A dimunitive beauty

When A.R. and I went hiking the other day, I was excited to find one of my old-time woodland neighbors in bloom. It only grows in two places that I know of in the entire forest behind my house. She wanted to pick it but I had to help Her understand that this flower is too scarce to do that.

The little beauty is called Chimaphila maculata (Spotted wintergreen.)

Nature Walk

My little Niece-in-Law, A.R., showed up to Sunday dinner dressed beautifully, as always, in a dress and fancy shoes. I reminded Her that we had talked about a nature walk for the afternoon, so She got Her PaPa to drive Her home to change.

I am a firm believer that for a child to be pyschologically healthy, they need to have times where they learn the importance of being dressed up,clean and mannerly; and they also need times where they are out and about in the dirt and the mud, or learning how to use basic tools to take things apart; or just reveling in being alive. That goes one hundred percent for Girls as well as boys.

I had so looked forward to this nature walk, especially since acquiring Rachel Carson's book recently about helping children to maintain their sense of natural wonder.

I was very honored to be trusted, I a grown man, by myself with the safety and care of this little Girl. That is so rare of a parent these days, with very good reason. You may know, and I certainly know, that I would select the slowest and most painful death possible for myself rather than hurt a child in any possible way -- but a parent cannot read a caregiver's mind. Trust. It was all about trust.

So, finally, we meandered down into the woods. She was far too little to use my big walking stick, so we found Her one that was more Her size. I remembered what Carson wrote and just let A.R. explore and ask questions, rather than be subjected to a litany of botanical nomenclature.

I did point out and identify poison ivy and help her remember the tricks to identifying it: leaves of three; with smooth, not sawtoothed edges.

She found the skull of a raccoon or possum and insisted on bringing it home ... along with a handful of rocks, little freshwater clam shells and a sprig of wild ginger.

We reached the creek and She was a little reluctant to take Her shoes off and dip Her feet into the water -- but again remembering Carson, I knew that She needed that sensory experience. So I didn't press the issue. I dipped my toes in the water first and She eventually did the same.

I let Her clamber around on the creek boulders, ever poised to catch Her if She slipped, biting my tongue as She neared the edge where the water flows a little fast, doing my best to keep the difficult but necessary balance between over-protection and risk.

The hike wasn't all pleasant. She hit up at one point against a nasty branch of multiflora rose and it hurt -- but these experiences are needed, too, the development of woodland awareness -- one always watches where one's feet are going -- critical not just for avoiding thorns but also snakes and ankle-twisting loose rocks or holes.

She came home a little muddy, a little soppy, but full of excitement about Her day and the treasures that She had found. I hope we made some memories, the kind that I treasure from my own childhood.

A failure to help

I am a fast lane freeway driver.

Freeways are boring, especially when one is traversing the same one that one has traversed for decades.

So I do not dawdle.

There is a drawback to this, however. One, my view is invariably one of a long, grimy concrete jersey wall. The scenery two lanes over to my right is just a vague green blur.


Two, I like to help people. Just always have. Was raised that way. Going 70-ish on the freeway, by the time your eyes register someone on the side of the road hefting a spare tire and your brain beats down all the reasons that you shouldn't stop, you are a quarter mile ahead of said person and your chance to help is gone.

Today, I espied a young lady crouched in the most dangerous of places, on the freeway shoulder beside her driver's side tire, preparing to change a flat, or possibly already in the last stages of doing so.

Stop and help? A mere second or so of cudgeling my inner wimp into submission -- I'd be late for work, I might die, etc. -- and I was ready to be of assistance. But of course, I couldn't. I was too far left and too far ahead.

Nevertheless, I decided to turn around at the next exit and go back. I did, but She and the car were gone. She'd done the job just fine on Her own, which is entirely to be expected of a sensible Woman in the 21st Century.

I couldn't help but feel that my need for speed cost me this morning, the chance to dirty my hands but brighten a day.

Water Willow

I was so excited this Memorial Day when, down at a certain wetland with my Sweetie, I discovered Water Willow in bloom.I have searched for this plant for years, ever since first coming across it in a distant location where I have not seen it since.

It is of course not related to true willows, which don't have flowers like this. It's in the acanthus family, whose more typical members are thorny residents in dry areas. Acanthus leaves show up on a lot of ancient Greek art, for example.

The genus name for water willow, justicia, comes from James Justice, an 18th century Scottish botanist. I wonder if he choose it in a proud moment of discovery or whether it was homage paid by an admirer of his work. Things to research, things to research.

I trimmed off a stem and am now trying to root it in a bucket of water for eventual transplant into the bog garden that I hope to build someday in place of the crumbling deck in my backyard. I'm just not a sit-on-the-deck kind of guy.

Now I have a new quest: to find the only other representative of this family that is native to my area: the so-called wild petunia, ruellia spp. Once again, it is no relation to actual petunias, which are in the potent nightshade family.

Word of the Day

Adaw: Daunt or subdue: Comes from the Old English "of + dagum," literally "out of days."

"Daunt" sounds so sissy and foppish, like two dandies dueling. Far more true to our hairy, barbarian, Anglo-Saxon past is the grunted vow, "I shall adaw thee, thou vile curr, I shall end thy days like the dog thou art!"

Glue traps

From sad experience, I have learned the following:

If you ever feel compelled to use a glue trap to catch mice or rats, and something gets caught on it that you didn't intend, such as a little bird -- can happen quite easily in a crawlspace or shed ...

Use vegetable oil to dissolve the glue and release the captive.