Skywatch Friday

Skywatch!

Florida in August

To help with transportation and errand needs during my stay in Florida during the time Mom is in the hospital, my sister, Joyce and her husband generously offered the use of a car that is kept in their winter home about a half hour drive from my parents’ residence. I am glad, grateful and relieved to have an extra set of wheels. There was even a full tank of gas. It’s an Intrepid, a solid car and rock steady to drive. I took to it right away. It’s the same car her husband accidentally ran himself over in, but we won’t go into that. We all have these stories.

Unfortunately, as I drove the car from their house back to the home of my parents (about 30 minutes) with the air conditioner going full blast, I was trying to talk myself into believing that it was only because it was 1,000 degrees outside that it just seemed like the air wasn’t getting cooler in the car. But Dad, an ex-refrigeration serviceman, and wise in the way of these things, exclaimed when we drove to the hospital later:

“This air conditioner isn’t working! It’s hot in here!”

In case you did not know, it is bloody hot in south Florida in August. I suffer a mild case of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) not during the winter months when there is less sunlight, but instead when each summer approaches with its weeks of hazy, hot, humid days. The heat is like a great hand pressing my face into the earth. I lose interest in my surroundings. I don’t feel like doing anything and tend to headaches and irritability. I hate peeling my clothes off my sweaty, sticky body.

I really, really hate the heat.

So by the standards of the Universe, it seems totally appropriate that I should be driving an un-air-conditioned car in south Florida in August. Whatever it is that I need to learn, I had better do it fast before my body is nothing more than a puddle in the driveway.

If you will excuse me, I am going to get some ice cubes for my glass of wine, which has also suddenly become:

TOO HOT.

Chicken Soup in Florida

Mom is still in the hospital and seems to be stabilizing, though the doctors have not pinpointed the source of her mysterious illness. Surgery may still be in our future but we are keeping our fingers crossed and doing strange dances to the health gods that it can be avoided.

We are pleased at the care she has been receiving from Fawcett Memorial Hospital. The nurses and caregivers are kind, attentive and polite. The doctors are clear in their explanations even if they are still not sure of the diagnosis. We hope the day will soon come; however, when she will be released to come back home where I am planning on several gentle menus to replace the bland hospital food and coax her back to health. This is one of her favorites:

Chicken Soup

6 chicken thighs, skinned and boned
½ cup rinsed barley
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
Large onion
1 large can peeled canned tomatoes—smooshed by hand or chopped up into the pot.
1 Tblsp soy sauce
Bay leaf
1 tsp each thyme, rosemary, basil, parsley. The original recipe call for a teaspoon of each, but I like herby soups so am deliberately heavy-handed and use more like a tablespoon.
1 large can chicken broth or enough to fit all the above.
Throw it all in a pot and simmer for an hour and a half. Remove the chicken and chop it up into bite-sized pieces. Toss it back in, heat through and serve. Great with a crusty bread.

Enjoy it~it’s a very soothing soup, both for the patient and the cook~

The Immortality of Ice Cream

My mother is in the hospital. There are signs of something dramatic going on but the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with her yet.

Mom and Dad, both active, vibrant 84 year-olds, have been living in south Florida for over twenty years, while my three sisters and brother all live in the northeast, too far to pop over for a hospital visit or bake a casserole or drag the garbage cans in or help put up the hurricane shutters.

We are organizing. Telephone calls, emails, mobile messages. Among the five of us, we have a surgical nurse, an Episcopal priest, a high level executive assistant, a business owner and a not-for-profit administrator who likes to write. We are intelligent, compassionate adults who care. We are figuring out what to do as the situation evolves and new pieces of information drift in.

After learning the latest development last evening, my first clear course of action was to go to the freezer and fill up a bowl with chocolate ice cream, drown it in butterscotch sauce, and eat the whole thing without stopping.

You laugh. It works.

Years ago, a friend of mine who was dying of cancer asked me to visit her. It would be our last time together. On the drive there, I wondered what we would talk about, though we were never short on topics, and often wandered into conversations about mysticism, spirituality, religion. We did not hesitate to laugh and be irreverent, despite her strict Catholic upbringing and lifetime involvement in the church. We did the same thing during our last hour together. We spoke of dying, of death and of “the other side.”

When I left her bedside, I took leave of her husband and adult daughter, got in my car, buckled my seatbelt, turned on the ignition, backed out of the driveway, and drove straight to Haagen Dasz and downed the biggest cup of mocha chip ice cream they had. After Rita’s funeral two weeks later, I did the same thing.

Ice cream is a kind of decompression chamber for the pain of mortality. I exercise, eat well, take my vitamins, get enough sleep. Conscious of keeping my weight down, I rarely treat myself to dessert, avoid sweets, eschew candy and junk food.

But I will not be leaving this world with a carrot stick in my mouth.

Farmer Ed

My sister and her husband are justifiably proud of their backyard garden in rural Vermont. After only a year in their new home, they are already harvesting brussel sprouts, lettuce, peppers, green beans, radishes, cucumbers, squash and corn. Just for fun, I thought to try out the movie capabilities of my camera, so with apologies with my clumsy photography and too-loud outbursts of laughter, here is a rare interview with my brother-in-law, Farmer Ed. Hope you enjoy the family!

And what did we do with the lavish supply of cukes? Try this refreshing recipe, adapted from a 1972 edition of American Cookery by James Beard:

CUCUMBER SOUP
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
5 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and cut into strips
2 Tblsp finely chopped onion
2 Tblsp chopped fresh dill (I love dill so more than doubled that)
2 cups plain yoghurt (strained Greek is great)
Combine broth, cucumbers and onion and cook over low heat till cucumbers are tender. Whirl in a blender or food processor until desired consistency. Cool. Combine with yoghurt. Chill and enjoy!

Nina's Red Barn Farm

There is no photograph. I am sorry. There was no time. It was too late. There is nothing left but essential juices. Gone up the food chain, as they say, no longer on this earth, become part of something in the great beyond and never to be forgotten by those who knew.

We ate Mr. Stripey.

Mr. Stripey was one of the big, juicy, mild, thin-skinned, organically grown heirloom tomatoes from Nina’s Red Barn Farm, which has become my first stop at the Ringwood Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning from spring to fall. She sells others as well, among them the famous Brandywines that I grew in my own little patch several years ago. They are reminiscent of the original “Jersey” tomato I grew up with.

Nina invited me to stop by last Sunday, but she had only been home from work a short time when I arrived. I felt a little guilty taking up her time when she obviously had so much to do, but she encouraged me with “Come over here by the corn rows,” and “Swiss chard is coming up there,” and Look at the pumpkins. We thought they would vine out in an eastward direction, but they are marching west instead.” “Over here are the zinnias.” She rustled around the back of a bush.

“Here.” And offered a handful a of plump, sweet raspberries. Heaven.

She talked knowledgeably about growing corn and “everything it has to do to become corn,” far more complicated than I ever gave anything without a brain credit for.

I was tickled to see Nina’s chickens, who were scrambling at the coop door, knowing that her arrival meant they would be allowed out into the yard to peck among the lush grass. They rushed the open door in a wave of rose and cream feathers. As as soon as they hopped to the other side, they stopped and clucked among themselves, creating a pile-up of hens behind them, not much different from a traffic stall on the New Jersey turnpike.

“They’re just like people, aren’t they?” laughed Nina. “They get right outside the door and stop.”

I loved seeing the hens swirling around me, citified romantic that I am, and tried to put out of my mind all the chicken sandwiches I have ever eaten. These were laying hens, and soon Nina invited me in to collect the smooth globes of their eggs, which she would wash and sell, storing them in a cooler in a shaded spot at the end of the driveway for folks to come at will, put $3.00 in the cigar box to bring home a dozen fresh eggs.

A few hens managed to slip through the generous limitations of the enclosure. Nina chased them down and returned them to the safety of the group on the other side. One had slipped through the hedge into the neighbor’s yard, but she soon grabbed it and handed it to me.

“Just hold her around her body and keep her wings down,” she instructed. “Drop her over the fence.”

I was embarrassed to say how thrilled I was to hold a living chicken, so you may well be weeping with laughter by now at the poverty of my adult life. The hen was plump and warm and soft as a pillow. She did not fight me but waited, clucking quietly while I carried her to safety.

There are also bee hives, two of them, high on a deck to (hopefully) discourage the bears. I followed her upstairs to visit them but was reluctant to step into stinger territory.

“Always approach a hive from the back,” Nina instructed. “Look, there are some collected on the front porch of the hive.”

I had gone this far and didn’t want to look like a wimp after having been so pitifully thrilled at holding a chicken. I tiptoed behind the hive and sure enough, there were a small collection of bees colored the same glowing gold as the honey they produced. They ignored us. We spoke quietly, almost reverently.

“Put your head down on the hive and listen,” Nina suggested.

Not stopping to think that I was about to put my head on an active bee hive, I leaned over and rested my ear against the corner. It was one of the most amazing sounds I have ever heard, a visceral vibration of thousands of tiny wings against my cheek. It ignited my sense of wonder as much as any five-year old, and I looked up at Nina as if I had just discovered the new world, then bent over to do it again. It was the sonic frequency of life. My ears were swallowing the sound. I couldn't get enough of it.

It is probably one of the plain, ordinary things that people experience, but I am happy to report that I will never quite be the same for having rested my head on a hive of honeybees.

Glacial Erratic

On my Saturday morning walk, I passed a boulder that I must have gone by a million times before (there are a LOT of rocks and boulders around here). It is at the corner of the circular road at the botanical gardens. The boulder is a plain, dull gray, nondescript, raked by invisible claws by some incredible force. I could barely read the faded identification sign next to it, but it said: “Glacial Erratic.”

I stood up straight. I had never heard this term before. It brought all kinds of visions. Just what is a “glacial erratic?”

Turns out this poor rock is not from these here parts. It had been determined to have originated from the northwest, when some middle earth hollow burped out this chunk of magma to cool and nestle near its kind. Unfortunately, it was in the path of one of the great glaciers that either gouged, covered, smothered, or pushed everything in its path, including the boulder I was looking at on a Saturday morning in August 2008.

This sort of thing gets me going. How long did it take to push it across the continent? How many days under the hot sun, how many star-lit nights did its blind face lie under before it arrived here, where people pass by every day, not realizing the force of nature that brought it to the corner of this anonymous road? People sit on it like it was a bench to rest; others pop a foot on top of it to retie a sneaker. Do they know it is a glacial erratic, that erratically was shoved out of its natal home by a giant ice cube? It fascinates me, almost to the point of feeling uncomfortable; like, what other amazing things are going on under my nose, millimeter by millimeter, that I am blind to? Creation is a light almost too brilliant to look at; the oak from the seed, the migratory flight of a hummingbird, a drifting cloud. You could well lose yourself in it, which, I suppose, would not be a bad thing, and where it will all end anyway.

Let's Go for a Walk!

Join me for my Saturday morning stroll! It's about three to four miles and will take about an hour or two, depending on how many times we stop to take pictures or examine spider webs. It's questionable as a fitness walk but great to shake off the stink of the week.

We can slip through the backyard on the way to the road.

Pass by the bunny breakfasting on pesticide-free weeds.

A sure sign of civilization.

This outdoor bird guide was perched in the middle of someone's yard and opened to the page of the birds most likely seen at their feeders.

This is Laverne with her human, Shirley, who rescued her from a local shelter a few years back. We often meet on our walks, and they are both always smiling!

A political statement with which I humbly agree.

Ah! A Great Blue Heron on the lake! See it?

I stuck the feather here a few weeks ago as an anonymous thank you to this homeowner who so generously allows walkers go through the woods behind his house.

Autumn is coming....

Passing a small barn with two retired horses dozing in the sun.

Gotta share the road!

A milk can mailbox post. This is the post box for a million dollar mansion that is only occupied for a week or so throughout the year. Go figger.

Guess we don't have enough real white-tailed deer around here. At least, this one doesn't devour my hosta!

Home again! We can slip into our backyard through the junipers. Thanks for joining me!

Why Birding?

So, why birding? asked my tall, willowy niece as we walked along one of Vermont’s quiet country roads after dinner. She slowed her gazelle strides to match my short ones. Why not ‘frogging,’ or any of the other nature things?

I glanced at her as we strode up the hill, then filled my lungs with the scent of pine and sweet rain. Vermont has had more than its share of storms this summer, making the sodden fields behind my sister and brother-in-law’s house too wet for an early evening stroll, so we had chosen a dirt road for our walk.

I smiled, knowing she would wait for my answer. She would neither hurry nor prompt me. Being with her was like walking with the safe part of myself, the part that relaxes in the woods because whatever I happen to be in the moment is freely given and just as freely received. Such is this special young woman, youngest daughter of my sister. She had also just become a “new aunt” at the recent birth of her own sister’s daughter, whom I had traveled to Vermont to see for the first time, and to celebrate the new life in our family. I cherish the brief touches of time that allow conversations like this one.

Why birding? Well, I said; in fact, it all fascinates me. It is all connected. Birding is just an entry point. Once you study one creature, you learn about the next and then the next. You learn about where they live and what they eat to survive. You learn about who they fear and who they fight. You see things differently. When I first saw the overgrown fields around my sister’s new house, I did not think “messy, must be mown, where’s the lawn,” but rather, “What great habitat for grassland birds….” But there is something else about birding that keeps me coming back, and is probably why I am not an avid lister or chaser of life birds.

There is just something about birds, I said, that lift me off my feet of clay. Somehow, I am assured of my place in the scheme of things, that I DO have a place, despite occasional doubts. I am thrilled to spot a Lovely Cotinga against a blue Belizean sky, but I can also watch a family of crows cavort from tree to tree in my back yard and marvel at their other world, their pure assumption that they can fly away whenever they sense the need. Birds take me beyond myself to a place I cannot name, but always need. That’s why.

She smiled.

A wood thrush sang.

Cicada Summer

photo by EO_Forever (Photobucket)

We are greeted every day now by the static hum of cicada song, a sure sign we are sliding down the back of summer. The insects have emerged from their underground burrows, crawled out of their chrysalis shells and opened their translucent wings so they can fly, albeit clumsily, to the tops of trees. From these leafy dens, they vibrate their thoraxes to attract a mate so they can procreate and send their little cicada genes into the next generation. The females slice tiny openings in twigs in which to lay their fertilized eggs. When they hatch, the larvae fall to the earth and dig themselves in to the base of the tree to spend the intervening years rummaging around near the roots, without doing any damage to them. When it comes time to rise (depending upon species) they emerge into daylight. If you see holes with no soil excavation around them, a cicada probably emerged from there. Fear not. The poor guys do not bite nor sting. They are 100% defenseless. All they can do at this point is mate and die.

Cicadas are rather large, startling looking insects, with enormous ruby eyes. Their habit of constantly vibrating their bodies can be unnerving. Every once in a while, one will stumble into the building where I work and crawl around the floor in confusion, and people get all nervous. Eventually, someone comes and gets me and I bring my paper cup and a piece of paper and capture the poor thing, then carry it outside to release it into the grove of trees in the back, which is where it was probably trying to go in the first place. Another life saved, including a piece of my own.

The New Jersey State Fair

Despite early morning thunderstorms, my husband & I joined up with friends yesterday to attend the New Jersey State Fair. I have been going to this annual event for many years and always knew it as the Sussex County Farm & Horse Show, so still call it that. It features the county's finest farm produce, equipment, farm animals and events such as tractor pulls, watermelon eating contests, dance pavilions and wood carvers.



We wandered through it all: The pathways through the vendor stalls, the agriculture displays of antique farm equipment, prize winning quilts and homemade jellies and jams. We kept up our strength through it all with fair food: curly fries, sausage sandwiches, hot dogs, crepes, pretzels and ice cream (with extra butterscotch), and washed it all down with lemonade or lime fizzes.
As usual, I gravitated over to the horse show area and the schooling ring, where years ago I warmed up horses for some of the riders who were scheduled for a class later in the day. I spent many happy hours at this show helping out with grooming, wiping down muddy legs and shining boots in stirrups. A towel hanging out of my back pocket was standard equipment. I was itching to get my hands on it all again. Hey, you never know~

Blue Jay Learning Curves

There are a zillion birds at our sunflower feeders these days, mostly fledgling Titmice, Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, Nuthatches and a trio of Blue Jays flailing about like the Three Stooges. The jays appeared with a parent a couple of weeks ago. The young ones hunkered down on a branch near the deck, watched their parent hop onto one of our cage feeders (the kind that is supposed to be squirrel-proof; however, the squirrels have discovered that if they throw themselves on the dome and roll it around, a few seeds tumble to the deck railing).

The parent Jay jabbed a seed from between the wire mesh of the feeder, then flew to the waiting fledglings, who immediately started bill-open crying and fluttering their stubby wings. After several days of this, they accompanied the parent onto the deck rail and were soon hopping on to the opposite side of the feeder, creating a counter-weight to the seed-digging parent. There they would hang, bewildered as to the next maneuver, which would be to hoist itself upright far enough to thrust its head through the bars and into the center silo where the seeds are.

The group is occasionally interrupted by an adult Red-bellied Woodpecker swooping in, as if to demonstrate how a professional gets the job done. The Woodpecker clamps its stiff tail against the outside of the feeder and lunges forward into the seed, then releases its grip and glides away to stick to the trunk of the white oak tree in the middle of the yard.

The Jays scattered at the superior “a-bill-ity” of the Woodpecker but quickly returned to the lesson at hand. Within a few days, the parent Jay was relieved of duty. The young birds now spend most of the mornings crawling all over the feeder. During their breaks, the feeder hosts the smaller birds, as well as a random grackle who has not yet seemed to master the seed-stealing routine of the jays.

This is a daily treasure of my Normal Day. It’s a great way to start one….