The Best Saturdays are Spent Bird Watching and Gardening

Saturday morning on Queen's Creek. Another walk with the Williamsburg Bird Club, led today by Bill Williams. We walked from the parking lot to the floating dock and saw bluebirds, cow birds, grackles, cardinals, towhees, wrens, titmice, chickadees, goldfinches, robins, and more. On the creek, there were osprey, great blue herons, white egrets, red-winged blackbirds, red-shouldered hawks, laughing gulls ... We walked through the woods and into the brushy area where there were plenty of warblers, gnatcatchers, woodpeckers. A very birdy day.

Next stop: the annual Virginia Native Plant Society sale. I bought swamp milkweed, butterfly weed, jewelweed, bee balm, foam flowers. All but the bee balm were purchased because they are suitable for my very shady yard, which is a flower and vegetable garden with a rain garden on the side. At home again, I got them all in the ground just in time for the rain. The bee balm was planted in a spot where it will get about 5 hours of sun a day. Keep your fingers crossed.

Did I mention that I stopped by the Williamsburg Farmers Market? Ah, yes. A little bee pollen for extra energy ... and amaretto-almond honey butter just for fun.

Tonight? A book and a glass of wine. Saturdays are splendid.

Back in School

I recently discovered what I want to do with the rest of my life. About time, don't you think? So, here it is 26 years since I finished my M.B.A. that I find myself back in school and preparing for my first final exam in quite a while.

I've known for a long time that business isn't my cup of tea, but I couldn't quite figure out what else to do. I've been freelancing, mostly writing books and articles since dropping out of a full-time traditional business job in 2004. When my father suffered a stoke last year I found my interest in brain injury and communication coming together like magic. Dad has aphasia of the sort that has left him fluent, but making many word errors. He uses many "nonsense" words and has difficulty reading and understanding what is said to him.

When a speech therapist came to work with him, I discovered the speech-language pathology career path, which I am exploring by taking courses online through Longwood University. Am I too old for this radical career change? I have to think not. I love to learn, am intrigued by our unique human ability to use language, and know that I need to do something helpful and worthwhile. Volunteer experience so far has been touching. It feels right.

Wish me luck with my Anatomy and Physiology exam! Send positive energy this way on next Thursday morning.

Wales

Last summer I met Chris Evans from the U. of Glamorgan who was visiting Colonial Williamsburg as a visiting research fellow. His research has to do with Wales and their industrial support of slavery. You know, iron into hoes, wool into cheap clothing. So, one day I told him that I imagined Wales looking like the Charlottesville area and he replied, "Yes, but there are no trees in Wales." That put a damper on this treehugger's eagerness to visit the "land of my fathers."

But when husband Ken showed me this article in today's Washington Post, I got fired up again, looking ... for the perfect cottage rental, walking path, castles, etc., etc. To do: look at Centre for Alternative Technology website, search for a source of real Welsh wool to knit blanket for my step-grandchild to be, buy caephilly cheese, read "How Green was My Valley" ...

Wales, the greenest place on Earth
By Pamela Petro
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, March 21, 2010

For two decades I've been exhausting my vocabulary seeking names for all the shades of green in the Welsh countryside. Pastures are Crayola green; windbreaks are jade; spring mosses are the chartreuse of an avocado's innards. The ribboning hills after it has rained, when sunlight breaks through shark-colored clouds, throb pure neon. Distance makes the mountains aquamarine.

These days, Wales can add another green to its palette: the green that comes from being one of the most environmentally progressive nations on Earth ...

(Photo from WP article.)

Intriguing New Book: Prosperity Without Growth

"Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.But question it we must. The idea of a non-growing economy may be an anathema to an economist. But the idea of a continually growing economy is an anathema to an ecologist. No subsystem of a finite system can grow indefinitely, in physical terms. Economists have to be able to answer the question of how a continually growing economic system can fit within a finite ecological system."

"For at the end of the day prosperity goes beyond material pleasures. It transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose. It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society. Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological limits of a finite planet. The challenge for our society is to create the conditions under which this is possible. It is the most urgent task of our times."

Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet

Moonlight and Music at New Quarter Park, June 7, 2009.



Moonlight and Music nights are being held at the park this summer to celebrate the 40th anniversary of man's first walk on the Moon.

Come to New Quarter for Moon Gazing with NASA on August 1 and more Moonlight and Music Nights on August 5 and September 4. NQP is in York County at 1000 Lakeshead Drive, just past the Queens Lake neighborhood.