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.

I was hooked on newspapers by age five. The old weekday Milwaukee Journal had a section called The Green Sheet. Printed on pale, green newsprint, it featured three pages of comic strips plus kids’ features, contests and human interest photos. One of my childhood mysteries was how my parents possibly could reach for the white parts of the paper first.

I was gradually drawn into more and more sections of the paper, and, by adulthood, I was a newspaper reader for life. Or perhaps I should say,”as long as newspapers exist”.

The beauty of a good paper is in its eclecticism. Even when I’m a week behind on the Times and I say to myself,”I’ll just scan each page for headlines”, I’m always drawn in.

Using the computer, I go directly to the information I want. In the paper, serendipity reigns. I do not wake up in the morning knowing I will read about the politics in Botswana, the genetics of polar bears and the architecture in Finland…but my paper can deliver all that and much more in a day.

I confess to being a chronic clipper of interesting articles, a trait my friends know well. Snail mail to a friend has longevity that a”forward”can’t match.

My paper is also a trove of creative inspiration. I developed several lesson plans for my middle schoolers this year with ideas that came as I was reading gallery reviews in my newspaper.

I must add that I use old newspapers to cover the tables in classrooms when we do messy art projects. To my delight, some kids always start reading the papers and want to keep reading. I go over, fold up the paper, hand it to them and say, “It’s yours to take home and finish”. That may be more significant than the day’s art project.

I take great delight in finding the treasure in the trash. And since almost everything sold at the Wisconsin State Fair, food and otherwise, fits into the trash category, the fair is an excellent hunting ground. It’s also a solo expedition, as my husband dislikes smells, crowds and noise.

Armed with twenty-five dollars, I jump into the fray. After visiting the chickens, rabbits, sheep, cows and horses, I search for souvenirs. In my opinion, a good souvenir beats out a cream puff every time. So I visit The Exposition Building with its hawkers and snake oil salesmen. I love the art of the barker, but I do not need a wonder shredder. I still use a splendid shredder that my mother bought at the Fair seventy years ago.

My three best State Fair souvenirs are not stain removers, French fry slicers or wood-burnt signs; they are pieces of folk art. The first is an oil drum lid from Haiti which has been transformed into a lacy landscape of leaves, flowers and birds.

The second treasure is a retablo, or chest of San Marcos. These figure filled boxes are made by artists in Peru and were originally portable shrines. Ironically, I found the Peruvian shrine in the Chinese Pavilion.

The last treasure is a lady…an extremely heavyset, clay lady from Oaxaca, Mexico. To get her home, I had to convince my spouse to pay a quick visit to the Fair for the sole purpose of hauling her out.

She has graced our deck for many years now and has undergone a metamorphosis. She started out gray and gradually turned white. Then, one year, she was entirely electric blue. When the azul faded away, her true terra cotta color was revealed. She’s our fair lady.

I must add a postscript here. Since our friend, Donna, retired from the Wisconsin State Fair, the Fair has lost its lustre for me. Donna was Poultry Superintendent for many years, and I must say that the fowl building rocked when she was the mother hen. I won’t be going to the Fair this year, but I have my souvenirs.