(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

My next door Lillian is a lucky duck -- her backyard floods every year (mine doesn't), and she gets regular visitors that the rest of us miss out on in this Detroit suburb. These guys were exploring her yard last night.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you'll come again. Enjoy more Wordless Wednesdays at Wordless Wednesday, and 5 Minutes for Mom!

Fly away home

This week I heard a call on npr for junior scientists to do field work in a ladybug project. I love this project so much, I wish I still had little kids at home. Cornell University is asking kids to find and photograph ladybugs. What a great summer project, and a chance for the little folk to actually make a difference as scientists try to track down some rare little beetles all over the country!

A learnable moment

I had some time to walk with my grandson this week. He is growing up so fast and doesn't need to hold my hand on the sidewalk but he often reaches for it -- and I love it. Besides, on this particular day he was feeling kind of puny, as my brother used to say. Flattering shot of me, huh? But it was a good reminder to me that environmental action can take many forms, including attention to diet. As Michael Pollen says, Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Can we save the world, or part of it, one cookie at a time? I can see from this photo that it wouldn't hurt to try!

Edible space

I saw today that one of my (daring & irreverent) gurus, Crunchy Chicken, did a recent post on edible lawns. I was thrilled to finally learn the name of those little yellow sour flowers! For me, that sweet-sour taste is a reminder of childhood and long summer days without adult intrusion, something that doesn't occur in most kids' lives today -- probably a good thing, since I often wonder how so many of us survived!

The green, green grass of home

It is raining again, several days in a row now, and I can't help but despair as I watch the water swirling down my storm sewer, because I've already seen my neighbors dumping chemicals on their lawns. The houses in my neighborhood are maybe 5 blocks from Lake St.Clair, and our storm sewers empty directly into the lake. In fact (lest you doubt), the storm sewer in front of my house is stenciled with a fish, and the statement that it goes straight into the lake. Even so, no one here seems to make the connection between their green lawns and the pollution that is building up in our little lake, particularly in the canals, on the beaches, and near the shoreline, and getting worse as the water levels drop.

I understand my neigbors' lawn lust. I value green stuff around my house. When I was little, it seemed like there was soft, green grass everywhere, and I know that no one watered or put fertilizer or pesticide on any of it. It was only recently that I realized, from a sudden flash of mental image, that it probably wasn't grass at all. I remember huge areas of clover, pink and white, and those little yellow flowers that were bittersweet to eat. And liberal splashes of dandelion, every child's favorite flower. As kids we loved to lie on our backs and watch the clouds, to roll down the little hills, to crawl on our bellies in the soft "grass." After a soaking rain, we used to run outside with mason jars to pick up the nightcrawlers, to sell to the fishermen for a nickle a dozen.

In the 8 years or so I've lived in my current house, I have seen a few anemic worms, but never a night crawler in my lawn. When I "googled" clover, most of my 'hits' came back with information about how to kill it in lawns, even though we used to think it was a perfectly acceptable grass plant. I wonder if we will ever start to ask ourselves whether it's worth it, to fight the chemical battle that is destroying us in order to nurture the ordinary grass that is not native to our area. Meanwhile, in my lawn, I let the little johnny jump ups and clover flourish, and I will not apologize when it turns brown - as it definitely will - later this summer. If I'm lucky, my house will sell before then . . . and I'll move on to a new lawn that I will also neglect! Next time, though, I'm going to look for clover seed and other native plants, and see if I can create a lawn worth rolling in.

Recycle This

I guess this is what it is to grow old. I have been nostalgic lately, thinking about the many different me's I've been over the years. Me's long ago abandoned, the way we do with everything these days.

The me who aspired to be a Dr. Doolittle, in the hopes that animals would have more to tell me than the adults in my life. The me who hitchhiked across Massachusetts to a macrobiotic commune, where I ate oatmeal with raspberries and took a walk after dark in an old cemetery where there were more fireflies than I've ever seen, before or since. The me who skinny dipped alone in a West Virginia lake, and then took a train to a folk festival where I saw the sloop Clearwater and heard (according to Pete Seeger) Don McLeon's first performance of "Bye Bye Miss American Pie." The me who first saw the ocean when I was 20 and completely submitted to something I never wanted to leave. And the me who left anyway. The barefoot me in an army surplus jacket who looked like a wraith and played the dulcimer.

The me who settled for less than I wanted out of the fear that my first choice would never come, and (wrongly) thought that second best would be better than nothing. Who was, in fact, afraid of a million things, failure, embarrassment, hurting other people's feelings, not being pretty enough, not being thin enough, not wearing the right clothes . . . good lord, what a petty bunch of me's that was! The me whose second child was born at home, before the midwife got there.

The me who went to law school even though I had never met a lawyer, and even though I would rather have been able to stay home with my children. And also even though, as it turned out, I don't much like law. The me who somehow, over time, morphed into someone who has become sensible, or maybe just lost her nerve.

I've been wondering lately where some of those other Me's went, and how I ended up with this one. Nothing is never lost, or so they say. One of these days, then, I must check the Cosmic Recycling Bin, to look for the parts of me that are still good, still usable, and recycle them into the latest version.

Is it something in the water?

I have thought a lot lately about a different kind of pollution that seems to have settled on the area where I live. It may not affect our ability to breathe or prosper (although I am not too sure about that) but I think it makes life uglier than it needs to be. There seems to be an epidemic of rudeness, anger, and downright meanness that seems to surround us. And I guess it must be a contagious condition, because I too often 'catch' it and add my own ugly. I know it’s become a national joke but really, why can’t we all get along?

The world has certainly changed in my lifetime and (I like to tell myself), I am not that old. I remember, as a child, giggling when my aunts became so frustrated that they burst out with a “cowabunga” or “jiminy cricket. ” Part of what made me laugh was the non sequiter-ishness of the words. On some level, I think those words also taught me that frustration was universal but also that it was not so important that it required a violent response, that it was trivial and would pass. I recall hearing only one minor swear word as a child, whispered by an adult who thought no one else was present.

Believe it or not, kids, people didn't used to say every rude thing that came to mind. They undoubtedly had private conversations where they could vent, but they were not rude to each other in public. I think the big change happened in the 60's, so I guess my self proclaimed peace-love generation created, or at least encouraged, the trend.

Today, we have moved to a whole new level of rudeness. Expletives are included in virtually every publicly spoken conversation. I hear them in the office, the street, the line at the grocery store. People say them to each other, into their ever present cell phones, and when talking to themselves. We seem to have forgotten how to publicly restrain ourselves or at least express our feelings and concerns in actual language rather than rely on the ever-ready sexual and scatological expletives. We don't even hear the words anymore, at least not in their literal meanings, because it would surely give us pause if we did. (you want me to what?) The not-nice words are just as irrelevant as “cowabunga,” but not so funny, and instead of making me giggle, they make my stomach feel as if it’s tied in knots. What a shame to think that, instead of teaching self-respect and self-restraint to the “leaders of tomorrow,” our legacy is a bunch of clever new swear-word combinations. Isn't it just another example of the trash we are leaving behind?

Sometimes I fantasize that the silver lining of global warming might be that, when we can no longer waste our limited resources on nasty music and vulgar entertainment, we will learn again to talk, to spend time, maybe even to like each other. I suppose it’s too much to ask that we also pull taffy, churn ice cream, and pit cherries on the back porch . . . but I’m ready it you are.