Taken near Stockland, IL at sunrise

argiope aurantia, our charlotte

This little girl was spotted in our front bushes in May, 2009. She took up residence there and remained for the entire summer. When I arrived home from work in the early morning I would check for her presence in the web. If she disappeared for a day, we would worry that something terrible had happened to her, but sure enough she returned soon after, sometimes in her old web, sometimes in a new one. I guess you could say that she had a high "web-site tenacity," which is the probability of how long spiders remain in their webs before they find another site. This term was described in 1973, long before the internet was around! She had a good food source there, but we think she just liked us. :-)

She ate flies and beetles that ventured unknowingly into her lethal web. After paralyzing them with venom, she wrapped them tightly in silk.

Her abdomen, which was usually flat, grew large and round and stayed that way for days after eating. We came to know when it was time for her next meal.

As time went on, she somehow carved for herself a little depression in the leaves so that she could expand the web out further. After all, she was getting larger, and needed to be able to catch prey that was worthy of her size.

In this photo she holds a large winged insect, perhaps a cicada. We did see a few of those last year.

My favorite photo of her. The yellow and black markings on her legs and abdomen are clear as she rested after a long meal.

Her home began to extend above the bushes.

When the lower bushes were too confining for the size of the web she wanted to build, she moved up and anchored onto the pillar of our front porch and the Euonymus Alatus, or "burning bush," growing next to the house.

One morning, after I did my usual check for her, she was gone again from the web. I searched the bricks and within the leaves. I finally found her on the soffit of the front of the house. I knew it was time to say goodbye. She was drifting away from where we could be close to her and watch the details of her life play out. The mornings were becoming chillier, and I knew that she couldn't hang around forever. It was time for her to build a nest in which to make her egg sac. After laying the eggs, she would grow weaker and eventually pass away.

We had adopted her as part of our extended family, and last summer I found her offspring on some of the bushes.  I called them my natural mosquito-killers.  This spring we should be seeing Charlotte's grandchildren.  I will welcome them joyously into my garden too!

convention of the river spirits

black coal river

the strawberry saga continues

Here we have an intact strawberry, full of hope and promise for a long ripening, and almost ready to give up its juicy sweetness to the humans who planted, watered, and cared for it:         

  

This next one shows that I need to go into stealth mode with night vision goggles in order to witness the precise moment of ripening (before the birds wake-up and have a feast):         

                              

Finally, this last specimen has helped me to realize that maybe the farmer's market is a better option:

Hopefully I'll make it there early enough on Saturday before all the strawberries sell out.

train them up (or down, or sideways)

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."-- Proverbs 22:6

I thought of this verse today while walking through my garden boxes and looking over the strawberries that I planted about a month ago. My fruits and vegetables are also my children, and even better because they don't talk back or try to sit on and flatten the cat. Although I'd never trade my real kids for an insect-free organic row of lettuce, I swear it.

Strawberries are unruly and don't like to do what they're told. They need to be trained, just like children, although I have a hunch that training strawberries is a slightly easier task.

We have tiny wild strawberries growing all over our yard. For the past couple of years I've fought with the ones that grow through my daylilies. Every couple of months I go out there and yank them up (guiltily), and before you know it they are back again as if nothing ever happened (they are very forgiving, to put it nicely).  That's because strawberry plants grow from a bottom crown, and they send out long runners in all directions to make more little plants. When you pull them up, you have to get them at each crown section. Even then, there are always more lurking under the bushes just waiting to creep around the corner.

Those wild strawberries have been a good lesson for me on how to keep the "domesticated" ones under control. (Disclaimer: this advice cannot be applied to marriage.)

So here's what I did:

I made a corral for my berries by using the holes in concrete blocks (I got them for free on freecycle.org--I love that website!).

Three on one side, and three on the other:

I filled the middle of the box with some peat, compost, and top soil to help the drainage issue (when it rains it turns into a muddy pool, since our soil is mainly reddish-colored clay).

Here they are a month later, a little larger, the ground a little greener.  I get so used to the brownness of winter that I don't think of it as dreary until I see a side-by-side comparison.

Some strawberry blossoms:

As they grow and send out runners, I plan to turn the strawberries in toward the center of the box to keep them from taking over my yard (although choking out the rampant unstoppable Bermuda grass and wild onions might be a benefit to letting them go crazy!).

I've read that it is best to lop off the flowers the first year so that the plants can spend their youth growing rather than reproducing (sounds like good advice).  But I want fresh strawberries this year, if only a few!  Call me greedy.  And hopefully by next year I'll have a box full of yummy strawberries to pick in the spring and summer!

Chihuly Nights at Cheekwood botanical garden

We have a membership to Cheekwood botanical garden in Nashville. In November, we went and saw some of the artwork of Dale Chihuly displayed throughout the grounds.

I've had this post in draft since then, but just thought to finish it up when my cousin in Seattle said on facebook that the powers that be are tearing down an old amusement park to build a Chihuly glass exhibit. I value art, and it does have a place in the education of children, but come on now. Where are the priorities???

the after-Christmas before-January-4th void

Santa has come and gone. Maybe you were lucky enough to get a quick shot of him climbing up the chimney for the kids who demanded "proof" this year:



The gifts have been opened and the torn wrapping paper cleaned out from underneath the couch.

Christmas dinner has been ingested and digested and flushed away, with a few cups of eggnog left in the fridge.

If you contributed to China's economy more than you really wanted to this holiday season and couldn't afford to take a vacation, you have now hit the void. The "Christmas break void" is one of the peaks of a parent's desperation throughout the year (not to rival summer break) to keep the kids busy so that they don't put ribbons and lipstick on the cats out of sheer boredom, but with no money to do anything.

I was able to dig up $20 from a dusty corner this afternoon to take the kids to an indoor family playroom. We did R/C car and helicopter racing, played fuss ball, pool and air hockey, and climbed through a treehouse.

The boy will be a pool shark by age 13 if I have my way
(after we positively ID the cue ball)

Because of poor planning, I wasn't wearing the right pants for the situation. They were jeans, but low riders that didn't allow for bending and crouching. It took a lot of coordinated movements and slick clothing readjustments in order to avoid flashing half the building from up in the air.

My kids spotted friends to play with, so I grabbed the nearest magazine and plopped down on a couch. Finally, a little me time while they were happy and occupied.

The magazine was La Vie Claire. I had never heard of it before, but it was full of gardening photos, so I couldn't put it down.

Lately I've been searching for worthwhile New Year's resolutions, not something thrown lazily together such as "exercise 3 times a week" or "shave my legs daily" (weekly maybe?).

One of the quotes in the magazine was "Do something creative every day." Am I sheltered or something, or do I just spend too much time reading the news? That quote had never passed my eyes before. But I am now making it my own. Resolution #1. Even if it's as simple as taking one photo, because I don't always have time to write.

When we finally returned home, my hands were shaking from a near-lethal cappuccino/Rice Krispie treat/Lucky Charms combination. Maybe that's why I decided to take this photo tonight:


I've been playing around and experimenting with the settings on my digital camera lately (forever an amateur), and I'm fascinated by how a slow shutter speed will make stationary lights gyrate and put them into motion, when in reality they are standing still.

I created this photo tonight, which I have named "Holiday Procession." The streaks are shaped like faces with torsos; the figures march forward two by two in both a somber and celebratory way. The context is yours to imagine.

The Christmas break void has turned out to be fruitful for me. I have gained a little direction for next year--to focus more on creating, rather than sitting for longer than I should as a passive participant of life behind my computer screen.

Now I just need to get up the will to pull out the Play Doh again so that my little ones can enjoy a bit of creativity too (perhaps I have a future fashion designer on my hands, since she has recently discovered that the mushy pink and blue glop adheres beautifully to her pants).

full moon over my house

Last night, I left work early because I've been fighting off the crud (Is this a Southern word? I learned it here.)

As I got out of my car and turned toward the house, the most beautiful scene was in front of me.

A jet contrail streaked across the sky beside the moon.



The full moon illuminated the details of the clouds, reminiscent of Van Gogh's "Starry Night."



There aren't many nights like this in late November.

tomato with personality

This year I harvested several oddly-shaped tomatoes. Here's the strangest one of them:



I picked this guy while still green because the temperature outside had dropped below freezing, and some of the others on the vine were already starting to get soft spots. This might have happened because the blossom was set when the temperature was below 50 or so degrees. This was, in fact, a late season (October) tomato, and I picked it this month.

Either way, I'll take this little guy over any of those uniformly round and red and tasteless specimens in the grocery store!

explaining death to a 4-year-old

This morning my husband's grandmother died. I worked last night, so sometime while I was sleeping he explained what happened to my daughter.

Later on before dinner, she hid behind my son's bed. I realized she was crying, and when I asked her what was the matter she burst out with "Grandma died!" So we had our first conversation about death.

"Can I touch her?"

"Yes, but you can't laugh or play around. It's a very serious occasion at a wake."

"Did God take her to heaven?"

"Yes, she's up in heaven with God. Her body will be in the casket, but she's not really there. It's just her body."

"Did they rip her head off?

"No."

She doesn't have a head anymore?"

"Uh, yeah, she still has a head. She just can't talk to you anymore. What made her who she is, how she talks to you, that won't be there. Go on and eat your soup now, sweetie."

She seemed satisfied with this. We'll see how the wake goes.

Rest in peace, Gram.