Columbines In the Garden

 I've been doing a bit of shopping lately, mostly for the garden. The fantasy is that once things are planted this time the critters won't come in and dig them out or chop them off or whatever their personal version of Nuclear War is this time around. "This time", of course, is defined as anything between my seeing something in the garden, or a store, or in a photo calling out for a new home here, and the end of the next century. Those critters mean business, by gum, and train their future generations in all versions of their particular vendettas and successful warfare techniques. Well, I can wage war too!

It's notable that the expensive stuff is always the first to go. These vegetarians' idea of steak, oysters, champagne and caviar had been everything coming from my bulbs that is wanted to grow here. If that wasn't enough, (since who's patient?) they've gone after the bulbs themselves as kind of a hardship buffet. It does seem like I finally have a modest win on my hands now that I'm spreading rhubarb bits amongst their smorgasbord. And here I've been doing everything I can to get rid of those plants since they've been crowding out really good planting space. It should have occurred to me that there was a good reason rhubarb was doing so well. Or at least noted that this end of the garden had more survivors. Good thing I am a failure at getting rid of it (though I'm still happy to let any and everybody pick it so long as they leave something. I'm going to need it by fall and for next spring during those hungry times for the critters: pick, chop, freeze some, scatter more. Then come snowmelt, thaw and scatter more and more till it's back growing all over the place again so I can take it directly from live plants. Hey, sounds like a plan anyway.

The south garden starts with rhubarb. In the middle is still-active bleeding heart, something else I inherited and which is unbothered by critters. It's large enough to hide the far end of the bed in this shot, so it's been around for a while. I guess I should have known what's still around is not on the critters' high-buck menu. Whether I think it's lovely or plug-ugly, they won't touch it. On both sides of the Bleeding heart is what IS on their menu: lily bulbs. And of course, lily tops.You may look at this and wonder what the complaint is. There's obviously a lot of lilies there, and even a hint of a bloom. That's a whole second planting to replace the first.

 The bloom was short-lived, but that was not the doing of any critters. After several days petals dropped. This was just an early bloomer. A generous assortment of rhubarb leaf pieces and stalk chunks decorated the ground with the second planting, and the "good stuff" was left alone. Well, except for the wind, but I'm not doing that battle. We all know who'd lose. 

There is one way only to fight the wind, and then only up to a point. That's with wire  cages, well seated in the ground. Once I was sure my tall balloon flower (remember that one?) was going to thrive, I visited the hardware store on its behalf.

You can see how much it's grown in a week or so. This was taken before we had several days in a row of rain and cold here. I set out a bucket and it shows rain of 2 inches! Not an official rain gauge, but upon that realization, a search online was made, and one should be delivered by month end. Meanwhile, these look like tender shoots, but they've not been bothered by anything's teeth, are growing quickly, and are tucked in behind one of the 4 wires keeping their cage properly shaped. If the rain ever stops and temperatures rise again, I'll take more progress shots. This was before the system moved through (s-l-o-w-w-w-l-y) knocking the temperature from high 80s to mid 30s.

I did say this was about columbines, didn't I? I've had the wild small red and yellow natives blooming in my previous garden since its first or second year, meaning early '90s. They are reliable, hardy, and spread seeds in any empty space to grow more. 

 Fine, but it's time for VARIETY !!!  Big and fancy! And by gum, already potted since the packaged ones I bought were apparently thoroughly deceased and determined to remain so. (Glad my nose still doesn't recognize rot - nor skunk either, but 'nother story.)

Last week on the way home from a grocery run, I stopped at a local garden center. I had one thing on my mind: fancy columbines. They have a huge area to browse, so I asked directions. 

"Hey, (fellow employee), do we carry columbines?... Where?" She looked terrible at giving coherent directions, but luckily just invited me to follow her ziz-zag through tables. I noted she slowed and was looking around for them just before I noticed I was already standing next to them! They had 3 varieties, so I picked out two. One pot of solid yellow, one of red/pink. The third was red/white, but they weren't quite as healthy looking. I looked around, but no blue ones. 

Sigh.

The pots went in a box for support for the trip home, and were immediately planted once the groceries were put away. Where did I pick to plant them? Next to the rhubarb, of course! We'd let enough be dug out the fall before that there was some open dirt space waiting. I don't know that they need the protection, but it was there and why not?

 

 

 

The yellow had fully open blossoms which dropped in a couple days. The red was showing color, but even now hasn't opened to show off, likely from the cold. 

There was one problem, however. The garden needs a blue columbine. Not only are they beautiful, but Steve's from Colorado, and grew up with those, its state flower. Time for more research online. I started with metro garden centers, the really huge ones for the best chance of finding a blue columbine. The first website didn't show plants, just gave hours and address plus listed major categories of merchandise and plants. I needed specifics!

I remembered I still had a gift card for one from Christmas. They had a fantastic website, the kind you show when you actually want customers instead of relying on decades of reputation alone to haul them in. This one had blue and white columbines! The photos were exquisite, easily found by selecting for perennials and spring blooming. I made a quick call to be sure they were still in stock, since a one way trip was about 60 miles. In rush hour. In the rain. Past construction!

After a quick conversation with Steve, confirming he'd like them in the garden enough to not mind me taking the trip (despite his worrying about all those previously mentioned conditions of the trip), and confirming he wasn't about to bounce around in the car that long despite having had his back surgery but was staying home, off I headed.

Once there, of course there was something else on my list, so I got directions to where to find those, which incidentally passed an irresistible succulent that would fill a gap in a planter where another had died about a year earlier. Those in my cart, it was time to head outdoors into the cold windy rain. Once I located all the columbines, about a block from the end of the building, helpfully organized under "Perrennials - A" for asclepius, I located two different blue/white varieties, a purple/white, a pink/cream, and a couple more empty spaces where varieties had sold out. I did a very speedy check since I was already chilled and the car's warmth was still about 15 minutes away. Comparing the two blue, my original choice stood out. The purple was tempting, but instead I went with two pots of the blue! Back inside, check out, wheel the cart down to where I parked, unload into the car, properly dispose of the cart which belonged back next to the building.... Yep. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr! Fortunately  the car still held its warmth and shortly everything was cozy.

Once home the pots were set on the porch till the rain ended. (two days?)  I wasn't going to ask Steve to leave his cozy spot to come out and have a look, but one of the blossoms was perfect! I plucked it, showed him inside, and then made a white background to get a photo.

The browns are not the flower, but the shadow. My camera insists of an overall light amount for grey, so even with flash and brightening it to the limit of my software, the background remains grey. But the blue is that deep! The black "tails" of the flower are also that deep blue. The tiny green stub was the stem.

I figure tomorrow they'll go in the ground. The rain has got to stop sometime, right?

Early Memories On The Farm

I told somebody yesterday I grew up on a farm. My family remembers it as a resort on the Crow Wing chain of lakes.  Of course I remember that part of it too. But it was also a farm, however modest. We moved in when I was maybe 3 or 4, then moved into town in a different school system when I was already in third grade, so my tender age is my excuse for many gaps in my memories. What I write here is not all I recall, but is indelible, however, for what it is.

Looking back it seems kind of weird that those years split into two sets of memories when it was all one home on one chunk of land. The private parts were the family home except for the store it was built over, and the bits up the hill and behind the cabins that were farm, nothing much like the full farms our neighbors lived on, with fields and barns, cows to milk and pigs. The public part was the resort, with 8 fairly rustic cabins, separate plumbing for them in a shower building our Dad put in. This was the way my parents made their living for about 4 months of the year, their public identity. Our dad had a winter job at a tree nursery, which barely made ends meet but kept us going for a few years. Few people care to vacation in uninsulated wooden cabins in what back then were very cold winters, reaching -40 often enough to think of that as common, so the resort season was understandably very short.

Up on the hill behind the cabins was a corn crib. I can still envision it both full and empty. I still am not completely sure what ate the corn. We didn't even grow corn, so it's likely a neighbor who did rented the space, though those kinds of details were not part of my awareness. A fenced area which also enclosed the corn crib held sheep. I have great memories of shearing time, watching neighborhood experts run clippers over the sheep and neatly separating fleece from suddenly sleek skin. The sheep were released to go wander within the fence, just like we kids were when watching got boring enough. I was short enough to hide in the tall grass, and occasionally one of my parents remembered I was... somewhere, and called me in to prove I was still safe. In hindsight it's weird that the grass was so tall at sheering time, as that is done in early summer so the fleece can grow out enough to keep them warm for winter. But sheep eat the grass so short that nothing is left for cows, and ranchers tend to hate them. This of course is me looking back more than 70 years, not something that made any kind of impression on my carefree mind, not like hiding in the grass, or looking for butterflies or whatever other bugs that might have been hiding next to me in the grass, or even picking a stalk to see what it could do or how it came apart.

I wasn't allowed back there by myself, being so young, so sheering time took on a unique importance. Other things made much less impact. I'm sure there must have been a barn of some sort, as I kind of mentally place it as a backdrop to the sheering activity. But having a mental picture of it? I can picture the inside of a barn, without being able to swear whether it was ours or one belonging to the neighbors we kids visited with fairly often. It may well be overlaid with TV and movie images with the inside of barns as sets. There was hay up on the overhead platform, and a wooden ladder nailed to a hefty post. I could climb it easily, but transferring to the hayloft itself meant letting go of the ladder, a new thing at a young age.  I had to do it just to show that I could be just as brave and able as my older brother. He would tease me unmercifully if I didn't. So of course Mom decided it was too dangerous and I should stop climbing it. Somehow that made what I had been doing because everybody else did it into something scary, and made me doubt myself and whether I could safely do it. Still, I never did fall, and the views from up high and the games we could invent filled some otherwise boring days.

By the time I was five, my attention was drawn to the windmill tower on the property, down lower in the trees. It was just there and always had been in my existence, but once I really looked at it, I saw all the triangles it was made out of and figured out how safe it would be to climb. All I had to do was move and refasten one limb at a time and I'd be perfectly safe. One foot, the other foot, one arm, the other arm. The triangles got smaller and smaller as I rose, but the principle was the same. It was a fantastic adventure, written about here way back on July 28, 2011. It had been printed elsewhere while I was still getting comfortable with writing things to be read - actually read!!! - and finally brought over to my own blog to keep. It's title is "Reclaimed 3: Two Towers, Part 1. "

I bring it back as a different view of that day because I was a bit different when I wrote it, and did so then in large part because it contrasted with "Two Towers, Part 2." Today the climb contrasts with the hayloft ladder. Once again Mom freaked out, just much more so since I got much higher this time to the point where she couldn't even find me up above the tree line. After debating whether I could stay up there until my parents quit calling and went away, never knowing just where I'd been, I reluctantly decided that would never happen but only make what trouble I was in worse. Announcing myself, I climbed back down, one limb moving at a time, nothing else letting go until the previous piece of me was secure. I never was scared, never regretted doing it, and Mom never succeeded in making me feel scared for what I'd done. She was doing that adequately by and for herself. I gloried in that cllimb! I still do. What she did succeed in was getting me to promise never to climb it ever again! I never did break that promise.... Darn it! She made me unsure about hayloft ladders, but never the windmill tower.

Perhaps she should have left well enough alone, and me able to climb, since my next self-taught skill was learning how striker matches worked... in singles and multiples... right behind the house... in a pile of dry leaves. I scared myself just fine that time, but got the fire out before any real damage was done. I smuggled the box of matches back to where they were supposed to be without getting caught. I also had the presence of mind to bury the black leaves under brown ones to hide the rest of the evidence. I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has worn out by now anyway, so you have my full confession written down for the very first time.

In addition to the sheep, we had a chicken coop. It wasn't back up on the hill, but down on the level with the cabins, just back a bit behind them. I remember most clearly the part where it was time to eat one. Whichever parent was to dispatch one pulled it out by the feet, held it down with its head extended, and brought down the hatchet. Then the fun began, this headless feather-shedding thing flopping all around, this way and that, taking what felt like a full minute to die. My parents kept telling us it was dead the second its head came off, that all this wild activity was "just its nerves". I'm not sure whether we believed that then, but we tried to take comfort that it wasn't in pain. The rest of food prep details are fuzzy, but I recall dunking the bird in (hot?) water to help get the feathers off. I also recall spending what seemed like hours anyway removing them. We must not have had chickens long, because I also recall visiting a neighbor a few miles away and waiting while she "candled" eggs so Mom could buy them. I couldn't tell how she did it, perhaps because I had a bad angle for watching, but when the eggs got home none of them had the blob of blood that said they were fertilized and ready to become a chick instead of breakfast.

There were two more things involving animals, though not necessarily farm animals. There was a fairly long hike from the house up the hill to where the school bus picked us up. Something drew my attention to a pile of brush in the woods next to the road a bit more than halfway there. I wasn't in a hurry, nor was my brother along, so it must have been just an errand up to get the mail, also at the entrance to the property. There was a litter of new kittens in a pile under the brush, eyes still closed, happy to stay put rather than run away from those two small hands reaching in, gently petting them, picking them up for a cuddle and putting them back. Mom was nowhere around, likely hunting so she had milk to feed them. Eventually I went on my way, keeping the secret of what was under the brush pile. As always, had I told anybody, I would have been forbidden from doing at again. They were there the next day, and the next, so it was a total shock when they'd been moved. I never saw them again, not as kittens, not as wild cats doing rodent cleanup. But for years afterwards, any time I saw a brush pile, I'd wonder about what kittens might be hiding under it, sure that there must be some somewhere.

The other animal was memorable both for it's size and for the tragedy almost breaking my heart. A pine snake came visiting. A huge one, possibly 6 feet long and as thick as the 4x4 my dad used to kill it. They are harmless, except to rats or perhaps your pet cat, but we didn't have a pet cat back then. What we did have were customers on the resort part of the property, and they noticed the snake. How could they not? Just because many people fear them, and that's bad for business, the snake had to go away, and in a way that reassured everybody it would never return.  It could so easily been put in a gunnysack, into the car, and driven a few miles away to go about its business of rodent control. I didn't fear it, for two reasons: there are no poisonous snakes in that part of Minnesota, and my brother and I were well acquainted with chasing and occasionally catching garter snakes. We'd never been told to fear snakes. Our parents didn't seem afraid of it, but while they were intent on my Dad doing his grim job of pounding it over and over,  a crowd had gathered to watch, with nobody telling them to stay back for safety. Eventually it quit moving, and once the curious had examined it, the body was disposed of. I'm not sure I ever forgave that unneeded brutality. 

The last memory involves no animals. I got to drive a tractor! If memory serves, I was way too small to have had any sane person put me up in the seat by myself, tell me where to put my feet (I assume there was a clutch as well as the gas pedal) and how to move them. Yet there I was, getting it moving, steering it to avoid knocking over the swing set, and all too quickly asking how did I stop this very intimidating piece of machinery. Once again I did it to show big brother I was just as good as he was since he'd just driven it, but this time I also knew it was sheer luck that I did as well as I had and didn't do any damage. I never drove anything again until high school driver's ed, and after than not until I was married and had my first kid. Oddly enough I love driving now, and just in my working career as an IC courier over 29 years clocked over 2 million miles. (I kept track for tax purposes.)

Return to The Park

A friend of mine had some time yesterday morning and accepted my offer to revisit the park. She's only been to the version on the WI side of the river, despite living in MN. In addition she'd never seen either trilliums or Jacks in the pulpit. We headed out early, anticipating unseasonal heat later in the day. This time, not being a semi-holiday weekend but early on a weekday, the sole handicap parking spot was available. While I no longer qualify, she does, so the tunnel path was right next to the car. This time she was ahead of me, shooting things which caught her unique eye, like a mossy rock standing up in a tiny stream bed, its moss coat in two distinct colors, oddly green in the middle with a vertical circle of orange surrounding it.  I shot it myself, but the photo which resulted didn't say anything to me. OK, odd, but not my idea of special. Movin' on.

I had stopped a bit earlier to video the stream just before it had funneled into the tunnel under the highway, its gentle current leaving reflective ripples. Not only did I have to fight with highway noise overhead, but my friend was excitedly pointing out a variety of things which caught her eye. I'm guessing she hasn't tried to replay video with a specific soundtrack before, and I didn't think it would be all that useful to ask for silence. Besides she was having a good time for her first visit, and I'd been there before. With my permit sticker, I could return any time.

She found, while waiting for me, what I'd missed the day before, however. Embedded in the nook of a twisty old debarked and thoroughly insect-drilled stump on the highway bank was a clump of mushrooms. The whole clump would have fit in a hand, but we weren't going to disturb it.

 She was gung-ho to continue straight on the path to see what's next. I wasn't. First, what's next was all vertical. This was the gorge the river had carved over millennia, after all. I knew we were both fairly low on energy for ambitious hikes, even with frequent stops to take photos, and the path was a bit too full of raised tree roots. The distractions of looking way ahead at the next thing left both of us open to tripping, possibly needing to leave before even seeing what I'd brought her to see. She'd already passed the turnoff we needed to take, where three feet in were the jack in the pulpits. I called her back.

There they were, same as they' been. But this time, after gently showing her the unique shape of the plant, I got her to hold the big leaf out of the way so I could get a shot of what was mostly a hidden blur before when both my hands were managing the camera. The "Jack" was perfectly visible in one of the same pair from the day before, and now they had parted slightly to give me the perfect angle.

After we finished I asked her did she want me to do the same for her to get a shot. A bit puzzled, she asked me, "But where is the flower?" I explained she'd just been holding the big leaf to the side so we could both see the flower. That was the big show. She was enlightened, just not impressed. A whole hillside of trilliums awaited her and off she went, happily spending about ten minutes, until her body said enough already.

On her way she found still another Jack in the pulpit, and as I was seeing if I could get an angle on that, (nope) I heard her mention pink trilliums. Pink?

My first thought was she'd fond a different pink flower, much pinker than what she really had found, as it turned out, as well as smaller and different number pf petals. I'd passed some minutes earlier and taken a shot. But this wasn't what had caught her eye.

The day before everything blooming in that large patch was white. Not a hint of pink anywhere. I caught up to her, and started to find them.

There they were, one here, one there, sparsely sprinkled among the white. Standing in place, I could see hundreds of white ones, and about a dozen pink. I could tell research was needed, but later discovered Google is kind of iffy with information. These might be how they start, blending in to the white around them as they age. But does "as they age" mean between morning and afternoon? Or it might be a mixed patch. But why no pink ones the previous afternoon's visit? I'll have to ask the horticulturist in the booth where you pay for permits, as she'd already directed me to the tunnel and which way to turn on the other side a few days before to find the trilliums. She wasn't in yet, and we needed to leave.

On our way out, I stopped at the far end of the tunnel for a shot of the water. It was a different sky from the day before, a different sun angle,  and a whole different photo. So why not?

A Transplant Sucess

Many years ago I tried a flower I'd never heard of before to go in the home garden: balloon flowers.  Go look them up. You'll find they grow about ten inches tall. They also come in multiple colors.  My research was wrong on both points, or at least for what I bought, and not at all helpful for replacing it. 

It's not that anything happened to the original plant. Unless, that is, you count freely reproducing as something happening to it.  One plant became a clump, added an adjacent clump, became a third clump in the middle of a former garden path, the one that cuts across the corner of the "L" so we don't have to walk down the driveway to get into the rest of the yard. With that path blocked, we stopped using it, and it became more blocked, filling with lily of the valley, hostas, coneflowers,  small volunteer burning bushes,  daylilies, columbine (the small native red/yellow ones), thistles, dandelions, violets, and grass. I'm sure I missed a few plants in there, along with a multitude of baby trees. It's not even that large a path! Plus it was covered with square paving blocks!

Still, the major obstacle was the balloon flower. We kind of hated to step on it. Stepping over it wasn't an option. Remember my research showed it was maybe a foot tall?  Try over 5 feet! And colors - plural - was a light pastel blue. No plural. Just blue, so pastel it shows in pictures as more white. The shape of the flowers is as described, where the bud petals stick together along the seams, puffed out in a balloon, a bit smaller than a ping pong ball, and with some corners. Then they suddenly separate into a familiar flower shape.

This is part of a mature clump in front of the former house, the original one. The siding is medium blue, making the flowers look white. This was shot years ago before I had the ability to enhance colors on my computer. You can see the heaviness of the tall stems leaves them vulnerable to tilting and breaking, but they do bloom prolifically once established. Note down in the right bottom corner is a yellowish bud from a foreground daylily, an old-fashioned tall one, not the short ones like Stella D'Oro.

You can easily imagine the challenge stepping "over" one of these would present.

I wanted some in the new garden after we moved back north. I couldn't find a duplicate. This is where selling your old house to a son comes in handy. He's been a willing provider of sections of anything I wanted from 35-year-old gardens. Clear the path by digging out that balloon flower? Sure!

So we watered everything before a major digging spree, this one plant especially. It turns out they have a lonnnnng tap root. Some of that got left in the ground, so I'm a bit curious how stubborn it will be about returning. But I got a section, top cut way back, root about a foot long. This made it interesting because we're not supposed to dig deep holes here, per the lease. Lots of infrastructure, electric, gas, water and sewer, crosses unmarked underground. They don't tell us where. Since it's technically private property and I'm not an owner but a renter, I'm not entitled to the information. It's why so many gardens here are raised beds. So I dug carefully, wider than deep, and slanted the root - a bit shorter than when I received it - at about a 45 degree angle, and buried it by putting a circle of rocks around it and filling an extra 3 inches of dirt over the top.

Fingers crossed.

It survived its first summer. I'd left the stems about a foot long, giving the roots less work to do to nourish the top, and before frost it produced two balloons. Yeee-haaaa!

So, spring is here. All over, things are beginning to leaf out or sprout up. The first blooms are showing, except those chopped off or dug up by our abundance of rabbits and squirrels. The red peony which came with the property is as tall as its cage already, and tiny buds are showing. It's next to the balloon flower, which now has it's own cage, 4 foot tall above the ground. Winds here are fierce so they'll need protection.

I've been watching the ground daily, looking for signs that the balloon flower survived winter as well.

Finally, one shoot! Then two!  Paul came over to help with more planting over the weekend, and took a close look, gently brushing dirt aside to show more tiny buds. We counted 7. The next day I found 9. Now perhaps 11. It's getting watered daily in this heat, and more tiny hopefuls poke up. The above photo is from this morning, before today's watering, and the ground is splitting even more. I get a kick out of green on top of purple stems where first was a whitish bitty bump. Looking down on these you can't tell the first two are 3 inches tall.

There is a paved path through the yard so folks on our block can easily access the community center / mail boxes on the middle street. These face it so we can all watch them grow, along with my circle garden and the lilies in the back which were just planted after starting indoors, then hardened on the porch inside mesh walls.

Right now the bleeding heart, also a legacy plant from previous owners, has been doing a bang-up job of showing off for everybody. The above photo is about a third of the plant, since I can't get far enough away to fit it all in the frame. In a couple months it will have disappeared back into the ground, if it's on the same schedule as last year, but the lilies will be taking over. And weeds.

Wind straight off the lake shoots up that corridor between back yards, so we'll have to see how those hold up and whether we need cages next year.

A Walk InThe State Park

I say that like there's only one.  If we're talking within ten miles, that's correct. It's along the St. Croix River just north of Taylors Falls. I drive past/through it every time I head to Wisconsin. Now that we're permanently here, and the trilliums are in bloom and visible with a tiny bit of risk from the highway while driving, I decided to get the annual car sticker for the car. I've been passing those triliums for years and never stopped with a camera. The road is too fast. There's no shoulder. It's too far to walk from safe parking. I didn't know yet that there was a tunnel from inside the park under the highway to a very walkable path where they grow in a huge patch.

It's not a sitable path, not level because it's the river bluff, but it's doable. If it were sitable... OK, scratch that. If I were still somebody who could sit on the earth and get up again without an assist, there would have been a whole lot more pictures taken, especially for the surprise at the end. But I was relegated to shooting downward, or bending over and holding the camera where I thought it was pointing to the right place - it wasn't:  the the important part was cut out - there would be better pictures.  But following is what it was, this afternoon, as good as I could do.

First there were a ton of violets along the ground.

Then the usual supply of fallen, mossy logs gently rotting away to renew the soil.

The opening to the tunnel has a small stream running through it, of course, because of the bluff. Low flow and minimal breeze lent themselves to perfect reflections of sky and canopy.

Then trilliums,

                                        and trilliums,

And trilliums, smothering the hillside, the path climbing up through the middle. Or perhaps I should say  one of the paths, as there was a split. One could choose to turn to the side for the gentle climb through trilliums, or a steeper climb up to ... well, I can't say to what except for seeing a wooden bridge because I didn't take it.

It had been a long day on my feet, since back home Paul and I were working on the south garden bed. There were still weeds to be pulled, plants to be sorted and organized, with holes to be dug so lilies which had finally sprouted cold be planted to replace those the squirrels had eaten last fall or the bunnies munched down to nubs this spring, then watered, then mulched, and watered once again once I finish this. Just say I was really footsore, especially after taking 64 shots of the trilliums. 

I know, right?

As I turned to head home I almost missed the surprise, back near where the path rejoined when I retraced my path heading downhill.

It started out looking fairly ordinary. I'd been looking at three leaf plants for a while now. I could easily have walked right past. Something stopped me. Kind of like a tickle in the brain.

Immediately adjacent were more of the same, except what had almost been hiding was more pronounced. Jack in the pulpits!!! Or was this duo Jacks in the pulpit? This pair was fun because they were touching each other but facing opposite directions. One jack barely shows, there if you know where to look. I tried one more time to get something showing the Jack more plainly.

Instead I got this. I apologize for the blur, but the fat fuzzy thing under the dark striped curl of leaf, a bit lighter then the darkest green and darker than the lightest green, is the Jack sticking up. Once I got home to get a large view, part of me wanted to  go back. but my feet were defiant.  I may try again tomorrow. 

Or not.

I'll have to ask my feet. Maybe 64 tries with them will get me a few good shots.




 

Are You Eating Tires Too?

 I bet you thought that was a totally silly question, that only an idiot  - or one of those morons filming themselves on camera doing stupid stuff just to get attention - would even give it a try. Come to think of it though, not much difference between the two categories. They probably are eating tires, too, but then, so are we.

We haven't studied it - yet - here in the US. But Switzerland has. And the answer they found is pretty much everybody has been eating, drinking, even breathing, tires. Yep, rubber automotive tires.

The thing is, what probably everybody knows without considering the implications, is that tires aren't just rubber. They get vulcanized for strength and longevity of use.  You may have thought of that as mostly a heating process, but it involves a lot of additives as well. We expect a lot of our tires, like 60,000 road miles of abuse before the steel belts show. Of course we almost never let them get that low on tread since they're simply not safe to drive well before then, but most of us hate to spend money until we absolutely have to do so. We pop in our cars, turn the key, and expect to go smoothly to wherever we want... for nearly forever. 

Manufacturers try to keep us happy by selling tires that perform as close to reasonable expectations as possible. They know we'll be back for more. Where we buy them will depend on how the last set worked for us. So stuff gets added to the rubber, things like DPG, 6-PPD, and 6-PPD-quinone.

Yeah, I have no clue what those are either, nor what precisely they do for tire longevity and performance.  But what is known is that those particular chemicals are toxic to mammals. You know, what we humans also are.  In studies on rodents, they have found that these additives lead to decreased fertility in males and have neurotoxic and neuroinflammatory effects. They haven't been studied for their effects on humans yet. After all, who would volunteer? "Hey guys, we know these things are poisonous to rats, but who wants to give them a try and report back what your symptoms are?"

Ri-i-i-ight. Remember they haven't been studied in humans on purpose. But the thing is, humans have been eating them. In Switzerland they've started studying them, finding them in the food supply - and in the air - and in the water, including high mountain lakes.

Go back to the tires and that inconvenient part about them needing to be replaced. The rubber wears off in microscopic bits with use. It gets in the air, on the ground, in the water. It lands on fruits and vegetables, gets taken up in plant roots, gets inhaled by whatever breathes. They're even in pristine (?) mountain lakes and rivers. They're everywhere.

Yummy!

Now alerted, while scientists have commenced to study how it's affecting us - though I'd imagine the first hurdle is separating out those rare people who may not have been exposed, off in some isolated corner of the world where tires are not used - we have to start thinking about how to minimize exposure. One way might be to no longer put those chemicals in rubber, but what happens to our tires then? Will they start falling apart on us? And under what conditions?

We could stop driving as a species. Uhh, camels, anybody? Horses and wooden-wheeled buggies? Lay rail everywhere and we have to walk all those places not on the lines? Sure, you bet, right away. It  could be great for the environment too,  but it just won't happen.

Those of us who don't bother to wash off our produce will have to start since the chemicals have been found on them. But as they're already in many of them it's only a tiny partial solution.

We could change our driving habits immediately, not by totally quitting but by doing it in a more tire friendly way. Fast starts and stops just make it worse. Ever heard the expression "lay rubber"? It's literal. You've seen the black streaks on the road. People get impatient, even angry, or their minds wander and they're surprised by that sudden reason to stop immediately running out right in front of the car. So we need to do better by giving ourselves more time to get where we're going, and consistently paying attention to all around us. (Put the damn phones down!)

Those are the kinds of things we could choose to do just for ourselves, and get twice the benefit from doing so. Meanwhile, it's a good thing that somebody's scientists are studying the problems to find out how much harm all that rubber is doing inside us. Our country's scientists won't be, or not soon.

But it's a pretty good bet we all are breathing, eating, and drinking rubber tires.

I'll take mine ala-mode please. How about a sprinkle of cinnamon?

His Best In Four Years!!!!

 Yesterday was the day we were waiting for. Both of us were a bit sceptical of how good the results would be, and tried not to be too confident ahead of time. After all, the last time we did this it not only hadn't been great, it turned into more problem than cure.

Yesterday was the day his back's pain interrupter was turned on. In preparation he's been going easy on his limited prescription of Percoset so he'd have some left for his 100 plus miles in the car. We discussed him having one before the ride to Minneapolis, but decided we didn't want any interference with his ability to tell how much pain relief he needed. If necessary he could take one on the way home.

His appointment started with the surgical staff inspecting his incisions for signs of healing or possible infection. He passed, and even better doesn't need to come back for stitches removal since they'll dissolve internally and let the outside bits drop away.

After they left, the tech from Medtronic came and spent over an hour with us. First he connected his computer up to Steve's now-internal mechanism. Wi-Fi is wonderful. It also means that like me, Steve now has to avoid magnetic scanners like those for security or in MRIs. That would reset the programming inside his body, which is what the next half hour was spent setting up, making a series of different programs for different uses. As each lead was powered Steve reported when he could feel the electricity and how far in which direction, while the tech asked him to move in different directions or in different movements like standing up or sitting.

The rest of the time was spent in showing how the chargers, programming tech, and nest of cords we were taking home and would be needing to use would work. The procedure took long enough that Steve needed to excuse himself for a restroom break, and reported when he returned that the walk produced no pain whatsoever! It was working!  

The one thing he did notice was that the more he needed the pain relief, the more he felt the electricity going through his body. What this means is that this system is smart tech, sensing need and supplying the right amount of relief, then backing off when not needed again. This resulted in the ride home providing a lot of tingling... instead of pain! We both still wince when a tire hits a bump or hole, but that's habit. Steve felt so well that he decided we'd head out to his current favorite restaurant and have a nice late lunch. His optimism led to a bit of over-reach, using muscles too long ignored, and exhausting him. PT is definitely going to be needed!

It also meant that the implant was working overtime once he sat in his recliner, and lying down didn't help at all. So we made what we hope is both first and last call to the tech guy, who is both smart and experienced enough to expect that kind of thing. He helped Steve change the power level to a lower point where it no longer was too strong but still knocked out the pain. The new plan is to power it back up when he's active, and back down for sleep.

This morning when he came out to the family room he was delighted to announce he'd just had the best sleep he's had in years, and several times today he's announced to others he's not felt this good in four years!

Next comes fishing !!!!!!!