Past Blogs

His official name is Marmota monax monax, but we just call him Woody. A woodchuck, or more likely a succession of woodchucks, has graced our yard all the seventeen years we have lived here.

Woodchucks, a.k.a. groundhogs, are the largest and heaviest members of the squirrel family. Distinguishing features include a broad, pudgy body, short, strong legs, little rounded ears and a well-furred tail.

“Homebody” is a good word to describe Woody. A woodchuck rarely ventures much farther than two or three hundred feet from its burrow. Being diurnal, these short excursions all occur in daylight hours. And it is a solitary creature. We have never seen two together.

Woody is a daily presence from April through October. By early fall, he waddles about thick  with fat from gorging on summer greens.  Woody is a confirmed herbivore.

When cold weather arrives, groundhog retires to his underground hole, curls up in a ball and drapes his tail over his head. Woody is a true hibernator. His heartbeat drops down to 4 beats a minute, down from 75+ when he is active. Body temperature plunges to 38 degrees as compared to 90 degrees. We know spring has returned when a skinny Woody appears under our feeders, guzzling up the fallen sunflower seeds.

Last week I came up from the beach and down the mowed grass path that leads to our front deck. But I soon stopped in my tracks. Our woodchuck had excavated an enormous hole and pile of dirt right in the middle of the path. I laughingly informed my husband as I entered the house that he would be mowing a detour to our path thanks to Woody’s building activities.

We are happy to reroute our path. In the past, Woody has dug burrows under both our neighbor’s and our decks. Since these construction sites came dangerously close to our foundations, we are all in favor of a giant hole in the middle of our front yard.

Our groundhog is a welcome and whimsical part of our yard’s wildlife. We smile every time we look out and see him in the Tooley Cafe.

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Here are two basic facts:

The earth can survive without people.

People cannot survive without the earth.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if these truths could be taught to every grade school child? What a meaningful celebration of Earth Day that would be. Instead, many schools will send the kids outside to pick up litter and tell them they are saving the world. How did we arrive at this state of magical thinking?

I know that even extremely young children can understand our dependence on the Earth. In my plant program, I have children trace their favorite foods back through the food chain……..the ice cream is made from milk which comes from the cow which eats the grass that grows in the light of the sun. After tracing back several menu items, the children can all answer my next question, “Can we live without plants and the sun’s energy?”

Many forces are working against education in our nation. At the moment, teaching details gets preference over teaching the big picture. Unfortunately, students don’t learn to think when their time is spent memorizing copious little facts for endless tests.

Parents who believe the world is 2,000 years old and science isn’t real exert influence in many school districts. In a nation that embraces political correctness, these people’s views sometimes get equal weight with those of the most educated scientists in the world. If only teachers would be allowed to reply to parents who are against science with the quote, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, they are not entitled to their own facts.”

And lastly there is greed. Huge profits can be made by exploiting the Earth’s water, mineral, animal, plant and human resources. For-profit charter schools can generate big money for their shareholders from taxpayers’ dollars and simultaneously teach that unregulated capitalism is good for the planet.

We may be the species with the biggest brains, but if we succeed in making our planet uninhabitable for us, we will also be the stupidest.

 

 

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Who’s afraid of the big, bad butter? Not me, and I’m glad to report that the butter tide which has been out in recent years, is now flowing in.

“Butter is back” proclaimed a recent New York Times op-ed piece which cited a large study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The article reported that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat did not have more heart disease than those who ate less. One doctor stated, “I think future dietary guidelines will put more emphasis on real food rather than giving an absolute upper limit or cutoff point for certain macronutrients.” That doc sounds like he has been listening to Michael Pollan.

We never abandoned butter at our house. I concluded that a product that tastes so wonderful and has so few ingredients (pasteurized sweet cream, salt) could not be a total pariah.

To find out how butter got so maligned, simply follow the money. Big corporate food companies knew they could rake in the profits by making butter a health threat and then marketing their hyperprocessed replacements.

The lobbyists for the food giants must be working on overdrive at the moment to refute the new findings. Expect to see lots of anti-butter attacks in the upcoming media.

Now is the perfect moment to celebrate butter’s return to good graces. We can all rush out to our grocery stores and pick up that delightful seasonal treat, the Easter butter lamb. I think I’ll buy myself a flock this year.

P.S.  Perhaps picking up your butter lamb at the grocery store won’t work if you are not a midwesterner. The tradition originated in Eastern European countries, especially Poland. If you are not lucky enough to have these butter creatures readily available,  consider butter sculpture.

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The following is a fictitious diary. Warning: Shards of reality may appear.

November 3- First snowflakes of winter, how delicate and lovely they look.

December 1- Hoping for a white Christmas.

December 5- One inch of pristine snow blankets the ground.

December 15- Big blizzard moves in.

December 24- Plane tickets home for Christmas canceled due to extreme snow conditions.

January 6- Snow Day

January 17- Ditto

January 28- Ditto

February 2- Purchase tickets for Florida vacation.

February 17- Return from Florida and find snowbanks higher.

March 2- $617 bill from plow guy.

March 13- Massive snowstorm, plow guy’s plow breaks down.

March 24- Everyone’s eyes glaze over at the word “snow”.

March 30- First returning robin spotted on top of a snow covered branch. It looks unhappy.

April 6- Stick “For Sale” sign in snowdrift in front of house.

April 12- “For Sale” sign buried by snowstorm.

May 20- Cherry trees in full bloom; remove “For Sale” sign from front yard.

November 6- First snowflakes of winter, how delicate and lovely they look.

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In addition to being married to the love of my life, I am also married to Mr. Bricolage. (Bricolage is French for do-it-yourself.)

Mr. Bricolage is the name of a giant chain of home improvement stores headquartered in France. My guy epitomizes that name.

In our house, leaky faucets get fixed,  scratched woodwork gets refinished, clogged drains are immediately liberated and faulty wiring gets rewired. It’s as if I live with a crew of expert plumbers, carpenters, electricians and painters. I marvel at my good fortune every time yet another thing goes haywire.

The house I grew up in did not function this way. My father was a wonderful, caring man, but he was not handy; tools defied him. One short story will explain all.

My mother asked my father to put an awning over the back door so we wouldn’t have to stand in the rain or snow when fumbling with the key in the ever sticking lock. My father bought a little assemble-it-yourself aluminum awning, gritted his teeth and managed to get the pieces in place. Next, he measured the space above the door three times to get the awning perfectly centered. He put the screws in place and tightened them to last for eternity.

And then the great moment came when he opened the door. Crunch. He had installed the awning too low, and our back door now opened only 18 inches. Several choice swear words followed.

Here is the most amazing part of the story. The awning was left that way until my mother sold the house over 30 years later. Every time anyone came in the back door, they came in sideways. The groceries were squeezed through that small space as well.

I would have married my guy even if he were not Mr. Bricolage. But what a bonus to be able to walk straight ahead through every door in the house.

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