Praising Him For Pine Needles

We've been studying plant cells this week. Our own microscope revealed wonders to us at the kitchen table. The membrane of an onion really is a marvel of beauty when you look at its inner structure.

Then we turned to some micrographs online. And this one blew me away.

It's the cross section of a pine needle.

Let me say that again, just so you can marvel over it with me one more time: it's the cross section of a pine needle.

Is it any wonder that the world is so beautiful? This is the secret, inner life of a pine needle, the kind of needle lying by thousands on the forest floor, here today and gone tomorrow. This is the beauty of the inner structure that no one sees, unless they really go looking, with intention and attention. 

And who puts that desire in us to look? And who puts the desire in us to create beautiful designs? And where does our drive and ability to create such intricate, lovely designs (think Celtic knotwork, Tiffany stained glass, Van Gogh poplars) come from? From the one who makes pine needles look like this. Praise Him!

Poetry Friday: Jessica Powers

Not long ago I came across a gorgeous photo on the Facebook page for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I don't have permission to post it here, so a verbal sketch will have to suffice: imagine an indigo bunting perched on a branch, his body startlingly blue against a misty purple blur of mountains, his mouth wide open in a song you can practically hear. He's alone against a backdrop of beauty and majesty, just singing and singing.

Though it's not about an indigo bunting, the picture made me think of one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, "Robin at Dusk" by Jessica Powers. Jessica Powers was a Carmelite nun who lived from 1905-1988. My copy of her Selected Poetry is thumbed over, paged through, spilled on...sort of the Velveteen Rabbit equivalent of a well-loved book.

I thought I'd send the poem winging and let it perch here. Imagine the little bird singing for all he's worth...

I can go starved the whole day long,
draining a stone, eating a husk,
and never hunger till a song
breaks from a robin's throat at dusk.

I am reminded only then
how far from day and human speech,
how far from the loud world of men
lies the bright dream I strain to reach.

You can go here to read the final two (and amazing) stanzas. You'll need to scroll to the middle of the page.

Happy Poetry Friday! The roundup is at The Writer's Armchair.

Like Powdered Sugar...

I love beautiful blogs this time of year. You know the kind I mean, the ones where bloggers post pictures of their lovely red-cheeked kids playing in incredible looking landscapes that just happen to be their backyards. They then post wonderful ideas for getting the kids out into nature, no matter what the weather, so they can feed the deer or hang birdfeeders or snap photos of snow laden pine trees or brightly colored birds in the bare branches of a birch tree.

I love those blogs, and I don't.

They can help feed my need for natural beauty, and I do seem to have a deep hunger for it. Living for the past thirteen years in an apartment in a tiny post-industrial city can sometimes up my need for green to alarming levels. (Picture "green alert" like a Star Trek "red alert.") Even though I've made peace with our call here, even though I know we're where we're supposed to be, there are days (especially slate-gray-sky ones filled with spitting snow) when I think if I see one more bit of asphalt, I will scream.

Because sometimes, truth be told? Such blogs make me envious. And then I get grumpy because I know envy is such a scurvy little green-eyed thing and I need to get rid of it. Envy can grow into discontent, and discontent is not the land where I want to live, not during Advent or any other time of the year.

I don't own acres of land or a farm or a patch of Christmas trees. We don't have huge lovely windows that open out onto quiet tree-filled vistas. Sometimes even our glimpses of the sky are blocked by electrical wires and brick buildings. We do get out and nature walk, even in December and January and February, even here. We look for bits of beauty and thank God, we find them.

We even occasionally go somewhere else where such bits of beauty are more readily abundant, like our time at my parents' last week in Virginia. I thought my heart would burst when I saw a red cardinal in the bare branches of a crepe myrtle. He perched next to a green bird feeder and was backed by copper and yellow leaves still hanging on other trees. When I let my glance wander over to the right, I saw the fall-blooming camellia bush, laden with pale pink blossoms, and the coppery-plum leaves of the smoke tree. Tucked almost hidden in their side yard was a miniature Japanese maple whose leaves rivaled the cardinal's feathers.

That's a rich day, and I'm thankful for it, storing it in my memory banks. Here such moments are rare indeed, so I'll enjoy what I see: my eight year old curled up on the narrow sill of our window with a couch cushion and a pillow (longing for a window seat) marveling over the street below us. "Mommy," she said this morning, in the most enchanted of tones, "the parking lot looks like it's dusted with powdered sugar."

And so it does, a small citified Christmas cookie, baked with love and hand-decorated by God himself.

The Flight of the Hummingbirds

I'm a bit more than half-way through John Yow's The Armchair Birder. It's been a while since I've read a book of essays and I'm thoroughly enjoying these. He provides witty commentary along with his observations, and the birds he covers in these pages are "ordinary" birds (if there is such a thing...I'm starting to wonder!) not exotic ones. He even writes on a few birds, like the crow, robin and starling, that we see here in our little city.

An example of Yow's writing style will also provide you with one of my favorite passages so far. It's in the essay on the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris):

"Maybe the male I'm watching right now, sitting impatiently on the hook from which I've removed the feeder to refill it once again, is in fact trying to fatten up so he can hit the highway and catch up with his pals. Or maybe, since we're having one of the hottest, driest summers on record, he and all the other hummers are just thirsty. In any case, they'll be gone soon enough, headed to Central America on a journey that will include a 500-mile, nonstop flight across the Gulf of Mexico. The energy they build up for the trip often doubles their body weight, yet even so, the feat seems pretty miraculous. Austin says that a physiologist once proved by metabolic tests in his laboratory that the ruby-throat couldn't possibly store enough fuel in its tiny frame for such a lengthy flight, but, he writes, 'the birds, never having read the report, continue to do so twice each year.'"

Heh. It's not possible, but they do it anyway. How I love this.

Can you imagine the thousands...nay, millions...of wingbeats that one hummingbird must beat for such a long flight? A nonstop flight of 500 miles! For that tiny (yet courageous and ferocious, according to other descriptions) brightly colored bird.

Where does the hummingbird get its hidden reserves of energy? Yow mentions later that hummers can eat a wide variety of insects in mid-air, catching them "flycatcher-style." He didn't connect that to his former musings, but I found myself speculating that perhaps the way they have been designed enables them to take in the extra nourishment they need as they go.

Well, however the mystery works, it strikes me that the hummingbird probably gets the energy he needs where we all get it: from God, the one who sustains the whole world. As I was praying yesterday, feeling in need of strength for the ongoing journey, I felt thankful for the hidden reserves of energy given us by the Holy Spirit. And I found myself picturing the flight of the hummingbirds, whose migration will for me forever be an icon of reliance on the unseen...and the cheeky joy of doing what looks impossible in the face of all the reports that seek to define what's possible.

100 Species Challenge #4: Mayapple

On Friday, the sweet girl and I went on a field trip with one of the families in our homeschool group. We headed to a nature center about 20-30 minutes from here and had a marvelous time seeing and hearing all sorts of amazing creatures great and small. Our favorite sounds belonged to croaking bullfrogs (we saw about a dozen of them, poking their eyeballs just above the surface of the pond) and hammering woodpeckers (we heard them but didn't see them). We also saw tadpoles in various stages, thousands of termites devouring an old log, and countless beautiful trees.

One plant we saw in the woods intrigued me so much I decided to take this photo so I could bring it home and identify it. The kids kept noticing the large, umbrella like leaves and I was surprised to find this mostly round white flower clinging to the front of the stem and sheltering under the leaves. Not all of the plants were flowering, but the ones that were had only one flower.

Thanks to Peterson's wildflower field guide, I now know this is a mayapple (podophyllum peltatum). It's a perennial plant found in woodlands; the flower usually appears in May and is later followed by a lemon colored berry. According to Peterson's, everything but the berry (which can be made into jelly?) is toxic.

The funniest thing was that I had no flash of recognition when I read its English name, but the light bulb went off for me when I saw the Latin name. Podophyllum happened to be the name of the homeopathic remedy that got me through a terrible intestinal virus in March. (Recall that homeopathic remedies are made with miniscule and very diluted amounts of substances which would otherwise be toxic.) So thank you, Lord, for the helpful medicinal qualities of this unusual woodland plant!

One more funny note: the plant has gone by many other names, including wild lemon and also mandrake. One website where I read information mentioned that in English folklore, the plant has been described as screaming when it's pulled from the ground, with its screams driving people insane. Ah-ha! Anyone else think that JK Rowling has read this bit of folklore? Good Harry Potter reader that I am, I couldn't help but laugh...and consider reaching for my fluffy pink earmuffs.

Loving the Beautiful Particulars

If anyone had ever asked me if I loved nature...all the wonderful things God has created...animals, plants, weather...I would have always told them yes.

I grew up with, and completely took for granted, a lovely yard in Virginia. We had terrific climbing trees, green grass that felt terrific on my bare toes, a gorgeous garden complete with a garden patch I was allowed to call my own from a very young age. We had rose bushes and a plum tree and at either end of the street where I lived there were grassy fields (we called them the "triangles" because of their approximate shapes) where the kids in the neighborhood could meet to play kickball or pick wildflowers or collect bugs. We had ditches with ivy-covered banks between which water flowed like a miniature stream, allowing us to race leaf boats. I had a sand pile and a swing set. Down the road from us were neighbors who had all sorts of lovely trees, including magnolias. Almost nothing is more beautiful than their large, creamy blossoms and shiny dark green leaves unless it's the feathery, powder-puff pink blossoms on the sweet-smelling mimosa trees, which also flourished in our neighborhood. A block or so away, we even had a patch of woods in which we could wander (sadly gone now).

I loved it all. But I never fully appreciated it until I didn't have it.

I've had other places of beauty besides that first neighborhood. I lived on two stunningly beautiful (though vastly different) college campuses, including one in the mountains of western North Carolina, truly one of the landscapes of my heart. In the first five years of our marriage, D. and I lived less than five minutes from a Pennsylvania national park that burst into incredible dogwood bloom every spring, a place where you would stumble upon fields of deer or quaint covered bridges when you turned a corner.

I didn't know I was going to grow up and be called to live in an urban setting. Cities, for all the fascination they hold, always felt like they sucked the life out of me if I was in them for too long. Too much concrete and glass and brick, too much rust and bustle. I didn't mind visiting cities, but I was certainly never going to live in one, and I would have said adamantly that I would never a raise a child in one if I had a choice.

And yet...here I am, here we are. In the post-industrial rust belt for almost twelve years, a tiny town of boarded up storefronts and too much traffic, completely yardless, my front "porch" a concrete step just a few inches above street level. Would I love to live somewhere else? You bet, except for the tiny little wrinkle that the Lord has apparently called us to be where we are for the time being and given us a love for this place and those who live here. If there was one other important thing I learned along with my love of all things green in God's world, it was that the very best place to be is the place where God calls you, no matter where it is.

So here I am, here we are. And guess what? In this remarkably dry and weary concrete land, I have found myself falling in deeper love, and in deeper ways, with the created world.

I think it's because we see so little of it, because I have to work so hard to find ways to share nature with my little girl. She has none of the beauties I took for granted when I was her age, no yard to run around in, no place to safely walk barefoot, no opportunity to just sit and stare for minutes (or hours) at bugs. Well, we do have those opportunities sometimes, but they come rarely and they have to be planned carefully, with visits to the yards of friends or nearby parks or the seminary lawn. I think what I am most wistful for is the deep sense of freedom and spontaneity that I had as a child, when I could simply wander outside (I can hear a squeak and the slim wooden frame of the back screen door slamming behind me as I write this) and toss myself down onto the grassy lawn with a good book. The sounds I took for granted were cricket chirps and cooing doves, not motorcycles and trucks. The smells I took for granted were sweet honeysuckle and pungent ivy, not exhaust fumes and the dumpster across the road.

So we've had to get creative. We've had to get passionate about learning as much as we can about every bit of nature within reach. We take nature walks here in our little city, picking wildflowers, crouching as near as we can to curbside gardens that don't belong to us, twining binoculars around our neck so we can peer at the birds nesting in the birdhouse in the yard of a nearby church. During the week hardly anyone is around those church grounds, so we sometimes sneak into their side yard for a few minutes and play. There's a long, cascading kind of willow tree there, a small one that blooms with beautiful white flowers in early spring, and the sweet girl calls it her "tree house." She hides beneath the branches while her Mom keeps a casual lookout for anyone who might be wanting to kick us off the property, trying to give her little girl a few minutes of the kind of quiet, green privacy she loved so when she was six.

And I am amazed at how much I'm learning. Do I still long to live in a place where I can these things for granted? Well, to be perfectly honest, yes. But having to work hard to find bits of nature means I value them all the more when I find them. I have learned the names of plants and trees and birds. I've never been particularly good at knowing specific names of things, so I've tried to get better. And as I learn them, I pass them on to the sweet girl. We're learning together to appreciate every bit of God's beautiful created world we can, from the ten sycamores across the road (whose buds we watch with such raw expectation every March) to the wonderful starlings that are nesting in the gap between the buildings across the street. Not to mention the tree sparrows that have their nest in the corner of our own building (we live over a warehouse) and the huge crow that struts his stuff on the roof across the way from time to time.

This past weekend we went to a nearby park for a picnic supper, something we try to do as often as possible in spring and summer. This was our first picnic of the year and it was a bit grey and chilly in the early evening, but still oh so beautiful. Robins were scattered on the grass in such vast numbers it was like they were having a Robin convention, or (more likely, I thought) deciding to field a few baseball teams. I counted 29 robins at one point on the baseball field, most of them congregating in the outfield.



And I was stunned by the surge of excitement and happiness I felt when a bright yellow blur tumbled by us, surfing the wind. I actually stood to my feet shrieking "it's a goldfinch! it's a goldfinch!" I was so thrilled to see that amazing bird I wanted to toss a handful of confetti or set off sparklers. D. had told us he'd seen one during his morning walk the other day, but neither the sweet girl or I had been able to add this particularly beautiful little bird to our spring list yet, and we were delighted to do so. He flew by twice (yes, it was definitely a he...we could tell by his colors and markings) finally alighting on the metal fence by the baseball field, and I simply stood on the other side of the fence, staring in awe.

Getting to know God's world in its particulars is a joy. It strikes me as somewhat ironic that it took almost a decade of lean years to get to me to the place where I began to passionately look and learn everything I could. Somewhere along the line I realized I had to stop majoring in wistfulness and get busy appreciating anything and everything alive and growing (or singing or flying!) that God put in my path. The beauties of green and growing things, the gorgeousness of the natural world, are never going to be something my daughter is going to be able to take for granted as I did. But that doesn't mean I can't teach her a deep gratitude for them, and a deep joy in discovering them wherever they are.

100 Species Challenge #3: Lily of the Valley

I've been slow as a tortoise posting anything on the 100 Species Challenge we started last summer. I've taken a number of pictures of plants and flowers, and even identified some of them! but have been remiss about posting anything. Given my slowness and our urban environment, I still think it will likely take me several years to actually manage 100 postings, but I'm enjoying myself anyway! Don't be surprised to see a few more posts than usual this spring...

# 3 on our list is Lily of the Valley. I took this photo in the beautiful gardens at Old Economy last Thursday. The technical name for this particular variety is Convallaria majalis var. montana. The green tint on the bell-like flowers shows it's the US variety.

The sweet girl thought these needed water since they were drooping, but droop is part of their distinctiveness. Some people think they look like tear drops, and one legend says that they were formed by Eve's tears when she left the garden. I like that: wouldn't it be like God to turn even those tears into something beautiful?

Flower Art

The sweet girl and I went walking and photo-taking on this beautiful autumn day. I snapped a picture of some purple flowers and then came home and played with the image with my rudimentary photo software. I actually have some lovelier ones than this -- I tried it in regular color, grayscale, and this "solarized effect" -- but they're too high resolution to upload on my ancient computer. Thus the tiny postage stamp size (I needed to save it in a much lower resolution and then also crop for the close-up.) Some days I long for a better camera and computer, but mostly I'm just grateful for all that we have, including transient and tiny beauties like roadside flowers.

And I thought this was a rather nice effect, even in miniature! For me, looking at flowers in such detail is an exercise in contemplation and awe. I realize anew the intricate and amazing amount of design included in even very small living things. What an artist our God is!

Insect Adventure!

A few minutes ago the sweet girl and I were heading back inside after our read-aloud time (chapter 4 of Robert McCloskey's Homer Price, if anyone is interested!). I crossed the sidewalk and started to reach out to open the door at the bottom of our stairs when I suddenly stopped in my tracks and let out a tiny screech.

There was a giant praying mantis on our front door!

Seriously, he was huge. Easily 6-8 inches long, all pointy legs and gangly neck (I never realized what adolescent looking bugs they were before) and a beautiful hue of green with some brown accents. You could tell he would blend in really well on most trees, but on our white painted door, he definitely stood out.

I confess I wasn't sure what to do. The sweet girl, despite her totally fearless stance toward insects we see in books, was understandably a bit nervous when she came face to face with this very large insect in our path. I was a bit nervous too, mostly because I didn't relish him flying straight at me when I tried to open the door. I assured S. that he didn't bite or sting, but I also thought it would be prudent to pick up a lengthy stick and tap at the door to try to get him to move before we got too much closer.

We found a sycamore twig of a few inches (the kind of twig S. used to call her "sycamore wand") and I made a couple of futile jabs near the door glass a few inches from its head. He shuffled an inch or two the the right, as though huffily annoyed that I would disturb his residence in the crack of our building's front door. A truck from the lumber yard rumbled past us at that moment, and the driver braked rather suddenly, making a loud, squeaking noise which seemed to startle the praying mantis as much as it did us. He dropped a few more inches, but caught himself right on our doorknob and clung to the gold metal surface for dear life.

Turned out the truck driver had braked so he could get out and see what I was half-heartedly jabbing at on our front door. He laughed when he saw the huge insect, and we marveled over it together. "I thought you must be looking at a bug!" he said, and helpfully headed toward the door with cupped hands (he had on huge, leathery work gloves). The thing buzzed off in indignation, lumbered its way into the sky (it almost looked too heavy to fly) wheeled around (making me jump a bit and S. give a tiny shriek) and then landed on the upper window of the apartment next door. The nice truck driver stayed around for a minute or two more so we could all marvel at the size of the insect and the rarity of seeing one around here (yes indeed, we are an urban family for whom this is a major event) though he told me his brother has rural property and they see them there all the time. He pointed out kindly that he thinks it's against the law to kill them, and I assured him I'd just been trying to make him fly away. "They're amazing, aren't they?" I said.

And indeed they are. Absurdly strange, and yet bizarrely beautiful. It made me think of the G.K. Chesterton quote, which I've quoted here before: "A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish."

100 Species Challenge (#1): The Sycamore Tree

I decided that I had to start my list of 100 species with this:

1) Sycamore Tree (platanus occidentalis)

For all the years we've lived in an apartment in an urban setting, my green-hunger has been mostly fed by the ten beautiful sycamores across the road. We can see them from our front windows, beyond the asphalt parking lot that runs between us and the parallel road. When the sweet girl and I sometimes borrow the nearest public bench for read-aloud time, it's under the shade of one of those sycamores. We've come to think of them as our special trees.

I'm not sure I even knew what they were when we first moved here eleven years ago. I grew up amongst maple, oak and pine in Virginia. If there were sycamore trees in the neighborhood, I don't recall them, and I think I probably would given their sheer size, the beauty (and largeness) of their leaves, and the fascinating way they "shed" their bark in the summertime. I love the mottled look of the trees as the bark peels away, their beautiful shades of brown, tan, cream and palest gray-green forming lovely designs and the dry, heavy "scrolls" of bark that fall to the ground. It was only through reading done for this challenge that I learned that what the tree is doing when it loses its bark really is akin to shedding, or perhaps more accurately, molting (like a caterpillar that's outgrown its skin). It has something to do with the fibers of the sycamore bark not being able to "stretch" to accommodate the growth of the tree inside.

I've also learned that sycamores belong to one of the oldest tree families on the planet (platanaceae) and that individual trees can grow to be hundreds of years old.

The sycamores in our neighborhood are probably a hybrid breed, called the London planetree, which was developed from the American sycamore. I don't know that for certain, but from what I read in an article in about.com's forestry section, those are far more common now, especially in urban areas, as they're able to resist certain forms of illness that sycamores are prone to.

I also learned that the biblical sycamore was probably the sycamore fig (ficus sycomorus). Good to know, as I was never quite sure how on earth a "wee little man" like Zacchaeus could have ever managed to clamber up one of the sycamores in our neighborhood. With their huge trunks, they're not exactly easy-to-climb trees!

The 100 Species Challenge

In recent years, I've spent far too much time feeling green-starved and yard-and-garden-hungry here in the post-industrial town that time forgot. Being called to urban ministry is a challenge as well as a blessing, and one of the challenges for me has definitely been green-hunger, especially since we're yardless.

One thing I've done to nourish my sanity and surrender to some more contentment is to begin to notice the created beauty that's around us, even in a small decaying city in the rust belt. I've been better at finding "pockets" of beauty, noticing things (with my eyes, my camera, sometimes my pen) growing between the cracks, sometimes quite literally. The sweet girl and I have taken a lot of nature walks, and I've tried to learn a bit about the plants and trees in our neighborhood.

So when I saw The 100 Species Challenge, I was intrigued, delighted (and yes, a little intimidated). My thanks to Melissa Wiley for posting this on her blog, where I originally saw it.

And what a great idea this is, to identify species within walking distance of where you live! Although I suspect my list will grow slowly, I'd like to give this a try -- if for no other reason than I'd love to continue to notice (and begin to name) more of the plants and trees around me. Like I said, it helps to measurably build my gratitude and contentment. Not to mention it helps me to be a better observer, and teach the sweet girl to be one too.

So here goes. The 100 species challenge! If you think you might like to participate too, see the link above. In accordance with the guidelines set out by the originator of the challenge, I'm also posting the rules here:

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The 100-Species Challenge

1. Participants should include a copy of these rules and a link to this entry in their initial blog post about the challenge. I will make a sidebar list of anyone who notifies me that they are participating in the Challenge.

2. Participants should keep a list of all plant species they can name, either by common or scientific name, that are living within walking distance of the participant's home. The list should be numbered, and should appear in every blog entry about the challenge, or in a sidebar.

3. Participants are encouraged to give detailed information about the plants they can name in the first post in which that plant appears. My format will be as follows: the numbered list, with plants making their first appearance on the list in bold; each plant making its first appearance will then have a photograph taken by me, where possible, a list of information I already knew about the plant, and a list of information I learned subsequent to starting this challenge, and a list of information I'd like to know. (See below for an example.) This format is not obligatory, however, and participants can adapt this portion of the challenge to their needs and desires.

4. Participants are encouraged to make it possible for visitors to their blog to find easily all 100-Species-Challenge blog posts. This can be done either by tagging these posts, by ending every post on the challenge with a link to your previous post on the challenge, or by some method which surpasses my technological ability and creativity.

5. Participants may post pictures of plants they are unable to identify, or are unable to identify with precision. They should not include these plants in the numbered list until they are able to identify it with relative precision. Each participant shall determine the level of precision that is acceptable to her; however, being able to distinguish between plants that have different common names should be a bare minimum.

6. Different varieties of the same species shall not count as different entries (e.g., Celebrity Tomato and Roma Tomato should not be separate entries); however, different species which share a common name be separate if the participant is able to distinguish between them (e.g., camillia japonica and camillia sassanqua if the participant can distinguish the two--"camillia" if not).

7. Participants may take as long as they like to complete the challenge. You can make it as quick or as detailed a project as you like. I'm planning to blog a minimum of two plants per week, complete with pictures and descriptions as below, which could take me up to a year. But you can do it in whatever level of detail you like.

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And that's it! Stay tuned...I'll let you know how it's going. All my posts related to this will be tagged appropriately.

Five Blocks, Five Nests

April! The sweet girl and I are spring detectives again, on the lookout for "clues to spring" whenever we take a walk.

It can sometimes be hard to spot clues in early spring, especially in the concrete and pavement environment we usually traverse. But yesterday provided us the wonderful discovery of five birds' nests within the five city blocks we walked to the post office. True, two or three of them at least were in the small gazebo park next to the post office (one of the few spots in town where we have a good clump of trees together) but it was exciting, nonetheless.

In fact, birds have suddenly appeared in great numbers, even in our little city. When I woke up yesterday, I could hear one (hear, not see) trilling a good morning song over and over. If I stood in one particular place in my kitchen, right under the skylight, it was like having front row seats concert seats. Later in the morning, during our school-time, a bird flew right up to our apartment windowsill and boldly peered in at us for a few seconds.

I'm excited because our small box from the Rainbow Resource Center arrived late yesterday. I had ordered a couple of craft projects and a math game from them, and while I was at it, I also ordered a good pair of child-sized binoculars. With the birds returning in great numbers and busily getting their spring building projects underway, I want to make sure we're good and ready to watch.

Making Herbariums With Betsy, Tacy and Tib

“Yoo-hoo, Betsy!”

As a child, I always wanted to yell that. That’s because I always longed to be friends with Betsy Ray, the protagonist of the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. Like me, Betsy read books in maple trees. How much fun it would have been if we could have shared a tree!

There are many fictional landscapes of my heart, places I’ve visited far more times than some actual geographic locations you can pinpoint on a paper map. Deep Valley, Minnesota, at the turn of the century, is one of the best.

I wished I could join Betsy, Tacy and Tib on so many of their escapades. Most of all, I always wanted to join them on the “Big Hill” behind Tacy’s house, where they liked to picnic and gather wildflowers. Their picnic food was the best. If I close my eyes, I can practically smell the cocoa made in a pail over an open fire, or imagine the taste of Tacy’s mother’s plain, unfrosted cake.

I recently discovered a wonderful blog (just right for my winter-weary self) called Wildflower Morning. The lady who has created this beautiful space has issued a call for photos and artwork inspired by wildflowers. I knew I would enjoy looking at the lovely entries, especially as winter cold rages on here in my part of the country. I didn’t realize I would post, but how could I resist this week’s call for “literary wildflowers”?

Because one of the funniest scenes in all the Betsy-Tacy books comes in the seventh book, Betsy Was a Junior. Betsy, Tacy and Tib are high school juniors (Deep Valley High, class of 1910) and for most of the book they’ve been having such a fun time that they’ve neglected their studies a bit. (Rabbit trail I won’t pursue: how uninspiring some public education already seemed by this time…these books were based on Maud Hart Lovelace’s real high school experiences in Mankato, Minnesota during the same years.)

The little girls who used to gather wildflowers have now grown up (at least somewhat) and have discovered, to their dismay, that they are all about to fail Mr. Gaston’s Botany class. And why? Because the herbariums he assigned them to create at year’s beginning are due the next day, and none of them has worked on them all year.

”A herbarium,” said Betsy, “is a collection of dried and pressed specimens of plants, usually mounted or otherwise prepared for permanent preservation and systematically arranged in paper covers placed in boxes or cases.”

“You know the definition all right,” said Tib. “But you can’t turn in a definition tomorrow.”

“How many flowers did he say we had to have?”

“Fifty.”

Thus begins the girl’s merry and manic attempt to create herbariums of fifty flowers each, during the seventeen hours remaining before they need to leave for school the next morning.

”Only nine,” said Tib. “We’re supposed to spend eight of them sleeping.”

“Supposed to spend!...There’s no law about going to bed the night before you have to make a herbarium for botany.”

They do a pretty good job finding flowers in the spring sunshine before the sun sets that evening. Remember, it’s near the end of the school year, so days are long. They find “clover and dandelions, and strawberry blossoms and buttercups, and wild geranium and lupine, and columbine and false Solomon’s-seal.” Hurrying back and forth, they scour across the grass and find “purple violets…(and) the dog-tooth kind…spring beauties and wake robins…bloodroots…Dutchman’s breeches…hepaticas…jacks-in-the-pulpit.”

So many of these flowers I’d never heard of before I came across them in Maud Hart Lovelace’s prose. Some of them I’m still not familiar with entirely, but just typing their names intrigues me and makes me think I should spend some time looking them up!

In the end, of course, Betsy, Tacy and Tib can’t quite find fifty kinds of flowers each, even in Deep Valley in the springtime. But they have a great time trying. They dry them in batches in the oven and stay up almost all night at Tib’s house. They sneak out before the sun is up, cleverly thinking they’ll find more, only to realize to their chagrin that the flowers aren’t open yet. ”Fine botany students we are!” cried Tacy and went off into laughter which made the robins, thrashers, meadowlarks and warblers redouble their efforts at vocal supremacy.

They also finally realize that they could have made good herbariums (at least Tacy and Tib think so) and that they all would have enjoyed it if they’d taken their time and spent the year working on them. They even pass the class...barely, though I always start laughing when I reach that part of the chapter:

”Never, never in my whole life,” said Mr. Gaston (he was twenty-four), “never in my whole career as a teacher,” (he had taught for three years), “have I seen such herbariums! Not a fall flower included!”

But he felt a little guilty, perhaps because he could not identify all the specimens they had presented. At any rate, for whatever reason, he passed them.

So there you have it...one of my favorite literary passages about wildflowers!

On the Prowl...for Good Nature Documentaries

Easter Monday finds us at home. D. had to leave at 5 am for his week-long conference. I had taken the day off from the office, which turned out to be a very good thing both because I'm exhausted and because the sweet girl has been sick with a bad cold or some sort of virus. She's been feeling miserable off and on since Saturday, and yesterday morning, had it not been Easter, I don't think I would have had the heart to drag her out anywhere. As it was, we only made it to church, and she felt so miserable that she basically curled up in my lap or her Daddy's (or sometimes stretched across both) and dozed through almost the entire church service. She perked up after a nap and enjoyed coloring easter eggs...she even made a green one with a face which she has dubbed "Mr. Eggman." (That Beatle-esque named cracked my husband up, who said "goo-goo-ja-joob" when he saw it, of course.) My favorite line of the evening was when S. admonished me, almost sternly, NOT to eat Mr. Eggman. I have a feeling he may be around for a while...

Anyway, she seemed to feel better for a while this morning, but is now lounging lethargically on the couch, her eyes looking bleary again. She has sore throat and a cough. She's been feverish, and I thought that had broken this morning, but she's warm again. I'm giving her the special treat of eating lunch (otherwise known as "picking at my food because I don't have any apetite") on a t.v. tray while she watches, for the fourth time in 24 hours, "Fuzzy Wuzzy Bears."

"Fuzzy Wuzzy Bears" is an old documentary video done for kids (I think it was distributed by the BBC and Time-Life). I picked it up for a dollar in a library sale sometime a few months ago, and once in a while, S. drags it out and watches it over and over. She's always had a real passion for bears, so it's not surprising she'd enjoy it so much. It's fairly well done. The music is hokey, and the overly enthusiastic narrator voice can grate a bit on adult ears (he sounds like the long-lost twin of sports commentator Bob Costas) but the footage is good, and a wide variety of bears presented, along with some good, age-appropriate information about each. They even throw in a bit about raccoons, whom they call the "cousins" of bears (is this true? not sure). D. insists it was just because the production had some raccoon footage they wanted to throw into the mix!

It's well-done enough that I'd pick up more in this series if I could find them, but alas, it was done so long ago that unless I find a bunch more at a garage or library sale, I doubt they'll be available anywhere.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for nature videos/documentaries for children ages 4-7? I can find wonderful books and websites for this age-group, and we were blessed with a gift subscription to "Our Big Backyard" but I have had a really hard time finding good videos for children. Maybe there's an assumption that every kid has cable, thus access to Discovery Channel and Animal Planet (but they must produce videos and dvd's, right?). I tried looking up the title to the old series S. is watching this morning "Growing Up Wild," but it turns out that name has been used in another, more recent series by Animal Planet which didn't seem to be getting very good reviews on Netflix. Before I put it in the queue to check it out myself, I thought I'd ask around.

Our library has a handful of videos, but they're either not very well-done, or they're a little bit too old for the sweet girl. I'm looking for something between *Baby Einstein* and *Eyewitness Video* (the ones narrated by Martin Sheen, which seem geared for slightly older kids and sometimes have a bit of an odd tone). Because we live in a city and don't have a yard, I am always on the lookout for good photos and videos of real animals and plants so I can try to widen the sweet girl's view of the creation. Any ideas appreciated!

Spring Detectives

It turned beautifully warm here today -- in the 70s! We're supposed to take another dive into cold (and possibly snow) over the weekend, but how wonderful to walk outdoors in shorter sleeves and light jackets.

The sweet girl and I decided to take a walk and be "spring detectives." I explained to her how that meant we'd be on the lookout for clues and signs of spring.

Here's what we sighted:

--purple crocuses (purple, six petals each, beautiful yellow pollen centers)
--bees (two of them, alighting on the patch of crocuses)
--bird's nests
--old brown oak leaves on the ground
--warm weather!
--buds on the forsythia bushes (still bare)
--buds on the sycamore trees (tiny, pointed and dark red buds)
--a man washing his car
--another man vaccuming the inside of his car
--silver wind chimes on a porch, with a little metal butterfly
--yellow crocuses in the front yard of Miss Shoshana's house (a dear friend who moved away to Australia last year -- their house isn't sold yet)
--a bench that needs repainting
--two girls and their little brother (friends of the sweet girl) coloring with sidewalk chalk

What signs of spring do you see in your neighborhood?