Sorbus Terminalis

 

A visiting botanist once told me that one of the trees on our property was a very rare and special sort. The news gave me a fleeting appreciation for the thing. (As I have mentioned several times in this blog, no one would ever call me “Nature Girl”). But when the tree was destroyed in a storm a few years ago, I was sad and missed its shade. I had forgotten what kind of tree it was by then, so I wrote a blog post (“Goodbye, Tree”), asking my green-thumbed blog friends to help me identify it. Unfortunately, you all were pretty useless. I then forgot about it.

Well, I just ran into that botanist and had the presence of mind to ask him again about that tree. I give you . . . (drum roll) . . .

the Elsbeere

(aka Wild Service tree, aka Checker – or Checkers or Chequers – tree, aka Sorbus torminalis)

A little googling told me that this truly is a rare tree, its wood is prized, and its berries are used in cooking or to make one of the most expensive types of schnapps there is. Hundreds of years ago, the fruits were considered to have medicinal value – torminalis means “good for colic”. It is also good for bees. It was named “Tree of the Year – 2011” by a German forestry association.

These trees usually live for 200-300 years, but mine was ripped apart by a storm at the ripe old age of 15.

Darn! Now I really miss the thing!

 

After writing all of the above, I went back and reread the old post. A very earnest commenter had suggested (among many other things) “Wild Service Tree” which I apparently pooh-poohed offhand. A later commenter (Hi, Alison!) commiserated with the first: poor girl, she wrote, “she really thought you cared”. (Alison has had my number from the start.)

Clearly, I have appreciation issues.

Goodbye, Wild Service Tree.

 

Resurfacing

 

It seems I have chosen Mother’s Day (or Mother’s Day has chosen for me) to be the day I return to blogging. It is kind of fitting – because it is mostly due to my mom and my mother-in-law that my life energy is coming back after a long period of hibernation and lethargy. Firstly, Mom and I exchanged old-fashioned email letters this week and caught up, making me suddenly acutely aware of how much I have missed communicating with her. It energized me just seeing her name in my Inbox. Thanks, Mom.

Then my mother-in-law invited all her kids plus spouses to the opera in Vienna on Friday, inspiring my husband to turn the occasion into a longer weekend stay. Despite one spell of bad luck (a crazy accident that will be covered in an upcoming blog post) it did me a world of good to leave the home village. Once again I became acutely aware of just how long it has been since my last getaway. Sometimes you simply have to put physical distance – kilometers or miles – between yourself and your daily worries and ruts in order to clear your head. That is what our two days in Vienna did for me. Thanks, Omili.

 

A few hours after getting home, I went to mini-seminar on wild herbs that my next-door neighbor had organized. A specialist walked with us around our neighboring field – the same route I take with my dog every day – pointing out various wild plants and flowers. She told us their medicinal powers, which parts were useful or edible (root, leaf, or blossom), and how to prepare foods or tea or creams with them. We gathered some, went back to the house and chopped them up. We mixed them into sheep’s cream cheese and yogurt. We spread it on fresh-baked bread. It was delicious.

That was yesterday. Today I wrote down all the (German) names of the plants that I could remember. Then I grabbed a basket and my dog to take my usual walk – but this time I noticed all the different wild plants I passed. I collected some again, repeating all the names I could remember. When I got home I laid them out on paper to create photographic cheat sheets in case I forgot any of it. And then it struck me . . . I could only translate two (!) of these 15 or 20 words into English. If I had been asked to name any of these plants two days ago, all of them would have been called either “weed” or “wildflower” –  i.e. one of the only two words in my English vocabulary for small green stuff that grows in fields.

I went to my laptop and fired up the google. I started typing these German names into the translator. “Yarrow”? What is that? I had never heard that word before! And if I had had to guess, I would have said it was a part of a boat. “Ribwort”? “Plantain”? I would not have recognized these as members of the English language. “Sorrel”? Isn’t that a breed of horse? “Avens”? I think that is a Norse goddess. “Ash weed”? “Vetch”? “Campanula”? Not a single bell was rung in my head by any of these words. And the final insult? – the one plant I thought I could name – the stinging thistle – turned out to be a “nettle”.

Now, I have never claimed to be Nature Girl, but this all struck me as fairly bizarre and pathetic.  Ostensibly, I have been passing these plants twice a day for thirty years without them ever having caught my attention or interest. Coincidentally, I have been powering through menopausal maladies for half a decade while about 5 different plants growing between my front door and my mailbox have been known to help ease these discomforts . . . How did all this knowledge escape me? How is it that I had almost no words to name the things I see around me every day?

Yarrow, ribwort, plantain, sorrel, avens, ash weed, vetch, campanula, nettle, thistle.

 

I assume I will continue to walk my dog around the cornfield at least once a day – this is one of my routines that I would never consider a “rut”. But from now on, I also assume I will not be plodding along obliviously, with my sights turned inward, circling around obsessively in the dark recesses of my brain. No, I will be looking at what is outside and around me, identifying green things and appreciating their existence. And I know they exist because I now have names for them.  The path of my daily dog walk has been resurfaced.

I think I’ve been resurfaced too.

Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Omili.

2017 in the Rear-view Mirror

I’m not sure I ever confessed this before, but I am one of those people who writes a year-in-review Christmas letter and mails it off to about 50 different people strewn across the globe.  Theoretically, I assume that none of the recipients groans on receiving it – though I can’t be entirely sure about that. I do get the sporadic positive feedback. The best part is that each year one or two of the readers are inspired to respond in kind. I get all sorts of news and pictures and updates from people I haven’t heard from in way too long.  That, alone, makes the whole exercise worthwhile.

A second perk of this year’s efforts was that – once I was done – I had to admit that 2017 did NOT suck as much as I had thought it would at the start. It was not all exhausting postandpresenttrumptraumamalaise after all! There were wonderful travels and reunions and moments in teaching. There were new (learning) experiences and moments of parental vicarious glory while listening to my children sing or perform.  My (originally African) daughters became dual citizens of Europe and the USA.  I rediscovered ice cubes and developed a taste for cooking. I got a boat named after me! . . .

Ok, ok, in that last one I am fudging a bit. It is not a yacht or anything. It’s a tiny remote-controlled bait boat. And it wasn’t actually my husband’s idea to name it after me, but his fishing buddy’s. And he only used it once before it broke down. But, still – I got a boat named after me! How many people out there can say that??

 . . . What else? . . . I hoed a hedgehog! I protested! I became a Chicken Whisperer! And right at the end of 2017, I discovered yet another new hobby.

It began at a Christmas market that I went to with my husband and my dear friend Lyart who was visiting. We stopped at a stand full of lovely, handmade birdhouses and Ly immediately bought us one.  A few mulled wines later, my husband disappeared and returned with a second, bigger birdhouse. In the following days, I excitedly purchased all sorts of birdfeed and then pressured the hubby to put up/hang up the houses in our yard. We filled them with seeds and then withdrew back into the house to watch.

            

The birds started arriving almost immediately. Mostly little white and blue ones. “What are those?” I asked my husband and he informed me that they were “Kohlmeise”. I looked that name up and found out that, unfortunately, these birds are called “great tits” in English. Then another bird appeared and caused a lot of excitement. “What is it?” I asked. My husband replied that it was a “Specht”. I google-translated that name and the word “pecker” popped up on my screen. I didn’t like where this was going . . .

 

 

I’m not sure I ever confessed this before, but I am something of a prude. I don’t run around the house in my underwear. I DO advise my teenage daughters to take their time and not rush into serious relationships. I don’t get racy jokes. I don’t use swearwords or “dirty” words and rarely hear them in my own household.

. . . What can I say? I still fully intend to continue this new hobby of bird-watching (though, I don’t intend on talking about it much). I’m hoping it will help me cope with whatever 2018 brings, the way chicken keeping did in 2017.

And speaking of 2018 – I’ll take this chance to wish all of you out there reading this a

Very Happy New Year!

 

Country Mouse, City Mouse

or:

“Four Recent (Mostly Unrelated) Run-ins with Nature.”

 

For some reason (which might have something to do with the return of the Nemesis to my household) I have had this sense of Mother Nature stealthily inserting her tentacles into my daily routine and life like the roots of a staghorn sumac. All I know is that I keep having these various encounters with Greenworld. It’s all very odd.

Encounter Number One of course deals with chickens.

Thanks for all the support you all gave me for my frequent chicken posting, by the way. Alison added that I shouldn’t neglect the Gingerbread Man in the process, so . . . go ahead and blame her for this first part of the post. On her urging, GB Man (finally!) met the chickens. It was . . . well, let’s have him tell the story . . .

“It went okay, basically. They were standoffish, mostly. Kind of clique-y. I spent most of the time alone at the feed trough. One chicken finally joined me, but didn’t say anything. Another one was all hectic and liked to call attention to herself. She had a haircut just like that guy I always see on my Person’s laptop. That was kind of creepy. I didn’t find any eggs. I’m not sure what all the hullaballoo is about.”

 

 

Encounter Number Two happened during my daily dog walks.

The autumn colors are spectacular this year. In the past two days there has also been an interesting assortment of clouds and a very thin haze, so it felt the whole time like I was walking through an impressionist painting. I remembered telling a student about Claude Monet and how he would paint the same scene over and over again at different times of the day and in different lighting. I tried the same thing, except with my camera. Here’s an example:

 

Encounter Three

My upstairs bathroom has officially been declared a natural habitat of the rodents, by the rodents and for the rodents. We had known there was a mouse – maybe two – in there for a while and we finally set a trap about five days ago. Within 10 minutes we heard a loud snap and had our first captive. The husband took it outside, walked quite a ways from the house, and set it free. He then reset the trap. By the end of the evening we had caught 5 mice.

Three days later we were up to Number 22 – here he is:

Since there is no way that 22 mice were living in our small upstairs bathroom without us noticing it, we decided that we were simply catching the same two or three mice over and over again. Somehow they were finding their way and sneaking back in.

The husband made a makeshift carrier for the next two mice and then took them to work with him the next morning (in a city 10 miles away). Here is Mouse 25 who is slated for relocation tomorrow. Note the useless Devil Cat posing nonchalantly next to him. No sense of shame there whatsoever.

Encounter Four required a road trip.

Now that the chicken project has lost its shiny new luster, the husband is on the lookout for a new project. He discovered a livestock breeder who had not only chickens, but also little dwarf goats and sheep. He asked me if I wanted to go along with him to look at them and for some reason, I actually said yes.

         

I’ve considered myself a city person who merely ended up in the country by accident 30 years ago and will probably keep living here for up to 30 more. But that doesn’t make me a rural person, no matter how many chickens I keep, walks in the countryside I take, or mice I relocate. I just don’t see myself as the keeper of miniature goats.

Although . . . they were pretty cute.

And I would find room for that donkey in a heartbeat.

 

 

Girl Gone Bad (Temporarily)

About 36 hours ago, I turned to a life of crime. Among my offenses are fraud, corruption, theft, criminal neglect, cruelty to animals and attempted murder. This is my confession.

It began when I went to my boss at the university and explained my predicament of having no students in my course. I was fully prepared to say goodbye to that job after 30 years. Instead, after asking me a few questions, my boss said this:

“I realize it is a difficult situation for you, but I have to ask you to keep teaching the course. We sell this program as a package and can’t simply cut out one of the offerings, even if it isn’t needed by anyone at the moment.”

To be honest, I was kind of stunned. I pictured myself coming to the university each week, sitting in an empty seminar room for an hour or so on the off chance that some sorry procrastinator showed up mid-semester, and then collecting about $250 a pop for my “efforts”. But my boss was clearly perfectly willing to let me do this.

I told him my opinion that it really wasn’t necessary to offer two English courses with the numbers we had in the program right now. He countered that changing the curriculum would be a long bureaucratic nightmare and costlier in the end than paying me for not teaching for a while.

I said I felt uncomfortable taking money for nothing and so he made a few suggestions of how I could alter my hours – maybe blocking them, or maybe offering online instruction . . . He would be okay with any alternative I came up with. He thanked me for coming to see him and for my good work over the past three decades. I left.

I sat on a park bench for a while and thought: ”What am I going to do?” At some point it occurred to me that what I needed to solve my problem was students. Where could I get some? From the other English course. I called up the teacher and we hatched a plan.

I showed up in her course and succeeded in luring her five best students away and into my course. Before leaving her class, I thanked her profusely for allowing me to steal them. Back in my classroom, we joined the two students who had shown up for my course that evening and we were off to the races. Let the semester begin!!

Thanks to my thievery, I felt somewhat better about defrauding the taxpayers. I think that, eventually, I could have even successfully rationalized it all if my crime spree had ended there. Unfortunately, this morning I almost committed murder.

I was hacking away with a hoe in one of my flower beds. I wanted to clear the jungle growing there completely and start from scratch. After a bout of hoe hacking, a round piece of dried weeds came free and tumbled down toward my feet. I reached down to grab it and got stung by pointy quills. I realized that it was a hedgehog that had rolled itself up in self-defense after being bludgeoned by my hoe. The remorse was immediate and overwhelming.

I stood there staring at the poor creature and saw that it was still breathing. Was it injured? Was it suffering? “Do veterinarians treat hedgehogs?”  I wondered. My cell phone rang. The husband was calling to say he’d be home in an hour and would I feed the chickens. I said yes and then blurted out “I THINK I KILLED A HEDGEHOG!!”

 

I am happy to conclude this post with a few updates:

The chickens experienced hunger today, but the hedgehog survived. (He eventually unrolled and burrowed back into my flowerbed.) The relief I felt will help me to return to the straight and narrow – my life of crime is over.

I will not defraud.

I will not steal (any more) students.

I will not be cruel to animals.

I will not hoe.

Mystery Solved

Which came first?  The chicken – definitely!

The egg took its sweet time.

 

Blackthumb’s Garden Report – Part Four – Full and Final Disclosure

 

(alternative title:

Confessions of a Would-Be Chicken Whisperer)

 

Despite all of my previous professions to the contrary, I am developing a certain affinity for our new pet chickens. I call them “pets” because 1) there have been no eggs,  2) we feed them, 3) they put up with our displays of affection, and 4) they do nothing (except run away anytime we get near them) to dispel the idea that the feelings are returned.

For four days in a row, I have squirted antibiotics into the beak of Chicken #3 (the Bielefelder). I have listened to her forlorn and lonely cries from her quarantine pen. I have ooched the two new Wyandottes into the stall twice and worried about them not being accepted into the flock. I then felt some pangs when one of them was boxed and sent off to a friend as a gift. I have found dubious reasons to wander past the chickens’ enclosure several times a day. I have discovered a sudden interest in what they like to eat. I check repeatedly for eggs.

But! Don’t think for minute that I am suddenly on board with this insane idea of chicken-keeping!

Although . . .

The (remaining) Wyandotte really is gorgeous. And I’m happy to say that the Bielefelder is on the mend. And the wimpy Sulmtaler is to be pitied for her hairstyle and the way we refer to her as “Trump”. I also get a kick out of the fact that the biggest bully in the flock turns out to be the “Swedish Flower Chicken” – now there is irony for you! Finally, after extensive observation, I am also pretty sure that our one rooster (“Gustav”) falls somewhere in the LGBTQ spectrum.  Which I am okay with, of course! I only mention it as one theory for why our flock still seems uninspired to procreate.

I broke down and bought a carton of eggs at the store today. May it be the last time! And with that, I will officially leave off on chickens and return to my customary blog subjects. (Unless, of course, I find an egg.)

Blackthumb out. (mic drop)

 

Blackthumb’s Garden Report – Poultry Edition

One of the husband’s new chickens is sick. She has the sniffles and sneezes and has no appetite. I suggested my mom’s cure for colds when I was a kid. She made chicken soup. He wasn’t amused.

His idea was to go out and buy a small “quarantine” box for the sick chicken. So now, 10 days into this project, we have five chickens and two coops.

No eggs yet.

 

Blackthumb’s Garden Report – Apology and Correction

The husband insists that I correct the falsehoods implied in my last post. There were at least half a dozen carrots, several handfuls of tomatoes and a whole colander full of potatoes.

 

If I had seen this coming yesterday, I wouldn’t have bought that 5 pound bag of potatoes for $2.49.

Blackthumb’s Garden Report – Harvest Edition

Bumper crop this year!