My Wandering Attention

Hole Punch Clouds or Fallstreak Holes Over Nazareth

2009-10-23T18:12:00.005-04:00

Yesterday morning in the skies over Nazareth, Pennsylvania, these atmospheric phenomena were visible for while. Called hole punch clouds or fallstreak holes, they happen when water vapor clouds start to turn into ice crystal clouds, starting from a central point. They look like places where an alien ship rose into the sky.

The ice crystals that form are heavier than the water vapor and they begin to fall. That's not always visible from our perspective, but in the example below you can see the crystals falling towards the left.

Later in the day, the sky looked like this:

But that's a whole different kind of phenomenon. I think they are Stratocumulus undulatus or Altocumulus undulatus. You tell me!

Wild and Cultivated, a nature column, the early May edition

2009-04-19T20:03:00.007-04:00

My wandering attention wandered into the attic this week and some of my old nature columns from the Kutztown Patriot. This is the one I wrote for early May.

I've been to the country, my sneakers on the familiar paths, and it's true: "Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands, Clothed in the blooming garb of spring!"

The wildflowers, old friends, are showing their faces, blooming now where I first saw them more than 35 years ago, where they have bloomed since long before I came upon the scene, and where they'll bloom, I hope--perhaps against hope--long after I make my exit.

Spring is a familiar and comfortable place. It brings to us not just what we love, but what we're used to: dandelions, houseflies, clover, robins . . . without them the world wouldn't seem like home. The coming of May is like stepping into a room in your grandparents' house. No matter how you change, it stays the same.

A lot happens at once in early May. The threat of frost finally passes, trees leaf out, insects appear, and the last wave of migratory birds begins to arrive. The final ingredients are assembled and the dough of summer is set up to rise.

It's all coordinated, of course. Nature runs an efficient household. Insects hatch out just as the leaves they eat spread in the sun. Birds return from the south in time to begin feasting on the caterpillars, grubs, wasps, beetles, and butterflies that have just appeared. The timing is perfect.

glimpse of a scarlet tanager

For the most part, these are the birds of wood and field. Now come the brilliant scarlet tanagers, orioles and indigo buntings; the later warblers and vireos; and the most beautiful voices of the forest, the woodland thrushes (except for the hermit thrush, who is an early bird). Others just pass through like the rose-breasted grosbeak, who sometimes stops at feeders on his way to more northern or remote locales.

The only real feeder bird among this group is the ruby-throated hummingbird. The first year, I had my feeder out for two months, cleaning it and making new nectar every two or three days, before I finally saw a hummer in the garden. But when he showed up, it was worth it!

There's nothing like watching a hummingbird after sunset, sitting on a lilac twig and jumping up to grab insects, turning at the smallest sound so that his throat sparkles like sequins on the gown of a starlet. He zooms over to hover at the feeder one last time, and then he's gone until morning.

I put my feeder out in mid- to late April. Despite a tiny brain and a trip to and from the Yucatan, a hummer can remember the exact spot where a feeder hung the year before, so my feeder could be his first stop when he returns. As the season progresses, I see more females than males, that is until the cardinal flowers bloom in late July. Then a male takes up residence and chases any who get near the hummingbird equivalent of riches.

Since ancient times, the fertile weeks of early May have been celebrated as the time of the female, Mother Earth, the Goddess. Animals born in April venture out into the world with their mothers. Many birds are sitting on eggs or feeding young.Plants thrive and soil is warm enough for planting. It's the perfect time for Mother's Day.

Some of the best Mother's Day gifts are gardening gifts. Dig a new bed for her. Give her pots of herbs or flats of vegetables or flowers. Plant a lilac for her! It will bloom at this time every year.Put in a perennial--a daylily, a peony, a bleeding heart or one of the others, and she'll have it for years to come. If I know Mom, she'll thank you for it again every year when it blooms.

Perennials in the garden, like wildflowers in the woods, give us something to watch for in the round of the seasons. While human ways and traditions may falter or change, nature's traditions go on forever.

I wish a happy Mother's Day to my mother, to all the mothers out there, and to nature, Mother Earth, still feeding, protecting, and delighting us after all these years. And until next time, keep your eyes open!

Volunteers in Our Lawn and Garden: Two Foods, a Cat Intoxicant and Insect Repellent, and an Entheogen

2008-07-08T06:02:00.000-04:00

Catnip, Nepeta cataria, is one of the plants that has appeared without invitation on our property. Last year it was a small plant and I let it stay for amusement's sake. This year it is the sizable bush you see above. It is currently in bloom, but I am sorry to say that the honeybees that frequented it and the white clovers scattered through the lawn are absent this year. Bumblebees or some relative thereof are working gamely to step into the gap left by our beloved disappearing Apis. Neighborhood cats come by our place to amuse themselves at this plant. It can also be used as an insect repellent.

Another volunteer in my world is the Indian tobacco or Lobelia inflata, known by some as an entheogen. Look that one up. It's poisonous, but as with many poisonous substances small quantities are used medicinally. I grow three other species of lobelia in my gardens, but this one showed up on its own initiative. I'm unlikely to try it. Smoking a little isn't fatal, but caustic enough so that, I have read, it was an amusement of indigenous boys to tell the recently-arrived Europeans that it was good to smoke, in order to enjoy watching their coughing, tearing and retching. Boys are the same everywhere.

Purslane, or Portulaca oleracea, is one of the most common of "weeds," and the best non-seafoods source of Omega 3 fatty acids. Here it volunteers next to a Vinca minor I planted. It is eaten in many parts of the world, but stateside most of us pull it out. I have left it in because I plan to eat some.

Grapevine--I don't know what species, likely Vinis labrusca or riparia. This was no doubt planted by a bird who ate the grape somewhere else. Of course this is a food plant, but more interestingly for me, it is a secondary source for one of the substances I am taking in the herbal protocol for Lyme. I take resveratrol derived from Polygonum cuspidatum (which does volunteer at the park just a few blocks away), but grapes are the best known source of this substance. Hello, friend!

There are many more volunteers in my little yard, but I'll end today with this old acquaintance, lamb's quarters, one of the goosefoots or Chenopodiums, in this case, Chenopodium album or alba. A small oxalis stricta, or yellow wood sorrel is struggling to life there next to it. I usually pull the latter on sight. I quote from a site on little known food crops: "Fat hen - Chenopodium alba: A common European annual weed that is a distant relative of quinoa. A good leaf crop and spinach substitute that also has potential as a seed crop with some selection. Seed is small but has 16-18% protein, should be soaked before eating to remove bitter saponins." Another green. I can add it to my purlane for dinner tonight.

So while the lobelia may give me pause, the other plant volunteers I've shown here today have only good things to offer me if I am perceptive enough to notice them and humble enough to accept them. Interesting, if only to me.

Volunteers of the Plant Community

2008-07-07T15:24:00.001-04:00

Fennel that grew itself from seed outside the window I see from my computer.

Okay, so after Eric was bitten by a tick and put into the hospital, I became obsessed with tick-borne illnesses. Then interested in Lyme, then amazed at how Lyme symptoms were all the symptoms I'd had for the last 15 or so years (since back when I lived in upstate New York, where Lyme is relatively common, and where I spent a whole lot of time in the woods).

Our family doctor's test for Lyme yielded a negative result, but research showed that those tests mean little or nothing. Then I ran across Stephen Harrod Buhner's book, Healing Lyme. He was already a favored author of mine, because his attitude toward plants as beings was similar to the one I'd felt as a child and on and off as I got older.

I started his Lyme protocol of several herbs. At first it was horrendous, much like when I went on an anti-yeast diet years ago--headaches, brain fog, inability to do much, just wanting to lie down all the time. But when I looked it up, people who had done the protocol before me said that it was caused by the things dying off. They said keep taking it and suggested a couple of things to ease the anguish. Their suggestions helped and after a week or so, the harsh conditions began to lift.

Weeds, aka volunteer plants along a street in Nazareth.

And now, a little over 3 weeks into it, I feel better than I have in years. My knee hasn't fully recovered, but today I found myself smiling as I walked down the street, just feeling good. This is almost unheard-of in my life. For over a decade, every day has been a struggle between me and the creepy, relentless darkness that dogged my thinking, a darkness that seemed almost to come from outside. I didn't want life. I despised myself. Most of the time I looked forward to death and only didn't kill myself because I wasn't, in my judgment, worthy of death. Now all that has lifted. I feel like just another person living life.

So now, of course, my ever-wandering attention has turned to plants, herbs in particular. Buhner has said something to the effect that invasive plants may be invading in order to help us with new invasive diseases or to help us with other problems, that they are volunteering in our cities and gardens in order to volunteer to heal and help us. That idea captivated me, especially because one of the herbs I'm now taking is one that I've spent many hours eradicating in the nearby state park.

The plants that grow in a healthy yard instead of the often-preferred grass monoculture, with a bee, a sign of health.

So what if it's true? What if all of these species that grow where no one has planted them, those we call weeds, are bearing gifts for us? Sounds crazy to many people, of course, but I've seen enough unbelievable things happen to know that the standard explanation we're given for how things happen in the world is inadequate to the truth. I'm reserving judgment.

For a while I'll be exploring the volunteers in the garden and the town, woods and fields around me, looking at what the earth may be saying in its green language.

Prognostification, aka Guess at the Future

2008-06-23T08:36:00.001-04:00

How way leads on to way, and
Each layer opens another

A side outcome of the further study of the action and effects of tick-borne diseases and other chronic illnesses caused by hard-to-find spirochettes, protozoans and viruses, will be a technology in which genetically-altered microorganisms will be introduced to the body in order to better fit a person for a certain job or career. Right now science has not caught up with the extent of infection across the human population, and eventually some illnesses now thought to be caused by other factors will turn out to have been caused or exacerbated by these stealth organisms. Their study will show that not only illnesses but some advantages are caused by related organisms, and eventually that information will be used for people's benefit.

Welcome, Anyone.

2008-06-18T21:34:00.000-04:00

Welcome, anyone.

I'm starting this in order to have a place for when I feel like saying something. I'll post pictures, comment, post links to things that strike my fancy. I hope to practice not being embarrassed by myself at times when I'm corny, sentimental, or trying to be cool when I'm clearly too old.

I'll be back sometime to post again.