these guys.  Daughter #1 sent a surprise package last year with a note saying, "You've been BAMBOOzled!"  And I was.  These are the greatest houseplants in the history of mankind. This was just a baby bamboo when it arrived, only 6 inches tall with two little leaves. Now it's a small tree.

The first one survived so well she gave me another. I really like the planter it came in.  It's a fancy bamboo- all curly. It's been trained.  I can just see it- "Here bamboo, c'mon girl, roll over!  That's a good girl.  Curl!  Curl!!"

Then I bought one at the Farmer's Market in St. Louis and gave it to the Whee for her room.  She likes her bamboo with bling.

Any way you dress it up, bamboo is the houseplant for you!  If your green thumb lives outdoors, anyway.

Make way for ducklings

The 1941 book Make Way for Ducklings was a favorite from my childhood, and had the same charm to my daughters.  (For more info about this great children's book, check out the Book of the Week page).

So it was with a sense of deja vu' that I had the delight of making the acquaintance of these ladies and one proud fellow, in the middle of the city.

They had just come up the bank from the drainage spillway below, which was pretty deep and surprisingly clean for residential runoff.  I think they're doing the 'urban crawl.'  It's the duck version of pub hopping.

Judging from their interest in us, I'd have to say that they're not too wild as far as wildlife goes, but it was wonderful to see how wildlife had adapted to the encroaching of humans on their territory.

And just like in the book, traffic waited, (no traffic cop, which would have been so cool) while they waddled their little webbed feet across the intersection to the pond on the other side.

I love a parade with feathers!!

Outdoor Art

Whew!  I'm taking a weekend class in the great Sooner City, and in my spare time I'm wringing every drop of cultural enrichment I can from the campus.

Chocolate exhibit at the Natural History Museum.  Is life good, or what?

There's lots of fabulous free art to be seen just by strolling the grounds of this beautifully landscaped university.

I think this guy's eyes are red because he just got his tuition statement...

And this one.  She's young.  She's thin.  She's a freshman.

I just spent eight hours discussing contextual interpretation of images.  How can I not interpret these sculptures in the context of their proximity and connection to the campus?!?!!


Wow-  I'm afraid I have only one context from which to interpret this piece of art and it has nothing to do with campus.  An escapee from Dr. Moreau's island.  I don't really know what else to say to this...

                        Happy Trails!

Almost Grown

Daughter #1 is about to celebrate her 23rd birthday.  I can hardly write that number, for one reason she's a really old soul, so 23 doesn't begin to express the real her.

The other reason is because it was only yesterday I was nursing her and standing over her crib at night watching her sleep and looking out from the kitchen window as she chased the chickens, and...  Yep, mother lode of mother longing.

She's the daughter that made me a mother, that for all time established my identity as "so-n-so's mother."  She's my first baby. She taught me everything about what not to do as parent.

This old soul in a young body brings the two parts of herself together in the most introspective and artistic way. She made several of us plaques as gifts.  Mine hang in my kitchen.

This one is my favorite.  Simplicity is important to me. I don't think the wall I'm building keeps people out, I think it makes them curious to peer over and see what my life is all about.

The Whee has plans for an elaborate birthday cake.  I'm envisioning the mounds of icing right now. 

Motherhood is great.  Except when they go and grow up.

Repurposing

In all the recent cleaning and re-organizing, I came across a couple of items I had sort of forgotten I owned.  (Sometimes I forget I have children too, but it's not quite the same thing...)

One of these items belonged to my grandmother.  These items are old.  Maybe older than me, which would make them really old.

The jar was my grandmother's and I don't remember what she used it for.  I've revived it as a sugar container.  It holds enough sugar for 4 days worth of coffee,  which means I'm consuming waaaay too much sugar. Or too much coffee.

I love the green color. It's a vibrant, organic color that brightens my world when I'm slaving in the kitchen.

The other is an old juicer. I loooooove fresh squeezed juice.  I really, really, love it when someone else squeezes it for me. The Whee wanted to know where the motor was. When I explained how it worked, she shouted "that's insane!" and ran out of the room. Score another one for Mother Nature and simplifying life.

As Big as all Outdoors

I was trying to organize my life this week.  Things like labeling file folders, making a schedule, buying color coordinated notebooks.  I'm not sure it's more organized, but it's a lot prettier.

I tried to organize my pictures as well.  Here's the problem:  categories.  Is it a picture of the Whee or is it in camping?  Is it summer or is it fishing?  The choices are overwhelming and I'm becoming woozy from having to make so many decisions. 

One category became clear as I shuffled things from one file to the next, thoroughly mixing them up so I will never, ever, be able to find anything ever again.

Murals.  Lovely, huge paintings on the side of a building in some little podunk place I enjoyed passing through. Or maybe the mural was the destination. If I were a real, honest-to-goodness organized person instead of just a wannabe, I could tell you where all of these were taken.

However, in my alternate reality, I told myself I would remember exactly what we were doing on that trip and where we went and what we ate and what was so cool about the place, and... you get the picture.  So to speak.

Soooo, here's the mural collection to date, with best guesses as to where they were taken.  (Thank goodness for Nowata tooting its own horn!)

Nowata, OK

Chandler, OK

Nevada, MO

Hominy, OK

Sedan, KS

Dunno, but it's a pretty good guess somewhere in Oklahoma..

Happy Trails, and may your adventures be as big as all outdoors!

The Kansas Icon

As summer passes and corn dries in the husk, the maize turns a deep ochre color, and the sunflower heads droop and no longer follow the sun each day, I am mentally and physically preparing for fall.

It is both exciting and poignant.  Summer is always my favorite time, and this one was an exceptionally good one.  Fall marks the advent of wonderful things like kids returning to school, but summer-summer is special.

Fall has pretty leaves. Summer has sunflowers. Each time we leave the state in the summer and return, my marker of getting close to home is a nearby field of sunflowers.

I watch them start as tiny green shoots, then suddenly one day there they are, all standing proudly at attention, saying "good morning" to the sun.

They lift their golden faces in a sunrise salute, then bend their green reedy necks to follow the summer timekeeper on its path through the sky.

And now, their bright faces have gone dark, the seeds centering their existance dry and brown and ready to be released to the harvester.

It's the signal for me to begin preparations for the changing of the seasons.  Readiness for school.  Different plantings in the garden.  Finding and airing the cool weather clothes.

To start keeping time with alarm clocks and school bells and deadlines. To be responsible and prompt and overdressed.

Good bye my hot weather friend.  Sleep well in your winter slumber and see you next summer!

In search of adventure

My daughters and I went to the movies the other night to see "Eat, Pray, Love." We had all read the book by Elizabeth Gilbert, so we knew what to expect to some degree. Julia Roberts did a fabulous job of course, but I found myself feeling the same frustrations as when I read the book.
Looking for peace, and one's self, and one's purpose is a leading theme of Gilbert's story. She travels to Italy, India and Bali in search of these elusive attributes.  Although it's stated by the medicine man in the movie, it's hard to see where Gilbert finally 'gets it'- peace, contentment, a sense of self and a life purpose-are all inside.

I can create a peaceful, beautiful, place near my home. Although it might not look like the Mediteranean Sea, I can find beauty if I look. I can find interesting people if I look. I can find someone to help if I try. I can alleviate my boredom, my discontent, my restlessness, all without hurting people or leading them on.
Adventures don't happen because you go to an adventurous place. Adventures happen as a result of the interactions of you with your environment. Find your adventurer within.

Summer Yum

I think that farmers with backyard gardens and produce stands should be subsidized just like the big farmers.  I like this whole garden-to-table chain, and it looks like it does me more immediate good than waiting for the wheat to turn into bread.

Watermelons.   Fruit juice in the rind.  Waterfruit.  Seed spitting contests.  Nourishment and entertainment rolled into one big green delicious ball.

Tomatoes.  Okra.  Green beans.  It's enough to make a person become a vegetarian.  'Course I'd have to beef up my resistance to hamburgers.  Not be a chicken about saying no to animal protein. A-veal to my inner vegan when the pork is baconing to me from the fridge. 

It's almost enough to make you read another blog, isn't it?

These guys really ring my bells...

          May all your adventures be delicious!

To kiss a quail and hug a fox

The Whee has been visiting the Wichita Wildlife Refuge since she was nine months old. (She'll tell you she remembers that first trip, but don't believe everything an eleven-year old tells you).

She been so much she's named all the sculptures in the Visitor's Center. She has not grown tired of trips there; indeed she has grown into a sort of ownership of the place.  She knows in which patch of trees she will see deer, and which section of the preserve the longhorns are in, and she can give you a guided tour of the visitor's center.

She likes the night sounds room, and the bones room, and pushing all the buttons to make the stuffed animals hoot, huff, howl, or gobble.

I like it that the place is kid-friendly and hands on. Even if it brings out some weirdness... Remember the poor little dog in the Grinch?

I like that she feels a kinship with this place. I believe we need to offer our children this type of connection to place and to the outdoors.  Feeling ownership will do far more in making them aware and responsible for the environment than any lecturing we do.

And I like that her enthusiasm and joy is contagious, and that the wildlife personnel are kid- friendly just like the exhibits.

I look forward to her taking her kids there someday.  Then I'll get to do all the weird stuff. Mabe I won't wait till then.

Rock Hoppers

One of the attractions at Wichita Wildlife Refuge is the rock-hopping.  From Charon Gardens to Little Baldy to Mount Scott, you can climb and jump and chase to your heart's content.

I am exempt from jumping, leaping and scrambling. I use picture taking as my excuse, knowing all the while that it's really because I have knees older than me. (Did you have to think about that one?)

 

I leave that to the young un's.  Those supple, flexible, healable, fearless ones...

Now spelunking. Spelunking I can do. I don't mind tiny, dark places, even with the threat of rattlesnakes. 

I have some hesitation to leaping, camera in hand, and sliding off the mountain, bouncing down to the valley below like a ping pong ball, my head hitting every fifth boulder, and ending up more befuddled than I already am. I really can't afford to be more befuddled.

But absolutely one of the great things about rock hopping all day long...

Is how incredibly hot, tired, windblown, and rock scratched you get...

And how well you sleep on the way home!

B is for Bison

Ahhh, back in the great outdoors!  Philo, the Whee and I made a day trip to the Wichita Wildlife Refuge near Lawton, OK.  For purposes of education,  historical significance and Sooner Pride, let me mention that this was the first wildlife preserve established in the United States.  Thank you Teddy Roosevelt!

Under drizzly skies we herded large bison bulls down the highway through the preserve.  Ok, actually we kept our distance behind BoBo the Big Buffalo Bull because he outweighed my Honda 2 to 1.

Rules for viewing the free-range bison and longhorn in the preserve:  keep your distance, stay in your car.  Don't feed the animals. 

I think he was licking up the water on the road.  I hope that 's what he was doing. I can't bear to think that the animals in the park have become addicted to oil, grease and carbon emissions.

The sunroof of the Honda is a perfect vantage point for photography, a safe vantage point! And the wildlife officer doesn't yell at you for being outside your vehicle.

I wish I could go back in time to the days when thousands of these massive mammals roamed in huge herds.  I've heard (and felt) the concussion when just one was stamping, I would love to feel the rumble of a million hooves.

That one stomping?  That was about 16 years ago, when I went to the Preserve with Daughter #1, and as I prepared our picnic, she slipped away over the rise, and was going to pet "the big cow" (bad side effect of growing up around cattle).

I heard the "huff" and felt the hoof, and faster than lightening realized all was not well and went looking for my baby.  And told her to back up slowly, wondering how my skinny 98 pounds were going to fair up against that hairy 2000. 

But all's well that ends well.  No one was trampled in the making of this blog.

    Happy Trails, and may you have a really big adventure!

take a Hike!

          Exploring hiking trails can be a spiritual, inspirational, relaxing, or healing experience.  For me, it’s just plain fun!  Recently someone asked me why I hike, and I was dumbstruck for a moment.  It’s so much a part of me, and what I do, that I really had to stop to consider a response.  It was as if someone had asked “why do you breathe?”

            I can tell you what it’s not.  It’s not a search for myself, because it’s just a part of me. It’s not an attempt to overcome obstacles or find meaning, although I find that when I’m hiking I have the time to think things through, and my head clears. It’s not a quest for a spiritual experience, although I believe tall trees make great cathedrals.

I don’t hike to escape anything, although escaping from noise and chaos does me good. I don’t pursue walking as a form of exercise, but it fulfills that role for me anyway. I don’t take to the trail to feel close to nature; I feel close to nature, so I hit the trail.

And each trail has its own benefit for me. Sometimes I just want something for an easy weekend hike and camping. When I wanted to introduce my 11-year old to hiking and backpacking, we headed to the nearest state park, and worked our way through the progressively longer trails there. I may be looking for spare and simplified, or full of history, or to challenge myself with an all out survive-on-your-own backpacking trip in the wilds.

Wherever the trail leads you, and for whatever reason you feel compelled to walk, follow the urge. You’ll find exactly what you’re looking for, and maybe more than you expected.

           

Grid-less?

Another site on which I also blog has daily life challenges, and today's is "get off the grid."  I have no problems throwing the cell phone in the swimming pool, haven't had a TV in six years, and can even turn off the electricity.

But to leave the internet?  Are you really serious?  That might be taking simplicity too far!  OK, for two hours I will go play in the pool in the 105 degree heat.  Two hours off grid counts, doesn't it?

Cannonbaaaaall!!

Simplicity

Last year for Christmas, Daughter #1 made me a plaque which said "I am building a wall of simplicity between myself and the world."

This might have happened because said daughter has had to listen to me preach for almost 23 years about simplifying life, eliminating commercialism and materialism, minimizing, re-use/recycle/make-do, and don't be wasteful.  And that I'm a hermit and proud of it.

I don't look at it as a wall to keep the world out, I look at it as a wall to keep my sanity in.

Apparently some of that nagging sunk in, as evidenced by the awesome canvas she made for me, and which now hangs in my kitchen. 

Simple life: minimal decorating, finding what matters and adding no more to your life than that. 

Right now what matters to me is simple food.  Simple, homegrown, delicious, easy to eat, no cooking required, no clean up required food.

Like this:

Welcome to dinner at my house. Includes a glass of milk.

These cherry tomatoes from my mother-in-law's garden were so beautiful.  They looked like little Christmas ornaments. These gorgeous crimson orbs deserved a beautiful bowl, and place of honor as the main course. My rule is that functional items must be pretty, and all pretties must have a function.  Enter antique bowl.

The bowl was a lot fuller when I started.  I couldn't help myself.  It pretty much turned into dinner for one.  Hermits are not good at sharing.

Mac n Cheese, anyone?

Paths less taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 


Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

...Robert Frost

I love this poem, it exemplifies everything about the way I think life should be lived:  outside, communing with nature, traveling, taking the risk of the unknown.

While not every path I've taken has been the less-traveled one, they have been some of the most mysterious, most beautiful, most intriguing, most interesting, and most memorable times of my life.  I just wanted to share some of them with you...

Isn't this awesome?  Makes me want to see what's around the bend.  This was a fluke photo taken by Cousin Jed using someone else's camera.  I think it worked out because he's a tree taller than the rest of us, and could get up in the foliage.
 
 
 

 
This is a different kind of path,  on the edge of a cliff.  I wasn't wondering where the path was going so much, but rather if the caboose end was going to end up at the same destination as the engine end. It wasn't a very wide path.  It made me, um, pay attention.
 
 
 

 

Another kind of path, not a walking one. This one made me want to go really fast! And honk the horn a lot!

 

 

 

 

Sometimes the path less taken has other travelers.  Share the road!  It's hard to beat a road with sights like this.  Unless this sight tramples you for being on her road.

Happy Trails, and may you always take the road less traveled!

The Chicks are Trying to Leave the Nest

One Chick two Chicks,
Hawk Chick, OU Chick.

No no NO!  Say it ain't so!  I don't want my babies to grow up and go away (ok, there were times when I did want them to go away- like outside, for just a few minutes so I could think.  But not for long and not this far away!)

One is across town and one is several hours away.  How could they do this to me?!?!  Just because they know how to do their own laundry...

And my baby.  My fluffy, feathery, bright-eyed and happy-first-thing-in-the-morning one.  Surely she won't leave me.  She still sits on my lap in public places and says she doesn't care what people think, she loves her mama.

She says she'll take care of me when I'm old.  Says she'll call every day and visit every weekend.  I'm going to remind her of this.  Often.

Junior High?  No way!  It's a jungle in junior high, filled with hissing and biting and, shudder, lockers.  Why would anyone do that to their child?  Why would any child be excited about that?  But she is. Because she is the eternal optimist, the perpetual positive person.  Because she's normal and has never been stuffed in a locker.

I think I'm going to need therapy.

Summer Skies n Scapes

One of the benefits of living on the plains with few trees and plenty of scorching sun is that you get a great view of the sky.

Clear blue sky with fluffy, puffy, white, dry, little clouds teasing you from waaay up above, offering no shade and no rain and no respite from the heat.

But at least all that clear blue sky makes for some great KaleidoScapes!  Here's a couple of new ones for the collection.

This one is made from a tree that went without water for a very long time. Like, centuries maybe.

Hope you're still enjoying the warm, sunny days of summer!  We'll be complaining of the cold soon enough...


Happy Trails, and may your adventures take you through shady glens...

Riparian Love Affair

I love to explore rivers, their banks, and surrounding territory.  I love the sound of the water as it changes pitch, depending on what it's flowing over, or under. I love the timbre of the wind in the trees. (Sorry, couldn't pass up that one). I love the smell.  Well, ok, maybe not the smell. I love the colors in and out of the water.

I especially love watching the wildlife that gathers around a river. Life cycles intrigues me.  As in a lot of species, the guy is the colorful one here.  Dragonfly love.

This couple almost glow.  I chased them downriver for quite a ways before I got a decent picture of them.  Egret love.

We heard coyotes, an owl, turkey.  Wonderful, refreshing, life-giving water. Draws all things in.  Sustains all things.

Entertainment, recreation, sustenance, aesthetics, gathering place. All encompassing, all-good water.