The Nature of Things

Autumn seems to have come a bit early to my Southeast Texas garden this year. According to the calendar, it doesn't arrive until next week, but if you ignore that clue and just concentrate on the weather, you would swear it has been here these last few days. We have had glorious, sun-filled days with temperatures in the 80s F. It has been wonderful!  More wonderful still, some of my plants are putting on a late flush of bloom just in time for Bloom Day.  Pineapple sage has been a dependable bloomer all summer long. More members of the sage family - autumn sage in front and the purple in back is 'Mystic Spires' salvia. A few of the oxblood lilies are still blooming. The inland sea oats are blooming, also, although you would hardly know it unless you gave them a second look. Those "blooms" will become a bit more colorful and noticeable as autumn advances. Crossvine puts on its big display in the spring, of course, but, like many spring-blooming vines, it also gives ...

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes My rating: 5 of 5 stars I did not grow up in a house full of books. In fact, there were few on our bookshelves other than the ubiquitous King James Bible. I loved comic books, especially the Tarzan of the Apes ones. I read and reread them, and later, when I was around twelve I think, I began to discover REAL books. The first ones that I found on my own were the Sherlock Holmes novels. I was drawn to them because I knew the name Sherlock Holmes. Even virtual illiterates could not escape the name of the great "first consulting detective" or the knowledge of his story. The first book that I bought by myself was a volume of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories. He was my first literary love and I have remained true to him all these years later. He still fascinates me as he still fascinates much of the world, as evidenced by the popularity of modern movies, television shows, and literary pastiches featuring him. What must it have taken to conj...

Did you hear about the big brouhaha in the world of poetry last week? It seems that a poem that was included in this year's volume of the Best American Poetry series was published using a nom de plume . That probably wouldn't have stimulated much discussion or controversy except that the poet's real name is Michael Derrick Hudson and the name under which the poem was published was Yi-Fen Chou. Hudson has said that he submits his poems first in his real name, and, if he can't get them published under that name, he resubmits the poems (unchanged) under his Asian pen name. Apparently, the editors who originally published his poem in the literary journal Prairie Schooner , as well as Sherman Alexie, the editor of this year's Best volume, were unaware of the fact that the poet is Caucasian not Asian. Did that make a difference in his poem being selected for publication? Perhaps we'll never really know the answer to that question. A better question according to Davi...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : A shorebird that is frequently seen far from the shore - the Killdeer . *~*~*~* The big news this week in the world of science and the environment from long, long ago was the discovery of a previously unknown hominid species . The fossils of the species were found in South Africa at a place called Rising Star Cave. There were lots of bones which scientists believe were from individuals that were alive some 2.5 to 2.8 million years ago. The individuals had brains the size of an average orange and were named Homo naledi , referring to the area where they were found.  *~*~*~* Last week I showed you some pictures of my backyard birds that are molting. All About Birds has an article that tells you everything you need to know about this phenomenon. And now comes word that some birds, like Bullock's Orioles , stop for a while during their migration to complete their molt.  *~*~*~* Sometimes Nature interferes with our bell...

Back in 2009, I had a bit of an epiphany about a genre of literature that I had previously derided. Mainly, I now think, I sneered at it because my mother had loved it, and my teenage rebellion against all things that she liked carried over to my prejudice against her favorite fiction genre. I'm talking about the romance novel, of course. Those were the books that, as I grew up, were typified by the well-thumbed paperback with Fabio, or a Fabio look-alike, with torn shirt, or no shirt, on the cover.  As predictable as the covers were, the plots were even more predictable: Innocent, beautiful, usually poor girl meets experienced, handsome, usually rich man who falls helplessly in love with said girl, and all sorts of stumbling blocks must be overcome before they eventually fall into each other's arms and live happily ever after.   I think the genre has grown up a bit and become somewhat more sophisticated over the years and perhaps our view of genre literature has grown also, ...

It's oxblood lily time once again. When school starts in the late summer, we start looking for these magic lilies that soon pop out of the ground with colorful blossoms. A common name for the plants is "schoolhouse lilies," a nod to their time of bloom. The traditional color of oxblood lilies is bright red.  But there is also a fuchsia pink variety. I have both in my garden. Oxblood lilies ( Rhodophiala bifida ) are close relatives of spider lilies ( Lycoris radiata ) and rain lilies ( Zephranthes ) all of which have similar life histories. They produce most of their foliage during winter and spring and then go dormant during the heat of summer. As summer begins to wane and, typically, the fall rains begin, they pop out of the ground once again and begin their bloom.  During the plant's dormant period during summer, they need little or no water. In fact, artificial watering during this time can actually harm them, but the late summer/early fall rains give them the sig...

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov My rating: 4 of 5 stars I had my Nabokov period in my twenties. I was mesmerized by the man's writing and read everything of his that I could get my hands on. One of those things was, of course, Lolita . I can no longer be sure (because it was such a long time ago in the dim mists of my personal history) whether my memories of the book are truly memories of the book or of the old movie starring James Mason as Humbert Humbert and directed by Stanley Kubrick. I saw enough of that movie on television that it made a lasting impression on me. Either way, each (the movie and the book) in its own way was a tour de force. I can remember finding parts of the book/movie laugh-out-loud funny when I first read/watched. Funny how time and life experiences change one's perspectives. Having children certainly changes one's perspectives. Having two daughters changes one's perspectives. I can no longer find anything about Humbert Humbert funny. He is a monste...