I'm getting over green and learning a lot about this prairie landscape out west. The juniper berries here this morning turned an eye-popping blue in the early morning freezing temps here where winter has decided to return after much needed rain.
I am glad you are back in winter for at least a bit longer, and I hope the returning robins enjoy the juniper berries now that they are blue and signaling their ripeness!
The junipers know when the robins will be returning and they produce the "disordered" waxy molecular structure on their berries that reflects blue light wavelengths and makes the berries look blue, and thus obvious to birds, just before the robins will return. That's an old relationship, and a long mutuality. Enjoy the birdsong and migration!
Rain is such a gift! We are so short of moisture this year I fear it will be a brown spring and summer, so I'll enjoy your rain and your grandmother tea-olive tree vicariously. And I celebrate with you that you found your querencia there in the Southern Appalachians. May the blessings continue to flow your way!
Winter is slowly disappearing here in the PNW: feet of snow piles are melted, exposing the tunnel cities of moles/voles. Raining this week which is always welcome in this drier side of the Cascade mountains. The wildflower bloom has started and I hiked Catherine Creek on the Columbia River (despite the ferocious winds), ohing and ahing over grass widows, camas/death camas, yellow bells, bistort, two Lomatium species, and the leaves of bitterroot, yarrow and lupine. A meadowlark serenaded us for most of non-aerobic walk.
The spring bloom in that part of the world is so glorious! I am glad that you got out to hike it (despite those Gorge winds!) and to revel in the meadowlark singing spring home. Enjoy the unfolding of that glorious season.
The camas bloom in the prairie high on the Klickitat where my late husband and my parents are buried. I cherish that place.
Growing up in the Northeast, my concept of beauty did indeed focus on rolling hills and greenery. However, all that changed when I got off the plane in ABQ in 1991 and began the drive north to Santa Fe. The power of brown and its many shades and manifestations claimed my soul and made me realize I needed to live here. I finally got to move here in 2002 and 've remained faithful to this magnificent terrain ever since.
Liz, I think northern New Mexico is your querencia, and I am glad you and Vince found your home here when you did. May it always nurture your heart and spirit!
That's from my lived experience. I worry a lot about how this landscape will survive in dry times like these past twenty-something years (with occasional wet years interspersed). And then as soon as we get rain or snow, the landscape responds by flourishing. I have to learn to trust the community of the land!
I love the Prairie! I love grasslands so much! But now living where I live, where agriculture and urbanization have overlain the prairie, I find other things to learn about, and enjoy. There is a one–lot sized green space behind us so within a few steps of my back door I can be walking around on the ground. But the soil there is toxic in some way, because the grass does not spread easily, and even certain “weeds”don’t grow there. (Russian thistles thrive!)My guess is the toxicity comes from decades ago when this neighborhood was developed behind us. Still, it has some growth and three big maple trees, and a big blue spruce. And when I can venture further, 5 miles down the road is a wonderful Arboretum near the river, and about 7 miles from here is good Earth State Park. Before I got sick, we hiked out there. Sometimes now I can just drive there and look.
Kathryn, I am glad that you have the small green space right behind you for nearby nature. Your description of the large trees--the three maples and one big blue spruce--makes me think it might have been a house site at one time. Those sound like the kind of trees that would have been planted around a farmhouse, and if the house was not in good enough shape to be saved, the structure would likely have been bulldozed and the debris simply pushed into the cellar hole, a common practice. That would account for the mature trees thriving but the soil over the cellar only growing tumbleweed, which will basically grow anywhere except really toxic sites. Tumbleweed is an annual and has super-shallow roots, so it could thrive in the thin layer of soil over the building debris in the cellar hole, where grasses and wildflowers with deeper roots would not survive in that not-soil. At any rate, at least it gives you a pocket of open space! I hope that you can get out to the arboretum and the state park on your good days as spring unfolds.
It definitely has been 20 years or more that we have watched the monsoons become less active. I'm so glad I've been here since 1979 when the monsoons arrived like clockwork. At least I did get to experience that.
Oh, those booming, thunderous summer monsoons! Especially in the Chihuahuan Desert where we lived and you did too, if uphill in Silver. Seeing the desert green up and hearing the spadeoot toads emerge and call for mates was just magic. I'm glad I got to experience that too.
I found the tape you did of your radio show about spade foot toads!! I remember enjoying it a lot with Jim and then when his sis came to visit, we shared it with her on a car trip.
OMG! I didn't know any tapes still existed from that show. How fun! Here's an excerpt of the chapter about them from Barren Wild & Worthless (the excerpt ran in Hayden's Ferry Review journal and they recently featured it in pieces from their archive): https://haydensferryreview.com/spadefoot-toads-and-storm-sewers-by-susan-j-tweit
I confess, Susan, I don’t think I ever got over green. But I am so grateful to have lived in a number of wildly different ecocommunities, intimate with all of them, made of their molecules. I love your writing about prairie. ❤️
Dear Priscilla, You certainly have sampled a good variety of the biodiversity of the North American continent in your travels, and now the specks of islands in the far Pacific Ocean! And as you say, their molecules live on in you, which is a lovely way of looking at relationship. May the green there continue to nourish your spirit and fuel your writing, for which I am grateful.
As I was reading your post, I kept thinking this is reminding me of something else. And then I got to this part: "Because living here reminds me that finding beauty requires awareness, that celebrating abundance keeps us going, that diversity is integral to community and that miracles can happen on any ordinary day." Such a beautiful reflection.
It came to mind because I have poked around old farmsteads that have been developed, locating the house site by the trees first, and then tracing the foundation hole by what plants grow where. Also, I recently got to watch the removal of an old farmhouse that could be saved, so I saw firsthand what filled the cellar pit, and that building detritus won't be great soil for a very long time. (In this case, the detritus was capped by a generous layer of actual soil, so it's going to be seeded with a meadow mix that will be lovely to watch as it grows. But most builders aren't plant-folks, so they don't know how to treat a site like that so it's fertile again.)
Thank you for sharing your beautiful landscape with us, Susan! Are sage grouses some of the creatures who live there? I love the subtle shades of gray-green, sage-green, silvery-gray and muted gold around Santa Fe. I bonded with the chamisa. :) I see milkweed and penstemon in your wildflower gallery, are the pink tubular blooms a kind of salvia?
Thanks, Carmine! Sage-grouse live where big sagebrush forms the shrub overstory en masse, not chamisa (which is adapted the slightly dryer conditions). The Taos Plateau, just north of here, has remnant sage-grouse populations, and they are more abundant in the sagebrush country farther north, especially in my home state of Wyoming. But cheatgrass invasion has caused huge fires throughout the sagebrush country, and that has led to dramatic declines of the big sagebrush canopy and of these beautiful grouse, sadly. The pink, pea-like blossoms with the native bumblebee in the wildflower photos are milkvetch, a native legume. The milkweed is western whorled milkweed, the penstemon is James' penstemon, and the evening primrose (the big white flowers) is pallid evening primrose.
Thank you for the plant IDs. How painful it must be to witness the declines of the sage grouse. I get legislative action alerts from organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity to help them protect habitat for those beautiful sage grouse. I donate and send emails to legislators, along with many others who care about wild creatures and lands I imagine.
Thank you for taking action! I wrote about the threats to sage-grouse in 2000 on a cover article for Audubon Magazine ("The Next Spotted Owl") so I've been watching that decline for a long time. (The article was not digitized, and I suppose I should do that and archive it on my web site along with all of the dozens of other magazine articles I wrote before digitizing was a thing sometime when I have spare time. Which seems to never happen!)
I'm getting over green and learning a lot about this prairie landscape out west. The juniper berries here this morning turned an eye-popping blue in the early morning freezing temps here where winter has decided to return after much needed rain.
I am glad you are back in winter for at least a bit longer, and I hope the returning robins enjoy the juniper berries now that they are blue and signaling their ripeness!
Now that you mention it, I did see and hear the robins have returned. Noticing in the mornings the bird song has returned. Migration is underway!
The junipers know when the robins will be returning and they produce the "disordered" waxy molecular structure on their berries that reflects blue light wavelengths and makes the berries look blue, and thus obvious to birds, just before the robins will return. That's an old relationship, and a long mutuality. Enjoy the birdsong and migration!
I wake each morning grateful to be in this particular spot in the universe.
It is raining-pouring- from deep gray skies.
But from the back garden, a tea olive tree glows in white blooms. It is an ancient presence, these plants usually grow no more than 8 to 10 feet.
This gorgeous being is over 30 foot tall, loaded with frothy blossoms which entice every honey bee in the village.
I marvel at her from the dining room window, my favorite place for morning meditation and tea.
Gratitude for this hearts home fills each changing hour of my day.
Blessings to you, my friend
Kathleen
Rain is such a gift! We are so short of moisture this year I fear it will be a brown spring and summer, so I'll enjoy your rain and your grandmother tea-olive tree vicariously. And I celebrate with you that you found your querencia there in the Southern Appalachians. May the blessings continue to flow your way!
Winter is slowly disappearing here in the PNW: feet of snow piles are melted, exposing the tunnel cities of moles/voles. Raining this week which is always welcome in this drier side of the Cascade mountains. The wildflower bloom has started and I hiked Catherine Creek on the Columbia River (despite the ferocious winds), ohing and ahing over grass widows, camas/death camas, yellow bells, bistort, two Lomatium species, and the leaves of bitterroot, yarrow and lupine. A meadowlark serenaded us for most of non-aerobic walk.
The spring bloom in that part of the world is so glorious! I am glad that you got out to hike it (despite those Gorge winds!) and to revel in the meadowlark singing spring home. Enjoy the unfolding of that glorious season.
The camas bloom in the prairie high on the Klickitat where my late husband and my parents are buried. I cherish that place.
Growing up in the Northeast, my concept of beauty did indeed focus on rolling hills and greenery. However, all that changed when I got off the plane in ABQ in 1991 and began the drive north to Santa Fe. The power of brown and its many shades and manifestations claimed my soul and made me realize I needed to live here. I finally got to move here in 2002 and 've remained faithful to this magnificent terrain ever since.
Of course I mistyped: ...and I've remained faithful...
No worries: I translated!
Liz, I think northern New Mexico is your querencia, and I am glad you and Vince found your home here when you did. May it always nurture your heart and spirit!
Enjoyed this reflection of gratitude, Susan. I could practically hear the crunching of your boots or shoes as you hiked along!
Thanks, Shawn! Blessings to you.
I love your comment about "green" here in the desert. "It is a gift, not a given." That is going to stay with me! Thanks.
That's from my lived experience. I worry a lot about how this landscape will survive in dry times like these past twenty-something years (with occasional wet years interspersed). And then as soon as we get rain or snow, the landscape responds by flourishing. I have to learn to trust the community of the land!
Susan, thank you for this beautiful post.
De nada, Marlena! I am honored that you read my essays.
I love the Prairie! I love grasslands so much! But now living where I live, where agriculture and urbanization have overlain the prairie, I find other things to learn about, and enjoy. There is a one–lot sized green space behind us so within a few steps of my back door I can be walking around on the ground. But the soil there is toxic in some way, because the grass does not spread easily, and even certain “weeds”don’t grow there. (Russian thistles thrive!)My guess is the toxicity comes from decades ago when this neighborhood was developed behind us. Still, it has some growth and three big maple trees, and a big blue spruce. And when I can venture further, 5 miles down the road is a wonderful Arboretum near the river, and about 7 miles from here is good Earth State Park. Before I got sick, we hiked out there. Sometimes now I can just drive there and look.
Kathryn, I am glad that you have the small green space right behind you for nearby nature. Your description of the large trees--the three maples and one big blue spruce--makes me think it might have been a house site at one time. Those sound like the kind of trees that would have been planted around a farmhouse, and if the house was not in good enough shape to be saved, the structure would likely have been bulldozed and the debris simply pushed into the cellar hole, a common practice. That would account for the mature trees thriving but the soil over the cellar only growing tumbleweed, which will basically grow anywhere except really toxic sites. Tumbleweed is an annual and has super-shallow roots, so it could thrive in the thin layer of soil over the building debris in the cellar hole, where grasses and wildflowers with deeper roots would not survive in that not-soil. At any rate, at least it gives you a pocket of open space! I hope that you can get out to the arboretum and the state park on your good days as spring unfolds.
It definitely has been 20 years or more that we have watched the monsoons become less active. I'm so glad I've been here since 1979 when the monsoons arrived like clockwork. At least I did get to experience that.
Oh, those booming, thunderous summer monsoons! Especially in the Chihuahuan Desert where we lived and you did too, if uphill in Silver. Seeing the desert green up and hearing the spadeoot toads emerge and call for mates was just magic. I'm glad I got to experience that too.
I found the tape you did of your radio show about spade foot toads!! I remember enjoying it a lot with Jim and then when his sis came to visit, we shared it with her on a car trip.
OMG! I didn't know any tapes still existed from that show. How fun! Here's an excerpt of the chapter about them from Barren Wild & Worthless (the excerpt ran in Hayden's Ferry Review journal and they recently featured it in pieces from their archive): https://haydensferryreview.com/spadefoot-toads-and-storm-sewers-by-susan-j-tweit
I confess, Susan, I don’t think I ever got over green. But I am so grateful to have lived in a number of wildly different ecocommunities, intimate with all of them, made of their molecules. I love your writing about prairie. ❤️
Dear Priscilla, You certainly have sampled a good variety of the biodiversity of the North American continent in your travels, and now the specks of islands in the far Pacific Ocean! And as you say, their molecules live on in you, which is a lovely way of looking at relationship. May the green there continue to nourish your spirit and fuel your writing, for which I am grateful.
As I was reading your post, I kept thinking this is reminding me of something else. And then I got to this part: "Because living here reminds me that finding beauty requires awareness, that celebrating abundance keeps us going, that diversity is integral to community and that miracles can happen on any ordinary day." Such a beautiful reflection.
Thank you, Lou! And thank you too, for recommending Practicing Terraphilia to your readers at We're All Getting Older. Many blessings to you.
Thank you for that theory ! I hadn’t thought of that…
It came to mind because I have poked around old farmsteads that have been developed, locating the house site by the trees first, and then tracing the foundation hole by what plants grow where. Also, I recently got to watch the removal of an old farmhouse that could be saved, so I saw firsthand what filled the cellar pit, and that building detritus won't be great soil for a very long time. (In this case, the detritus was capped by a generous layer of actual soil, so it's going to be seeded with a meadow mix that will be lovely to watch as it grows. But most builders aren't plant-folks, so they don't know how to treat a site like that so it's fertile again.)
Thank you for sharing your beautiful landscape with us, Susan! Are sage grouses some of the creatures who live there? I love the subtle shades of gray-green, sage-green, silvery-gray and muted gold around Santa Fe. I bonded with the chamisa. :) I see milkweed and penstemon in your wildflower gallery, are the pink tubular blooms a kind of salvia?
Thanks, Carmine! Sage-grouse live where big sagebrush forms the shrub overstory en masse, not chamisa (which is adapted the slightly dryer conditions). The Taos Plateau, just north of here, has remnant sage-grouse populations, and they are more abundant in the sagebrush country farther north, especially in my home state of Wyoming. But cheatgrass invasion has caused huge fires throughout the sagebrush country, and that has led to dramatic declines of the big sagebrush canopy and of these beautiful grouse, sadly. The pink, pea-like blossoms with the native bumblebee in the wildflower photos are milkvetch, a native legume. The milkweed is western whorled milkweed, the penstemon is James' penstemon, and the evening primrose (the big white flowers) is pallid evening primrose.
Thank you for the plant IDs. How painful it must be to witness the declines of the sage grouse. I get legislative action alerts from organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity to help them protect habitat for those beautiful sage grouse. I donate and send emails to legislators, along with many others who care about wild creatures and lands I imagine.
Thank you for taking action! I wrote about the threats to sage-grouse in 2000 on a cover article for Audubon Magazine ("The Next Spotted Owl") so I've been watching that decline for a long time. (The article was not digitized, and I suppose I should do that and archive it on my web site along with all of the dozens of other magazine articles I wrote before digitizing was a thing sometime when I have spare time. Which seems to never happen!)