Williamsburg Wordpecker

Mission Accomplished: Strawberries

2012-05-06T16:41:00.001-04:00

Ken with our 8 quarts of berries!

It's that time of year and the strawberry fields were calling me. Ken and I caught the Surry Ferry after lunch and headed to College Run Farms to pick our own. Between picking them in the field and washing and sorting them at home and taste-testing along the way, I think I've gotten more than my daily recommended allowance of vitamin C for today. Yum. Oh, and we had some homemade strawberry ice cream at the farm too, of course. Extra yum.

Gulls at the Ferry dock

Of course, I miss Hidden Brook Farm in Toano. As far as I can tell, it was the last pick-your-own strawberry farm in James City County. Farmer Hunt died this past year and his family decided to discontinue farming. The thing about going to Mr. Hunt's was that you could always come back with honey and eggs and whatever else he might be selling that day. He will be missed. His farm and his love of farming have slipped away.

The 1st strawberry from my garden

Now it's back to the strawberries. I'll consult some of my old recipes. Ken has gone to the store for pound cake (instead of shortcake) and other dinner ingredients. Two of our boys will be here for dinner to enjoy them with us. And I'll take some strawberries and cake to Mom and Dad when I visit them tomorrow.

P.S. The strawberries in my garden are ripening too. I picked and ate the first one (pictured above!) this morning. Delicious.

Good Karma

2012-04-29T10:50:00.000-04:00

Good Karma filled our home when Ken's friend, Frank, a Buddhist monk, spent Saturday evening and Sunday morning with us. Frank and Ken were high school friends and they and their Northern Virginia track team buddies have started to get together from time to time to remember their youth. Their get-togethers usually coincide with Frank's trips home from Thailand.

On this trip, Ken brought Frank and his mother here to spend the night before proceeding to Wilmington, North Carolina, where Frank's mother is moving to be closer to her other son. On their way south, Ken will take them to a Thai monestary in Carrollton for a visit. Ken is earning merit, Frank says, due to his kindness.

I have been intrigued by Buddhism since becoming friends with a Buddhist man in 1995. I learned from Xavier and have read a bit, but fresh conversations with a monk have nudged my curiosity and understanding along. I cherry-pick concepts that appeal to me. Multiple lives. Selflessness. Simple living. Community. Good Karma. Frank is a forest monk. As a Master Naturalist, this appeals to me. Yes, the forest, nature, does have a calming and mind-clearing effect. In the words of John Burroughs, "I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order."

March Blooms on Our Wedding Week

2012-03-31T10:19:00.002-04:00

Wedding Day Morning

When my daughter announced that March 24 would be her wedding day, I never imagined what a beautiful day it would be. Oh, of course the day was beautiful inside! But it was unexpectedly beautiful outside as well. Redbud and dogwood lined the Colonial Parkway for those traveling from Gloucester to Williamsburg. New leaves painted the sky bright green -- an appropriate tone since the wedding colors were navy blue and Granny Smith apple green.

Wild Columbine

On Tuesday before the wedding, on my way home from teaching school in Gloucester, I stopped at Green Planters and discovered that many new perennials were in stock. I bought blooming Jacob's Ladder to intersperse with my early-blooming Golden Ragwort. The owner told me that many more native plants were expected on Thursday, so I stopped there again. I bought Virginia Bluebells, Creeping Wood Phlox, and Cinnamon Ferns. They fit nicely with the blooming Wild Columbine and, of course, Daffodils that have been blooming since late February. I planted through the twilight, until dark fell and the first guests arrived.


Our family gathers around

My husband found the perfect quote for me in a comic strip that appeared in the Washington Post that Thursday: "In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt" (Margaret Atwood). A little bit of it was still under my nails, freshly manicured on Friday in a opaque shade of buff pink.

On Saturday it rained midday, hard enough to wash the church parking lot. Streams yellow with pollen carried it away just in time. The bride was told that rain on your wedding day is a sign of good luck. As the guests began to arrive, so did the late afternoon sunshine.

Southern Toad

2012-03-13T21:07:00.000-04:00

It's 9 p.m. and still 70 degrees outside on this unseasonably warm night. Through the screen door I hear the call of a lone Southern Toad. According to eNature they emerge from their burrows after twilight to forage for insects. They breed from March to October in temporary water pools. It's been raining a lot lately and the yard is full of soft spots, so this must be an excellent time for mating. Ah yes. I believe I hear more than one now.

Early March Blooms

2012-03-03T16:00:00.000-05:00


Golden Ragwort - first blooms

On March 28, 2011, I took photos of the flowers, shrubs, and trees in my yard and wrote about them in a blog post so that I would have a record of botanical progress to have for year-to-year comparison. Well, as I said in last weekend's post about a Mourning Cloak Butterfly, 2012 has been a year for the record books. Today, when I looked around the yard, I saw Golden Ragwort beginning to bloom and it is pictured here. (The photo of Golden Ragwort in full bloom that I inserted in another post last year was taken on April 19, 2011!) So, yes indeed, things are blooming earlier.

Pulmonaria (Lungwort)

Another plant that I mentioned was blooming on March 28, 2011 in last year's post was Pulmonaria, or Lungwort. Like daffodils, which have been blooming for several weeks now, the Lungwort is native to Europe and Asia. I've watched these plants with interest, of course, (my yard was appropriately full of blooming Daffodils on St. David's Day) but they are not native to North America and I've really been paying closer attention to my native plants. I want to see how they are reacting to climate change. (In which, the polls say, more people now believe.)

Wild Columbine

Another native plant that I saw sending up shoots and preparing to bloom on March 28 last year was Wild Columbine. Yes, the same plant in my yard is just about at the same point in its preparation to bloom this year, but more than 3 weeks earlier. In another post from last year, I noted that I was enjoying watching Wild Columbine bloom in April.

The botanical progress that I documented last year showed trees leafing at the same time that the native plants were blooming. I'm not seeing that this year, but the buds are fat. Any day now.

My daughter is getting married in 3 weeks. Will the Dogwoods and other trees be leafing out by then? I do remember that on my first wedding day, 28 years ago on Derby Day in early May, the Dogwoods were beautiful in Williamsburg!

Mourning Cloak Butterfly

2012-02-25T18:04:00.000-05:00


Mourning Cloak Butterfly

The temperature in this part of Virginia set a record yesterday. I saw 84 degrees on my computer's Google gadget, but the paper says it only made it to 82. Anyway, that's still about 30 degrees warmer than the average temperature in February should be.

So, you can imagine my surprise when a butterfly swooped by and landed in my garden. And wouldn't you know I had my camera in my hand? I snapped a quick shot of the phenomena and downloaded it today. But a little research proved that this was not, however, unusual. Did you know that the Mourning Cloak is the state butterfly of Montana?

I would guess this has to do with the fact that the Mourning Cloak is a sign of summer that our northwestern friends cherish on a snowy day. Ahh! A butterfly in the snow. I recommend an article in Nature North to those who wish to learn a little more about this bug. The long-lived butterfly overwinters and hibernates. When it emerges, it mates and dies soon after.

I hope my little Mourning Cloak finds a friend.

Savoring the Smell

2012-01-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

My nephew's wife wrote a melancholy blog post this morning that would, I suppose, make any mother teary-eyed (Savoring the Smell of Baby For This Too Shall Pass). Those quiet moments with your baby. Rocking, nursing, knowing that it's cold outside but feeling safe inside. You're so close to that little one.

Leigh Ann is smitten by her baby and joyfully dotes on him. Mark, Leigh Ann, and baby Sam have recently returned to their home in Tennessee after spending time with my sister and her family for the holidays, which included a celebration of the baby's first birthday.

Funny. Before reading her post I'd just come downstairs from savoring the smell of my son's room. Actually, I hadn't thought of it as savoring at the time, but I guess that it was. Leigh Ann is right. The baby room smell and feeling did pass. My 22-year-old son left this morning after spending his Christmas break with us, home from graduate school, a 12-hours drive away. His room had been a mess for two weeks. But when I opened the door and stepped into it this morning I was met with the sight of clean floors and tabletops. The only mess was his rumpled bed . . . that I can't stand to launder just yet. It holds the impression and the smell of him. I want to hold on to the feeling of his being here just a little bit longer, to savor it.

I tried not to cry or over-do my goodbyes this morning because, after all, isn't this why we raise them so carefully? So that when they go, we feel they are ready and able. We let them go because this too shall pass and there will be a next chapter and a next.

We took his crib out of the attic for our first grandchild to use this Christmas.We've left it up in the guest room, formerly my daughter's room, and look forward to a visit again soon.

Savor on, Leigh Ann. It's the wonderful purview of motherhood. Hold your children close in body and hold on to the memories. The rooms will change, but you can close your eyes and take those memories out to savor again as needed.

My Prius Turns 100,000 Miles

2011-10-22T16:17:00.002-04:00

99,995 Miles

Today we celebrated eight years and 100,000 miles together! Me and my Prius. Woo-hoo! I love, love, love my Prius. There is absolutely no doubt about it. Unless there is an even more energy-efficient car by then, my next car will be a Prius too. I love my Prius!

99.996 Miles

And what's not to love about a car that's gotten 50 miles per gallon, plus or minus 5, for 8 years! Now that I'm commuting 57 miles (round trip) 3 days a week, my mileage is averaging about 53 to 57 MPG, probably because the speed limit on the Colonial Parkway third of the trip is 45 miles per hour. (Okay, you noticed the 40 in that last shot. I had to slow down to take this photo. Good thing there wasn't much traffic today!)

99,997 Miles

By commuting to Gloucester, however, my car has reached the 100,000 mile milestone a tad sooner than she might have. Nevertheless, I celebrated and captured the moment in pictures. Fittingly, we were traveling down the Colonial Parkway on the way home to Williamsburg from Gloucester when we hit the mileage milestone.

99,998 Miles

In 2003, when my daughter started to drive, Toyota was beginning to promote it's new bullet-shaped 2004 Prius model. The Prius hybrid was a new idea, but the sleek design was a great little lagniappe. As a M.B.A.-Turned-Vegetarian-Environmentalist, the fuel efficiency had me anyway. But as someone who loves great design, I just had to have it. So, I went to my local Toyota dealer and plunked down my $5,000 deposit in August of 2003. I was the second person on their waiting list. My daughter was excited too. I waited for the Prius and she waited for the Prius so that she would get my Honda, which I had thought was the best car on the road until I'd driven the Prius for about a week! My Prius arrived the week of Thanksgiving 2003. I was the second person in Williamsburg to own a Prius.

99,999 Miles

Bigger and roomier than my Honda, the Prius had lots of room for groceries, vacation stuff, moving kids in and out of college, and toting stuff back and forth to New Quarter Park. There is even enough room in the Prius to haul my 14.5 ft. kayak, seats down and tailgate secured with bungee cords. I've been to my local dealership faithfully, every 5,000 miles, for scheduled maintenance. I have not had a single problem with my Prius outside of recall notices, which were taken care of during scheduled maintenance trips. All that hoo-ha about brakes and stuff. Bah! Toyota took an undeserved bad-publicity hit on that, in my humble opinion.

100.000 at the Cheatham Exit!

Here we are at 100,000 miles and just under 8 years later. I don't anticipate trading her in anytime soon, but the Kelley Blue Book trade-in value is $6,550 and the sale value is $8,570. Hmmm. So that means that my Prius has cost me about $2,000 per year. Gas? Let's see ... at an average price of $2.50 per gallon since late 2003 and 50 MPG, I've spent $5,000 or $625 per year. Not bad, I suppose, to pay $2,625 a year for transportation in the good ole US of A these days. Like I said, I love my Prius!

Changes and a Brave New Blog

2011-10-19T13:54:00.000-04:00

Jamestown Rd. to Rt. 199

Blogging on Williamsburg Wordpecker has slacked off this summer and fall as a career move is taking up more of my time. You may remember that I wrote a blog post a year and a half ago about my change of direction and what prompted me to take it. Since then I've posted random thoughts about this new work I'm pursuing in speech-language pathology.

7:30 a.m. on the Colonial Parkway

To bring you up to date, I've been accepted to a graduate program offered by James Madison University. What fun! Really! I love the course information and my colleagues. The work is sometimes a pain in the butt, but I don't get too stressed. Thank heavens for my love of education and maturity. I know that life's a journey and I'm probably over the hump, enjoying the downhill ride. To me, the courses and the work in speech-language pathology are so much more exhilarating and fulfilling than the options: more engaging than early retirement and far less stressful than business!


8:00 a.m. - Crossing the York River

So far, I've enjoyed the people I've met as a volunteer at CDR and substitute speech teacher in Williamsburg-James City County schools while taking undergrad prerequisite courses. I am now in my second semester of grad school and have already found employment in this high-need field. A small elementary school in Gloucester was having trouble filling a speech position and offered me a part-time, provisional teaching position. Granted, there probably aren't too many young people who want a part-time teaching position in a rural community, but it's just about perfect for me. Part-time is all I want and my aging parents live in Gloucester.

5:30 p.m. - Coming home

So here I am. On the road again. Three days a week I hang a left on Jamestown Road and head to the Colonial Parkway and Gloucester. These days, instead of random thoughts about my yard, I'll probably be posting more often to my other blog. It's one I maintain through the school to communicate with parents about speech and language development.

Fortunately, about half of my 56-mile round-trip commute takes me along the Colonial Parkway where that part of me that yearns to be on the waterfront is satisfied. This October, the peaceful views are tinged red-orange. For now my photos are fuzzy and through the car window, but I may be stopping from time to time in the future to capture a more perfect shot.

Good Night Irene

2011-09-13T20:07:00.000-04:00


Irene visits my neighborhood

Since I got environmental religion about 10 years ago, I've watched in disbelief as the deniers denied and as most other people didn't think too much about it. Our recent post-Hurricane Irene week without electricity made me start thinking about the climate again. I watched an interesting NOVA show, "Secrets Beneath the Ice." It was a good refresher with new information on advances in the science behind global warming.

I just read an article in Nature with some news about tying climate and weather together in a more accurate manner. That will be useful. Here's an excerpt:

Heavy weather

Severe storms make the public think of climate change. Scientists must work to evaluate the link.

Extreme weather makes news, as was demonstrated last month by the blanket coverage of the devastation caused to the east coast of the United States by Hurricane Irene. But was the prominence of the story a feature of modern media hype in a rolling-news world? Hardly. According to a New York Times analysis, when Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida in 1992 and killed 22 people, it received twice the traditional news coverage that Irene did.

What is new is that coverage of extreme weather is now often accompanied by a question: is this a consequence of climate change? This question was raised frequently after Hurricane Katrina smashed through New Orleans in 2005. Most climate scientists responded equivocally, as scientists do: climate is not weather, and although all extreme weather events are now subject to human influence, global warming driven by greenhouse gases cannot be said to 'cause' any specific manifestation of weather in a simple deterministic sense.

Is that response enough? The question, after all, seems fair, given the dire warnings of worsening weather that are offered to the public as reasons to care about global warming. It may irritate some scientists, but in fact the question can be seen as a vindication of their efforts to spread the message that the climate problem is a clear and present danger. Most people associate the climate with the weather that they experience, even if they aren't supposed to. And they are right to wonder how and why that experience can, on occasion, leave their homes in pieces.

Given the growing interest, it is a good sign that scientists plan to launch a coordinated effort to quickly and routinely assess the extent to which extreme weather events should be attributed to climate change (see page 148). The ambitious idea is in the early stages, and its feasibility is yet to be demonstrated. It will require funding, access to climate data from around the world and considerable computer time. Funding agencies and climate centres must provide the necessary support. [More]

Nature 477, 131–13, (08 September 2011), doi:10.1038/477131b. Published online 07 September 2011.

I look forward to reading more about progress on the ability to attribute storms to climate change.

Holly with red bark?

2011-08-13T18:57:00.005-04:00

Red-blotched Holly

On a recent trip to Nags Head, we took a walk along the Sweet Gum Trail at Nags Head Woods Preserve, a Nature Conservancy property on the North Carolina Outer Banks. It was a jewel of a find on that overcrowded barrier island, which always leaves this environmentalist a little sick in the stomach and depressed. Too many beach houses and tourists crowded on a narrow sand dune. Too much water use and waste. But that's a discussion I've had with myself too many times. Back to the trail.

Lichens thrive in harsh environments

We found the maritime forest to be just as advertised, quite biologically diverse. I was particularly intrigued by the holly tree with red-blotched bark. What was that tree? It looked like your typical Ilex opaca (American holly), but could it be something else? The red stuff was on holly trees everywhere, making the mixed forest look somewhat eerie, as if the forest home of the Sir Walter Raleigh's claim were harboring natives in war paint, quietly waiting for the moment to turn the tables on modern invaders who came in SUVs.

I asked my naturalist friends about the unusual trees at today's bird walk, but no one knew of a holly with red blotches on its bark. Finally, I made it home to do a little Googling. Seems that this wonderful red rash is a growth of that ethereal composite life form called lichen, which is mostly fungus and requires a cooperative arrangement with algae and cyanobacteria in order to survive.

Lichenization is a survival strategy for fungus and it is often found in harsh environments, like the sandy Outer Banks with soil low in nutrition. Most lichens are gray or green, but the red color of this variety is due to light exposure and dry climate. For more about lichens, check out the book Lichens of North America.

fMRI connects city living with mental health

2011-07-09T11:43:00.000-04:00


This is you brain on city living

I'm studying neuroimaging this week in my neurology course so clicked on a link that struck me in my Nature.com news feed. The authors of City living and urban upbringing affect neural social stress processing in humans conducted a study that showed functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) to prove that stress affects the brains of city folk differently. This sort of stress leads to physical and mental health disorders. In their words: "Our results identify distinct neural mechanisms for an established environmental risk factor, link the urban environment for the first time to social stress processing, suggest that brain regions differ in vulnerability to this risk factor across the lifespan, and indicate that experimental interrogation of epidemiological associations is a promising strategy in social neuroscience."

Areas of the brain that are involved here include the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) and the amygdala. The pACC region is involved in experiencing emotions and regulating behavioral as well as reacting to psychosocial stress. It may be the neuroanatomical structure that perceives social standing and thereby contributes to our mental and physical health. The amygdala is a part of the limbic system, which has been called the brain's emotional center. The amygdala is famously associated with fear and anxiety. It is connected to pathways responsible for defensive behaviors and it is the part of the brain that is responsible for emotional processing. In the city, these areas are always on alert. There, people are continually subject to the Shakespearean "slings and arrows" from bossy people and bad bosses. Saber-tooth tigers (cars, alarms, airplanes, and other such menacing noises) jump at them from every direction.

While the authors don't point to the flip side -- the physical and mental health benefits of one's proximity to a natural environment -- I'll do it here. Richard Louv might agree. As one who has personally benefited from re-establishing a healthy relationship with nature, I think I am physically and mentally better for it. I feel some sort of calming sense in my brain and body every time I get lost in examining the details of nature or get my hands, fingernails, and nostrils full of rich, fragrant soil. I would be in the portion of the study group that grew up in a rural environment and now lives in an urban area (population over 100,000). The study group that grew up and currently lived in an urban environment was of greater interest to the authors of the Nature article.

The authors conclude, "Our data reveal neural effects of urban upbringing and habitation on social stress processing in humans. These findings contribute to our understanding of urban environmental risk for mental disorders and health in general. Further, they point to a new empirical approach for integrating social sciences, neurosciences and public policy to respond to the major health challenge of urbanization." Ah, the far-reaching implications of brain research empowered by new neuroimaging technology.

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-04T10:09:00.003-04:00


July 4, 1996

Because it's been an emotional weekend and I'm feeling a touch of empty nest melancholy today, I looked for old photos of a favorite 4th of July memory. The one I've scanned for this blog post is from a "trip" to Colonial Williamsburg with my children to celebrate the 4th in 1996, an incredible 15 years ago. The years go by so fast, don't they?

On this day we took our picnic to Market Square and settled in for a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Afterwards, we roamed Colonial Williamsburg, making stops at all of the kid-friendly exhibits. We brought food from the kitchen and set the table for an 18th-century dinner at the Powell House. We sloshed in the brick-making pit. We drilled at the encampment. Finally, we watched the Colonial Williamsburg Fifes and Drums and stopped to take a picture with a friend from our old neighborhood.

As we called it a day, the kids begged, "Mom, can we do this again every year." I stifled a laugh and said sure, I thought that could be arranged. My daughter was already a junior interpreter, so she did indeed spend more holidays there. In three years, my son would join the Fifes and Drums and spend the next 8 Fourth there.

How fortunate we've been to live in Williamsburg where we've been able to participate in the many opportunities that Colonial Williamsburg affords its employees and neighbors. What a lovely growing-up experience my kids have had here.

My daughter announced her engagement on Friday and my son left for graduate school in Tennessee yesterday. They're off on their own now. To them and others, my generation passes on the rights and responsibilities that are their heritage.

Waterfront Property

2011-07-03T15:58:00.000-04:00

My 2003 book has been revised and republished as a Kindle ebook. From the preface:

"Waterfront Property was written in 2003, soon after my late twentieth-century environmental epiphany. A couple of years earlier, I’d bought my first kayak and, at a drifty kind of paddling speed, I had time to consider my murky Chesapeake Bay heritage. In the years around the millennium, I read many books and articles to better understand what was happening to the natural world. At the same time, I was writing business copy. Outside of the work day, I honed my skills by writing articles and attending writers’ conferences. I thought I’d write a novel about the environment someday, but the story wasn't coming to me.

"It took awhile for the idea to take shape. It wasn't until I interviewed a frustrated economic development executive in Newport News that this book popped into my brain. The guy I’d interviewed was dismayed by development and political winds that ruined the environment for short term growth gains. There you go. On the ride home to Williamsburg along Interstate 64 the plot thickened. A little bit of my life, a little bit of environmental development wisdom. A story jelled about somebody who suddenly asked, 'What the hell am I doing?'

"Like a lot of first books, Waterfront Property is a tad autobiographical: I worked in business but gave it up after my epiphany. I'm from a small town, Gloucester, not Mathews, but live a comfortable distance away from my old hometown in a nearby city. I worked in economic development for a short while. And like any work of fiction, this book is inspired by real experiences that are both consciously and unconsciously expressed. Although real people, places, and events stimulated me, they were just the seeds from which this fiction grew in my mind.

"In the 2003 version of this book, I used fictional names for the towns. In this revision, I am using local area names. But it's still fiction. My intention is not to paint any person, place, or activity as good or bad. I have willfully manipulated the facts in order to make fiction. But I did not invent the Gulf Oil Spill or Hurricane Isabella, so their absence dates the book."

Blueberries!

2011-07-02T20:51:00.004-04:00

Blueberries at Bush Neck Farms

My stepson and his wife are quite the cooks. One of her specialties is all sorts of interesting jams. The family loves to go berry picking for blueberries, cherries, strawberries, and more. My husband doesn't have that same joie de vivre about the berry-picking experience, but because his son had just corresponded with us about their latest adventures with cherries, I decided to coax him along on a trip to Bush Neck Farms in James City County yesterday (about 10 miles west of Williamsburg on the Chickahominy River). We picked nearly 10 pounds and visited a farm stand to boot! Even though there were a few unripe berries, twigs, and leaves in the batch (I blame him, he blames me . . . ), I was glad to have him along because I wouldn't have picked as many without him.

I was anxious for the blueberries to come in because I wanted to give Helen and Scott Nearing's fruit juice recipe a try. (Regular readers will remember that I recently finished their book and wrote about it in this blog at the end of May. That was just after the local strawberries were done for the season but before blueberries were ripe.) The Nearings raised most of their food and the book included several of her simple recipes. One was for juice and because we are big on 100% fruit juice, the recipe below sounded good. Here's their description of the process:

Juice a la Nearing

"The glass jars were sterilized on the stove. A kettle or two of boiling water was at hand. We poured an inch of water into a jar on which the rubber had already been put, stirred in a cup of sugar until it had dissolved (we used brown or maple sugar, or hot maple syrup), poured in a cup and a half of fruit, filled the jar to brimming with boiling water, screwed on the cap and that was all. No boiling and no processing. The raspberries, for example, retained their rich, red color. When the jars were opened their flavor and fragrance were like the raw fruit in season. The grape juice made thus was as delicious and tasty as that produced by the time-honored, laborious method of cooking, hanging in a jelly bag, draining, and boiling the juice before bottling. Our only losses in keeping these juices came from imperfect jars, caps, or rubber. We found that two people could put up fifteen quart jars in twenty minutes."

Cooking blueberries with honey
and lemon

In addition, I made a blueberry cobbler and took it to my parents today. You'll find the recipe via this link to allrecipes.com. We had some warm with ice cream and it was delicious! Finally, I made blueberry honey jam. My daughter-in-law gave us some that she made last year and it was perfect. My husband likes his all-fruit jam not too sweet. I found this recipe and just finished making 8 cups of it.

Best ever blueberry honey jam
(makes about 8 cups of jam)

4 lbs. (roughly 11 cups) fresh blueberries
2 1/2 cups honey
1 Tablespoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice

1. Wash and pick through blueberries.

2. Mix berries with honey, let sit 2 hours.

3. Put honey-berry mixture and lemon juice in pot. Boil on medium heat for 30 minutes, scraping sides of pot and stirring bottom as you go. Once the jam "sheets" it is done.

4. Sterilize 8 cups worth of canning jars, lids, and rings. (Boil for 10 minutes.)

5. Ladle jam into jars, leaving at least 1/2 inch of space. Put the top and ring on the jars and close, tight but not too tight.

6. Place closed jars in pot of boiling water until covered and boil for 10 minutes.

7. When done, place on counter, each jar should make an airtight seal.

We have another 8 cups of fresh berries left, I estimate. My husband will make blueberry muffins in the morning and the rest will last us a week as we eat them with yogurt or cereal or just a handle full at a time!

Birds inspire the fine art of writing

2011-06-27T15:10:00.004-04:00

At dinner last night, my husband and I were sharing tidbits from what we were reading that day. He got up to get his book and came back to share several poems from Billy Collins' Ballistic. They were all fun, but the one that I've copied below was my favorite.

Ornithography
By Billy Collins

     The legendary Cang Jie was said to
     have invented writing after observing
     the tracks of birds.

A light snow last night,
and now the earth falls open to a fresh page.

A high wind is breaking up the clouds.
Children wait for the yellow bus in a huddle,

and under the feeder, some birds
are busy writing short stories,

poems, and letters to their mothers.
A crow is working on an editorial.

That chickadee is etching a list,
and that robin walks back and forth

composing the opening to her autobirgraphy.
All so prolific this morning,

these expressive little creatures,
and each with an alphabet of only two letters.

Perhaps I was thinking something along theses lines when I took the photo above of sparrow tracks in the snow. And a friend sent this photo to me of great blue heron tracks on a concrete pier after a recent bird walk. Words and images come together once again. Are they sending us a message?

Lots of critters, but not the ones we were looking for

2011-06-26T14:15:00.000-04:00


Diamondback Terrapin

A lot of Historic Rivers Master Naturalists got up early today to help with Virginia Terp Search 2011. A Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) graduate student recruited us to canvass the waterways of the Williamsburg area for diamondback terrapins. I was with Team 4 and our territory was (of course!) Queen's Creek from the shores of New Quarter Park.

At 7:30 a.m., the deer are abundant.

According to VIMS, "diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin) are the only turtles in the U.S. that live exclusively in brackish saltwater marshes, coastal bays, and lagoons. They range from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Corpus Christi, Texas, including Chesapeake Bay. Terrapins mainly stay in the water though they can be spotted basking along marsh banks. They are named for the concentric markings and grooves on their shells. They are not sea turtles, but like sea turtles their populations are in trouble. Threats include drowning in crab pots, habitat loss, nest predation, and boat strikes."


Osprey

The purpose of the graduate student's work was to conduct a survey that would estimate the species population. Our group can attest to the fact that the terps are in trouble on Queen's Creek. We saw one head bobbing across the stream in 2 1/2 hours of looking. But in any case, time outdoors is never wasted on a Master Naturalist! We saw lots of other critters, starting with herds of deer grazing in most of the park's meadows.

Great Blue Heron

When we settled into our first lookout location, we unsettled Mother Osprey on channel marker 15. We tried to keep our eyes on the water, but it was much more fun to watch for glimpses of her young one in the nest. The osprey mom keep us in sight and squealed a cry at us from time to time just to let us know she was paying attention.

A little crab sex?

Right around the corner, the pine trees provided nesting space for Great Blue Herons. They called, flew, and landed to look for snacks in the marsh beside us. Now remember, we were looking for terrapins. Really! And it was at this location that we saw our one and only of the day. Just a head poking out of the water. We were pretty sure it was a terp.

Fiddler Crab

At our next station the beach was hopping with fiddler crabs. As I looked behind the reeds for terp nests, eggs, or footprints, I caught a couple of fiddlers going for it. The female is on top. The male grabbed her from behind and somehow they ended up in this position. Next I came across a fiddler with the biggest fighting claw I'd ever seen. Okay, little fellow, I see you all ready!

Sunday morning paddle

While we were at station 1 we saw a couple of homo sapiens board a canoe and take it for a spin on Cub Creek, a tributary of Queen's. Later, we saw them again at station 2 on Queen's Creek and one more time at station 3 at the New Quarter Park floating dock, where I snapped this.

Mud toad!

People watching continued to be good at the floating dock where we watched a father and son fishing. They pulled up a croaker, several oyster shells, and a mud toad while we were there. The dad told us that his son has been crazy about fishing since getting a rod and reel for his birthday. The kid's a little ham, I might add.

Northern Watersnake

And to cap the day off, we were excited to see just one more extra special species: a northern watersnake! Don't worry, it's not poisonous. People sometimes think it's a water moccasin, but you can tell them apart by their beady little eyes. That's the sort that non-venomous snakes have while poisonous snakes have slitty eyes.

Well, so we didn't see much of our target species, but the morning was just fine, all in all. The temperatures were in the 70s and sun was peeking in and out behind the clouds. Like I said, time outdoors is never wasted on a Master Naturalist.

May I Recommend the Carrot Top Tea?

2011-06-25T09:55:00.001-04:00

My garden in a jungle of plant parts that I don't eat! Granted, they are food for the insects that make the soil, but many are quite edible by humans if we could find a tasty use. Carrot tops are especially worrisome to me because they just look so green, healthy, and edible. I guess it's their similarity to parsley. When you pull up 4 or 5 carrots for a salad, you end up with a peck of greens.

Last year I found a recipe for soup that included carrot tops. It was okay, but not good enough to try again. The greens are too bitter for soup, in my opinion. This year, I ran across a recipe for carrot top tea, so thought I'd give it a try. It's for iced tea, but as a Southerner, that's fine by me. I think the carrot top tea is as good or better than most of the herbal teas I've tried. I think I'll try microwaving a cup for hot tea from my next batch.

Here's the recipe. It appears on many websites, so I'm not sure where it originated. My guess is that it's been around for a while, due to the plant's medicinal claims to fame. I've added proportions as a starting point, although you should experiment to make the tea conform to your preference of tea strength.

Carrot Top Tea

Put washed and torn carrot leaves from 5 or 6 carrots in a pot. Pour two quarts of boiling water over them. Leave to steep until the tea is cold. Strain to remove the leaves; put leaves in compost. Place the pitcher of tea in the refrigerator to chill.

According to the folks at the World Carrot Museum, "carrot tops are edible and nutritional, rich in protein, minerals and vitamins. The tops are loaded with potassium, which is what makes them bitter." In addition, the World Carrot Museum (a virtual museum by the way) has dedicated a page to carrot tops with all sorts of information about how great carrot tops are as an antiseptic and for conditions like flatulence and bad breath. The page has recipes that include carrot tops in soups, salads, tobouleh, and gumbo.

Other useful carrot information that I took away from the World Carrot Museum site included storing tips: cut the tops off before you store, put water in the bag to keep carrots from going limp, and store carrots away from fruit because that causes them to emit a gas and become bitter.

Eat more carrots . . . and carrot tops!

House Wren Fledging Day

2011-06-17T13:09:00.002-04:00

House Wrens in the Bluebird Box

I've been watching the House Wrens this spring as they selected the old bluebird box in my backyard and built their nest, brooded eggs, and feed nestlings. The noisy little bird is one of my favorites, even if the resident couple did chase away a timid bluebird pair who were also intent on the house.


House Wren Fledgling on the edge

Yesterday, I took this photo of a parent at the box. The little chicks go crazy when one of the parents brings a bug. Their little mouths fly open and they push and shove to get right in front. The parent tucks the bug in a gaping mouth faster than a speeding shutter, waits a second or two, accepts a fecal sac, and flies away to dump the diaper and get another tasty treat.
The babies have been edging closer and closer to the opening and this morning I saw one perched precipitously in the door of the box. He was looking this way and that. Gripping and fluttering from time to time as if to maintain his balance. Obviously, he was there long enough for me to get my camera and change to the long lens.

Hey! No pushing!

The parents would chatter at their nestling, seeming to urge him out. Dad seemed to say, "You're a big boy now, kiddo, no more free treats!" Eventually, the inevitable happened. One of his siblings bumped him from behind and he fell forward, clawing, gripping and flapping for dear life. He scrambled back in, but this only made Dad more demanding. "Chatter, chatter, chatter! Do you hear me? Chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter!"

Okay, I'm outta here.

So Junior came to his senses in about a minute and popped into the door hole again. This time he flexed his legs a few times and then . . . one, two, three, and out! He swoop, swooped and made a reasonably soft landing on the ground. Hey! He liked this flying thing. I watched as he chattered to anyone within listening distance and took short practice flights back and forth between low branches. He took off for the bird feeder! He went back to the box to tell his siblings it was okay to come out now.

As I've watched the birds this morning, I've also seen Mom and Dad cardinal with their four young. Yesterday, Mom and Dad were feeding them, but today they've discovered they can help themselves from the bird feeder too. There are several super-small chickadees too. More fledgling toddlers, I suppose. So cute.

Bee Balm in Bloom

2011-06-15T09:15:00.000-04:00

The bee balm is blooming all around my yard today. This is one aggressive plant, but I don't mind (for now). I bought a plant at the Virginia Native Plant Society's plant sale two springs ago. Today, that plant has sired multiple patches in my front and back yards. The view out of my office door is towards the plant pictured here and it's surrounded by blooming daisies, sundrops, and butterfly weed. Very colorful!

This photo above was taken with my Pentax point-and-shoot camera, which I've been using quite a bit since I dropped my Nikon SLR. I wrapped up the Nikon and sent it to the repair shop in New York about a week ago. It was returned yesterday (!) and I took another picture of the same plant with it.Too dark, but mechanically, the camera appears to be just fine. I'll have to take it out for more of a test run soon.

"Inch by inch, row by row . . .

2011-06-06T09:23:00.000-04:00

Gonna make this garden grow
. . . Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land"

I heard David Mallet perform the Garden Song at the Williamsburg Regional Library about 5 years ago. I can heard him and I sing along every time I walk through my little garden gate. I do indeed love to watch my garden grow.

We had about an inch of rain on Sunday, so I took a look-see afterwards. The lettuce and dill continue to give me more than enough for salads and seasonings. And I'm due to pick sugar snap peas again today or tomorrow. I was delighted to see a dozen or so baby crookneck squash on the three squash plants. I pulled up a carrot to check on them again. They are about 4 inches long now, but still a ways to go.

There are plenty of tomatoes, but it may also be a week or more until they are ready to pick. One of my favorite herbs is basil and the plants in the garden are finally taking off. I have lots more basil in pots on my deck, where I get the most sun of any spot in my yard. The tree canopy is wonderful, but it is indeed a challenge for me as a gardener. The pots on the deck are also full of hot pepper plants and sunflowers, as well as assorted other flowering plants.

The weather forecast calls for a hot and sunny week, which will be a fine follow-up to the rain. The bean vines should inch along quickly now. Unfortunately, they are growing on a wire trellis. I learned from the Nearing book that that is a no-no. The wire gets to hot for the tender pea and green bean vines. I'll have to correct that next year.

Living the Good Life

2011-05-31T12:36:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Helen and Scott Nearing's book The Good Life, about their 60 years of self-sufficient living on farms in Vermont and then in Maine. The Nearing's embraced the back to the land movement during the Great Depression years. Their book described the good life they sought which divided their time into three segments: time to make their food ("bread labor"), time for personal pursuits, and time for service to others. Notice that no time was spent accumulating money or buying things. It's all about living simply and for them, that was the definition of a good life. The book documented how they built their house, budgeted their resources, and raised crops. I enjoyed the book for its documentation of a place and time in history as well as for its timeless gardening advice.

Sugar Snap Peas

I put a bit of that advice right to work in my garden. Over the weekend I weeded and mulched and staked. The garden's looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. It's already more fruitful than in year's past because the soil is better now, after three years of use and continual work on building it up with compost. The Nearings would be proud. Earlier in the spring, I dug out several long wood violet roots that probably sucked away a lot of water from the garden vegetables in years past. While wood violets are quite edible and I do throw them into my salads from time to time, I'm not ready to cultivate them just yet. Inspired by the Nearing's, I pulled up the spinach that was bolting and immediately replanted lettuce in that area. After the lettuce takes us through the heat of the summer, I'll plant more spinach. I'm looking forward to taking their advice on planting lots of root crops in the fall and seeing how long they take us into fall and winter.

Tomato Vine

Today I will pick the first of the sugar snap pea crop. We'll have some sort of stir fry for dinner. There are lots and lots of tomatoes on their way. About 25 small tomatoes are on the vine and double that number of flowers. About a dozen of the tomatoes are just beginning to turn pinkish red. Squash flowers are blooming and the cucumbers are coming up at last.

My Garden Path

It's turned hot now. We've had temperatures in the 90's for a week or so now. But it hasn't chased me indoors yet. I have to spend at least an hour every morning checking on my vegetable and flower gardens, feeding the fish, and refilling the bird feeders.

While not the Nearing's Good Life, it's good for me. I suppose my life is divided into quarters: time for "bread labor" (which is not all time in the garden!), time for personal pursuits, time for others, and time for earning money to pay for the other "necessities" of modern life (electricity, the Internet, transportation, etc.). This simple life, while not self-sufficient, is good.

Purple and Gold: The Flowers are Celebrating Too

2011-05-26T11:23:00.000-04:00

Coreopis on Catnip

How appropriate that the flowers in my yard are blooming in shades of purple and gold this month! My son graduated from James Madison University on May 7. A few days earlier, I received my acceptance letter to the DLVE-SLP M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology offered by JMU.

Virginia Spiderwort

I'm enjoying the month off between finishing up my SLP pre-requisites (my previous credits in history, art history, and business didn't apply!) and the official start of the Masters program on June 9. Of course, that means I've been spending lots of time tending the yard. It's been so much fun to watch things grow and the vegetable and flower gardens are lovely. My son is in between too, working at the Cheese Shop and William and Mary sports camps until his Graduate Assistantship and Master's degree program begins at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.

Near the end of the blooming
period for this Passion Flower

The growing season started in March with first flower bloomers including daffodils and iris and buds growing on plants and trees like dogwoods. Things picked up in April when I enjoyed watching wild columbine and golden ragwort. Things have really taken off this month as the sun has gotten warmer. In the vegetable garden, I've been picking lettuce, spinach, dill, parsley, and basil for a couple of weeks now. Oh! And a strawberry or two. I have just two plants in my garden this year.

In the garden, the tomatoes and sugar snap peas are blooming and some of the spinach is blotting. The carrots are blooming underground. I picked one to see how they were doing the other day and came up with one about the length of a finger. I added it to a garden fresh salad for lunch.

I noticed the purple coneflowers (as seen in the Williamsburg Wordpecker banner) were starting to bloom yesterday!

The Marvelous Mind

2011-05-15T21:16:00.001-04:00

In preparation for my next adventure, work toward a degree in speech-language pathology, I've taken a couple of prerequisite courses in neuroanatomy and neuroscience. It's been fascinating. I've also been reading lots of books and articles about the brain. My husband teases that neurology is king, changing everything. It is an area of understanding that makes psychology and religion seem outdated and naive. Isn't science wonderful?

I just finished An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman. Beautifully written with abundant metaphors that don't mess with the facts, it satisfies the writer and art historian and realist and budding SLP in me. Here's a passage just for fun:

"The brain's dynamo runs millions of jobs, by mixing chemicals, oscillations, synchronized rhythms, and who knows what else. It is like looking at a mosaic or a pointillist painting in motion. Study the whole and the parts disappear; study the parts and the whole disappears . . . I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive. But I also sense the universe is magical, greater than the sum of its parts, which I don't attribute to a governing god, but simply to the surprising, ecstatic, frightening everyday reality we all know."

And another:

"Neurons grow like quaking aspens in the forests of the mind . . . they have two kinds of limbs, dendrites and axons; the former to listen, the latter to speak . . . dendrites hear what neighboring neurons signal through their axons. Like elegant ladies air-kissing so as not to muss their makeup, dendrites and axons don't quite touch . . . At land's end there's a terminal, where a neuron talks to its neighbor by releasing special molecules, more than a hundred different neurotransmitters, that can drift across the tiny gap and bind to receptors on the other side . . . Neurons speak an elite pidgin neither chemical not electrical but a lively buzz that blends the two, an electrochemical lingo all their own. To speak, a neuron wends an electrical shudder down the length of its axon in a wave created from the ebb and flow of alternating sodium and potassium ions . . . When the door opens, potassium ions rush out and sodium ions rush in, again creating an electrical charge . . . until the message zooms among whole environs of neurons. This one process (synaptic transmission) underlies everything the brain does, all of our knowledge, motives, whims, and desires . . . 'Ultimately all that we are -- all our memories, hopes, and feelings -- can be boiled down to the banal transfer of a few ions across the membrane wall of brain cells.'"

On the Morning After in the Rain Garden

2011-05-15T14:00:00.001-04:00

Rain Gauge Report: .58 inches!

My rain gauge reported that we had a little over a half inch of rain yesterday. I've always been a weather watcher, but ever since I've been a Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network reporter I've been even more nutty about the power of rain.I know that anytime we get a half inch of rain it's just wonderful.

My easement rain garden

We could still use a lot more, though. I planted in my rain garden yesterday and the soil was dry and hard in many spots that you might think would be more moist from the recent rains. Apparently, it takes awhile to recover from a drought, and we haven't recovered from last year just yet.

Because it had rained and I planted in the rain garden yesterday, I walked down to the easement to check it out and take some photos first thing this morning. It hadn't rained hard enough to challenge the dam I'd reconstructed. It blew out after a particularly hard rain about a month ago, the one that brought deadly tornadoes to the area, passing within a mile of my daughter's home in Gloucester. This is the most rain we've had since then. Everything looked good. The first retention pond held all of the runoff that came to it from Oxford Road and Druid Court. It didn't look as though the second pond had held any water or that the dam had played any stormwater retention role.

Butterfly Weed

Can you see the Bald Cypress tree right in the center of the easement rain garden photo, above? I may not live long enough to see it develop those classic knees, but I couldn't resist trying to raise it. I also planted Lizard's Tail, Horsetail, Switch Grass, Blue Iris, and a Carolina Laurel Cherry in the rain garden and surrounding area.

I couldn't help but take lots of photos on this wet morning. Everything looks better in the garden when it's basking in raindrops.