Past Blogs

“If you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.”

I saw these words on a poster in an art room where I was working. The quote was attributed to Einstein, but being a born skeptic, I looked it up and found he never uttered them. Nevertheless, I do like the sentiment the words convey.

One of our cultural problems these days is the expectation that we all must be experts on everything. Good students are devastated if they get a “B” in one subject. Stress is rampant in schools where it is now possible to get more than a 4 point average. As Garrison Keillor quips, “All the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average.” Woe be to those children that aren’t.

Kids’ jaws drop when I say in a classroom that I have always struggled with math. Since art and language skills are my strongest, I fail to see why I must be equally proficient in solving advanced algebraic equations. In my opinion, x has no business pretending it’s a number anyway.

Sharing and the common good are not currently in vogue.  The logical outcome of this thinking is the onus being put on each individual to be completely accomplished at everything.

Don’t buy into this kids. Your world won’t end if you get a B or even a C. A quick look back in history reveals very few Renaissance men and women. Most of us get by with the help of our friends and a pocket calculator.

Be a fish that knows it doesn’t have to climb trees. But strive to be extremely good at swimming or whatever your special thing might be.

We heard them before we saw them. One morning last week as my husband and I were eating on the front deck, we simultaneously looked up from our granola and said, “Who is making those strange sounds?”

A glance in the sky over our neighbor’s field quickly gave us the answer. Two bald eagles were soaring, wheeling and conversing with each other. Their calls were unlike any we have heard from the birds who frequent our feeders and little woods.

Eagles do live along our lakeshore, but spotting them is not a daily experience….it’s an occasion to remark to a neighbor, “Did you see the eagle flying around in Fischer Creek Park yesterday?”

I said a silent thank you to Rachel Carson who wrote the 1962 book, Silent Spring,  which alerted America to the horrible toll the pesticide DDT was taking on our bird populations. Songbirds died from eating poisoned insects, but birds higher up on the food chain such as raptors, suffered shell thinning. Their nests were filled with deformed offspring or the equivalent of omelettes. A ban on DDT allowed our bird populations to rebound before it was too late.

We hope eagles will be a continuing presence along our lakeshore. We are already referring to our duo as “George and Martha”.

Click here to hear the surprising sounds these magnificent raptors make.

The present arrived in a bucket. Shortly after we moved to the country, a good friend visited and exclaimed, “I found the perfect plant for your meadow at our master gardener sale. It’s a …….. “. A senior moment ensued after which she said, “I can’t remember its name, but I know it belongs here.”

We proceeded to plant the mystery gift in front of our deck where it thrived.

Five years later, I was picking raspberries in my neighbor’s back forty when I spotted a huge stand of the mystery plant.

“What is that?” I asked.

“A cup plant,” my neighbor informed me, “and it loves our soil.”

The cup plant, formally known as Silphium perfoliatum, is an amazing specimen. Each summer it grows to over 6 feet tall with sturdy square stems about three quarter inch across. But the leaves are the best feature. Bigger than my hand, the leaves appear to be on opposite sides of the stem. A closer look reveals that the “leaves” are only one leaf  which wraps around the stem forming a perfect cup, a drinking dish for birds. The plant’s foliage hides the sipping birds from predators.

All summer we eat on the deck and watch the birds, especially goldfinches, visit. When summer ebbs and the yellow flowers bloom, the cup plant turns into a restaurant as well. Birds, butterflies and bees come for the seeds and nectar.

After thirteen years, our original plant is producing offspring. We now have baby cups springing up in a wide radius around their mother.

Stop by next spring if you would like your own cup plant. Just bring a bucket.

The curtain is coming down on summer. Many sun filled days remain, yet the signs of an impending finale are impossible to deny. The Martin house is getting silent as its occupants head south, while the insect chorus becomes louder each night.

Our milkweed pods grow visibly fatter each day; the little blue stem reaches taller and taller. The first yellow of the goldenrod is dappling the meadow as the yellow of the male goldfinches is fading.

Our baby raccoons aren’t babies anymore. The chipmunks, a bumper crop this year, are stuffing their checks to capacity. The migratory birds are eating on overdrive as well.

And then there are my spider friends. Every Charlotte in our yard is in high gear, spinning, spinning, spinning and wrapping eggs. Being an arachnophile helps when living in the country and also knowing that of 43,000 spider species in the world, only one percent give humans the possibility of grief.

The darkness is creeping in earlier each night, and even after a sizzling day, the nights are deliciously cool. We throw the windows open wide.

If we moved to the middle of the planet, we could live in eternal summer. But wouldn’t that be like having a birthday every day?

“Nothing gold can stay”, said Robert Frost. Summer is fleeing before our eyes.

I am not a good photographer. Training in art enables me to recognize a bad photo, and most of my pictures are only memory joggers for my own consumption….”to keep a moment from running away” as Eudora Welty so succinctly phrased it. I’m content to view the work of others to experience photography as an art form.

Nevertheless, luck is a true presence in all of our lives. So once in every 5,000 photos, I get lucky and an aesthetically pleasing photo happens. Here are three which, to my amazement, appear to have worked.

I must note that while taking this bridge shot, I was saying,”Well, this one isn’t going to work!” It was taken through the windshield as we were traveling 55 mph on the bumpy, metal bridge roadbed.

Good photographers can make magic happen. The rest of us must patiently wait for luck to grace us.