The bubble freezes in the most amazing patterns. From my back yard on this frigid and snowy day.
Blowing bubbles not just for summer
nature
Oh, the things you’ll see
On my way to an early appointment, I saw this. Turned the car around and parked for 10 minutes. Capture the beauty when you can. 💕 (No filters.)
Blooming can take time
In nature and in ourselves
The longest I’ve ever lived in the same house is this one. My childhood homes were many between my mother and my grandparents. I lived in between from infancy to 18, in between the times when my mom was able to care for me and the times my grandparents would provide. I never stayed in the same place for any length of time.
In the early 70s my granddad bought a house in one town and had it transported to ours and placed on top of a first-story foundation they built made of blocks. They had cut the home site out of the side of a hill with the majority of trees cleared, except for a select few fully mature tulip poplars.
Granddad hated what he called “dirty” trees, but Grandmother and I delighted in the yellow and orange tulip-shaped clusters of color that dotted the green-filled branches. The petals would eventually expire and litter the ground in the spring. Then, in autumn, the brown, ski-shaped samaras soiled what remained of the green lawn. Granddad saw the natural cycle of these trees as a nuisance, but I saw the process through the lens of wonder.
While I was enjoying the tulip poplar trees of my youth in St. Albans, WV, nearly 200 miles away, one had sprouted in the backyard of a family in Georgetown, KY. The mother of the family placed rocks around the sapling to protect it. Her son witnessed the tree grow tall, and when he returned to visit after moving from home, they would notice the yellow and orange tulip shaped clusters of color as they sat in its shade.
The first year my husband and I lived here, he went to his mother’s house for a visit and dug up two sapling sprouts from her favorite tree, and then planted them in our backyard. We watched them grow tall and full and wondered for a few years why there were no blooms until we learned it can take up to 15 years before a tulip poplar will produce flowers.
Then yesterday morning, from my back porch, I watched the sun’s beams poke through the woods and land on one of the tulip poplar trees, and there they were—yellow and orange-shaped clusters of color glowing in the expanse of green-filled branches. Fifteen years after being planted. Fifteen years here. The longest I’ve ever lived in the same place.
I feel a kinship with these trees. Maybe I needed to be in one spot for 15 years before I could bloom, too.
Black walnut harvest is fun adventure
Part of our property has an abundance of black walnut trees and my husband suggested we check if anyone in our area buys the nuts.
Turns out a company called Hammons has a buying station nearby. I called and they pay $18 for 100 pounds. I envisioned how this would be a great teachable exercise for Ellie, who’s almost-eight. She would learn the value of being paid for work, about saving money, and basic math. It would be fun for the family.
My husband, Charlie, in response to my vision, says, “I just want to walk through here without turning my ankle.”
It’s okay to have different dreams.
So, to get an idea of the project, I grabbed a 2-gallon bucket and timed myself as I filled it. Five minutes. I weighed it on the bathroom scale. Ten pounds. So ten buckets = 100 pounds in less than an hour – easy.
Then Charlie mentions they might weigh them AFTER they’re hulled. This is something I hadn’t considered.
I called and confirmed it was true. I did some research and learned it takes 220 pounds of walnuts in their hulls to get 100 pounds in the shell. It was going to be more work.
And it was. Four of us spent a few hours gathering nuts in buckets and bags. Our backs became weary and even though we wore gloves, our fingers became stained black from the overripe walnuts.
We filled the back of the car with the fruits of our labor and headed to the farm store. The hulling machine chugged to life, and we dumped bagfuls of walnuts into its bin. A conveyor carried them up and into a covered area which separated the nut from its hull. It conveyed the remnants in the opposite direction and dumped into a wagon, and the hulled nuts deposited into a mesh bag on the other side.
The final weight was 75 pounds. $13.50. Divided by four. $3.38 per person.
Which was exactly how much Ellie needed to buy a tiny pumpkin and some cat treats from the farm store.
We didn’t have conversations about savings, nor did we have lessons in math. We had little money to show for our efforts. But what we had, though, was time spent together. And that was priceless.
See a short video below.
What I learned today about fungi
What you see here, I think, is some sort of Pac-man-like game the trees are playing using the mycorrhizal network. Not as fast paced as what we play electronically, but then nature has its own timetable and pace. 😊
FYI: mycorrhizal (from Greek, Myco, “fungi” and Rhiza, “root”). The complex network connecting trees is dependent on a symbiotic relationship with microbes in the soil like fungi and bacteria. This symbiotic relationship between tree roots and fungi is known as the mycorrhizal network. —Science In The News, May 6, 2019 by Valentina Lagomarsino, Harvard.edu