Margotlog: Nothing Gold Can Stay
It is a most glorious, glimmering morning, with maple leaves turning from green to gold, and I am
remembering Charleston, South Carolina, as a girl where it seemed to take a lifetime for leaves to turn color and fall. Not that I cared, but now, so much more is at stake.
I stare out at the glimmering maples and elms, oaks and aspen. The phrase "Nothing Gold Can Stay" runs through my head. Beside my desk, the sun on a mottled plant (brought inside with the earlier cold) shows delicate, trasparent, purple-pink tongues. At the tips of thin branches, green sprouts as sharp as needles. Here's to you, Robert Frost with your "Nothing Gold Can Stay!"
It's not that I expect immortality, yet midway along the desk, a cactus busts into grotesque red-gold hatchets, each tipped by a pink tongue.
I stare and stare, wondering what I've done to deserve such flowering. Then I recollect fall when the sun is much lower in the sky, hot to get in my windows. Brazen Hussy! Watch out or I'l fry an egg on you.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Margotlog: How "Weeds" and Dirt Can Save Birds, Insects, Us
Margotlog: How Weeds and Dirt Can Save Birds, Insects, and Us
Our neighborhood in St. Paul is far from the suburbs. You can tell, sort of: Some of us, me especially, do not douse our postage-stamp yards with chemicals to "enhance" the growth of grass
and kill those devil "weeds." Turns out, according to many rather dire reports from arborists and
ornithologists, the glorious, manucured, "one size fits all" LAWN is killing birds, not to mention hordes of insects which birds need to survive.
Imagine you are a blade of grass, or horror of horrors, a flat-leafed weed. The beauty of your simple relation to mother earth is that you have all sorts of leafy relatives of the dandelion or other broad-leaf variety. The soil formed by your seasonal decay is not "polluted" with chemicals thrown on your heads by humans who, for some god-forsaken reason, think one-size, one height fits all.
Let me remind those crazed lawn-growers: The modern lawn came into being in the English countryside, centuries ago. That countryside was "manicured" by sheep who nibbled greens close to the ground--a type of mowing, you could say. Nothing wrong with mowing or sheep; in fact if we in our small or larger green spaces employed sheep to nibble down the growth, there are very good chances that NO CHEMICALS would be strewn among the clover and dandilions. Such nostrums would eventually KILL the sheep.
Consider this: chemicals thrown on lawns eventually run into sewers which will sooner or later spill into water treatment plants, or simply run off into streams, lakes. The worms and seeds that manage to live among the chemicals will transfer that toxicity to birds. No wonder, according to many recent assessments, many formerly common American birds are becoming scarce. Guess who's the culprit?
Humans! For some reasons, hundreds of thousands of humans--be they lawn owners or farmers dousing their crops with poisons to kill off various borers--have concocted such a stew of death that the birds via the insects and seads they eat are becoming scarcer and scarcer.
Here's my home method: I DO NOT USE HERBECIDES or any kind. I let the Creeping Charley and the various sprays of taller weeds have their place. Yes, I plant some flowering glories that appeal to me. Some are perennials that return year after year. Others I dot through my various "beds" for color, charm, variety. On my backyard deck, I plant flowers purchased from Mother Earth Gardens. These do a fine job throughout the summer of dazzling my eye and sating my desire for vibrant flowers.
BUT in the so-called lawns, front and back, I let grow whatever wants to grow. Some years if the growth gets too tall, the lawn-mower "cuts its hair." But mostly, what is tall and flowery is a sight to behold. What is short and weedish has more than its place. And
THE BIRDS I FEED at the bird feeders and water at the bird baths, do not seem to die from the experiment. Am I missing certain worm eaters? Probably. But I do what I can. That's what we all should do!
Our neighborhood in St. Paul is far from the suburbs. You can tell, sort of: Some of us, me especially, do not douse our postage-stamp yards with chemicals to "enhance" the growth of grass
and kill those devil "weeds." Turns out, according to many rather dire reports from arborists and
ornithologists, the glorious, manucured, "one size fits all" LAWN is killing birds, not to mention hordes of insects which birds need to survive.
Imagine you are a blade of grass, or horror of horrors, a flat-leafed weed. The beauty of your simple relation to mother earth is that you have all sorts of leafy relatives of the dandelion or other broad-leaf variety. The soil formed by your seasonal decay is not "polluted" with chemicals thrown on your heads by humans who, for some god-forsaken reason, think one-size, one height fits all.
Let me remind those crazed lawn-growers: The modern lawn came into being in the English countryside, centuries ago. That countryside was "manicured" by sheep who nibbled greens close to the ground--a type of mowing, you could say. Nothing wrong with mowing or sheep; in fact if we in our small or larger green spaces employed sheep to nibble down the growth, there are very good chances that NO CHEMICALS would be strewn among the clover and dandilions. Such nostrums would eventually KILL the sheep.
Consider this: chemicals thrown on lawns eventually run into sewers which will sooner or later spill into water treatment plants, or simply run off into streams, lakes. The worms and seeds that manage to live among the chemicals will transfer that toxicity to birds. No wonder, according to many recent assessments, many formerly common American birds are becoming scarce. Guess who's the culprit?
Humans! For some reasons, hundreds of thousands of humans--be they lawn owners or farmers dousing their crops with poisons to kill off various borers--have concocted such a stew of death that the birds via the insects and seads they eat are becoming scarcer and scarcer.
Here's my home method: I DO NOT USE HERBECIDES or any kind. I let the Creeping Charley and the various sprays of taller weeds have their place. Yes, I plant some flowering glories that appeal to me. Some are perennials that return year after year. Others I dot through my various "beds" for color, charm, variety. On my backyard deck, I plant flowers purchased from Mother Earth Gardens. These do a fine job throughout the summer of dazzling my eye and sating my desire for vibrant flowers.
BUT in the so-called lawns, front and back, I let grow whatever wants to grow. Some years if the growth gets too tall, the lawn-mower "cuts its hair." But mostly, what is tall and flowery is a sight to behold. What is short and weedish has more than its place. And
THE BIRDS I FEED at the bird feeders and water at the bird baths, do not seem to die from the experiment. Am I missing certain worm eaters? Probably. But I do what I can. That's what we all should do!
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
A White Squirrel in the Rain
A White Squirrel in the Rain
A beautifully white squirrel that often comes into our yard has a horrible deformity in its hind legs. It drags them as it pulls forward with its front legs. For perhaps a year, it's been part of the squirrel/bird congregation that appears early in the morning when I open the garage door and spread sunflower seeds in a trail to the right of the garage, and then straight ahead under the tall maples. Finally I fill the bird feeders,
The white squirrel has come to recognize me. I speak to it softly: "Don't be afraid," I croon, keeping my arms close to my body and slowly pulling up the door to the garage. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."
Somewhere, I gathered the notion that white squirrels (as different from gray squirrels) are deaf. This does not surprise me as I puzzle what could have happened to this small creature. If it's deaf, it could not hear a cat inch toward it, or the cry of a hawk as it perches in the Elm behind the house behind us.
Sometimes the white squirrel appears in sunshine. It almost always has the company of blue jays who are excellent buglers of trouble. Gray squirrels pay it no attention. A few times, I have come close enough to see that one of the white squrrel's hind feet seems eaten down to the bone. The other, though lacking muscle, is covered in the white fur of the rest of the body.
My heart is full of sorrow. I take deep breaths. But my determination to help the creature I so admire moves me forward. As I open the garage door, the white squirrel pulls itself under some leafy plants. It seems to be waiting for me to finish my sowing of seeds. I wish it well, and return to the house as silently as I can.
One late summer morning I watched as the white squirrel left the open area with the seeds. It headed, slowly toward the corner of the tall wooden fence that separates us from the neighbors behind and to the side. In that corner it slipped between the slats of the fences, then after a time, reappeared at the top of another fence limits of yard behind us.
Reaching the top of this wooden fence, the white squirrel was only a foot or two from the trunk of the neighbor's huge elm. With minutes of consideration, the white squirrel somehow propelled itself across the distance. I caught glimpses of its front paws pulled itself up the huge elm, and out of sight.
I felt as if a part of a mystery had been solved.
A beautifully white squirrel that often comes into our yard has a horrible deformity in its hind legs. It drags them as it pulls forward with its front legs. For perhaps a year, it's been part of the squirrel/bird congregation that appears early in the morning when I open the garage door and spread sunflower seeds in a trail to the right of the garage, and then straight ahead under the tall maples. Finally I fill the bird feeders,
The white squirrel has come to recognize me. I speak to it softly: "Don't be afraid," I croon, keeping my arms close to my body and slowly pulling up the door to the garage. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."
Somewhere, I gathered the notion that white squirrels (as different from gray squirrels) are deaf. This does not surprise me as I puzzle what could have happened to this small creature. If it's deaf, it could not hear a cat inch toward it, or the cry of a hawk as it perches in the Elm behind the house behind us.
Sometimes the white squirrel appears in sunshine. It almost always has the company of blue jays who are excellent buglers of trouble. Gray squirrels pay it no attention. A few times, I have come close enough to see that one of the white squrrel's hind feet seems eaten down to the bone. The other, though lacking muscle, is covered in the white fur of the rest of the body.
My heart is full of sorrow. I take deep breaths. But my determination to help the creature I so admire moves me forward. As I open the garage door, the white squirrel pulls itself under some leafy plants. It seems to be waiting for me to finish my sowing of seeds. I wish it well, and return to the house as silently as I can.
One late summer morning I watched as the white squirrel left the open area with the seeds. It headed, slowly toward the corner of the tall wooden fence that separates us from the neighbors behind and to the side. In that corner it slipped between the slats of the fences, then after a time, reappeared at the top of another fence limits of yard behind us.
Reaching the top of this wooden fence, the white squirrel was only a foot or two from the trunk of the neighbor's huge elm. With minutes of consideration, the white squirrel somehow propelled itself across the distance. I caught glimpses of its front paws pulled itself up the huge elm, and out of sight.
I felt as if a part of a mystery had been solved.
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