"A Spicing Of Birds" - Book Release

     Mark you calendars, ladies and gentlemen! Be at The Gulf Of Maine bookstore on Maine Street in Brunswick on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 4PM. Phippsburg artist, Jo Miles Schuman will speak about her new book, "A Spicing Of Birds." Co-edited by Jo with Joanna Bailey Hodgman, the lovely book is a collection of poems by Emily Dickinson, illustrated with classical works of avian art. The carefully selected watercolors, engravings, lithographs and early bird photographs correspond pleasingly with thirty-seven of Dickinson's works. Published by Wesleyan University Press, A Spicing Of Birds is a sensuous tribute to Dickinson's love of birds. Though birds were referenced hundreds of times in her works, Dickinson's deep love of birds has barely been mentioned in previous anthologies. The editors have here explored  the deep relationship of the poet to birds within the pages of this divine, little book. It's a book which feels good in the hand and in the heart. It will appeal to the birding soul in everyone.

Hang Over Cure- The Power Of The Pileated Woodpecker

Female Pileated Woodpecker

Recently, I spent three consecutive days on Hermit Island from six forty-five to ten AM. Hermit Island is on the end of the Phippsburg peninsula. Because it juts far out into the Atlantic ocean, it is a haven for migrating birds. They don't like crossing expanses of water any more than I like getting up early. So, they congregate building their numbers for the inevitable crossing. To catch the birds as they began to move with the rising sun's heat, I had to rise at 6, which makes me absolutely nauseous. I'm not crabby when I get up, but I am logy and have to fight back the spins. This is just how it is for me; I'm accustomed to plowing my way toward wakefulness. As soon as I start moving, I'm okay and I really do love the light in the morning and the soft silence.
     Hermit Island is privately owned. It's an undeveloped campground with 275 sites. Columbus Day weekend was the last hurrah. There were many die hard campers, none of whom were awake when I arrived. As I walked the two miles of dirt road to the end of the island, I could hear breathing and snoring from the tents. Picnic tables were littered with beer bottles and cans, debris from partying. A Red squirrel toppled a few to the ground, scaring itself, then scampering away. The only other sounds were rustling leaves, and the birds, thousands of them. Chirring, chipping and whirring mingled with the scratching sounds of tiny claws on bark. As I walked, no matter how carefully I placed each step, rocks skidded and gravel crunched. By comparison, my own foot steps were clunky, until I heard the Pileated woodpeckers.
     Pileateds are noisy. They bash, hammer and tear at trees and their call rips the air. I saw five in one day, four of them near one another. I'm sure they were the Pileated family group I had written about this past spring. It was a thrill to see them all grown up and out tearing up the forest. Their raucous screeching and drumming must have been a delight for hung-over campers' headaches. When I was a child, my father was often hung over. To roust him out and torment him, my mother would bang together pots and pans and tell him she was serving him a glass full of cold pork gravey. This formula usually worked, too. He would probably have preferred a Pileated cure.

Wordless Wednesday

"Spppppppppppppppooooooooooooooooooooooooky!"

Cross spider on web - not a cross spider, just a Cross spider.

"Leapin' Lawnowers!" Pickerel Frogs

"Do I look like I could hurt somebody?"

Pickerel Frog

I found this frog in my yard hopping in the grass. It's a Pickerel frog, sometimes called a Grass frog. They live in ponds and lakes, but spend a lot of time out of the water foraging for food. They are only about 2 1/2 inches long and reportedly difficult to catch. When approached, they hop quickly away in a zig-zag pattern. These are the frogs that often are hopping wildly away in front of your lawn mower. I had no trouble catching this one, though. I have a ninety-nine cent secret weapon - a kid's butterfly net from Reny's. Maine residents will know of Reny's as the odd lots store of all time. I have kept the price tag on the net, so I look like the Minnie Pearl of whatever-catchers. Remember her? "How-w-w-DEE-E-E-E! I'm jes' so proud to be here!" was her signature line.

     She was the comedienne and American country singer who wore hats with the price tag hanging on the front in her field of view. As a regular on the variety show "Hee-Haw!", she was always flirting and catchin' fellers. When I was younger, Minnie was my role model for catching men.
     I can be quite a flirt myself. But, these days, I'm more interested in catching insects and frogs than men. I bought the net a couple of years ago and keep it in my car, at the ready for things like this darting frog. Admittedly, on more than one occasion, I've thought about netting my crazy brothers-in-law. When I met my husband, he was easy to catch and required no special equipment. Of course, one must have some understanding of the behaviors of critters in order to catch them, not just the net. I'm sure Minnie Pearl knew this. I knew that the frog would zip away on a zig zag, so I held the net in front of it. Had the frog outwitted me and not hopped into the net as predicted, I would not tell you that I had seen it at all! Well, that's probably not true. To have only seen the frog, but not to have caught it, would be like telling my girlfriends that a man had proposed without having the ring to show for it. Minnie would never have made that mistake.
     The skin secretions of a stressed pickerel frog are known to be toxic to other frogs. They can't be in terrariums or other containers with other frogs because they'll all......CROAK! The secretions can also be moderately irritating if they come in contact with the eyes, mucous membranes, or broken skin of humans. It is advisable to wash up after handling pickerel frogs. After I handled this little feller, I had a swollen lip, but that could have been from when he punched me back after the netting.
     Pickerel frogs hibernate from October through April, but are common here during the spring and summer. Their populations are declining due to deforestation and pollution. One of the biggest sources of the pollution that's killing them is lawn mowers. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a traditional gas powered lawn mower produces as much air pollution as 43 new cars each being driven 12,000 miles. Each weekend, roughly 54 million Americans mow their lawns. They use 800 million gallons of gas per year and produce tons of air pollutants. Garden equipment engines, which have had unregulated emissions until very recently, emit high levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, producing up to 5% of the nation's air pollution and a much more in metropolitan areas. The little frogs that aren't chopped up by your lawn mower are left gasping for breath either way. They are very sensitive to their environment and are regarded by biologists as an indicator species. Think of this little feller as a Canary in the coal mine - when you stop seeing or hearing them, stop breathing the air.

Note: Many of you know that my dearly beloved husband makes a living mowing lawns. Sadly, I'm sure he's put more than his share of frogs through the meat grinder. As his wife, I can assure you that he keeps his equipment in great condition. All of it.

 

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Unidentified Insects, Phippsburg, Maine

"Tomato Crazy" A Cult Classic Starring Robin Robinson

     Recently, I was asked, "Do you have too many tomatoes?" I didn't hesitate. "No! I could never have too many tomatoes!" But, that's not totally true. In years past, when I've had big vegetable gardens, I have had too many tomatoes. I've called people and asked the same question. I think a common trait amongst vegetable gardeners is frugality. Most vegetable gardeners don't throw produce out unless it goes onto their own compost heap where it will one day give again. They freeze, can,  cook and besiege friends and co-workers with bountiful gifts of harvest. That's a nice way of saying that they unload the end results of their compulsions and guilt on other people in the form of tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, tomatillos, parsley or cucumbers (shall I go on?).
   One year, in the refrigerator, at the bottom of a plastic bag, I had one potato that had sprouted eyes like purple tentacles. I buried it in the vegetable garden for kicks and forgot about it. At the end of the season, after the first frost turned the greens to black slime, I decided to dig it up. I pushed the garden fork into the soil, pressing downward with my foot. I felt something underground - resistance. So as not to gouge the potatoes, I backed off the fork and moved out a little. I pushed again. More resistance. Moving outward, I pushed in again. I kept at this, moving further and further out each time. I was thinking, "What the hell is under there?!" It couldn't be a potato! It would have to be the size of a Volkswagen! Eventually, I dug up a lone potato that was, in fact, the size of a Volkswagen. Or, to be honest, maybe a SmartCar. I swear - it had a pulse or at least, its own zip code. It was enormous! It was so big, that I couldn't bring myself to chop it up. It was a country fair freak show vegetable, a side show. It could have been featured in a tent; to enter, only people over 18 could get a ticket. "Come one! Come all! Get a peek at the pulsing, colossus!" the hawker would chant to passers by. At the very least, it could have starred in a David Lynch cult movie. After all, there was weird asparagus in the 1977 classic, Eraserhead. I had a star on my hands! I decided to take it to work.
     At the time, I worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield, or "Blue Cross Blue Cheese," as  I liked to call it. By any name, it was a white collar cubicle hell that would have put Dilbert in a psychiatric unit. It was a staid, dull work place. And, that was before Community Supported Agriculture groups (CSAs) and before "organic" became a markettable concept. "Take A Vegetable To Work Day" had not yet been conceived, either.
     I wasn't the only one who brought produce to work. However, others generally brought things like fat and sugar laden zucchini bread, or maybe a daring jar of Bread And Butter pickles, certainly not a humungous, grotesque, single potato.  Well, there was that woman who brought the incessant dahlias. Her dahlias kept on giving until I wanted to scream. I like dahlias, but when a person insists on giving them to you over and over again because they can't stop them selves and neither can their dahlias, well that's another thing entirely. When no one would take them anymore, she showed up with mayonnaise jars full of them every day. The office looked like a dahlia funeral home. They were everywhere! The receptionist's head was not even visible when a person entered the building. When a visitor approached her desk, they talked to a big, pink or yellow or peach or white dahlia depending on the day. Sometimes it was deep red ones that looked like raw beef steak on a stick.  I can't even remember the dahlia woman's name. Dahlia? Maybe her name was actually Dahlia. Come to think of it, I can't remember her face either. I only have this image of a doughty, female form with a head like a giant, "Dinner Plate" dahlia. It's not an attractive image, either. The body is a mayonnaise jar with a voice speaking from a dahlia face. It's hideous, a nightmare to be sure. I know what you're thinking: I brought the giant potato to the same place of employment. But I only did that once.
      We had just recently been given e mail in the office. E mail was a brand new tool and it was only available in house. The Internet existed, but only the military had it. Can you imagine that? All of our information sharing was done on paper in the form of memos. There was a lot of grumbling and complaining about e mail. "What do we have to learn to do this for?" And there were people who refused to learn to do it. But, I embraced the whole idea. I was a quick study and learned to use it very quickly. One of the first things I did was tell the entire two hundred plus cubicles about my potato.
     I raffled it off. I didn't take money, much as I would have liked to. I understood the power of e mail and what I could gain from it, but I had limits. That's the only reason I wasn't the original founder of eBay. Even I realized I could lose my job by exploiting my potato and using company resources to do it. So, I had people guess the weight of the potato. The person who came closest could have the potato cooked to their specifications by me. I was a pretty decent cook, so this was an incentive. I made a whole 9x13 dish of au'gratin from that single potato which weighed...............2.8 pounds. It seemed like a anti-climactic end to the splendid spud, but after all - at it's heart it was just a potato.
     With the tomatoes bestowed upon me last week, I made cream of tomato soup. I had left over brown rice and used about a cup of lovage. I have lovage in my minuscule container garden. It was given to me by another crazed gardener, of course. Even my son the chef doesn't know what lovage is, never mind what to do with it, I asked. I used fresh thyme, basil and parsley. The cream base was fat free Greek yogurt and milk. I threw in a couple of generous glugs of white wine - the remaining quarter cup at the bottom of the bottle where the fruit flies had drowned. David loved the soup so much, he's been dreaming about it at night. He thrashes in his sleep and babbles about it during the day as if driven insane. "That tomato soup was so good! I drive around town and see everybody's tomatoes going to hell and I just want to take them. It's driving me crazy.........." he trailed off. He seemed confused, dazed, in a tomato haze. Maybe I'll ask him if he wants to star in a movie.............I'll call it "Tomato Crazy."    

This is another cooking drama from which bad dreams were born. Stay tuned.