Nesting Time

One night of steady rain and crashing thunderstorms and somehow the world seems right again after this very cold winter and weeks of the Big Dry. The butterflies are foraging on the still meager milkweed plants, but they are here- the Queens, the giant swallowtails, even the Monarchs back from their winter in Mexico. The resurrection ferns flock the oak limbs and the pastures are green velvet.

Everyone here is nesting. I go into the feed room in the barn and a huge squawk goes up from the wrens who have decided upon the seat of the baby stroller stowed there. It's a tender time and they very definitely do not want any visitors! Bob and Emily, our resident cranes are building a nest on the side of the pond between the ghost trees. Emily turns around and around, packing down the territory. Bob is busy bringing straw and twigs. From time to time they twine their necks around each other and then Emily sits down to contemplate things while Bob flings thin bits of dry grass in the general direction of the nest. I wonder how long this process will take?

The seasonal bird visitors are in full throat. Bluebirds, great flycatchers, red wing blackbirds and hummingbirds are all here. In the first week of April the chimney swifts will return. (We have already cleaned out the fireplace and closed the damper in anticipation.) Many migratory ducks are on the pond. These are such shy creatures, it's hard to see them before they fly away in alarm.

The long shadows of late afternoon are fuller with the leafing of the trees. Who said that Florida does not have seasons? Spring happens in an instant, it's true. Blink, and it's gone. By tomorrow, the mid day heat will mean a watering of the vegetables is necessary, and I'll think about water for the flower beds, the orchids, and that small oak tree we planted that looks so peaky.

There is something about water from the sky that is magical. The vegetables grew several inches overnight. Suddenly, I knew that some of those large and beautiful collard plants and broccoli must go, so I cut them down and bagged them up for our guests to take home for their tortoises.

All of a sudden, so much is ready in the garden- golden beets, peapods, many varieties of lettuce, radishes, swiss chard, and the ever present broccoli and collards we have been eating all winter. The squash and cukes and carrots are coming along and there are tiny tomatoes on the vines. The asparagus bed is producing enough spears to satisfy me as I brouse there.

Vegetables, birds, our friends- so much to celebrate in spring. Last night we all went to dinner at the Blakes'. Phil, the seventeen year old son of our favorite guests was the designated driver. Norman Blake had made such an incredible dinner! Such a chef in our neighborhood! We all ate fresh greens from our gardens to go with the amazing crab wrapped in salmon fillets, Korean rice, brussel sprouts perfectly cooked, and kumquat pie.

While there at the Blakes, we walked around their 'compound' to see the garden and the building project of a house for their son. After dinner we strolled up to buy eggs from the Blakes' grandson who keeps a flock of chickens.

Spring- such a wonder!

The tortoises have come out of hibernation and I expect to see squirrels very soon.

Hard Times

This has been a week of 'the drama' in two of the places I go. My old school was just having the dress rehearsal for this year's Shakespearean play, everyone's favorite, The Tempest. At Lacoochee elementary, Ben Aguilar's after school group was polishing their fifteen minute musical they will perform on Saturday at the Pioneer Florida Museum. The ages of the kids in both schools is about the same, and the level of excitement from the kids and parents is beyond bounds for both groups. Otherwise, these groups are on different planets.

I am so delighted to be back in the midst of 'doing the Play' at my old school. The children are brimming with health and good teeth and they have all so easily learned miles of Shakespearean dialogue (with the good parental coaching). Their speech is clear and confident. At dress rehearsal they are all in beautiful and imaginative costumes with tasteful make-up so their faces will not be washed out by the lights in the small professional theater they are using. They have learned how to manage the wonderful set, made by parents and painted by kids, that turns around to become a rocky cave or a forest glen. They know the stage lingo, and for the most part they move seamlessly as a team. Clearly, they are enjoying it all enormously and are proud of their efforts. One child plays a Celtic harp during the performance and the director wisely lets the piece run a bit longer than necessary. These are children who have every advantage, as kids should, as did my own.

So, I wept in the community task force meeting at Lacoochee when I heard about the girl who was in intensive care with a 'brain bleed' from an untreated ear infection, or the other one this week who was in the cardiac unit of the hospital from complications from an untreated thyroid problem. The Ronald McDonald health truck may be cutting back on visits, and the school nurse is now down to half a day a week. (the school has more than 700 students.) The school social worker is retiring and her position will go unfilled due to cutbacks. The new school psychiatrist is paralyzed with having to deal with so many presenting issues with these children. Where do you begin? And what about the number of homeless children? This amazing community organizer-principal has figured out how to get the funding to bus these kids to their old schools. ("With everything else they have to endure, they don't need to change schools and friends.")

This community school principal, not daunted at all, goes about working and persisting with these difficult things. She is reaching out on many fronts. She's getting Charlie Crist and Bill Nelson to do a drive through of this misbegotten town in the middle of nowhere. She leads the band at the County Commission meetings when she has an issue on the agenda. Next time it is the cutbacks in park funding. Parks are crucial to the children and families here.

Ben Aguilar and Rachel Kurtz teach third and fourth grades. They are not the ubiquitous title one teachers who are too tired to teach well and have long exhausted any spark of energy they might have once had. In their after school program they invite parents and kids to participate. I have never been there when any child was absent. They provide pizza and juice (I always bring fruit or vegetables for the kids to try.) These lovely young altruistic and idealistic teachers could be posters for the Obama program.

Neither of them had ever had any experience with drama, but they ploughed ahead with this motley crew of Hispanic kids and parents (no dads). One mom told me that this after school program was the most important thing she does as social life. Many of the moms do not speak English very well, and I do not speak Spanish very well. But we get along famously and help each other out linguistically. We smile a lot. These moms know that their kids must become fluent in English. When we are at an impasse about the costumes or any other issue, Ben can translate.

Everyone is set for the Saturday performance. The costumes are ready. I went to Walmart and purchased a lot of foam headbands to which we affixed faux cow horns or goat ears. I made chefs' toques and brought in aprons and old tee shirts of the appropriate colors and I showed the moms how to staple anything to anything. Voila! Pigs' ears or cow horns or chicken heads. They were on it! (Just like my private school gifted kids' moms)

This is another part of my life, not that I have left that other behind! I look forward to a few days in New York City and travels around the country coming up. I am so fortunate, though much less prosperous than we were. The really hard times are the ones I see around here in this small community.

I saw the first slow fireflies tonight, so beautiful and funny in the palmetto scrub. Yesterday, when I got off my bicycle to investigate the place I had seen bobcats, I walked into the woods to look for tracks. Along the cowpath trail I discovered a loaded handgun among the dead leaves. It was heavy and menacing so I put it into my bike basket and carefully rode back. We asked our ranch manager about it and he gave it to the Sheriff's department. When I returned from Lacoochee there was a sheriff's car in our yard. Apparently, there is an unsolved murder..

When I signed on for this life of mine I could not have said where I would go. But it is always intriguing. Even in hard times, there is much to do, much to think about, much to give, and much to be thankful for.

Dear Michelle

In a week of such terrible issues confronting this country (and the world), I was so heartened to read that our secretary of agriculture had taken a jack hammer to the concrete in front of the department of agriculture so that a vegetable garden could sprout there. Shortly after this, I read about Michelle Obama turning over ground near the White House for a vegetable garden. Months ago, I read a proposal from Michael Pollen that the new president should do exactly this. I hoped it would come to pass.

And so it has. Doing a garden is so homely. Anyone can grow stuff. You don't need to understand economics as we are now coming to know it. When you grow at least some of your own food you are growing a lot more than just that tasty salad. You are growing health for your family and health for our nation.

I have had a vegetable garden for many years. Andy and I had memories of the last of the "Victory Gardens" after WWII, when we'd toddle after our parents hoeing those weeds, and then canning jar after jar of tomatoes. So when we set up our own household, it seemed natural to try vegetable gardening.

Then, it seemed easy when we were all working full tilt to let the gardening go. It was a land of plenty, fast food, or anything you could possibly want in any season, carbon footprint not an issue. We reveled in knowing you could get Italian chestnuts, Peruvian asparagus, New Zealand kiwi fruit, blueberries from Chile.

We resumed having the vegetable garden. It was a pleasure to work in it after we got home from our jobs. Some years we participated in a community garden plot, my small daughter helping me. I began to notice that our kids were really quite healthy: no cavities, perfect eyesight, and hardly any colds. I like to think it was because of a diet rich in unprocessed food, lots of organic fresh vegetables everyone helped produce.

And now, we are elderly and still slim and healthy. Our vegetable garden provides almost all our meals. We do sometimes have to eat a LOT of broccoli or collards or beans or whatever is currently ripe. Here in Florida, we are blessed to have pretty much a full time array of vegetables. It has taken me years to find out what grows best when, and how to quell the bugs and critters.

Our morning orange juice is from freshly picked fruit off our trees, our toast from bread we make. Perhaps the eggs come from the two little boys in town who have a flock of chickens. I love being self sufficient and I know that many of our neighbors hunt and fish for food.

We have an ongoing compost pile, constantly providing fertilizer for the vegetables.

But we always came back to that garden in the yard. "What have you got today?" asks Andy the cook. Tonight it was Swiss chard and broccoli, a scallion or two and some herbs. For tomorrow it may be the golden beets and the now ripening peapods.

Michelle, you are wonderful. May you turn around the idea that Americans are the fattest people who have ever been on earth. Grow veggies!

Being Modern

Every year I resolve to try something new, maybe something hard, my hedge against getting old and set in my ways. I have taken classes to learn new techniques in something I love and in other things I have no aptitude for (ballet comes to mind), I have traveled to remote places and I have volunteered in rough situations.

Hardest of all has been trying to be comfortable with the amazing and rapidly developing technology. My eyes bug out like the proverbial kid in the candy store. A big part of me loves it all. If one were to ask me I would say that in my lifetime, outside my family and friends and work, the internet and all its ramifications, is the primo best thing I have experienced.

We were the first family on the block to get a computer, very expensive in those days. We sprang for one of the first Macs, not an Apple in those days. It was huge. The printer sounded like aircraft taking off. We all learned how to make our own programs. This was before games and all that bling took over, but gradually we became addicted to it. Then, we were early adopters of dial up. I even got a dedicated phone for it.

Time passes, and now I regard my computer as a very important friend, a window on whatever world I want at the moment. I spend hours each day in front of my monitor. The computer liberated me to write. It's so fast! Ticka ticka ticka! I can look up almost anything. When our satellite goes down, I go out and pace in my yard. Soon.. This technology certainly keeps me humble, though I now want everything in a nano second. When our electricity goes out I have to take a few deep breaths and think of Scrabble.

This year, for my technology advancement I took up Facebook. I think, instead, I should have signed up for a Chinese language course at the local community college. I am aware that the percentage of oldsters signing on to Facebook is huge right now.

In this age of twitter and poke, I am not sure I want to express myself or hear from others of the past and present in this way. I think I am too old and careful to tend to a garden of "friends" (who were never that close before!) The ever present whine of 'X wants to be your friend' makes me think of being a third grade girl.

One of my sisters has also recently signed up on Facebook. I miss really hearing about what's on her mind, though I could call her and find out! What I hear now is some truncated news with no nuance. Facebook asks, 'what are you thinking about now?' You see a tiny block to reply.

It's kind of weird to see that you have dozens of friends. I keep thinking there's a reason you haven't connected before this. Still, it's compelling to see that the old freshman roommate is on the site and wanting to be your friend. Or the spouse of someone you barely know.

But this is the internet. You don't have to respond unless you want to. And being the internet, you have to have decided that privacy is in sheer numbers.

Tell me your thoughts about Facebook, (but don't sign up to be my friend!) It's easy on my new blog to comment.

Most important: the hummingbirds returned from Mexico yesterday and now the yard is full of buzzing and tiny chirps.

Hostess Syndrome

We are bone weary tonight. We are suffering the effects of Hostess Syndrome, a condition diagnosed by my old partner and best friend, Marie. Here are the symptoms: before your guests appear, you obsess about the cleanliness and feng shui of their accommodations. You plan an array of interesting things for them to do. You plan menus. You look up the weather report so you can be prepared with enough blankets. When the guests actually appear you try to make them feel comfortable and welcome. You fold up that interesting newspaper column you were reading (forget the novel) and forego all naps because.. you are on hostess duty.

But, the thing is, we LOVE all these visitors and cherish their visits. It is all worth it. In this tourist season from Christmas on, we have rarely been without guests. They have been the best. Friends, family, some in enormous numbers, sometimes in couples, some just for the day and evening. We cook, gather things from the garden, take walks, sit on the porch and watch the birds and deer. The kids run around in the fields, fly kites, swim and hurl balls at each other.

I steal away to my studio, hoping for just a few minutes that it won't be populated with the wonderful guests who know that I am generous with my space and supplies.

But, it's true that when ever there is a sniff of guests here, Hostess Syndrome kicks in. Have to think of what dietary programs for each one ( vegetarian, vegan, no red meat, doesn't eat fish, is allergic to certain nuts, hates tomatoes, no pork, can't eat wheat etc.) We try to accommodate everyone. Andy, the cook, is spectacular with these food issues and there is always a wonderful dinner to share.

I am not complaining. I feel extremely blessed to have this enormous circle of family and friends. This season we have had an especially wonderful group of folks here. We have loved the visits from our children and grandchildren. We love their spouses. As I write this, Quincy, our youngest grandson is soundly asleep upstairs in the main house, probably dreaming of breakfast pancakes. (He'll eat anything!) But I am already thinking of events for tomorrow on which to hang the day. Will it be a trip to the train museum, or maybe a trip to the Pioneer Village, or perhaps a visit to Farmers' Feed to look at the baby chickens and turkeys and rabbits, and, if we're lucky they will have piglets for sale as well?

When we are without guests, or have low maintenance ones in the guest house, we have our weekend routine of spending hours reading the papers and working in our studios while listening to the opera. Many guests have contributed lots of effort to the ongoing work of the farm. They have worked in the garden, mowed the fields, cleared trails, and cut wood. We deeply appreciate these guests who are curious and reverent about the natural world that enfolds us.

Quincy, now four years old, is easy. Really, all he wants to do is spend time in the barn where he can climb on the tractor or get out all the cast off cardboard boxes, load them up in his wagon, and pretend he is a UPS delivery man. While this is going on, I can work in my studio, and occasionally get up to accept a "delivery". "Are there any charges?" I ask. Quincy smiles and says,"I don't think so! No charge."

He goes back to his business. No hostess syndrome issues here.

Sometimes a guest will offer me a plum of a gift. One of our latest guests, Claire, offered me some computer help, specifically on updating this blog. A gift of time and expertise like this is priceless.

Though I am weary tonight, I am full of the love these wonderful guests leave us.

Alligators and Spider eyes

No photographs this time; the satellite is behaving badly and refuses to download any images. (This is the only bad thing about living so far from civilization.) Just imagine three towards elderly women setting out on a balmy full moon night, flashlights clutched firmly, ankles redolent of insect repellent. We are off through the field to look for alligators in the pond. I warn against the cow pies so we step gingerly. At the edge of the pond I scan the water with my mag light. We hear the bull frogs sounding like fingers rubbing against balloons. Then, there it is- the red headlights of an alligator on the far side of the pond. They disappear and then come back, very satisfactorily and definitely an alligator. Seems to be only the one tonight. We head back across the field with our flashlights on our heads between our eyes looking for spiders. You see them in the dark as diamond bright lights. Then you home in on the light you captured, and voila! There is a wolf spider! So cool, my friends exclaimed. We looked at the night sky and headed towards the gopher tortoise burrows, hoping to see one of them bedded down for the night, but they were too far underground to reveal themselves.
I love these guests! Andy's sister Nancy and her partner, Claire, my brother and his wife Carolyn, have been the bookends to a long tourist season of family. I love my children and their progeny beyond imagination. There is something special, however, in the connection to our siblings. They are all so curious and forthcoming about their lives and ours. We are adults together and our tracks through life are intertwined with the long history of shared family stories.
We take field trips, forays out from this farm (that is paradise!) and have a wonderful time together. Today we went to visit Selby Gardens, an incredible semitropical horticultural garden, different, but just as interesting as the trip to Wakulla Springs with my brother and Carolyn.
For me, the most wonderful part of our drive was hearing about Nancy's experiences last month as she was on her way to Burma to teach students who were preparing to study in the USA. It was a compelling lecture (in the best sense) where I could interject a question or two. She was so generous to me, considered my level of interest. I wanted every detail.
Without little kids who always need to interrupt or be put in and out of car seats and straps or go potty or cajoled into doing what you want them to do, I relax and enjoy and forget about being the one who has to think about everyone's happiness.
These 'bookend' family guests disappear for hours to read or play the violin or whatever. They don't complain about the weather or bugs. They don't want to occupy the spaces where we generally work. They cheerfully clean up after supper. (Not that our kids don't.) But, it's kind of restful. And, at the end of the day they quietly join us on the front porch to enjoy the deer and birds and they don't mind eating whatever is in the garden for supper.
We are so fortunate to have this large and amazing family who come to visit. But I must say that my youngest grandson, Quincy, who is the most frequent visitor is possibly the biggest under my heart, (along with his oldest cousin, Diego), has a special place here. His tracks are everywhere; there is the nest he made out of Spanish moss under the crape myrtle tree, and the shelf full of boxes in the barn so he can be a delivery man, and toys upstairs, and stacks of library books we chose last week, a bike and helmet, and tiny surprises left everywhere for me to discover. And, where are all the flashlights?

Cow in the Yard!

Quincy, my adorable four year old grandson, has been visiting for the last three days. He had strep throat and I knew his mom, who was also sick, needed to have a break. When the amoxicillin kicked in he was the cheerful outside boy we know. Yesterday he pulled handfuls of Spanish moss off the crape myrtle and arranged it into a big rough nest. He got some round stones I had left on the edge of a planter for "eggs". He told me he was the daddy bird and he leaped around the yard flapping his arms and making tweeting sounds.

This morning, hopeful for a quiet adult moment before Quincy awoke, I went out in the yard with my coffee to watch the dawn and listen to the chorus of birds. To my dismay I saw that an almost grown calf had gotten into the yard through the gate Quincy must have left open. This calf, the last offspring of Freckles who died soon after of old age, and Curley who had to be put down from a bad hind leg, is the curious and bad personality heifer of the herd (considering her parents).

She thought she had entered the pearly gates. She was so ecstatic to find lots of moss, green grass, oranges on the ground and flower beds trying to come back after the frosts. I put my coffee cup on a fence post and tried to talk her into exiting. No good.

Frankly, I am somewhat wary of a 750 pound cow. How do you get a cow's attention? I tried whistling. (Could I pull her by her ears?) This cow was happily eating the crape myrtles dripping with moss and she had no interest in following me out the gate. I ran up to the vegetable garden and quickly stripped off a dozen collard leaves because I know those cows love collards. Back down to where the calf was I tried coaxing her with the leaves. She loved the collards but she wouldn't budge. I ran back and got two brooms and packed corn kernels into the pockets of my vest.

Meanwhile Quincy has waked up and Lola, the dascshund is at the ready with lots of barking to help herd anything interesting- and this certainly was interesting! Quincy is on the porch shouting for the cow to leave his"nest" alone. The rest of the herd is surrounding the fence so I cannot leave any gates open or they will all be in the yard.

I take some deep breaths and realize that this is beyond me so I call warren, who actually owns these beasts. He doesn't pick up his phone. We watch the progress of the cow and I see her nearing the water lily pond (and Quincy's nest). She looks interested in the $20.00 iris I just planted. I rush out, brandishing the two brooms and she just looks at me with liquid brown eyes.

Defeated, I say to myself that all will be revealed in time so I go in and prepare a banana strawberry smoothie for Quincy and put down some kibbles for Lola. I go upstairs to make the bed and pack up Quincy's clothes and I look out the window and see the cow heading for the vegetable garden! War is now declared. I run down the stairs two at a time, pick up the brooms, and I am out of the house in a flash. Screaming and flapping I head that cow off to the back gate I nimbly open in advance. As she exits, she gives me an even gaze as if to say, "Thanks for the adventure!"

As I huff down to where I originally parked my coffee cup Warren drives up, we giggle, and he turns around and goes home to his own hot coffee.

Later, Quincy and I drive down the hour or more trip to his house. You never know what may happen at grandma's house. In the rearview mirror I see him napping, his stuffed penguin gently clasped in his hands.