Saints and Trees

Plant a Row for the Bees

July 7, 2022 at 2:24 pm (Nature)
Tags: bees, flowers, Gardens, pollinators

I have recently become obsessed with planting to attract local and migrating pollinators—which basically means planting plants that attract and feed bees and butterflies. It all started with a catalog that came last year from Prairie Moon Nursery in Minnesota. At the time, I looked it over and thought it was pretty interesting, but last year I was on our church’s Search Committee to find a new rector for our small Episcopal parish, and didn’t have the time or inclination for exploring a new mail-order source for plants.

This year, however, our search successfully concluded with an energetic and enthusiastic priest who is precisely the right person for this calling, I was eager to plunge back into the world of gardening.

So I looked through the new 2022 Prairie Moon catalog (which is now limp because I look through it almost every day) and made a few modest selections: 3 plants each of Echinacea (coneflower), Lance Leaf Coreopsis, and a very tall flower called “Meadow Blazing Star,” which is pictured with a Monarch butterfly on the tall purple spikes and is supposed to be “THE ULTIMATE MONARCH MAGNET!” Two months after their arrival, the Coreopsis—which has gorgeous foliage!—are full of buds and starting to bloom, the Echinacea are sturdy-looking, and the Blazing Star, while still less than a foot tall, all appear healthy and happy to be out from under the shadow of the daffodil leaves which dominated their flower bed when I set them out in early May.

Lance-leaf Coreopsis (yellow) with Lavender and pink Cosmos

I used to raise tomatoes from seed in our old row house in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, growing Brandywine and other heirloom varieties (though Brandywine always did the best–and tasted the best!). I had an elaborate setup on a table in the basement: mint-green trays with nice little indentations for water run-off that held individual seedlings beneath long fluourescent lights that my husband had rigged up on chains so they could be lowered a few inches above the the little Jiffy-pot containers and then gradually raised as the seedlings emerged and grew taller. The little plants would raise their leaves to the light like a priest lifting hands in blessing.

But my days of raising anything from seed—let alone anything edible that must be guarded from the squirrels, rabbits, and deer that populate our little suburban town—are long done. My time and energy must be kept for other enterprises (such as writing!).

Our local Philadelphia Horticultural Society has a program called “Plant a Row for the Hungry.” While I do not feel up to contributing to this worthwhile project, I am deeply satisfied to know that my small contributions—including the catmint, lavender, and Russian sage already in the yard—are making a difference for smaller creatures in need of a meal. I am happy to be Planting a Row for the Bees.

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Sidewalk Dandelion’s Song

August 1, 2018 at 2:37 pm (Nature, Poetry)
Tags: Dandelions, Haiku

Refugee dandelion
Squats on a sidewalk
Fleeing the chemical lawn.

(Photo by Themium, from Wikimedia Commons; original is at a higher resolution)

The Alera Codex: a model for coming together in divisive times

February 16, 2018 at 4:32 pm (Books)
Tags: Fantasy, Jim Butcher, The Alera Codex

Jim Butcher knows how to tell a cracking good story.

He also knows how to undergird it with a morality that is desperately needed in these divisive times.

furies of calderon

First, I should issue a general spoiler alert, not because I’m going to give away any particular details, but because my general observation may spoil some of the twists in his story. So you may want to stop here and read the whole series for yourself, and then come back to this post. In that case, I’ll give you a general picture before coming to my larger point.

I’m not always up for epic fantasy. I think it is one of the most difficult genres to write really well because the characters can get lost in the trappings of plot and setting. But Jim Butcher writes such believable, well-rounded characters that I immediately get caught up in their stories. Even if you think fantasy isn’t your cup of tea, I urge you to give it a try. Then get back to the rest of this post. The first book is called CALDERON’S FURY.

For those who have already read the entire series and those who are simply curious to read on, consider yourself warned of my general spoiler, the whole reason I’m prompted to write about this particular series of books at this particular time. The hero of our series is a young man named Tavy, whom we first meet as a teenager hoping to escape his rural life. Tavy doesn’t want to flee the countryside because he is bored or has no job prospects, but because in his world, where almost everyone is born with some kind of magical talent, he has absolutely none.

Throughout the series, Tavy consistently makes his way by befriending his enemies. Not all of them, to be sure, and not by giving up his values or objectives.

Rather, he unites with those he has been taught to fear and hate in the interest of working together to fight against a common enemy, for common objectives. And in so doing, they create friendships and a better world.

Not a bad model for our times.

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Warrior Cats

June 24, 2017 at 7:57 pm (Animals, Books, Childrens Books)
Tags: cats, Erin Hunter, Warrior Cats, Warriors series

The New Prophecy, book 1

I just love the second set in the Warrior Cat series, THE NEW PROPHECY (six books). It’s all about coming together across boundaries, a message that we desperately need to hear and act on in these divisive times. If every child read these books and internalized their message, I venture to say that we would be looking forward to a world where justice and respect for the natural environment are key values of society.

I hasten to add that the Warriors series is anything but didactic. They are addictive, page-turning stories about four “clans” of feral cats who live in a forest on the edge of a human community.

The hero of the first set of six books starts out as a “kittypet” named Rusty who becomes curious about the wild cats he sees on the edge of his yard and eventually decides to join them and forsake his safe, comfortable world for the call within himself to hunt his own food, experience the untamed natural world, and enjoy the camaraderie—and the rivalries—of living amongst his own kind, unbeholden to any human providers.

The stigma of being raised as a “kittypet” rather than being born to the clan is one of the many ways that the author, Erin Hunter, artfully raises questions of belonging and prejudice among humankind.

Into the wild

These books teach political lessons, too. The dark shadow of the clan’s deputy, Tigerclaw, overshadows the span of the entire series. Tigerclaw, ruthless and cunning, who seeks power at any cost, forms a stark contrast with our hero, who on entering the clan as a kitten-apprentice is rechristened “Firepaw.” Throughout the series, Firepaw consistently reaches out to cats in need of help—whether they hail from his own “Thunder Clan” or one of the three rival clans who populate the wood and meet in peace only on the nights of the full moon, where they discuss common threats and negotiate boundaries and other concerns, much like nations coming together at NATO or the UN.

I realize these books are wildly popular, and some readers may feel inclined to rail at me for publicizing them rather than equally deserving, but less well known, children’s books. My feeling, however, is that any books which have so much potential to instill a love for wilderness and wild things along with an appreciation for the role of compassion and justice both within and across social boundaries deserve all the publicity they can get.

If you decide to read them or pass them on to the little ones in your life, please note that they really need to be read in order! The original series begins with INTO THE WILD, and there is a handy list of all the books on the website: Http://warrior cats.com. Be careful venturing beyond the booklist on the website, though, or you will encounter spoilers.

Thanks to Sam and Violet, my nephew and niece (niece’s daughter, actually) who piqued my interest in the series.

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Earth Day 2017

April 22, 2017 at 7:56 pm (Nature)
Tags: Earth Day

Favorite Slogans from this year’s March

We speak for the Trees, for the Trees have no Tongues

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I’m with Her ↓

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There was also a wonderfully creative poster for a new element called “Trumpium.” Among the properties listed: Noxious gas; No beneficial use found. Bravo to whoever created it!

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Groucho the Snake

January 20, 2017 at 6:00 am (Dragons & other fantastic beasts)
Tags: plush snakes, post-election blues, stuffed animals

This is Groucho the Snake. (He’s a squeak toy who was made for dogs to play with, but don’t tell him that!)

He was named after Groucho Marx–has those same buggy eyes.

Groucho is also a pretty good dancer.

I got him last October, about a week before the election, to help relieve the tension of a long election night. When you squeeze below his head, he sounds like a rubber ducky (for “rah-rah, go Hilary!”); when you squeeze near his tail, he makes a sad squeak, like he’s crying. (We were all making sad squeaks by the end of the night.)

This is how Groucho and I feel now.

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Wendell Berry for Easter Week

April 1, 2016 at 10:38 am (Books)

I know I’ve been remiss about posting, but can’t resist sharing one of my favorite poems, quoted by one of my favorite bloggers:

Mike Angell

I was tempted to read this whole poem for an Easter sermon. I didn’t, but I don’t know of a better sentiment for Easter week than Berry’s “Practice resurrection.”

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace

View original post 274 more words

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The Wildness in Wild Things

October 1, 2015 at 2:00 pm (Animals, Nature)
Tags: caging insects, children and nature, fireflies

Photo by Art Farmer (Evansville, Ill.), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (Firefly 0877)

A few weeks ago I read a magazine article written by a young woman who was recalling fond memories of watching fireflies on summer evenings as a child with her family. Her parents would bring along a large cage and give it to the girl and her brother so they could catch the fireflies. Children love to run and try to catch animals. Just watch any toddler waving her arms and stampeding a flock of pigeons. But these fireflies stayed in their cage.

When the family left the park at the end of the evening, they took the firefly cage with them and the parents placed it in the children’s bedroom. A living little nightlight. By the time the children woke up the next morning, the firefly cage was gone, discreetly spirited away by their parents during the night so the brother and sister wouldn’t see what happened while they slept.

The fireflies had died.

The writer’s language, as she recounts her later discovery of this gentle deception, shows an uneasy awareness of the insects’ plight, her description of “the dead little bodies,” with their “half-dried wings and quivering, then quiet, legs” demonstrating an empathy with their suffering, even as she never explicitly acknowledges that caging them was wrong. Later in the article, she cites the statistic that fireflies in the wild live for around two months, while those that they caught and caged died within twelve hours, but says nothing further on the subject. The remembrance of the firefly nightlight that she and her brother shared leads the writer instead to reflections on change and mortality.

The lessons parents teach their children about our relationship with nature are so lasting and important, lessons that will influence their attitude toward the earth and its creatures throughout their lives. My parents and I enjoyed watching fireflies, too, but it would never have occurred to any of us to try to capture the little creatures. My mother in particular valued the wildness in wild things and reveled in the free and untrammeled workings of nature. Any animal or plant, any stray cat, any bird, any wild creature had a right to its existence.

Fireflies are living creatures, not toys to be gathered for our use and then discarded. The lives of these insects have a place in the world, of spiritual value to humans, of essential value to the creatures themselves, and ecological value to the world in which they live.

Thanks to Amber Foxx for her assistance in editing this post.

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Summer Visitors

September 17, 2015 at 2:10 pm (Animals, Nature)
Tags: bird nests, birds, finches

This past summer we hosted an unexpected group of visitors. Sometime in mid-June I was about to take down the spider plant from its hook above our porch for some much-needed watering when I noticed bits of grass and weeds poking out of the top. Closer inspection indicated that a nest had been built around the middle of the dirt in the plastic hanging pot. I decided to leave it alone and spritzed a bit of water around the roots on the side, where some of the plastic had broken off last year (a tumble the plant took when I went out after dark and thought I had hung it up: not).

photo from watching grass grow blog (This is the female; the adult male has a red head.)

As the days went by, we spied Mama and Papa House Finch as they flew from the nest to a nearby wire every time one of us opened the door onto the porch. It was pretty common to see one of them sitting on the wire, complaining at us, as we sat on the porch reading. Eventually the finches became relaxed enough around us to return to the nest even when we were there.

A few weeks after the nest first appeared, my husband (who’s a bit taller than I) noticed the eggs. Days later we heard high-pitched cheeping sounds, and peering out the door screen saw one of the parents sitting on the nest, obviously feeding the demanding baby birds. Eventually, as the chicks grew, we could sometimes see three little heads poking up, mouths open wide.

Then, one day, they were all gone. We were able to actually witness the young’uns’ first flight. All day long, I’d noticed the parent birds sitting on the wire, calling out to the nest. I was out on the porch reading when my husband came home late in the afternoon. As he mounted the stairs to the porch, a little bird flew out of the nest and down to the ground. My husband worried that he had startled the bird into a premature flight and that it wouldn’t be able to defend itself outside of the nest. But I pointed out that the parent birds had been acting differently all day: instead of sitting on the nest and feeding the chicks, they were out on the wire and calling to them. I think the parents had decided they’d had enough and that it was time for the Finches Junior to leave the nest and learn to fly and fend for themselves.

We were surprised when the little birds didn’t come back, and I started to share my husband’s concern. Then I googled “finches nest” (or something like that) and discovered that once the little birds “fledge,” that is, take their first flight, that’s it. No more nest.

I also found something else: a webcam recording of a similar finches’ nest, with up-close shots of the nest interior, that a nature-loving blogger had installed when a finch family decided to build their new nest on top of the wreath on the front door of his house! I didn’t look at the entire set of footage, but what I saw was fascinating. Here’s the link: http://www.watching-grass-grow.com/house-finch/2010/

photo from watching grass grow blog

We gave it a couple more days in case the parent birds needed to stay there for the night, then took down the long-suffering spider plant, the nest inside still intact and encircled with an almost decorative rim of bird poop.

And how did our poor spider plant survive all this? It looked pretty scraggly when all was done and my husband took the nest off, but now, two months later, it’s green and flourishing, thanks to frequent watering. After reading that finches often raise two groups of chicks in a season, we decided to give poor Spidey a break, and have left it on the porch steps for the reminder of the year. My guess as to how the spider plant survived all those weeks without a proper watering?

It was “watered” by the birds.

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How I Spent my Summer

September 10, 2015 at 11:32 am (Books)
Tags: childrens books, SCBWI, writing

My summer began with a writing conference sponsored by the New Jersey chapter of SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. It was a great experience. I signed up for a peer critique, where we were divided into groups of four and received the first 15 pages of each other’s work to review. Thanks to that, I now have a new critique partner. I loved her book and she loved mine, too, and we both had useful suggestions that would improve our work. The best kind of mutual admiration society!

I also signed up for a critique from an editor at a well-respected children’s publishing house. She had some great comments which opened my eyes to areas where I need to better my writing, comments which will help not only with this book, but all of my fiction projects. It was a privilege to be able to receive this kind of feedback.

In addition to that, there were great lectures and opportunities to meet with other writers and illustrators, both published and unpublished, who work in everything from picture books to those geared for older teens.

Leeza Hernandez, one of the principal conference organizers and a published author and illustrator. Her books include the adorable Cat Napped! She was incredibly helpful when I hit a snag during registration.

I spent the rest of the summer revising my novel about a 13-year-old witch who is uprooted from her comfortable life in a little town where everyone is a witch and thrust into what we would call the “real” world. Her particular witching talent is the ability to understand and speak to animals in their various languages, and she uses this ability to investigate the strange rash of supernatural fires that breaks out in her new, supposedly ordinary, town.

I sent the revised version on to my new critique partner a couple of days ago. I was also accepted for another New Jersey children’s conference where I’ll be matched with a writing professional—an editor, agent, or writer—for further critique. Stay tuned for further developments!

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