I will remember the summer of 2010 as the year that bad gardeners were good ones. Plentiful rain alternating with sun created rain forest conditions. Everything shot up like a teenage boy. Our cup plant soared to an amazing height of 9 feet, 11 inches. Flowers I don’t even remember planting magically appeared in the front yard. The fields around us were so lush our farmers had to work nonstop to bring crops in. Hay wagons were everywhere.

The animals must have sensed the abundance. We were tripping over a bumper crop of chipmunks in our driveway. Raccoon families proliferated, and red and gray squirrels bristled in all directions off our bird feeders. The bird population ranged from hummingbirds to bald eagles. The insect count per square inch of our yard was astronomical.

Vegetable gardens overflowed making us all locavores. What we didn’t grow, friends and neighbors supplied. I resorted to that big cookbook in cyberspace several times for advice on freezing piles of zucchini and beans. These souvenirs from summer will be welcome when the snow flies.

Our beach glass collection is a barometer of time spent outside. Since I can hardly lift the bowl, I know ample time was spent on the shore.

The goldenrod is already all brassy, and the monarchs and many birds are heading for their second summers. We, however, are not snowbirds. We will stay put and start looking for more tell-tale signs of Fall’s approach. After all the exuberant growth and greenness of summer, it’s time for a rest.

As a historic preservation Commissioner, I quickly learned that bridges, unlike buildings, get beaten up all the time and have finite lives. Even die hard preservationists can’t save aging, albeit beautiful, bridges.

Luckily, my husband shares my fondness for fine bridges, and we frequently drive miles out of our way to cross one. The tip of  Illinois at Cairo is bridge heaven. We happily drove back and forth several times over the Mississippi and Ohio River bridges only stopping to change drivers so the other person could enjoy the views.

An efficient bypass around Tampa saves drivers from going over Tampa on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. We definitely turned that option down and were rewarded with spectacular vistas of both the bridge and the bay.

Five hours from our house is the Mackinac Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere. It joins the upper and lower parts of Michigan in fact, if not in culture. Like the denizens of the Conch Republic, a.k.a. Key West, Yuppers seem to enjoy being a breed apart. Bridges can do that to you.

Small bridges have charm as well. My favorite is the 98 year old Spruce Street pedestrian suspension bridge in San Diego. It was originally built to allow disembarking streetcar passengers access to their homes on the far side of the ravine. If no one else is on it, we love to go out to the middle and get it swinging. This activity is not for the faint of stomach.

The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge just north of Taos, New Mexico, is an absolutely flat bridge which doesn’t give away its secret until you are on it. Look down, and down is forever which proves that rivers are the best stone carvers of all time.

The bridge nearest our home is the Fischer Creek Bridge beside Lake Michigan. Like many bridges, it is a homage to the triangle, that tough shape that puts the strength into our buildings and bridges. Rectangles aren’t up to the job: they squish too easily.

I’ll cast my vote for bridges anytime. They are infinitely better than walls.

To view a delightful and surprising adaptive reuse of an old trolley bridge, click here.

Several years ago, we were at the gigantic Tucson Gem and Mineral show when we spotted a booth proclaiming the wonders of “Petoskey Stones”. We drifted over to discover that these amazing and lovely rocks are found  in our own Lake Michigan… but on the opposite shore near Petoskey, Michigan.

The charming, elderly couple who ran the booth had come from Northport, Michigan, to display their polished rocks as well as jewelry, paperweights and other items made from the stones.

The geology of Petoskey Stones, Michigan’s State Stone, is fascinating. The rocks are fossilized coral from the Devonian Period. The land we call Michigan now was covered by a shallow sea 360 million years ago, and  a species of coral called Hexagonaria Percarinata grew in the reefs. Glaciers subsequently moved, rounded and smoothed the stones.

On a trip to the eastern shore last year we did not find a Petoskey Stone. The city of Petoskey, however, was a delight to visit. This year we went back and hit the jackpot. Walking on the beach at Charlevoix, a stone’s throw from Petoskey, we struck up a conversation with a fellow beach walker. We inquired about Petoskey Stones, and she reached down in the water and came up with one. “It’s easier to spot one in the water than on the beach,” she helpfully said.

She was right. Here I am with my treasure.

More than a decade before I was born, the woman who would become my mother worked at the circulation desk of Milwaukee Central. A young man came in every week and checked out large piles of books. He was also checking out my mother. Eventually, he got courageous enough to ask her out on a date, and, lucky for me, she accepted.

Of course, if I wished to be more precise, I could thank Benjamin Franklin for my tenure on the planet. In 1871 he started the first free, public lending library in America. Up to this time, libraries were only for the royal, the rich or the church. Peasants did not have library cards. That would have been too dangerous.

My connection with libraries did not end at birth.I have visited some library almost every week of my life since I was four years old. For five years I had my dream job as the “Children’s Programmer” for the Greenfield Public Library. I was paid to read new children’s books, create programs for young people and present them. And for the last 24 summers I have had the pleasure of traveling the state of Wisconsin to present summer reading programs in libraries large and small.

Currently, debates rage on the need for libraries in a computer age. Who needs libraries when all knowledge is as close as your keyboard? Might I suggest that life (real not virtual) will always be found at the library. I should know.

In the airspace above the dragonflies, about forty of our purple martins were swooping around, chattering and gobbling insects for bedtime snacks. We observed that no dragonflies got picked off by the martins. I’m guessing the dragons were too big a mouthful.

As the last rays of the sun were fading, the highest layer of the sky was filled with silent streams of gulls winging home for bedtime in the lake.

In less than an hour, we witnessed hundreds and hundreds of flight paths. Unlike O’Hare, no control tower  filled with air traffic controllers was needed. And we are happy to report that, despite the congestion, no mid-air collisions occurred. Nature certainly has her act together.

That sums up my teaching philosophy of the last forty-nine years. Whether I am teaching art or natural science, I stick to the creed of large to small.

“Plan the entire picture first,” I remind the kids in my art classes. Or, “learn about the animal’s habitat, then see how that animal adapts to its environment”. In other words, make the connections.

Which brings us to lobsters and their friends. I loved biology and lapped up information on scores of species. But throughout grade school, high school and college, no teacher ever taught me the word “arthropod”. Many years later I was in a big Canadian natural history museum which had a banner extolling “The Wonderful World of Arthropods”.

“What’s an arthropod?” I asked my husband. But his teachers had not answered that question either. To this day, grade schools mostly ignore the large arthropod group and zoom in on the insect class.

The museum clearly presented us with the big picture in brilliant ways. Arthropods are a large phylum of animals with many jointed legs, segmented bodies, an outer shell and no backbone. Then the exhibits introduced the classes of animals with these features.

All of a sudden I saw lobsters in a whole new way. The curtain had fallen from my eyes. Lobsters look just like gigantic bugs or bugs just look like itty-bitty lobsters. These guys are all cousins along with other crustaceans, centipedes, millipedes, spiders and insects.

Arthropods are a big deal. They are the most numerous animals on earth. When we mammals mess up the planet beyond repair for our survival, the arthropods will probably continue on their merry way as they have for eons. Kids should definitely learn the big picture.

On our side of the road the principal dancers are more varied. We have provided some spectacular floral scenery for them. Monarchs flutter constantly in the milkweed blossoms, frequently doing mid-air pas de deux. Red Admirals are cavorting everywhere… the abundance of this classy little butterfly has not been this great since 1991. Stars such as the Mourning Cloak and Swallowtails stage solos through the blossoms. We are enjoying a stellar butterfly year along the shore.

When it became apparent that this was the summer of Lepidoptera, I headed for the computer and found a site listing all the families and subfamilies of Wisconsin butterflies. Throwing all caution to the winds, I hit the “Print” button and promptly depleted all the colored ink cartridges. It was worth the price. I now can stand in the front yard and identify our butterfly visitors. It would be so rude not to know the names of our guests. I’m sure we are hosting some Eastern Commas this week. They have lots of look-alike Comma cousins, but my computer generated guide book is a big help.

I know the butterfly show has a short run. The curtain of Fall will come down all too soon. I intend to see as many performances as possible.

I haven’t been responsible for feeding a male adolescent for many years, so was out of practice  at a family event a while back. Three teenage boys were among the guests at our house. I split a dozen large Sheboygan hard rolls, buttered them lavishly and stuck them in the oven to toast. I put a basket with the twenty-four rolls on the kid’s table, served the other guests and was about to sit down when I noticed the rolls had vanished. So I put twenty-four more buns topped with another half pound of butter in to grill. The scenario repeated itself instantly except this time I sat down to eat, too, sans roll.

At this year’s party I was prepared. Four dozen Sheboygan hard rolls were stuffed into my freezer awaiting their apocalypse.

The younger generation of our family is awash with girls, but we do have two little boys amidst our sea of females. I will be ready when they hit their teen years. I’m going to emulate the cooking methods of Sourdough Sam, Paul Bunyan’s camp cook:

“Sam’s cookshack itself was over two miles long. One whole side was taken up by the great griddle, on which he fried the sourdough flapjacks for which he was famous. It kept a whole bunkhouse full of cookees busy hauling wood for it. The batter was mixed in a big reservoir Paul had dug on a hill back of camp. The mixing was done with an old river steamboat which was kept busy steaming back and forth all night across the lake of sourdough. When the breakfast whistle blew, the floodgates were opened and the batter poured through a flume to a sprinkler system that squirted the cakes on the griddle.

Flunkies with sides of bacon strapped to their boots skated over the smoking surface, greasing it and turning the flapjacks with scoop shovels. As fast as they were done they were stacked on wagons drawn by four horses, which galloped to the mess hall, up a ramp, and down the middle of the great table, while men with cant hooks rolled the cakes off onto the plates. Another four-horse outfit, hitched to a sprinkler wagon, followed  close behind with the syrup.”

Sounds like a plan.

Quote from  “Ol’ Paul, The Mighty Logger”, by Glen Rounds

“Of course you do,” I replied, “you have lived ninety years.”

This conversation occurred at the dinner table at my aunt’s assisted living. My aunt ate with the same three friends, and I came to know them well during my monthly visits out west.

“No, I really don’t,” Frances insisted. “You and your aunt tell such good stories at every meal.”

My aunt, though almost deaf, entertained us with humorous tales of her world travels with my cantankerous, intrepid and globe trotting uncle.

“Frances,” I said, “if you think hard, you will definitely find some stories.” I know that the extremely elderly have an abundance of time to think.

The next night, Frances sat down and announced, “I have a story.”

Frances had lived her whole life in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As a young girl, she was fascinated by her big brother’s brand new Model T. When out for rides with him, she carefully observed what he did. And then, one day, she “borrowed” his Model T and took it for a joy ride out into the wide, open, oil rig dotted spaces around Tulsa where she ran out of gas.

Let me tell you that at ninety, Frances was still a beautiful woman. She did not remain stranded for long.

Once Frances found her stories, many more followed. Oklahoma state troopers who hid in the cleverest places and spoiled her driving fun figured prominently in many of them. Frances obviously had a lead foot on the accelerator pedal and a true love of the endless western roads. We all enjoyed her stories for several years.

But then, one evening, the chair at Frances’ place was empty. She remained in her room for two weeks with hospice care, and then she died.  We are so lucky that  Frances did not take her stories with her.

Sadly, America has become like a married couple who hate each other and refuse to find any common ground.  They spend all their time together trying to demean, demoralize and dehumanize one other. Absolutely nothing good can come out of such a relationship or anything it touches.

The fear and hate mongers among us are predicting doom for America because of our huge national deficits. Being prudent with money, I don’t underrate the seriousness of this situation. But I will state with uncharacteristic certainty that America will not be ruined by deficits. If we fall from greatness, hatred will be our undoing.

Throughout history, bad economic times cause people to look for scapegoats. The poorest and least powerful always get the blame; after all, they are the easiest targets. Hatred and its sidekick, dysfunction, then unravel the fabric of society.

Searing as it was,The Great Depression did not destroy America. My parents’ generation was badly scarred, but they survived.  And I owe my life of economic stability to the lessons my parents gleaned from those dark days and imprinted on me. Those lessons did not include hating and ridiculing everyone that did not look or think like me.

Here is my survival plan for this glorious Fourth of July. I will view the exploding fireworks as symbols of hatred being blown to bits. I will remain hopeful that the USA will get back to the real business at hand: working together to form a more perfect union where happiness is at least a possibility for all.