Category: Nature

Summer Reveries

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You can always tell it is full summer when the hummer wars begin. We hang out two feeders, and early in the summer, there is no competition for the feeders. But at some point, a male hummer takes possession of the feeders, and chases off any interloper.eH That is the line of demarcation between low and high summer. The sound track of high summer consists of the shrill calls of the katydid, along with the pulsating sounds of the cicadas. Weeds even grow dormant as the relentless heat bakes us during this drought we find ourselves in. Leaves on the trees were impressively green despite the lack of moisture, but now the leaves are tinged more often in shades of yellow and brown and the ground is littered with the shriveled hulks of the losers in the moisture war. So last week, we got over 2 1/2” of rain at one time that was not forecast. It probably will be too little too late for anything other than the weeds.

It is time to take stock of the other species who share our land. I see the neon-blue skinks as they skitter across our small retaining wall while I weed. Once I saw the box turtle who lives on our hillside, coming down our front slope. It must have survived the existential journey across our street, since even on our quiet street, we average 3 vehicles per minute. I wonder how I must have appeared to the turtle, who was looking up at this horrendously large being, trying to determine whether it would be worthwhile to pull head and legs inside of the protective shell. I left the box turtle to explore on its own, and went back inside. I saw it cross our steps, but then it disappeared. I’m just glad to see it back for another year. I do remember one year when I saw turtles mating in the back yard. It is tough not to anthropomorphize when you see them slowly turn their heads toward you, as if to say, “Hey! How about a little privacy here.”

We can never go far away from our largest visitors – the deer. Each year we see the new generation grace our yard. This one was particularly noisy as the fawn nursed on our driveway. There are two fawns that like to lay down in our back yard. No pictures of them dining from their mother. Soon the fawn’s spots will fade, and they will take on the behavior of their parents. By this time next year, we may swear at them if they forage in our flowers or our garden. But at this age, their cuteness wins them a bit of a reprieve.

There are some visitors to our hummingbird feeders that do not elicit a territorial response. The flickers sneak up on the feeder, first trying out our cherry tree in the yard, then flying over to the palm we keep in our summer living room, and only then selecting the feeder as their ultimate destination – unless they notice us, in which case they are likely to fly away. They are ten times larger than the hummers, so it is not a direct competition between the two species. Then the red-headed woodpecker announces its presence by drilling our soffit. Soon our feeder is overwhelmed by the size of the latest visitor. I’m still waiting for the arrival of our pileated woodpecker, who dwarfs all other birds at our feeder. You can hear their call in our woods, so we know they are around. Every so often we see one partaking at the suet feeder when we hang it in winter, so we know they are familiar with our porch.

I survey our garden slopes at this time to find bulbs that have broken through the surface. If you work at it, weeding will uncover several clumps of daffodils and jonquils to distribute to others. It is amazing how a few bulbs can engender much good will when they emerge next spring in bloom. Daffodils from our yard are now growing in multiple states, and this year maybe in a few more.

This year our finch feeder is attracting more chickadees than finches. But if you are patient, you may catch a finch seeking a nyjer seed fill. At least, this year no cowbird young are being fed by finch parents, as I’ve seen in the past. Cowbird bills won’t fit in the holes for smaller birds, so I’ve seen adoptive parent birds feeding young birds that should have fledged, but are still hanging around their smaller adult “parents”. I’ve wondered how a cowbird learns its life skills when they are raised by other species, but I won’t live long enough to get that answer.

Summer is a time to unplug and unwind. Even though we are retired, we have a hiatus from choir, chorus, and symphony rehearsals. The sport of summer, baseball, invites you into its slower rhythm, at least as compared to other sports. The drama of a pitcher/hitter confrontation plays out over minutes, while other sports whiz by in a blur of athleticism. That is why baseball is so good for summer, since it seems in synch with the slower pace of life. Soon we will see leaves fall for good, and the chillier air fits in with the faster paces of football and hockey. But baseball has a way of drawing you into believing that this is your year, only to dash that hope on the rocks of a poor bullpen. Oh, well, there’s always next year.

Observations of the Summer

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Every once in a while, it is instructive to bring back one of the statements of one of our greatest philosophers. Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot by just watching”. That is a true statement, but it requires you to take the time to really observe. Nowadays with the ubiquity of cell phones, people wish to live in their virtual worlds instead of the actual world they live within. The insect shown in the photo above is something that only becomes apparent if you truly observe. We were drinking coffee on our front porch when Carrie said, “What is that on the wall? A bug or a dead leaf?”

We quickly checked our sources. Carrie put it on Facebook, and within about 10 minutes she had an answer. Meanwhile, I googled insect identification sites, and had an answer shortly that matched the answer we received in Facebook. It is a Pandorus Sphinx moth. A harmless species that hides in leaves (near perfect camouflage) in the Eastern US. Our Facebook source told us the name, and shared a reminiscence about a cabin where these moths covered the outer wall one morning.

We do observe things. We heard the first cicada of the summer this week. It is not mid-summer until you hear the rhythmic murmuring of the cicadas advertising for a mate. Quite a life, to live underground as a nymph munching on roots for several years, then digging your way out into the surface world, shedding your nymph coating on some solid surface, and starting to sing your solitary song until joined by another.

It is still not late summer. So far only the males have visited our hummingbird feeders. It will be late summer when we start to see females, and the males lay claim to the feeders as part of their territory. Then you get the aerial acrobatics and fights in flight where the hummers get to show off how much faster they live than other species.

The squirrels have disappointed this year. We have a crop of crab apples that are just dropping slowly onto the spare car below. Up until this year we got to see the squirrels bend and twist, trying to strip the spindly branches of their ruby prizes. We don’t think too many have committed suicide through ill-advised dashes across the street, but they just haven’t gone after something to eat. At least they have left the tomatoes and peppers alone. I am still waiting for the first orb to turn red, inviting me to create the king of sandwiches (BLT). No mano for me, just the moisture from lettuce and the ripe slices of tomato is enough, especially with slices of toasted sourdough.

I’ve seen our neighborhood snake a few times this year. Since we no longer have any cats to torment them, they are able to explore our yard at their pace. So far this year, we haven’t seen any turtles. Margaret Renkl of the New York Times had a wonderful column talking about her turtle Opinion | The Turtle Who Came Back From the Dead – The New York Times (nytimes.com), and its reappearance after a long absence. I still remember the time we saw turtles mating in our back yard, followed by baby turtles emerging from one of our garden patches. But that was several years back.

Soon it will be time to look for the daffodil bulbs crowding the surface. By digging them up, then replanting a few, this gives the opportunity to spread the excess bulbs across the town and the states, sharing the flowers of spring among many. We’ve covered most of our available space with bulbs, so now we are trying to look for perennials that can survive living among the herd of neighborhood deer. I saw one buck who had his antlers already – far too early to see that. But that is the wonder of trying to really observe what is around you. Sometimes you wish you hadn’t observed quite so closely. Like the other night, when we were out at one of our favorite local restaurants, I saw an adolescent boy proudly wearing a t-shirt bearing the image of an assault rifle. Never saw him engage with any of his dining party in conversation. You can imagine there may be problems there in the future. But that is the human world. It is better to observe the world of nature, especially when it shows up literally on our doorstep

Sprung Spring

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The daffodils began blooming on February 20. This was extremely early for Spring to appear in South Charleston, West Virginia. And it was not the little daffodils breaking forth first, but the hordes down the hillside where I have spread bulbs in the 30 years we’ve lived in this house. I am enclosing three pictures in this post, two showing the hillside in front, and one showing the blooming bulbs in back of the house. Not shown are the blooms around the gardens, the blooms in between our neighbor’s house and ours, or any of the blooms we have encouraged at the interface between mowed lawn and natural woodland on the side of our property. Indeed, at times like this when all of the bulbs burst forth simultaneously, you can see the thousands of blooms we have in our yard, and I have the pleasure of knowing I’ve placed a majority of these bulbs myself. I grin when I see the bees grabbing the pollen from these early flowers.

I have not purchased bulbs for years. The last virgin bulbs I planted were left over from Easter displays at our church, where the blooms we sponsored became available after everyone tired of the Easter joy. That’s where the small daffodils which normally pop out first showed up. Not this year. The only bulbs not showing up are the jonquils, which always come last, and have multiple flowers per stem, so they appear to keep the bloom parade on track. Instead of purchasing bulbs, I let the greenery die down naturally, and that leads to giving enough energy to allow the bulbs to bud with new bulbs. Since these new bulbs always are higher than the parent bulbs, eventually the bulbs crowd the surface, and show up when I am weeding the beds. That is my prompt to dig up the bulbs, and replace a few back into the original holes, where they begin to repeat the cycle. I’ve dug up hundreds of bulbs in some years, and distributed them to relatives across the country, and to many in this city. It is always good to hear others talk about the blooms they have each Spring due to our efforts.

We subscribe to the New York Times. One of the commentators I enjoy is Margaret Renkl, who is based on Nashville and sometimes writes on the nature she sees outside of her window. On March 6 her column was titled ”The Beautiful and Terrifying Arrival of an Early Spring”. She commented on what she was seeing (blooming bulbs, flowering trees bursting out into full color, and birds confused on what signals to follow as part of their annual routine). She mentioned the risk these early spring adopters ran from late winter cold snaps. Well, we are now in the midst of several days with lows in the low 20’s Fahrenheit, and we are running the risk of ruining the early blooms. So far the daffodils seem impervious to the cold, but we will see what happens to the Lenten Roses and the flowering cherry tree now bursting forth to declare Spring officially here. We just had a story about the storm of the century, back in ’93. We were here for that blizzard, so we know winter still can throw a nasty trick at us. But somehow, I think the plants and animals in this area will adjust to the vagaries of the weather, and even if some of the blooms are withered by the late cold, we can look forward to the days ahead where the daylight savings time change enables later afternoon, and soon evening work hours in the warmer temperatures of Spring.

Hummer Court Is In Session

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Hummer is at lower right

 Zip! Zip! Zoom! The hummers swerve around us in their aerial battles for supremacy. Their distinctive wing sounds, coming from flapping literally hundreds of times per second, coupled with their chirping sounds, alert us to their presence. We put up two feeders, both on our front porch. Early on in the summer, a single male takes charge, but there’s not a huge rush on the feeders. Somewhere in July, though, competition sets in. A second male hummer dares to drink from the feeders. Well, the alpha male hummer cannot stand for that to happen. We begin to have hummer wars on our front porch, with two and sometimes even three hummers chasing each other. The original alpha male drives off the interlopers, and he goes to perch on a bare branch of an apple tree, or on the wires leading to the house. It is amazing to see the degree of competition we have for our sugar water. Best way to use ½ cup of sugar ever! Cheap entertainment. I must say I would not want to have a hummingbird attorney to ever argue a case of property rights, though. They are quite capable of putting on an effective defense among their peers.

We once put a feeder out in the back off of our deck, figuring a single hummer couldn’t observe both sides of the house at once, and thus we could support more hummers. What we hadn’t figured out was that raccoons could reach the backyard feeders, and we awoke to empty hummingbird feeders after a single night. We knew no birds could do that, and we did make an inference on the raccoon, but the image of a raccoon on a sugar high, bouncing off of the trees below was too good to forget.

Our summer outdoor living room is shared by many other life forms. This year we’ve had a bumper crop of skinks scurrying across our space. Not just the ones with neon blue tails, but another type with brown coloration. And we have had flickers at the hummingbird feeders, who are free from hummer raids. They seem to know it would not work to challenge such a large animal. They wish only to intimidate their own kind.

We even had another reptile pay us a visit this summer, and it provided quite a counterpoint to the frantic aerial pursuits of the hummers. A box turtle showed up, and we always are glad to see the slowest of animals still managing to survive in our urban environment. I say urban, because we do live on a city street, with a few thousand cars passing by daily. But when I look at the deer population, it becomes clear we only are the temporary residents, and the wildlife is the true inhabitants of our space. We do our best to welcome as much as we can, offering a multi-cultural lawn for any herbivores, and keeping our crab apple tree available for the squirrels.

I may have an argument or two with the squirrels, though. I have seen half-eaten tomatoes littering the back deck. I’ll be willing to fight for the tomatoes. Unfortunately, they won’t touch the excess of jalapenos growing in the same space. But watching the acrobats of the mammalian world stretching out on flimsy branches to grab a crab apple, scurry to a more secure perch, and just sit there gnawing at the bitter fruit. To them it must be a welcome change to their diet of nuts.

Soon enough the bounty of summer will be replaced with the need to stock up for winter. The chill of the fall evenings will cut through even the fur coats of all of the animals, and we’ll see the suicide squirrels who don’t make it successfully across the street. One day, our hummingbird feeders will be silent, as only the wasps still seek concentrated sugar. And wasps don’t make much noise. When we move the plants indoors, seeking to avoid the killing frosts, we will bid adieu to our outdoor living room. Until that time, though, we sit and watch the natural world intersect with us.

A Delight of Daffodils

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Front bank

Spring appeared spontaneously in March. We went from total winter inertness into a delight of daffodils almost instantly. Plus the bonus of flowering trees and Lenten Rose in full display. Even the brief interruption of 8” of snow a couple of weeks ago couldn’t stop the procession of the seasons.

Our daffodils represent 30 years of living in the same house. I’ve managed to spread the daffodils not only to all niches of our yard, but pass the bounty on to many others in the Charleston area, and establish outposts in Ohio, Richmond Virginia, and near Ft. Worth Texas. It is easy to be generous when you only have to dig up the bulbs that are crowding the surface and replace the lot with a few of those I’ve extracted. Now is the time – the 3 or 4 weeks in the spring – when all of the past work shines in its glory. Soon will come the jonquils as the last blooms of the spring, with multiple flower heads making up for the lower numbers of bulbs.

Daffodils below fence in back

Then all that will be left are the green leaves of the flowers. If you merely leave these in place, until June when they tend to blend with the dirt after they’ve fertilized the bulbs below, you will be guaranteed of flowers next spring. And for us, the added benefit is that the deer will not touch them. They dislike both the daffodils and the Lenten Rose, so we’ve cultivated both of these species to colonize our slopes and shaded flower beds.

Cherry tree in front yard

With my knee now functional, I should have much less of a problem in getting down on the ground to weed the flower beds, and dig up those bulbs whose heads poke up above the ground. I’m looking forward to that, since for the last few years it has been a struggle any time I sank down to the level of the flowers. If I could only find flowers that bloomed later in the year that deer wouldn’t treat as their buffet, I’d be happy. We try lantana every year, and sometimes it does not get munched, but it is not immune to the deer predation. Plus it gets expensive to buy lantana by the flat. So far we also have found lavender that deer don’t like, so we’re going to try some more of it. Plants like coneflower have not done well for us.

At least I am only worried about the marauding deer disrupting our flower beds. I am grateful that I don’t have to worry about tanks and armored personnel carriers and the boots of the enemy tromping around. I feel for the people of Ukraine, who will find this year’s spring to be a hollow reminder of what should be instead of what is.

Seasons Change, and So Did I

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Summer’s hold lingered on this year. Even in mid-October, we were able to enjoy our outdoor living room and had morning coffee along with the newspaper outside. But as the calendar turned to November, the mornings turned to frost. We finally had a killing frost, so the last of the basil and peppers and tomatoes turned to a wilted heap of formerly living matter. This year, though, our beech nut tree was prolific in its generosity to wildlife. So much so that earlier in the summer, we lost several large branches off of the beech full of nuts. The forester we use said it was actually the weight of the nuts causing the limbs to give way. So it was not a surprise for us as we sat outside in the early evening to see a family of deer grazing on the bountiful nuts littering our lawn.

Beech nuts are small. Only a few calories per nut, and you have to peel the triangular shell back to release the nut. Deer don’t worry about the extra roughage from the nuts, though. They just keep eating the whole thing, then depositing the remains as fertilizer on our lawn. We have learned to live with our four-footed neighbors, since we swapped out our flowers to deer-resistant varieties over the years. We do get to see sights like this year’s fawn trying to aggressively nurse from its mother. My guess is that the doe had already dried up since the fawn quit trying to nurse as abruptly as it tried to start.

This is the season of the suicide squirrels. You see their squashed carcasses decorating the roads all over this area. As you drive, you are likely to see a squirrel begin its dash across the street, then suddenly turn to go back to the safety of the grass, only to reverse course again and continue across the road. Many is the time when I’ve discovered how good my brakes are, by stopping before our car adds to the seasonal slaughter. Of course, we got to watch a squirrel score a touchdown at a recent Marshall game. The squirrel raced across the field, crossed the goal line to the delight of the student section, then eventually retraced his steps and left the stadium with humans in pursuit. Wildlife on the field is a common theme right now, though. This past weekend we were graced with the sight of a fox at the Arizona State – USC game. And I just saw footage of a moose running across the field at South Dakota State, although no football game was in progress. It is that time of year.

Photo by Zachary Hiser

Later falls and lessened tree color. Are these signs of global warming? As the statistician in me says, individual anecdotes do not a trend make. Still, one has to wonder when summer-like warmth extends later, and later into the year. Some trees still haven’t changed colors, like our cherry tree in our front yard. The only thing we can do is watch the trends, and report as appropriate. See, no one remarks when the expected happens. We only talk about it when our expectations are not met. In the case of the extended summer, it was unexpected, but welcome. Only when I reflect upon the weather do I realize that this is not normal. I am not accustomed to not needing a jacket in the middle of November. But I can enjoy it, for as long as it lasts.

Only a month ago. Now just a memory in green

September Ponderings

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Each September brings a different perspective. Some years the day to celebrate working people comes with brown leaves skittering along our driveway, and grass needing the coolness of fall to green up again. This September comes with an abundance of green, and an outdoor symphony composed by minimalists who only can think of one melody. When multiple composers are making their noises simultaneously, the symphony of late summer emerges.

Our hummer wars continue. One day we will miss the aerobatics around our feeders, but today the combatants fight one another for access to our sugar water. They will disappear this month, and we will miss them. Only wasps and flickers will remain to enjoy the dregs of sweetness we share. We put out another feeder full today, but who knows how long we will need to keep the feeders full.

This year we waited for painting on our front porch to be completed before we brought out all of our plants and completed our outdoor living room. It was into July before our plants could enjoy the sunlight and warmth of a West Virginia summer. We still partake of our coffee and physical newspaper on the porch, though jeans and flannel shirts may replace summer apparel later in the month. Things change in September, and even though the summer seemed endless, it always comes to an end.

This year the tomatoes and banana peppers have kept in production. It is a true luxury to slice down a tomato and enjoy its fruit right off of the vine. Plus we’ve received the excess from one of Carrie’s friends, a 92-year old (as of this weekend) ex-Marine who still is able to grow and harvest tomatoes and peppers. She is quite a woman, but slowing down just a bit, and who knows how much longer she’ll be able to bring forth harvests.

We’ve kept the hanging baskets alive throughout this summer. Each year we seem to fight a losing battle where the contents of the hanging baskets look like shriveled corpses by September, but this year we’ve managed to keep them alive and blooming. Now we even see the hummingbirds dart about the flowers, even flitting near our faces as we sit outside.

Our cat, Blinky, is now about 17. He no longer wants to come outside, and he’s grown increasingly deaf. Of the four flutes my wife practices (piccolo, C flute, Alto flute, and Bass flute), he only objects to the piccolo. He still has some high frequency hearing left. Anyway, he sits in his perch in our window overlooking our porch and front yard. Most of the time he just observes when not asleep, but one night he let out a piercing scream as something must have invaded his space, even though he no longer patrols it physically. Whether it was the neighbor’s cat, or possum, or raccoon, we don’t know but his reaction woke both of us from a sound sleep.

We both despair of the trends of the world. How we ended up with total idiots as governors of some of our most populous states we will never know. All we can do is live our lives each day at a time, enjoying the warmth while it still filters in through the trees across the street and up the hill. When you live on a hillside, the next street up is 200’ higher in elevation, with forest in between. The fires in California hit areas like ours extremely hard, but when you routinely have nearly 50” of precipitation per year, you don’t worry nearly as much about forest fires. It’s been over 30 years since the last bad fire year, and then the fires only seem to attack the ground litter, not the canopies of the trees. I could not imagine how it must be to see fire leap from tree top to tree top, sweeping across hillsides like ours as if they didn’t even serve as a speed bump. So we know what we have, in a place to live that would cost a fortune in some portion of this country that was in demand. Here, we just have to accept that people don’t want to live where the economy does not boom. However, as we watch, they are marching up the street with new fiber optic cable, eventually to link this isolated corner of our country with the rest of this nation. When we have true high-speed internet, and the possibility of remote work is more feasible, will an area where houses cost $70/square foot suddenly become in vogue? Time will tell, and that’s what we enjoy, the time to share an afternoon in our summer living room.

The Squirrel Gang Rides Again

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Casing the joint

I am sitting at home awaiting the knock on the door. You see, I am a purveyor of the most addictive substance in the world. Mealworms. They are the crack of the animal world. Titmice, mockingbirds, and squirrels all throw themselves at the feeder just to partake of this wonderful food.

The knock I am awaiting? It is not law enforcement. Rather, I am waiting for the squirrel gang to figure out a way to pound on the door, letting me know the feeder is empty. The other day, when we had a proper mealworm feeder, I counted 5 squirrels plotting on how to reach the platform of luscious treats. While I wasn’t watching, the squirrels managed to tear off the feeder portion, leaving only the clear plastic roof. The same roof a squirrel landed on, only to slip off and fall down onto the Lenten rose below. Once I heard a squirrel land squarely on the metal railing around our porch. Anyway, they tore off the bottom of the feeder, and we have yet to find it. I have visions of squirrels conducting their version of a cargo cult, gathering around the feeder base in the woods, chanting to bring back the wondrous food.

Mockingbird getting his fix from the late feeder

This morning as we were enjoying our coffee and newspaper on the porch, I filled the makeshift feeder we now have. It was literally seconds before the first mockingbirds descended onto the feeder. Undoubtedly they were watching the feeder from above, awaiting the delivery of manna. A few minutes later, the flock of titmice arrived, skittering up to the feeder whenever a mockingbird was not present. It mattered not that we were sitting there, a few feet away from them. The siren call of the mealworms was all that mattered. Bird crack, addictive as hell.

One of the squirrel gang showed up, and he paid us no heed as he worked out a way to get onto the platform. Yes, he could look on the ground for those worms tossed overboard by messy bird eaters, but the mother lode was up there awaiting his arrival. He looked at us as though we were interlopers in his realm, and all we wanted to do was prevent his ascension into the garden of Eden. So what if we sat there watching him? That was not going to bother him one bit.

Almost there!

We will have to figure out a safe way for both birds and squirrels to have their feasts. Where we’ve set up the feeder now, we are seeing the plants in the adjacent planter destroyed from the acrobatics of the squirrels. Our wind chimes are at risk as they use them as trapeze platforms, trying to gain enough altitude to reach the promised land. Or they plop down from the roof, giving their all to hold onto the feeder without tumbling onto the ground below. Whatever we choose, we will enjoy watching the battles over our mealworm donations. And if we think we can just let the feeder run dry, let me ask you. Have you ever been cursed by both mockingbirds and titmice? It’s not a pleasant experience, I assure you.  

Nirvana

Seasons Change (And So Did I)

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All pictures by author

The squirrels and birds will soon have to work for their living. No longer will their food be provided inside of a porch swing feeder handcrafted by my late brother, or suspended inside of a suet feeder. The seasons have changed, and spring obviates the need to provide supplemental food.

Oh, we will be bringing out the hummingbird feeders shortly, and giving away mealworms, but that’s not the same as the buffet we have provided during the winter months. The squirrels in particular, are enjoyable to watch. We have two who have claimed the feeder. No bird dares to swoop in for a bite while a squirrel perches in or on the feeder. But the second squirrel eventually becomes impatient, and jumps in itself, prompting the first squirrel to abandon the feeder and perhaps chew and swallow what it had placed in its mouth before it scampers off.

The suet feeder was where we saw some of the best birding action. The rarest of visitors is the pileated woodpecker, who visits so seldom we’ve been only able one time to capture a picture of this king of woodpeckers.

What has replaced the feeders of winter? The flowers of spring. Our yard is at its peak bloom right now with daffodils, hellebores (Lenten rose), and flowering trees. In the almost 30 years we’ve lived at this house, we have transformed our spring landscape by cultivating and spreading daffodils. We have literally thousands of them blooming right now, and when they fade, the jonquils will take their place in providing spring beauty. But we are most excited this year to see the blossoms burst out of our cherry tree. We’ve been babying this tree, trying to keep it safe from our ravenous deer, and whereas last year we had five lonely blossoms, this year it has burst forth gloriously.

The self-propagating hellebores are something that takes little care. They loves shade, which we have in abundance. Deer don’t like it, which makes it in high demand as a source of greenery that stands up to the deer’s predations. And pollinators of all types love its pollen-rich flowers. The only problem we have with it is that last year’s leaves flop over onto the ground when the tender strands arise with the delicate flowers. You have to cut them off and gather them up, trying not to get abraded from the raspy leaves, or else you just have a mass of greenery where the bottom leaves rot in place.

We like it when both of the Lenten rose and daffodils share the same slope. The Lenten roses are prolific in spreading their seed, and eventually you do have to ride herd on their spread, but this is their time of year.

It takes patience to transform a landscape. We’ve had nearly 30 years. Now the only thing we do beside cutting back the Lenten rose, is to look late in the summer and see where the daffodils are crowding the surface. When they do, I dig them up and spread the bulbs to share with others. Our bulbs are now found in 3 states, and in many places around Charleston. But the rewards come to those who have the patience to wait year after year and enjoy spring when it finally does come. Patience is a virtue we all need more of. Seems like the world now puts a premium on instant gratification, which does not usually work well.

Weather – We Like It Or Not

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In January 1982, I worked at a chemical plant in Memphis when we suffered through a spell of bitterly cold weather like Texas went through last week. Chemical plants are like other similar facilities, such as oil refineries and power plants. Memphis is not in the deep South, but our plant was not designed for an extended period of extremely cold weather.

So I can understand why Texas has suffered as much as they have in their current cold snap. And the longer temperatures remain so much below freezing, the worse the damage will get. When we suffered our freeze in Memphis, our first priority was to shut down in a safe way and prevent leakage of hazardous materials. Once that was safely completed, all we could do was settle in for the inevitable thaw that would come.

But when the thaw came, that is when the true damage was revealed. All of the water and steam piping that froze, often burst. The sound of dripping water showed how much repair was needed before we could start up again. In our case, large diameter cooling water pipes had frozen solid and burst, which delayed our restart for weeks. This was certainly a contributing factor in the decision by Du Pont to close the process a year later.

For facilities in Texas, often it’s the smallest components that cause the biggest issues. Pressure sensors have very small diameter piping that leads to a gauge and signal transmitter. That little bit of piping is often what freezes, leading to a loss of the sensor. Faced with the option of running their process blind, operators shut down their facility. Then the loss of heat from combustion or chemical reaction leads to more freezing. It’s a vicious cycle.

There are other factors that exacerbated the situation in Texas. By isolating themselves from the national power grid, they were able to claim that their utilities were not engaged in interstate commerce. That freed them from Federal regulation, and enabled them to rely solely upon intrastate regulation. For Texas, that is a prime motivating factor, and one reason why the situation has been so dire during this time. The few corners of the state that are tied into the national grids (El Paso and Beaumont) appear to have come through this crisis with minimal damage, since they were able to import electricity from outside of the borders of Texas. But everywhere else has been held hostage to the native stubbornness of the state.

To many on the outside looking in, it is inconceivable that Texans would willingly put themselves through a disaster just to continue to be free of external regulation. But that would not be a true assessment of the state of Texas. I first visited Texas nearly 50 years ago, and was struck by the attitude I encountered there. If any place in the US could be an independent country, Texas was that place. In the intervening decades, it seems this feeling has only strengthened. What Texas will find out is that there are real benefits to be had in integrating with the rest of the country. What I fear is this most recent incident will only serve to ossify the attitudes of true Texans, and perhaps send the secessionist movement into overdrive. It seems as though the tendency in Texas, and through much of the country, is that it is much better to go it alone. As if someone could wall themselves off from the rest of the world and still maintain a standard of living better than anyone else.

This was the motivating factor leading to the building of “the wall”. If we could just put up a barrier and prevent the others from diluting our genes, we would solve many of the problems of the nation. Funny thing, though. In Texas the concept of private property rights proved ascendant to the need to build a barrier. In many of the border lands adjacent to the Rio Grande, families that had owned the land for generations objected to their property being broken in two by a barrier wall. Civil litigation has held up construction for years, and there’s no end in sight.

So the tragedy unfolding in Texas is both of natural and human making. The cold they’ve been subjected to is certainly something that would cause much suffering by itself. But it was due to the nature of the power business in Texas, where no one enforced requirements to maintain back-up capacity, or winterize their facilities, that made a natural disaster an order of magnitude worse. Keep the situation in Texas in mind as Republicans keep insisting on a steady drumbeat of deregulation. Maybe regulations are more expensive. Maybe we pay a little more each month to ensure continuity of service. I know that it is a bitter struggle each time a utility in our state tries to recover funds spent on upgrading infrastructure. But as Texas has shown, you can pay me now, or pay me later. For Texas, later has arrived.