The Summer of Cicadas and One Lonely Wren

There is the whistling tinnitus like a not-so-distant siren,

the bulging red eyes, the crunchy wings under our feet, 

dogs snap and snack, I duck and dodge 

their aimless flight on my daily walk.

They are ugly and stupid as they wander through the air

until smacking into something solid

upon discovering it is not a lover they move on

finding refuge on a mailbox or a telephone pole.

A lonely male wren sings every moment of daylight

somehow confined to the hemlock tree near my window

his loud tenacious call is incongruent with his tiny bird-body

always prepared for his lady, he wakes me each morning at 5:15.

Owls and coyotes in the dark 

birds and bugs in the light

in the jungle of my suburban wooded backyard

everyone just wants to get laid.

These are a Few of My Favorite Things

The one blooming' thing in our yard, but it's worth waiting for.
My two favorite creatures - Rowdy the cool canary and Stella the magnificent mutt.
The Rodin sculpture room at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
A deer in my yard.
A happy house plant.

Anne Frank

"As long as this exists," I thought, "and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts, I cannot be unhappy." The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature, As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.

Anne Frank
From The Diary of A Young Girl

The Sun, Wind and Tide

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind and tide ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

Thomas Edison
Inventor
1847-1931

Stalking

The blue heron has been at the edge
of the pond all morning, stalking fish
with surreal patience, with the stillness

of a lawn ornament or my unmoving
body lying next to yours at night.
He makes no sound, just like us.

The fish does not know that the heron
is there, even though surely it could look up
and see what is so close.

The heron crouches low, just as I am
sometimes, as we are,
half of what could be.

Then the great bird sees what it wants,
its mouth plunges into the water and pulls
out the prize that will sustain its life.

The fish does not fight the inevitable.
The heron stands proudly upright to savor
the moment before swallowing the fish whole.

Around the Emerald Necklace of Cleveland

The first photo is Squire's Castle in the North Chagrin Reservation. The next two are at Brandywine Falls in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and the last is nearby on the towpath trail which will soon extend from Akron to Cleveland. Amazing beauty that we all take for granted too often.

When despair for the world grows in me . . .

I've realized lately that the divisive state of our country, the injustices I read about and see on the news daily are beginning to stretch my soul and spirit.

From a young age I had a sense of indignation at injustices and it was then that I began writing about them. Then, as an adult, I became completely consumed with raising children, various relationships, and discovering myself and how I would spend my time in life. My 30's and 40's were turbulent, and life is a little calmer now.

My mind is uncongested of so many yearnings now. I attribute this to my new-found frustrations with politicians, education, infighting and generally NOT coexisting!

There is a running dialogue in my head on various topics and I don't like it! There may be times when righteous anger makes a real difference, but in reality we have very little say and very little impact on the larger world. We can, of course, make smaller positive changes in our own corner of the world and sometimes this is all we can do.

In a moment of serendipity I came across this poem today. The first and last lines captivated me. I don't want to live in a state of anger or even frustration so tonight instead of watching the news I will come into the peace of wild things.

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Coexisting With . . . Crows.

I just read an amazing book called "Crow Planet" by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Your first reaction is probably - crows? Yuk! Those disgusting birds picking at bloody roadkill?

Well, of course they are just finding their daily bread like the rest of us. Personally I am always enchanted with birds. They are my favorite of God's creatures (along with dogs) and I think they are all beautiful (even the Canadian geese that traverse and befoul our yards and neighborhoods). Haupt convinces us of the intelligence and ingenuity of the ever-present crows. She tells of how they have learned to drop a nut from a tree onto a road and wait for a car to run it over and crack it before swooping down to retrieve it. She tells of how playful the crows are, taking a stick into the air, dropping it and then catching it on the way down.

What this book really did for me is remind me to slow down and observe what is around me. I love seeing the wildlife around me, but do I really observe what they are doing?

I want to co-create a nation of watchers, of naturalists-in-progress, none of us perfect, all sharing in the effort of watching, knowing, understanding, protecting, and living well alongside the wild life with whom we share our cities, our neighborhoods, our households, our yards, our ecosystems, our earth. All of us in cafes, pulling out our laptops and beside them our binoculars, just in case we want to see how that crow outside the window is doing with his bit of garbage, how his feet work to hold down the paper bag while his nimble bill extracts the french fries. Just in case we want to see, above the crows, the swooping swallows that only days ago arrived all the way from Mexico, violet feathers shimmering. From the swallows we can turn to the person at the table across the way and say, "Did you ever see a more beautiful color of blue?"

This Grand Show

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming; on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
John Muir
naturalist, explorer, writer 1838-1914


Photo of sunrise on the Carribean July 2011

Falling Water

In March we had a little getaway and I got to visit something I had always wanted to see - and it did not disappoint!! "Falling Water" is a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built for the Kaufman family (of Kaufman's Department Stores) in 1936 in southwestern Pennsylvania. It is built into the natural landscape over a waterfall with reinforced concrete and a cantilevered design that seems to defy gravity. In 1963 the Kaufman's only child donated it to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and it became a museum in 1964. Over 6 million people have since visited.

I found it to be truly beautiful and hugely inspiring. The second photo shows a living room "hatch" that could be opened to stairs that go straight down to the river and waterfall. Spectacular!

TREES!

Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy, they will sing before the Lord.
Psalm 96:12

Oh, how they are singing on this glorious October day. It's 10-10-10!

Squaw Rock

Only a few minutes from my house in an area of the magnificent Cleveland Metroparks system is Squaw Rock. The trails around it are cut into hilly prehistoric rock formations. If you walk just a short way from the parking lot you can see the sculpture. A blacksmith named Henry Church sculpted it into the rock near the Chagrin River in 1885 to tell the story of the Native Americans, which he called,"the rape of the Indians by the white man."

Into the sandstone he carved a quiver of arrows, a giant serpent, an eagle, a woman with a skull behind her and a baby in a papoose. The other side of the rock has an image of a log cabin and the first capital building in Washington DC.

You never know what you may find on a short walk in a park.

First Swimming Lesson - Tissue Alert!!

Nature

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
John Muir
naturalist and exploror
1838-1914

Look What We've Done

Did you ever stop to notice all the blood we've shed before? Have you ever stopped to notice this crying Earth, its weeping shores?
What have we done to the world? Look what we've done.
Michael Jackson - from Earth Song

Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers, not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve.
I Peter 5:2

The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel.
Proverbs 12:10

How many are your works, O Lord. In wisdom you made them all: the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number, living things both large and small.
Psalm 104:24-25.

Earth Day - TULIPS!

Critter Stories

I never tire of looking out at the birds at my feeders.For the past couple months a red-bellied woodpecker has visited it every day. He's a beautiful bird and I'm not sure why he's called red-bellied, but I enjoy his presence at the feeder.

I've also had a recent little miracle at my house. Since I love birds so much I always have one as a pet. I've had friendly and trainable parakeets and one nasty one that lived for 11 long years. I prefer the songs of canaries and my first one lived for over 10 years. When he died my kids surprised me with Sunny. He sang gloriously for years and then stopped. I assumed it was from old age. We think he's about 9 now and this past month he decided to start singing again after several silent years! It started out with little twitterings and now he's getting a little bolder in his songs. I can't get over it.

Then the other day I saw a red fox cross the street on my way to work. It was a residential area, but also wooded. I never saw a fox until a few years ago. They are very pretty animals and come by their sly reputation honestly. It was cool to see one.

I've had other animal encounters over the years. At one sort of decrepit house I lived in long ago a black bird made it's way into the kitchen through the siding. I panicked because I had little children in the house. Finally I opened the door and he flew out. That same house had raccoons pull back the shingles and crawl into the attic!

In another house my kids and I came home to see raccoon paw prints in the fire place. If it weren't for the glass doors we would have been sharing our food with them I'm sure. I wrote about a rat encounter in a poem. See HERE.

It seems every community in America is overrun with deer. I love them, but our city "culls" them every year, so I don't see as many as I used to. I have seen coyotes twice in my backyard. Once when my dog, Stella was running away from one. Did you know that coyotes make a horrific sound in the middle of the night while mating? A fun fact. I have also seen mink in my neighborhood, which I never had seen in my life. My last critter thought is the day I looked out my back window and saw Stella, a little 30 lb. doggie, frolicking UNDER a bucking buck! I screamed and she came, avoiding being trampled to death. Even beautiful deer can get testy.

Random Photo Saturday

Stella rolling in the grass - must be nice to be a dog...

Tinker's Creek Gorge in Bedford - a view like this is pretty rare in flat northeast Ohio. It was a misty night, but still a lovely sight.

YELLOW (around my house)

Amazing Photograph

This is a photo by Pat Gaines that was in the Denver Post recently. It is a red tail hawk being harassed by a kingbird. To read more go to http://denverpost.com/news/ci_13452818.