The Nature of Things

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly on blueberry bush. *~*~*~* This is my absolute favorite story of any kind from this week: We know that octopuses are very intelligent and very curious creatures, which means that they don't necessarily take easily to confinement. Such was certainly the case with Inky the octopus, a famed resident at New Zealand's National Aquarium. When a maintenance worker left a gap at the top of his enclosure, Inky didn't hesitate . He squeezed through that gap, headed for a six inch drainage pipe and squeezed through that, making it all the way out to the Pacific and freedom! Godspeed, Inky. *~*~*~* Despite the fact that snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas is greater than it has been in recent years, it is still only 87 percent of the long-term average and that is bad news for a drought-ridden California. The increased snowpack is not expected to be sufficient to offer real relief from the d...

April showers bring May flowers, so they say, but sometimes they bring April flowers as well. This month there are several firsts in my garden. The first sunflower. It grew from a seed "planted" by a bird. The first brugmansia blooms of the year. These plants normally bloom in fall and go dormant in winter, but they never went down in the mild winter just past and now they are blooming! Poor confused plant. The first canna bloom of the year. The first daylily. Not the first amaryllis bloom but the first one of those called St. Joseph's lily. It's not a blackberry winter, but a blackberry spring perhaps. These vines were gifted to us by friends in Mississippi when we visited there a couple of years ago. We got a good many berries from them last year in their first year in the garden. It's looking like a bumper crop this year. Yum! The Southern magnolia trees are full of buds. That first bloom will be opening soon. 'Peggy Martin' rose has bloomed profusely s...

Do you watch the HBO show "Girls"? If you don't, I can tell you briefly that it follows the adventures of four friends, twenty-something girls in New York, as they flounder their way through relationships, jobs, life, basically creating mayhem and angst wherever they go.  Sounds a lot like a lot of other TV comedies, doesn't it? Things like "Sex in the City," "Seinfeld," even "Friends." The thing that sort of makes "Girls" different is that all those other shows generally have at least one character with whom you can empathize, one who is likable. All the girls on "Girls" are so messed up, so totally self-absorbed, that it is hard to feel sympathy for them when life sends hard knocks their way.  These are characters that are really...well, unlikable. And yet watching them has been somewhat like watching a train wreck for me. I just can't turn away. I have watched the show faithfully for five years now. This season...

Last summer, a new rose plant popped up in my garden, near where my 'Litchfield Angel' rose was located.  'Litchfield Angel,' a David Austin rose.    Okay, I thought, it's an offshoot from the 'Litchfield Angel.' During the winter, I dug the new plant and moved it to another location in a sunny spot where it would have more room to develop. It flourished there. And then, this spring, it bloomed. Whaaat??? That's no 'Litchfield Angel'! But what is it? In color, it looks a bit like the old 'Dortmund,' an antique rose that I used to grow. But the 'Dortmund' is a single-flowered rose with one layer of petals. The new rose is double-flowered with many petals, although not as many as the 'Litchfield Angel'. So, what is this new rose? Is it some heretofore unknown hybrid, possibly of 'Dortmund' and 'Litchfield Angel'? The roses grew in the same general area, so such a hybridization would perhaps be possible. But r...

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin My rating: 5 of 5 stars How is it that I have been a constant reader all these mumble, mumble years and I've never read any of Ursula K. Le Guin's work? It defies comprehension. How many other wonderful writers have I overlooked along the way? I was reminded of Le Guin recently when I was reading an article about influential women writers and her name was on the list of ten presented by the author. It seemed like a kick in the pants that I needed to stick one of her books into my reading queue and finally make her acquaintance. I decided to start with the Earthsea Cycle , her series of fantasy adventures. A Wizard of Earthsea was the first in the series. Earthsea is Le Guin's equivalent of Middle Earth or the Seven Kingdoms - a fantastical world where sorcerers, wizards, witches, and dragons hold sway. A Wizard of Earthsea introduces us to young Sparrowhawk, a child who early on shows that he possesses the powers of a wizard. He...

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell My rating: 4 of 5 stars It is 885 on the island that will one day be called England, and it is a time of relative peace. The northern part of the island is ruled by the Danes and in the south, Wessex, Alfred, who will later be known as "the Great" still is king. Uhtred, the Saxon raised as a Dane, still holds true to his oath to serve Alfred. His renown has grown throughout the island. He is Alfred's most formidable warrior. Uhtred, though, has settled down a bit. He is now 28 years old and has a wife whom he loves and two children with another on the way. He has land and position and, though he still exults in the joy of battle, he is no longer so eager to seek it out. He knows the costs of battle as well as its rewards. But the fragile peace is not to last. Vikings have invaded and now hold the ancient Roman city of Lundene on the Temes and they hope to dislodge Alfred from Wessex and take over all the South. Moreover, they have a plan fo...

All week I kept seeing stories and comments online about a "racist and hurtful" poem by Calvin Trillin that appeared in the latest New Yorker magazine. Now the New Yorker is not generally known, I think, as a racist and hurtful rag, so the stories seemed very strange to me. I determined to judge for myself. I went to the New Yorker website and read the poem for myself. Then I read it again. And again. And I thought to myself, "What is all the fuss about?" I'm not a big Calvin Trillin fan. I've seen his poems described as "sing-songy doggerel" and that seemed a pretty apt description of his latest controversial work. But "racist and hurtful"? Perhaps I'm revealing my own obtuseness, but I just didn't read it that way. I thought his verse was an ironic skewering of foodies who chase after the latest trend, always looking for the next new thing that will mark them as more hip and sophisticated than everybody else. But racist? I d...