Is This Global Warming or What?

Okay, okay. The sky is not falling . . . just this minute, anyway . . . but the dandelions did give me a start when I finally got outside today.

Tuesday is my usually laundry day and I had gotten everything washed in plenty of time to line dry during daylight hours. But I was busy with my Phonology and Language Disorders exam and time slipped by and besides, it looked bleak and blustery, it looked too cold outside. When I did rouse myself from the computer, I decided to take a walk. As I put on my warm and fuzzy Oregon Coast sweater on my way to the door, I glanced at the thermometer. I would need a coat too, I figured, and that's when I saw that IT WAS 66 DEGREES TODAY IN WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA! And I missed a great blustery day of line drying and wasted all that electricity drying clothes for HOURS and HOURS. UGH. Shame on me, shame on me.

So I started my walk. I pushed up my sleeves by the time I made it to the end of the block. Then, as I was looking down at all of the beautiful mahogany-colored oak leaves, there it was! OMG! A dandelion! It's November 30, 2010, and we've got dandelions. Little did I know that when I said Hints of Spring they would really materialize so soon. I went home again to get my camera to record the event. Gotta report this to Project Budburst. The walk was short . . . but I've got to get on with the exam.

BTW, the tomatoes that I left on the vines are still ripening. When I was at Mom and Dad's house in Gloucester on Saturday, Dad showed me that his daffodils were up. Mom said the crocuses had already bloomed. What will this mean come spring?

GTG.

Coyote at the Kitchen Door

We have a few coyote in the Williamsburg area. See the article I wrote last year for Suite.101 when I was doing a bit of research in order to write up something for New Quarter Park staff and visitors.The staff tells me there are two families of coyote in the park this year. And a friend who lives in a very nice new neighborhood in the city told me that her husband saw a coyote on their street fade into the woods beside College Creek.

So when I saw the recently published book Coyote at the Kitchen Door: Living with Wildlife in Suburbia by Stephen DeStefano, I snapped it up to learn more.

The book is very personal, really. The author writes in the first person and I certainly understand his emotion, as will most environmentally-literate readers. He sprinkles information and philosophy between the lines of everyday life and relationships. His knowledge of the environment causes him not to fit in well with those who live without that vocabulary, blissfully unaware, and although I'm not a biologists, I am empathetic.

He gets angry when he sees suburbia encroaching, trees falling. We are too many and it shouldn't be a big surprise that we see more and more wildlife as we build more and more housing developments where there once was forest. And now, the wildlife are getting pretty used to us. Canada Geese and White-tailed Deer are domesticated. Coyote and bears tolerate our presence and scavenge our yard, formerly their woods.

Toward the end of the book DeStefano spends a bit more time talking up the need for a paradigm shift. We need to change the way we look at the world and think about our relationship to other living things, an idea posited by other scientists and humanists as well. He talks about how much effort we put into the care and upkeep of our homes and reflects that, "I just wish we all could carry the passion and love and care that we show for the buildings in which we live to the land and air and water that surround and support them. I wish our nation as a whole had the same This Old House kind of enthusiasm for the natural environment that we have for the built environment. It is every bit as important to your immediate well-being as paying the mortgage and keeping water out of the basement. Without all the things the earth provides, the place in which you live will no longer be the sweet and comforting place you know as home. The real estate agents are wrong: your house is only your second biggest investment in your life. Your environment is your first."

The last chapter hearkens back to Aldo Leopold. As I read this I remembered reading A Sand County Almanac when I was writing Waterfront Property. The land ethic. Yes. It was my environmental epiphany. I used the same quote: "We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." And in addition, "That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics."

Interspersed with the author's philosophical musings are short clips of fiction from the coyote's point of view that he weaves into the non-fictional setting: his Massachusetts neighborhood and region. DeStefano transitions, and the reader knows that the coyote is always nearby. 

One final thing: I like a passage he wrote about driving and thinking on an autumn day that I thought was artful, albeit melancholy. I've shared it here:

"I drive along, watching the weather and the rural scenery--letting my mind roam. Something about this time of year always sets me to thinking, especially when I am driving or hiking around. It's the dichotomy: it is chilly and kind of gray and gloomy, yet beautiful, quite and peaceful. It has the feel of the year's closing down, yet the world seems to open up. You can see far into the forest and the view of the sky is virtually unimpeded now that all the herbaceous growth is gone and the leaves are down . . . I drive, thinking about some of the same old things. I am  fully ensconced in my mid-fifties now and wondering how I got here so fast."

Reminds me of my last drive along the Colonial Parkway . . . where the coyote are always just out of sight.

It's Time to Make the Cranberry Sauce

When I was a junior in college, I traveled over to the Shenandoah Valley and spent Thanksgiving with my boyfriend's family in the Turkey Capital of the World. It was the turkey capital then, but I'm not sure it still holds the dubious honor. These days they say it's the "birthplace of the commercial turkey industry." But I digress.

I think about that trip and my former boyfriend's sweet mother every year about this time because Isabelle's cranberry sauce has become a tradition at my house. It was a big hit with my children when they were little. So tonight, as I wipe the sticky fruit juices from the counter and the Cuisinart, I salute Isabelle again, for something like the 30th year in a row. I'm happy to share this favorite recipe with you!

Isabelle Miller's Cranberry Sauce

2 cups sugar
1 lb. cranberries, ground
1 can crushed pineapple (with juice)
3 oranges, ground (part unpeeled and part peeled)
5 apples, ground (unpeeled)
3 - 3 oz. packages strawberry jello

I grind all of the fruit in the Cuisinart, although I think Isabelle used a blender, and then dump everything in a large bowl and mix well with a spatula. This recipe makes a gallon - enough to use half for Thanksgiving and the other half for Christmas!

Another recipe that made it home with me that year, way back in the 1970s,  was Isabelle's recipe for Japanese Fruit Pie. It hasn't been a regular with me, but my mom loves it and made it for the holidays for many years. I've always preferred fruit dishes, even over chocolate, so I suppose that's why I asked for the recipes in the first place.

Japanese Fruit Pie

1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 eggs.
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup pecans
1 Tbsp. vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup raisins
1 pie crust

Mix melted butter, sugar, and eggs with an electric mixer until creamy. Stir in coconut, pecans, vinegar, vanilla, and raisins and mix well. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. 

Enjoy ... and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Taking Care of the Garden

I ran into a Master Naturalist friend at church this morning. She asked if I had been there last week. Unfortunately, I didn't go. The service and sermon had been all about nature, my friend said. She loved it.

Too bad for me, but at least I could go online to listen to the recording of the sermon, "Taking Care of the Garden."

Jennifer began with a quote from E.O. Wilson's book, The Creation, a book in which he appeals to fundamentalist ministers to think about the "stewardship of Earth" model and to consider how it has destabilized everything.

Human centered preaching with its emphasis on the afterlife has encouraged us to manage and control Earth's resources for our own benefit rather than to live as a part of a living Earth and recognize our oneness with it. The traditional Christian religious model, Wilson says, encourages apathy and denial. Why care about this temporal Earth?

We need a new model, he says, a new model to replace the God as King model with a God as Universe one. This way of looking at life does not elevate humans over Earth. Rather, it recognizes that we are part of God's body. The bounty of the Earth isn't there for our use. It is holy ground that requires us to nurture, protect, and deeply, deeply love it completely.

Jennifer ended her sermon by asking us to imagine the changes we would make if, indeed, we would to imagine nature as God's body. It would affect our life and every choice for living.

I think so. I think we would live more simply and we would tend our gardens with care.

Why do people think the way they do?

Haven't you stopped to shake your head from time to time and wonder why on Earth people think the way they do?

Well, let's turn that around. Maybe they don't think.

That is, maybe they don't think the way you do because they simply don't have the same vocabulary.

My stepson, knowing about my interest in speech and language development, suggested a recent Radiolab program about words and their ability to open up new worlds. It seems that people don't have the ability to think about certain things, say global climate change for example, until they have the vocabulary to do it. People can only think the way they do about words they know. Interesting.

Listen to New Words, New Worlds here:



"In the late 1970s, a new language was born. And Ann Senghas, Associate Professor of Psychology at Barnard, has spent the last 30 years helping to decode it. In 1978, 50 deaf children entered a newly formed school--a school in which the teachers (who didn't sign) taught in Spanish. No one knows exactly how it happened, but in the next few years--on school buses and in the playground--these kids invented a set of common words and grammar that opened up a whole new way of communicating, and even thinking."

Project FeederWatch!

I was delighted to start the 2010 Project FeederWatch season this week, but a little disappointed in my bird count. Numbers of individuals of any species were low as were the species count. Here are the numbers of individuals seen at one time of particular species in an hour in my backyard. I've heard that the birds aren't coming to feeders as much yet because there's enough "real" food. I hope that's the case and that things pick up!

Red-bellied Woodpecker	1
Downy Woodpecker	1
Carolina Chickadee	3
Tufted Titmouse	3
White-breasted Nuthatch	1
Carolina Wren	1
Northern Cardinal	2
House Finch	3
American Goldfinch	4

Don't Send Your Leaves to the Landfill!

It's that time of year again. Beautiful leaves are falling and my neighbors are bagging them up to send to the landfill. It makes me crazy. Leaves are nature's fertilizer! If you want a beautiful yard next year, just mulch 'em up and let them do their thing.

For the last few years, after I think that everyone's at work, I head out with by cart to bring big plastic bags full of leaves home to my yard (Bonus! If I don't rip the bag, my next garbage can liner is free!). Each year I get bolder. I've been known to stop at strangers' houses and load up my trunk with bags of lovely leaves abandoned by the curb, already decomposing into rich soil. Last year I actually went to two neighbor's houses and volunteered to rake their leave if I could drag them to my house.

This morning, though, I took a chance. I went out before 9 a.m. because I saw that my favorite leaves were on the curb and I know BFI comes early (Grrr. Another pet peeve. Read more at Take Your Own Trash to the Dump). I had to get these "leaves" because this neighbor mulches a lot and the bags are half full of mulch. Good stuff. I used the half mulch to finish off the low edge of one bed (above, right) and mulched around the fence line of my garden where I planted iris and daffodil bulbs. Subsequent bags from this neighbor's yard will be more leaf, less mulch, but the first rake of the season is always the best because the landscapers end up raking away the dry mulch on top of the beds.

Finally, I fill up my compost bins with leaves. Come fall, after being mixed with veggie scraps, coffee grounds, and rain, they will have decomposed into a nutritious blend perfect for mixing with native soil to give my plants the meal they need. Leaves do that, you know. Decompose. You'd think my yard would be ten feet high by now, but actually, those leaves have become a nice, thick layer of topsoil over what was a typical Williamsburg yard made of clay.

I've written two articles about composting leaves for Suite 101. To learn more about the benefits of leaving the leaves, take a look at Fall Landscape Maintenance: Use Leaves to Make Compost, Protect Wildlife and Fertilize Naturally with Leaf Mulch: Mow for Mulch, Use Leaf Litter to Improve Soil, Add to Compost.

What was she thinking?

I'm taking a course in speech science this semester and one of our discussion group topics last week was the use of EEG (Electroencephalography) to see if all is well with the way the brain is sending messages, especially those related to speech. So when I saw this photo in the Style section this morning, I had to skim the article. Seems that it's a "Daily Pic" from FotoWeek D.C. I've copied the article from the Washington Post below.

The review allowed me to flex my art history muscles. Pictures as patterns. Hues of Mondrian. Drips of Pollack. A connection was made between the composition and 17th-century Dutch portraits. Yes, I can see that. But I thought it was a little closer to 18th-century American than Vermeer, although this 18th-century Hans Holbein makes a pretty striking comparison.

I Googled up some portraits because once I got started . . . you know. How about comparing it to this John Singleton Copley? It looks like the sitter has on her thinking cap too. The limited, nearly monochromatic, palate as well as the stark realism drives you into the painting, into the mind of the subject.

Finally, as a student of 18th-century Virginia art and history, I couldn't resist offering a John Durand portrait for comparison. Are there electrodes hidden beneath that kerchief?

Here's the WP review.

Spark of humanity in FotoWeek fizzle

By Blake Gopnik
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The latest of this week's Daily Pics from FotoWeek DC, Washington's third annual celebration of the photographic arts.

For a picture that's almost a symphony in white, there's a lot going on in Richard Ansett's "Woman With Wire Cap #1," which won him second place in the "Single Image -- Fine Art" category of the FotoWeek DC International Awards, now on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

One thing that's going on in Ansett's photo is its relationship to anything called "Symphony in White" -- from Whistler's first ideas about pictures-as-patterns in the 1870s to Barnett Newman's white-on-white abstractions from the '50s and '60s. That's modernism for you. And Ansett pushes back against it by adding pungent content: His all-white modernity isn't pure and pretty. It's about equipment and, maybe, science gone amok. Or maybe not.

A wall text tells us that Ansett's sitter is wired up to record her brain activity while she's exposed to pictures. Which means that she's rather like us, looking at this picture of her, and paying attention to our own brain states -- our thoughts; our feelings; our perceptions -- as we do so. For the time that this woman's being studied, modern science seems in the service of culture.

It even looks a bit like culture. The pure red, green and blue of Ansett's wires, on their white background, evoke the hues of Mondrian's abstractions. Their meanderings recall the drips and skeins of Pollock. The old woman's parchment face, in its white electrode cap, recalls elegant Dutch matrons in their white lace caps, in paintings by Rembrandt and his ilk.

For all its art-world froideur and its antiseptic, scientific gleam, Ansett's photo has that kind of sympathy, that kind of humanity.

Overall, the FotoWeek awards are a terrible disappointment. You've seen almost all their pictures many times before, in almost any publication you could name. The shot by Ansett, a commercial photographer from England, is one of the few that demands, and repays, closer looking.

As headquarters for FotoWeek DC, the Corcoran Gallery of Art will have free admission and extended hours through the end of the festival Nov. 13. It will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and until 9 p.m. Thursday. Call 202-639-1700 or visit www.corcoran.org and www.fotoweekdc.org.

Grateful for Late Leaves and Hints of Spring

The leaves are turning late this years. Some fell in August while others are still green. Still others are brilliantly colored, as we have come to expect at this time of year. But it's an odd fall display. If you pay attention to these things, you think you might know why.

I've just finished reading Field Notes from a Catastrophe and as I write, it's hard to keep things in perspective. Although I am well-read in climate change matters, more news about the fact that we are knowingly destroying the ability of the earth to support our species never fails to make me feel unsettled. The idea that we live with such a reality and nothing changes makes life seem like so much sleepwalking. The fact that the scientific community is so alarmed, and yet can't get our leaders to lead enrages me.  

" . . . at 378 parts per million, current CO2 levels are unprecedented in recent geological history. (The previous high, of 299 parts per million, was reached around 325,000 years ago.) It is believed that the last time carbon dioxide levels were comparable to today's was three and a half million years ago, during what is known as the mid-Pliocene warm period, and it is likely that they have not been much higher since the Eocene, some fifty million years ago. In the Eocene, crocodiles roamed Colorado and sea levels were nearly three hundred feet higher than they are today."

On this beautiful November day I took a break from reading to attend church and muck around the yard a bit. Jennifer's sermon was on that perennial November theme: gratitude. I took it to heart and believe that, yes, I do sometimes feel really sad and really happy at the same time. Even when my reading and thinking is so serious, I can feel an awe that delights. I am grateful. I feel connected. I know that nothing can be what it is in isolation.

Today, I muse. I look with awe and wonder at the colors of the season, the way the warm sunshine sets off the gold-hued leaves, and I found little surprises that make me smile as I look closely at what's growing in my yard.

I am grateful for the Christmas ferns that rise in swirls from my yard deep with acorns and leaves.

I am grateful for the row of many bee balm plants, growing now from the rhizomes of the one that grew in that spot this spring. Although it was so hot and dry that the mother plant's blooms were short lived, it did persist to give me this hope for the future. 

I am grateful for the wild confrey that's coming up in the front yard when they only plants of its species bloomed in the back yard this past spring. Its sticky seed rode a deer to the front yard, I suppose. The deer must have dropped the seed even while the hungry beast ate the turtleheads down to nubbins.

In early spring, before the heat taxed other plants, the golden ragwort bloomed from one spot on the edge of the yard and was able to spread its seed far and wide. I see the round leaves of golden ragwort growing in clumps in the flower beds and yard and rain garden.

I am in awe of the green tomatoes turning red in the window. I am grateful for the tasty tomato sandwich I had for lunch.

I am grateful for the large trees in my yard that shade me with their giant yellow umbrella of leaves. They will fall and I will mulch then. New leaves will sprout again in spring.

But I can't say that I'm not also frightened about what summer will hold. It may well be another record year, and then another. Can I know this and live, aware that we are interconnected and yet, that something is not right? Interconnected, and grateful?

Part II: Why is Queen's Creek So Darn Dirty?

Why? All you have to do is ask. The right person. Seems there is a really simple and logical reason.

Basically, the short of it is that sediment is continually being stirred up as the tide moves in and out. I found this illustration of three different types of tidal mixing in an estuary. It shows that as the salt water moves in, it is heavier and moves in a wedge along the bottom. The top layer is less salty and moves along the surface. The directionality leads to turbidity.

At the New Quarter Park Walk and Talk today, Jill Bieri, director of Chesapeake Experience, talked about our 64,000 square mile, 6 state plus D.C., estuary. The Chesapeake Bay is stressed overall, due to over-harvesting and the activities of 17 million people, but it's also very large and very diverse. Different streams in the watershed mean many different relationships and different sets of problems and issues.

She said that Queen's Creek is quite clean, actually. We measured for pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorous that make algae growth, die, and decompose, thus creating dead zones. The pollutant levels were low, but the water itself is not clear (the Secchi depth was 18 inches).  Jill used to work with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science on bay grass restoration projects. She said that Queen's Creek can't support underwater grasses and probably hasn't been clear enough to support the growth of underwater grasses in an historical time frame.

I asked about the look of the creek and referenced the Lynnhaven River Now project that I mentioned in my earlier post about our dirty Queen's Creek. The unique characteristics of Queen's Creek means that it isn't flushed by tides as well as the Lynnhaven. The Lynnhaven's bottom is sandier than ours. The current in Queen's Creek is faster.

As for the stained clothes I mentioned, Jill said that it was possibly due to the tannins in the water from decomposing leaves. We are blessed with huge swaths of riparian border that absorb and infiltrate stormwater runoff. Lynnhaven has very little because it's in a city with lots of industrial and residential sites perched all along its edge.

Now on that fecal coliform, that's a problem we have in common. That's from people, pet, and wildlife do. Lynnhaven has more of the first two and we probably have more of the third. Nevertheless, the added load from us and our pets has an impact on Queen's Creek's water quality. 

Queen's Creek is dirty, but as Chesapeake Bay tributaries go, it's not really bad. Rather, the particular features of the stream such as underlying geology, depth, and tidal current, keep turbidity levels high throughout the water column. Like they say, looks can be deceiving. Up close, Queen's Creek just looks worse than it is. But if you step back and take it all in, it's beautiful.

Read Part I: Why is Queen's Creek So Darn Dirty?

A Bushel of Green Tomatoes

When the local weather channel started to announce frost warnings, I knew it was time to save the green tomatoes. Once again this year, I gathered them in and now I have tomatoes perched all over the kitchen to ripen. The crazy hot summer stunted my tomato vines and they didn't really start to produce until after the weather broke. When they did come in, they were abundant.

So, now I have lots of green tomatoes and am hunting for some way to prepare them. Last year I tried Green Tomato Chutney, but it was a disaster. I had to cook it forever, it stunk up the house, and on top of that it didn't taste all that great. Since my husband doesn't care for pickled things, I wasn't going to torture him with vinegar smells again and I really didn't want to eat green tomato pickles all winter by myself. I already made salsa and don't use that much of it since the kids have been gone, so didn't want to make that either. We're not fried food eaters, so fried green tomatoes are out too.

I think I'll just wait for those that wish to turn to do so in my kitchen windows. Those too stubborn to turn will add their energy to the compost and go back to the Earth. But in the meantime, I did try one recipe new this evening: a recipe for Green Tomato Bread. It tastes pretty much like zucchini bread. Really, it does. That used up two cups. If you're like me and are looking for green tomato recipes, I recommend that you try this!

Green Tomato Bread


Mix together:
2 cups white sugar
1 cup oil
3 eggs, slightly beaten

Sift together and add:
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons cinammon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Cut up tomatoes and put in Cuisinart. Chop enough to measure 2 cups. Be sure to drain off the excess water before measuring. Add green tomatoes to the batter and mix well. Pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until bread tests done.

Why is Queen's Creek So Darn Dirty?

Because I'm the park interpreter at New Quarter Park, I find myself playing in Queen's Creek often. Only thing is, according to the EPA's National Water Quality Inventory, recreation is not a State Supported Use of the waterway.

I'm also an oyster grower for the Virginia Oyster Restoration Project and my oyster float is stationed at New Quarter's floating dock on Queen's Creek. The same Water Quality Inventory notes that the water quality doesn't support aquatic life or shellfishing.

When my oyster growing partner Jordan Westenhaver and I go to check on our oysters, we always wear clothes that we know will be stained. Although some of the shirts and pants I've worn on our work days have been through the wash several times, the water stains remain. Here's a photo of the oysters we raised last year in Queen's Creek. We scrubbed them, but they still look pretty bad.

How is it that a little creek like Queen's, nestled in a watershed that is largely wooded with no known pollution source, can be is so darn dirty? Today, I saw a posting on Facebook of reef balls in the Lynnhaven River, the river that drains the most populated and industrial parts of the City of Virginia Beach. The reef balls were covered with a thick shell of healthy oysters, oysters that look to be a lot cleaner than ours.

Makes me wonder: Can we launch a program like Lynnhaven River Now to restore a legendary Williamsburg/York County stream?

P.S. In the words of Lily Tomlin, "Oh. Nevermind." See the answer in Part II of Why is Queen's Creek So Darn Dirty?