Morning Silence

Mornings are my bliss. I can't remember how many years ago it was that I stopped waking to the sound of an alarm clock. I'm usually up between 4:30 and 5:00 and I dearly love the quiet of daybreak. I enjoy coffee on the porch in the summer and watching the world slowly waken.

This morning, for the first time ever, I decided to venture out to Van Buren State Park with my camera just as the sun was coming up. I was the only one wandering around the lake and it was such a peaceful hour alone. After walking for about a half hour and snapping things that seemed interesting to me, I parked myself on a picnic table at the edge of the lake and decided to just be still and watch. I saw a huge carp come to the edge of the lake and feed on something living on a rotting, submerged log. A bullfrog started his moaning, melancholy call and it made me jump with surprise. I saw dragonflies dancing on the water.

And, eventually in the silence, I was rewarded with this.

For sure, I'm a morning kind of girl.

Every Seventeen Years

I heard the first calls of the cicadas last night. They always make me feel a bit sad. They sound so lonesome. Hiding out underground for 17 years, they just wait. When they emerge it's only to make that rustling, buzzing sigh that signals the beginning of the end of summer.

When I first heard them last night dusk was beginning to fall in my kitchen. I was wiping the counters after doing the dishes. The kitchen light was off and the shadows of the chairs were lengthening across the tiled floors. What might I have been doing at sundown on a Sunday evening exactly 17 years earlier when these little creatures were first formed in the earth around our trees?

Quite possibly, exactly the same thing.

Last night, the sound of the cicada made me wonder – how is the 2009 version of me different than the 1992 one? 

What might the 2026 rendering look like?

Of course there are no guarantees, but one thing is for sure. The cicadas will be here, steady as clockwork.

Cicadas at the End of Summer

by Martin Walls

Whine as though a pine tree is bowing a broken violin,

As though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of

titanium;

They chime like freight wheels on a Norfolk Southern

slowing into town.

But all you ever see is the silence.

Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves.

With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do

just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space

museum —

What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory;

The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned

The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea & milk

in the bottom of a mug.

Or skin on an old tin of varnish you have to lift with

lineman's pliers.

A fly paper that hung thirty years in Bird Cooper's pantry

in Brighton.

poem credit found here

Calling All Tree Lovers!

This gorgeous tree is in our next door neighbor's yard. I've never seen anything like it. For about two weeks every spring it is covered with these beautiful flowers. The branches cover our garage and carpet the patio and driveway with petals. I'm clueless as to what this tree is. I've consulted books on Ohio trees, to no avail.

Got any ideas?

Before you ask, the neighbors don't know either. It's the only one like it they've ever seen.

One Tree – Three Weeks

November 4, 2008

November 10, 2008

November 17, 2008

What To Do With Walnuts

When we moved into our house in March the first thing the next-door neighbors warned us about was the humongous tree in our back yard. It’s a walnut and it is so tall that it hangs over four of our neighbor’s yards. The very nice people next door offered to take the branches that had fallen out of it over the winter because walnut burns so nicely. We happily chucked the branches over the fence.

Then, dropping the first hint of what was to come, the nice neighbor said, “Good luck with that tree later this summer. Your yard will be like a circus for squirrels.”

“Why?” I innocently asked.

“Well, last year wasn’t a very good year for walnut trees. This year will probably be a doozy.”

Mr. Neighbor on the Right (I don’t know his name!) turns out to be a prophet!

This 60 foot high, probably 90 year old tree is so laden with walnuts that the branches are hanging so low it makes walking under it difficult. . .not to mention dangerous! The first of the squirrel squatters are moving in and taking up residence. They are beginning to make preparations for the harvest by digging hidey-holes in the brand new flower beds. I guess if it were up to them the entire yard would be planted with walnut trees!

It’s kind of exciting to see what’s going to happen with all these walnuts!


You think I'm kidding? This is one branch – ten walnuts in close up camera view!


I remember that my maternal grandparents had a walnut tree when I was a kid. I I helped my grandmother pick up the nuts and then we tried to take the hulls off. The hull is the greenish-yellow outside that covers the very hard shell that you have to crack to get to the actual nutmeat.

There are many methods to remove the hulls. . .none very easy and all very messy. (Familiar with black walnut stain?? It comes from the hulls!! And, no it does not wash off!) Here are a few ways to remove the hull:
1. Wearing a face mask and gloves, smash them with a hammer.
2. Put them in the driveway and run over them with the car for a few days. (This isn’t recommended if your neighbors’ windows are close to your driveway. . .I’m just saying.)
3. Use an antique, hand-crank corn sheller. (Yay! An excuse to go to the antique mall!)
4. Put the walnuts in a portable cement mixer with three parts walnuts, one part water, and a few handfuls of gravel. Run it until husks come off. (Anybody got one of these I can borrow?)
5. The craziest recommendation I came across was a guy who put 3 walnuts at a time in the garbage disposal and ran it for 20 seconds before reaching in to take the nuts out. He said to only do 50 or so at a time or you will burn your garbage disposal up. . .(not thinkin’ I’ll try that one.)
6. If you ever get them hulled, rinse the nuts off outside with a garden hose. They will also stain everything in sight.

Once they are hulled dump them into a five-gallon bucket full of water and stir. Change the water several times until it no longer looks like strong coffee. Good nuts will sink to the bottom. Floater nuts should be discarded – they are full of worms! Allow the freshly shelled walnuts to cure somewhere out of the sun for several weeks before beginning the actual work of cracking and eating them!

I know it sounds crazy but this is just the kind of nerdy thing I get excited about! Part pioneer, part adventure, part stubbornness! I won’t buy walnuts. . .but I will try getting some for free!

Based on the fifty-eleven thousand walnuts on my tree, anybody want some free walnuts in a month or so???

List - Revisited (Again)

6. Cut a new flowerbed behind the garage. Procure and plant! Add the birdfeeders and baths.

I can finally cross this one off the list! All day Sunday, we played in the dirt!

Before:


After:


The sweating in between:





Sammy approves. And that's really all that matters!

Yo Yo Update - 876!

More Snow Day Images

Project 365 - Day 67

Project 365 - Day 56

“Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.” – Albert Camus

Project 365 - Day 27

An image of the moon setting in the west this morning. Like so many other things, it was gone in an instant.

“When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Project 365 - Day 20

This is my view from my work window every day. I love the colors of the flowers and every day I want to go sit on the porch and put my feet up. Someday I want to have a porch that looks that inviting.



"There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling." ~Mirabel Osler

Project 365 - Day 5

"The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many."
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Project 365 - Day 4

"God loved the flowers and invented soil. Man loved the flowers and invented vases."

~Variation of a saying by Jacques Deval (God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.)

Project 365 - Day 1

I read about a photographic diary that sparked my imagination. Called Project 365, the idea is to take a photo a day and remember the simple things in life that tend to slip by. It's hard enough to remember the big events in life - let alone the small ones. Today is the beginning for me. I plan to print a copy of each photograph and make an album a year.



There was a complete lunar eclipse last night. To see in best you needed to live in the Western United States, but the full moon over the pines in the backyard was beautiful.

“See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls.” – Mother Teresa