I am not a fan of soap operas. And I include in “soap opera” any long running dramatic series on Netflix, etc. Give me story with a beginning, middle, and an end. Books do it all the time. So many times, I have really enjoyed a TV series, only to find my interest flagging when it becomes clear that the producers, writers, etc. will string me along as long as I let them. Let Otis and Maeve get together. Or not. But bring “Sex Education” to a resolution, please. As much as I liked the series, two seasons was enough for me. Same with “Virgin River.” I would watch Laura Linney in anything. I’d almost, as one reviewer said of another actress, watch her do her taxes. But, April 15 would come, and then she and I could move on. When I learned that the writers of “The Big C” were going to stretch her Stage 4 cancer out for four seasons, I suddenly could not make it half way through Season 1. There have been exceptions. “Derry Girls” engaged me to the end. I have not yet tired of “Lidia Poet.” But for the most part, I prefer a two-hour movie. Or a book.
Real life, of course, is more like a soap opera. A stroll through my more than 30 years of journals would leave the reader gasping for a resolution. Lately, I have been thinking about my efforts to create a native wild flower meadow in Netflix terms. We enter at the beginning of Season Six.
Title: The Meadow: Too Good to Be True [S6:E1]
Imagine a dream sequence (and the obligatory [Skip Intro]). A lush meadow, colorful flowers, butterflies fluttering, bees buzzing. Bunnies hopping and deer grazing. Ethereal music. A cymbal crashes, and the dream collapses to a drab field of Japanese stiltgrass. Followed by another sequence, entitled, “Previously,” in which we get a few of the scenes from seasons one through five. I smother a strip of stiltgrass for a year under a silage tarp, move the tarp to another strip, sow wild flower seed, rinse and repeat. Twice. (Seasons 1-3). I glory in the initial blooms and note with dismay the sprouting of a thousand or more tulip poplar seeds sending roots into my underlying septic drain field. I struggle to pull or poison them without harming the wild flowers (Seasons 4 & 5).
Wildflowers in the New Meadow
Finally, after a few commercials, we get to today’s episode. It is early spring, and I note that the number of tree sprouts seems perhaps manageable and that violets are forming a carpet under the taller plants, outcompeting that other bane of my meadow, ground ivy. The violets in bloom are lovely. Maybe the violet carpet is getting dense enough to prevent germination of more tulip poplar seeds. Maybe my meadow dream is about to become a reality. However, this being a soap opera, the episode ends on a downer. Two weeks later, yet a new crop of tulip sprouts has emerged. That brings us to Episode 2.
THE MEADOW • What it should be
Title: The Meadow: Don’t Cry For Me, My Carina [S6:E2]
After the Intro, the Previously, and the commercials, we finally get to today’s episode, in which we find me mowing it all down. I cannot afford to let the tree roots destroy our drain field. Maybe if I mow for a year, I can kill most of the tree seedlings and the underlying carpet will get dense enough to prevent most future tree germination. Maybe some of the coneflowers andbee balm and iron weed and blue mist and indigo will survive and come back next year. Meanwhile, I’ll seek out a few good books.
Rummaging through my bookcase, I stumble onto a sheaf of favorite poems, and the instance of recognition brings a sudden shift, a release I’d been unaware I needed. Gathering those papers and my coffee, I head for the deck. It’s a lovely summer mid-morning, humidity low (at least by July in Tennessee standards).
First, I read “Praying,” by Mary Oliver. Then, “The Summer Day,” also by Oliver. Finally, I read them aloud, slowly, savoring, letting them sink in. Deep breaths. Looking across our meadow and over the encircling summer-green trees into the clear blue sky, I feel body and soul relaxing, settling into another space.
Moving on to Gerard Manley Hopkins, I again read silently, then aloud. Hopkins is less accessible, with his obscure words and surprising rhythms. But after a few tries, I recall the rhythms, and the spoken poems come alive. They seem to be psalms: of praise (“Pied Beauty”), of lament (“Thou art indeed just, Lord”), of struggle (“Carrion Comfort”), of hope (“God’s Grandeur”).
Hope. I need hope. The world has gone mad—mad with greed, mad with hatred, mad for power. Yes, it’s always been that way. But, this bad? Yet, Hopkins asserts, morning light does come
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings.
Evelyn Underhill (The Spiritual Life) says that when we pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” we are not to just wish for it, we are to work for it. We are meant to “form part of the creative apparatus of God.” Mary Oliver, in “The Summer Day” asks, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Ah, yes! the perennial questions: To what am I called, and will I have the courage to answer, Here am I, send me?
Turning again to Oliver, I re-read those two poems. Slowly. Aloud. In “Praying,” I suddenly recognize visio divina, a “doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.”
And I remember another poetic line, this one from Wendell Berry, a line that Bishop Brian Cole is fond of quoting. “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
Not how I had thought my day would go. Oh, so much better!
A text from a cousin: “G_ (another cousin) says you have a collection of old tools. I have a scythe from our grandfather’s farm. Would you like to have it?”
I told Nancy, and she enthused about displaying it on our walls. I have written before about some of our old tools. (If you are on the website, sigmon-carow.com, go to the tags cloud in the right column and click on TOOLS for a stroll down that particular memory lane.) Some are in my shop, some on a shelf above my office desk, some on the walls of our living room. Some we have yet to figure out how to display.
Both of my parents were from large farm families, and I have a boat load of cousins. Most still live in the area of my origins, where I have not lived since high school, and I am lax at maintaining contact. Largely through their efforts, I’ve been somewhat re-connected in recent years. “Old stuff” has played a part.
Cue an earlier message from that same Cousin G. Several years ago, she wrote that the old homeplace of a distant relative had recently been torn down, that its chimney was built of bricks handmade by one of our great-great grandmothers, that she’d salvaged some of those bricks, and asked if I’d like a few. “Yes! Definitely!” Nancy said when she heard the offer. Nancy and I are inveterate collectors of rocks and seashells; some bricks with a family history would fit right in.
When my cousin delivered those bricks on a trip through our area, she noticed the two-man crosscut saws (one from each of my grandfathers) on the walls of our living room. Apparently, the word got back to my other cousins; hence, the offer of the family scythe.
Grandpas’ Saws
We are eclectic collectors. Yet, “collectors” is not the right word. We don’t go seeking. But when we run across something that triggers an appreciation of beauty, history, form, or function, we hang onto it, and proudly display it if we can. We discovered a mutual fascination with seashells on our honeymoon trip to Kawaii, a compulsion to pick up yet another and another, sometimes despite (or because of) its imperfections. Some displayed, some stockpiled for future art projects. Similarly, rocks in their endless variations get incorporated into landscaping projects or kept just because. (We brought a pickup load along on our latest move.)
Some other things one might find around our house:
Instruments and oddities from an old machinist’s chest inherited from Nancy’s grandfather
The transmission from a multi-speed drill/driver—three interlocking planetary gear sets
A prototype motor winding for an award-winning motor designed by Nancy’s father (no one but Nancy could actually wind the field coils without making a mistake)
Snake skins
A left-handed half hatchet that my brother found for me
Chinese tea sets that Nancy brought back from Taiwan
A balance beam scale for weighing cotton (from my father’s childhood)
Tiny shells from that beach on Kawaii
Colorful pebbles from a beach on Watts Bar Lake
When I began writing this piece, I poured out those tiny Hawaiian shells into my hand and remembered our mutual delight at finding them and learning that we shared that fascination with shells. I took the bowl of Watts Bar pebbles to the sink to wash off the dust and re-experienced their kaleidoscopic colors and patterns, so vivid when wet.
Kawaii ShellsWatts Bar Pebbles
Sitting now in my easy chair as I write, I look across the room at my grandfather’s crosscut saw and hear it sing its way through a tree, smell the kerosene he would have used to lubricate that cut, feel the strain as I myself have pulled one end of that saw.
A recent post from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations highlighted “visio divina,” a variant on “lectio divina,” that contemplative practice of reading a religious text. Visio divina is a contemplative practice of looking, perhaps at nature or a painting or a scene from daily life. I don’t think it too absurd to consider those shells, pebbles, or old tools as an invitation to visio.
We started with a mission: To find a door. For various reasons of fit and finish, our existing front door was no longer satisfactory. Nancy wanted to replace it with something more in keeping with the style of our house.
We set out with a list of local building material salvage outlets. First stop, out of business. Second stop, near the old East Towne Mall, current site of a big Amazon last-mile delivery center. And there, the adventure began. Google Maps said turn left at E Towne Rd. So I did. Oops! Google meant—but did not say—the secondE Towne Rd. Yep, there are two of them, a few yards apart. Take the wrong (i.e., first) one, and you then embark on a tour of east Knoxville’s lesser known byways. This is not the Dogwood Arts tour.
Google Maps is recomputing. Take a right onto Washington Pike. Then, the first right, onto Washington Pike? Hey, weren’t we just on Washington Pike? Yep, another one. We are now miles farther from our destination than when we turned onto the wrong E Towne Rd., and must now circumvent Amazon. Eventually, we arrive at our destination. They do not have a door that we want. Two more stops, no luck.
Meanwhile, Nancy has located what we want on the Home Depot website. Why leave home when the answer was at our fingertips? Good question! The builder had searched. I had searched. We failed in not asking Nancy to search. It’s the story of my (digital) life. I can do a search and find nothing. Nancy uses the same keywords, perhaps in a different order, and hits pay dirt. Or, I repeatedly tap on my phone, and it does not respond. I hand it to Nancy, and it obeys her fingertips. “Why did you marry me,” she asks? “So you could work technology for me,” I humbly reply.
That was the first part of our day. Part two was a mid-week playdate with our grandson. We picked him up from his daycare and went to our favorite barbecue, where Nancy and I feasted on brisket, while our grandson ate blueberries and ketchup. Together. Or sometimes, just ketchup, licking it straight from the little cup it was served in. He is a pure delight. Happy. Interested in the world around him. His favorite verb is “need,” as in “I need that.”
After dinner, we take our ketchup-faced charge in search of a playground. On the map, Walker Springs Park seems promising. Google says turn left onto Walker Springs Rd. Oops! Google meant—but did not say—the secondWalker Springs Rd! What are the odds? Seemingly, in Knoxville, the odds are pretty good. There is also, not far away, E Walker Springs Ln. Is there a shortage of street names, so we have to reuse some of them?
The park and its playground were great. Small, low key, shaded. On leaving, we continued on (the second) Walker Springs Rd, until, voila, at the corner of Fox LonasandFox Lonas, Walker Springs Rd became Fox Lonas Rd. Only in Knoxville, you might be tempted to say. But no. These are small potatoes compared with Queens Rd in Charlotte. Look it up.
Changing the subject completely, below is a sampling of the cloud patterns Nancy’s camera has documented from our deck. (Reminder: If receiving this post by email, you will need to go to sigmon-carow.com for the cloud show.) Enjoy!
When we started this website and blog almost nine years ago, we wrote on the About page, “Blackoak Ridge is the local geographic feature on which our house sits, so “The View from Blackoak Ridge” is, in part, a visual look at our physical surroundings. But it is also an intellectual, spiritual, emotional view from where we are at this stage of our lives.” In the years since, the “views” have been mostly words. This post is a departure.
In 2017, seeking a place where Nancy could have a wet sink in her studio, we found our Shangri-La on the opposite side of Blackoak Ridge from where we’d started, with a view of the Cumberland Mountains to the north. This fall, Nancy began a series of photos from a particular spot on our deck, documenting the many moods of that view. It has become a contemplative practice for her, an exercise in attentiveness and a celebration of gifts and graces we often miss in our media-following and personal busyness. And the practice spills over, as we call each other’s attention to the views, sharing both the experience and the memories captured in the photos. In this and some subsequent posts, we share a few of these memories with you, in hopes that they bring to you “the gifts of joy and wonder.” (Note: The photos are presented in movie format. If you receive this blog post via email and the movies are not live, goto the website, sigmon-carow.com, for a better experience.)
Nancy’s series begins on September 24 and, although it is a foggy morning, the trees still show the deep green of summer. Subsequent photos show the progression through fall and winter, into the riotous color of mid-April.
In that sequence, change comes slowly. Even the startling burst of color from the azaleas in that last photo occurred over a two day interval. But sometimes, change comes swiftly and brings an unanticipated gift. In the following sequence taken the morning of January 6, 2025, the first three photos were taken five minutes apart and the last interval is just one minute, so a total elapsed time of eleven minutes.
We hope you enjoy these photo collections, and we look forward to showing more soon.
(Wednesday evening, response to Nancy’s phone query) “We’re always open, except Christmas Day. We have only closed for World War II and nine-eleven.”
(Thursday noon, text message) “Biltmore Guest, Due to severe weather in our area, Biltmore Estate is closed Thursday, September 26, until Saturday, September 28. Please visit biltmore.com/weatherupdate for important details. We appreciate your understanding.”
How quickly things can change! When we made plans to take a few days vacation, primarily to see Chihuly at Biltmore, the atmospheric disturbance that became Hurricane Helene had not yet formed. When we were packing, the stationary system that pre-saturated the ground in advance of Helene seemed a minor nuisance and Helene herself just a worry for the Gulf coast. By Wednesday night, however, we had decided to cut our visit to Asheville a day short, dropping our Thursday afternoon/Friday morning plans.
Thursday morning, our map-directed route from hotel to Biltmore via residential streets was already blocked by high water at two locations before we finally worked our way to the Lodge Gate. A walkie-talkie-carrying, yellow-rain-slicker-wearing employee, the first of many, directed us to an alternate way into the Estate. Our booking for the Chihuly exhibit was early, and we had seen the exhibit and toured Biltmore House by noon. The text message above arrived just as we were about to eat lunch in the Biltmore Stable Café. We ate and drove home without incident.
It was from the safety of our home over the next few days that we saw what was befalling the Southern Appalachians. Disasters viewed at a distance are hard to internalize: easy, too easy, to put out of mind. The we-were-just-there aspects of this one shrank not only the physical but the mental distance as well.
We had meandered through Asheville’s River Arts District on Wednesday afternoon, saw that particular gallery featured in the news story, that specific workshop, all now ruins. Video footage showing only the roof of Baltimore’s Lodge Gate visible above the muddy waters of the Swannanoa River reminded us that we had been there Thursday morning, ten feet below that water surface. We drove that section of I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge just a day before the river undermined it and washed it away. Meanwhile, a hundred miles to the east, in the county where I grew up, the Catawba River was flooding the home of a cousin, wiping out all but the structure.
Everyone I know in the Asheville area, in Boone, in Catawba County, is safe. Some are mightily inconvenienced, without utilities or usable roads. Some have lost much. Many, many more persons who I do not know have lost much much more.
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That Biltmore had closed during WWII (and housed art works removed from Washington, DC, for safety/security) connected with my recent re-reading of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, in which that episode plays a part. I have been on a Kingsolver reunion tour, having in the past month or two plucked from my bookshelves and re-read not only The Lacuna, but also The Bean Trees and Animal Dreams. And just a few months ago, I “read” (via Audible) Demon Copperhead. It’s been a Kingsolver summer.
Lending libraries are wonderful. Books downloaded to my phone for reading or listening are a marvelous convenience. But sometimes, nothing beats browsing through my own bookshelves and re-reading a treasure stored there. Besides the Kingsolver titles listed above, I recently feasted on Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, Arthur Miller’s Focus, and some plays by Oscar Wilde. Those last two were new to me, left behind from a son’s high school assignments. Farther down the shelves is Kipling’s Just So Stories; can’t wait for my grandson to be old enough to have his granddaddy read those aloud.
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Our shortened trip to Asheville was an early celebration of our 34th anniversary. Nancy recently asked me why I thought we had lasted. After a moment’s thought, I replied, “Because we realize there is more than one correct way to load a dishwasher.”
The whitetail buck and I face each other scarcely ten yards apart. He seems as curious about me as I am of him. Mona would love to give chase, but I’ve got her on a close leash and am talking softly to them both, trying to maintain our stasis. He seems to understand that neither of us is a threat and continues to regard us closely. He is rather small, with a beautiful six-point rack. His buddy, larger and more magnificently crowned, is warier and keeps his distance.
PHOTO BY NANCY CAROW
Eventually, Mona and I resume our walk. It is our third such encounter with that buck in a week, each time at close range with our mutual study. We have been blessed with whitetail bucks in our meadow and surrounding woods over the past few weeks—three of them, the large one and two the size of my friend. We have taken to calling them “the boys.” Not many “girls” recently, although at other times we may see half a dozen does and fauns but no bucks. I am not versed in their habits—the natural history that explains the variations in time of day, time of year, and year-to-year.
The first year we lived here, we had frequent sightings of one or more barred owls. Three times, I had close encounters with my car at night, startling an owl apparently hunting for mice among the roadside litter. After that first year, sightings have been rare, although we hear their “Who cooks for yoouu?” and other calls around the neighborhood.
“To everything, there is a season.” The “seasons” of the plants and animals on our two acres are still a mystery to me. Not just the annual cycle, but the year-to-year and time-of-day variations. Why do the deer favor mid-day at some times and dawn or dusk at others? Why do the violets almost crowd out the ground ivy one year but are choked by it the next? Why fox sightings in some years and not in others? Why do the deer eat all my iron weed some years, yet this year have left it alone and allowed new seedlings to thrive?
Early this year, Nancy and I handed off our responsibility for the grounds around our church. Just weeks ago, I handed off another job, as announcer for our community band. After a number of years in each role, it felt time to let go. The former energy was lacking and other responsibilities, most notably our grandson, were taking our interest and time. The season had come for letting go and allowing others to bring new ideas and passion.
Once upon a time, I rose early to journal and do a portion of the Daily Office before the family was up and preparing for work or school. For three decades, despite occasional lapses, I maintained some discipline of journal and prayer. In recent years though, those disciplines have fallen away, and my attempts to restart have failed. The season for these disciplines appears to have ended, whether from my character flaws or some deeper reason. If that season has closed, what is next? What contemplative/spiritual practice should I cultivate?
This is my first blog post in well over a year. Topics that inspire, and on which I might have something to say, elude me. Is my season of writing also at an end? What should I do to rejuvenate or replace it?
The seasons roll on. Some are repetitive and predictable—the no-seeums that have me itching every summer are almost gone and ironweed blooms are near. Some less so, still capable of surprise—Nancy spotted an owl today, a fox twice last week. Some are no fun at all—my readily bruised and torn old-man-skin. Some inevitable and others, perhaps, I can influence. My writing, my contemplative or spiritual practice—what should I be doing to rejuvenate or replace them? Against the entropic forces of aging, where is the balance between raging “against the dying of the light” and embracing the inevitable?
Your tiny hand squeezing my pinky finger. Your bright blue eyes studying my face, studying the world. These are some of my earliest memories of you. At one month, you stare at the dark ceiling beams overhead, then the trapezoids of light that are your living room windows. Those, I am told, are beyond your focal point, so you cannot see the detail—the turning-red leaves of the black tupelo against the clear October sky. But your eyes are hungry to absorb your surroundings, too curious to close until you are tired beyond sleepy. You delight in the world around you.
Circumstances brought you to live with your Grandnan and I at two months of age. Now you are going on five months, so you and I have had an intense, round the clock bonding, more like what I could have had with your dad and his brothers, if I had been more aware and open and mature. We’re buddies at 2 AM feedings and again at 4, when you need a diaper change and you think it’s time to play. I’m there in the evenings when you are fussy—as sleep or that last burp won’t come. I’m there in the mornings when you’re all smiles, lighting up the room.
I note the day to day changes, your growing strength and coordination, your curiosity and observations. I kiss the soft fuzz on your round dome a dozen times a day, noting the heat radiating as your brain makes ever more connections.
We talk, you and I. You regale me with your stories—those sounds you are learning to make—and when you discover a new one, you joyfully repeat it over and over and over. I tell you stories, too, about the cousins you have yet to meet, about the things we will do together—read books, play in the woods.
You are still drawn to strong contrasts and patterns: the false shamrock in the window, dark leafless trees against gray January skies, lights. But you are also aware of the subtler things: someone leaving the room, the dog inviting play via a dropped tennis ball. You recognize a recording of classical guitar, my go-to when you need a distraction from the painful gas bubble in your stomach.
Delighted. Still delighted.
In the Episcopal baptismal service, there is a prayer with the line, “give them … the gift of joy and wonder…” You were born with that gift; I suspect all babies are. Perhaps the prayer should be that we adults don’t snuff that gift out of you. Perhaps the prayer should be that we adults are opened to have that gift renewed in ourselves, to let you be our teacher.
It’s a scary world you’ve entered.During your lifetime, climate change is likely to cause great physical and social upheavals. Wars and acts of hatred seem closer to home than at any other time in my life. I worry about your future. But, you also give me hope. In a recent (January 21) On Being newsletter, The Pause, Krista Tippett writes of the teachings of the civil rights leader and, later, congressman, John Lewis: “in the space between the world as it is and what we long for it to become, we are called to “live as if” the possibility we aspire to is already present.”
Can I live in love when the world spews hate? Can I live in hope, not fear? As much for your sake as for any other reason, I try. And you also teach me how. You exhaust me, little guy, and I so look forward to your returning to your home soon. But your presence in my life is a precious gift. And the gift I most want to give you is the knowledge that you are loved.
Transitons. Transitions. Transitions. They keep piling on, and it is hard to catch a breath.Starting with happy ones: our fifth and sixth grandchildren are on the way. The fifth child in one family and the first in the other are both due in late summer.
In more happy news, our youngest took a new job with greater career potential and then decided to move house in order to shorten the commute. It’s a seller’s market, and their house sold quickly.
Then, an unhappy transition. Nancy’s mother passed away just before Easter. It was a blessedly short illness, just eighteen days from diagnosis until the end. Time enough for appropriate goodbyes to be said, short enough so that agonies were not prolonged.
Just this past week, Nancy’s father decided the time had come to move into an independent living facility. It is a transition not entirely resulting from his wife’s death—we had all known that the time was approaching for both of them. But not unrelated either—her parents had remained backstops for each other, a level of safety net that her death took away. Moving to a facility is not a milestone we typically think to celebrate. But I do celebrate that he took the decision on his own rather than being forced by some type of emergency and that he now has a deeper safety net and a level of social engagement not available when living alone in an apartment.
Watching (and walking with) my own parents in their last years, plus accompanying Nancy as she goes through the process with her parents, has led me to ponder how I will make that journey when my time comes. Each of our parents has had moments of graceful acceptance and moments of stubborn denial as the boundaries of what is possible have shrunk with age. How will I respond? Will I “rage against the dying of the light?” Or will I let go of my ego’s need to achieve and control? I am no scholar on the topic, but it seems that multiple wisdom traditions describe this letting go as an essentialstage of a life well lived—an emptying in order to be filled with something greater. In her wise book, Old Age: Journey into Simplicity, Helen M. Luke draws from classic literature (The Odyssey, King Lear, The Tempest, Little Gidding) examples of “growing into old age.” As with all growth, painful and rewarding.
Moving, Moving, Moving
You might have caught on that some of these transitions necessitate the moving of persons and stuff. Nancy’s father moving from his apartment into the facility. The disposition of all the “stuff” that does not go with him.
As to the kids, the ones moving in order to shorten a commute, they are both sellers and buyers. A seller’s market it is, a buyer’s it is not. They are still searching for a new house. And they just agreed with their buyer to move up the closing date on their old one. That means—Oops!—vacating this weekend, putting most of their possessions into storage, and moving in with parents. Us.
As I am writing, Nancy’s dad’s decision is less than a week old, and we have just received four day’s notice regarding our new house guests. Can you spell, busy?
Nature at Neverdone
Neverdone is the tongue-in-cheek name I have given this place we bought almost five years ago. We are for the moment at a point of stasis on construction projects. But the rescue of our two acres from invasive plants and its restoration into something like a native wildlife habitat is an ongoing and never-ending endeavor. A brief update.
Frog Pond with Iris
Nancy’s frog pond is a living, breathing thing of beauty—teeming with frogs at all stages of development, dragon flies, healthy aquatic plants, even a predacious diving beetle!
Tadpoles
We are continuing our experiment of smothering weeds under black plastic for a year, then sowing native wildflowers. Strip #1 is in its second year of flower, currently yellow with Blackeyed Susan and coreopsis. Strip #2 is in its first year, blooming blue and pink with cornflower, tinted brown with ripening wheat. (I wonder if the threshing unit on the combine was malfunctioning when our straw was baled. Never have I seen such a crop of wheat from bales of straw!) Strip #3 (it will be our last) is under plastic until fall. We are happy so far with the experiment, but the ground ivy is already creeping back into Strip #1. Can we keep it in check with hand weeding? Perhaps, if we can stay healthy (Nancy lost a couple of weeks to Covid) and get beyond this flurry of moving.
Meadow Strips #1 (background) and #2 (foreground)
In other parts of “the estate,” our war on invasives is a see-saw battle with no clear winner. I had thought we were winning against the oriental stiltgrass: A year ago, in some areas where we had pulled or scythed it down for two successive seasons, native violets seemed to have reclaimed their habitat. But this year, the stiltgrass has returned with a vengence, smothering the violets. Some was already knee high when I took the string trimmer to it earlier this week. The oriental bittersweet vines (that modifier, “oriental,” seems to herald trouble when applied to plant life in East Tennessee) that I pulled or poisoned last year seem to have become Hydra, their underground root systems pushing up new vines seven-fold. As to English ivy, we are holding our own, just barely. When one troublemaker seems in retreat, another surges ahead. I can almost hear a race announcer, “Italian Arum is fading in the stretch, but Air Potato is coming on strong.”
Our late winter hard freeze cut into the redbud and dogwood blossoms this year, but the spring show of azalea and rhododendron was spectacular. Whether by design or happy accident, the mix that we inherited have staggered bloom times. One or two or three shrubs will be in glorious color for a few days, then as they fade another set will open up, so that the azalea/rhody season lasts for a couple of months. I had thought the show was over for the year when some large rhododendron that had not shown much in years past revealed themselves as late bloomers whose white-to-pale pink blooms extended the season into late June. Now the hydrangeas are taking over, and the show continues.
Our wildlife predator mix is changing. For the first few years, we frequently sighted barred owl and red-shouldered hawk. As recently as a year ago, the late winter/early spring air was filled with barred owl mating call and response. This year, nothing. Nancy may have heard an owl one night. I may have spotted one in flight through the woods. I heard a hawk just last week, but it was the first all year. Could their absence be related to the increasing sightings of coyote and (for the first time) red fox? From the number of chipmunk I see running about, there appears no shortage of prey for all.
That’s our brief report from the frontlines. Back to packing.
Christmas has come and gone, all 55 days of the commercial season, which began the day after Halloween, as well as the twelve days of the liturgical one (December 25 through January 5). Epiphany, too, (the day, January 6) is behind us, although the liturgical season will be with us through Fat Tuesday.
Epiphany, from the Greek word, reveal. In the Christian church, Epiphany refers to the revelation of God’s physical presence in the world—the universal Christ in the form of the baby, Jesus. In secular usage, an epiphany is a revelation or realization of a deep truth.
Last year, January 6 became another of those days that will live in infamy, a different kind of epiphany, the day on which the depth of this nation’s social and political disfunction was revealed to the world and to ourselves. A year later, the disfunction has hardened, and the wounds show no sign of healing.
I have been struggling with these two epiphanies, one of light, the other of darkness. Torn between despair and hope, it is the signs of hope that I cling to.
Just after Christmas, Archbishop Desmond Tutu died. A few days ago, we observed the Martin Luther King national holiday. Against terrible odds, these men found hope and the courage to work for justice. In their lives and witness, I find hope.
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After a crazily warm November and December—mid 70s on New Year’s Day—temperatures plummeted into a cold and wet January. Mona gets walked usually four times a day—long walks including down into our woods and meadow—so that means donning boots and heavy coat or rain gear many times a day.
Winter at Last!
All that walking helps to burn off her excess energy and keeps me from getting lazy (maybe part of Nancy’s agenda in talking me into getting another dog?). With Nancy’s training and patience, Mona has mellowed into something of a lap dog. Cuddle time and exercise! The annoyance and inconvenience bring lots of compensation.
When the weather is suitable, I combine a work session in the woods or meadow with one or more of those daily walks. Loading The Goat with tools and a cable to tie her to, Mona and I trek down one of the pathways, and I spend time cutting, trimming, digging.
I have three huge brush piles, each growing faster than they decompose. We are trying to build up—a native, wildlife friendly habitat. But that requires some tearing out. Edges I would like to fill in with shrubs and forbs must first be cleared of invasive bittersweet vine and privet and rampant raspberry tangles. We’ve removed some small trees for aesthetic reasons. Much of the constant rain of deadfall from the large overstory trees can be left lying where it fell, but some needs to be removed from paths and open areas. It all adds up.
The heavy plastic silage tarp we are using to smother weeds has been moved to its third location, after a year at each of the first two sites. The roughly 100 x 25 foot strip at site #2 has been seeded with the same native wildflower mix we used on site #1. The experiment is a mixed success. The wildflowers are a great replacement for what we smothered out. But already the ground ivy has reinvaded site #1 or was not adequately killed back by a year without light. And this infestation is probably more than we can control by hand weeding. Barring a heavy chemical treatment, which would kill the wildflowers, we may be stuck with the ground ivy.
It is cold, and we are still in the depths of winter. But signs of spring are emerging. We have a few snowdrop blooms, and lots of daffodil stems are pushing up. A few weeks ago, we saw a doe being followed by her successful suitor, while a rejected one still hung around in the background. Life goes on. May Epiphany shine through all our darker epiphanies.
