What lies beneath…
What lurks below…
What creature swims within…
Beware…
For it might catch you unaware…
And scoop you into that big gaping hole of a mouth…
Then disappear silently to the depths below….
(This fountain is at Hornsby Bend, one of the best birding spots in all of Texas. Subtle ripples in the duckweed alerted me to the fact that I wasn’t alone.)
A couple of months ago, my son and I had great fun making Pokeweed Ink from the pretty but toxic Pokeweed plant. We made the ink and let it ferment in a dark cabinet and then promptly forgot about it.
But making the ink proved to be fortuitous, as recently my son was given a Social Studies research project at school — of all the colonies, he ended up with Pennsylvania, the state in which both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written. The rumors around the Internet were that these documents were written in Pokeweed Ink. (Edit: These proved to be inaccurate, however — thanks to Dana R., we know from the National Archives that iron gall ink was actually used. Iron gall ink was the ink of choice for many, many centuries — I’m going to have to experiment again!)
My son’s been working hard on his report and presentation on the Pennsylvania colony, and we remembered that we had that bottle of pokeweed ink, which luckily was still in good shape — apparently it fermented well (in fact, it smelled like either really old grape juice or very, very cheap wine). Whether a historically accurate ink or not, he could use it to create a document of his own.
So today we had fun practicing calligraphy with both modern pens and with pen nibs dipped in the pokeweed ink. It’s a lot harder than it looks, using a nib dipped in ink — a modern calligraphy pen is so much easier, alas. But it’s not as cool as using ink the old-fashioned way! However, for this particular project, we realized that doing any fancy writing wasn’t really going to work, so my son stuck with cursive writing.
My son prepared a sample Declaration for his presentation. He also took the bottle of ink with him to school. Science, history, art, fun!
What’s pretty neat, too, is that as the ink dries, the color darkens from the reddish look in the “Pokeweed Ink” text above to the darker in shown in the writing in the corner. Nifty, nifty!
Would you rub your face in it?
Or would you swan dive into it?
And then do this?
Is this where the saying “dirty old man” comes from?
Technically these guys are enjoying dirt and water… a.k.a. MUD. They are the Sturdy Beggars of the Mud Show at the Texas Renaissance Festival. A classic show, and always entertaining.
But I realized that I’ve really become a gardening geek when I found myself thinking — “that mud just doesn’t look good for plants. Needs more compost.” I even found myself drawn to the artificial flowers they stuck in the mud, wanting to decorate with more real flowers.
Geek. That’s me. On the other hand, I don’t rub my face in mud.
How about this 12-foot tall Walking Tree Man?
The honeycomb and bird’s nest are a nice touch.
I had such fun working with 4th-graders in their language arts class today. They are studying words with the root foli-, which means “leaf.” So we headed outside to look for real-life examples of foli- words. But first we reviewed several prefixes, including:
Uni- (one)
Bi- (two)
Tri– (three) (also Tre-)
Quatre- (four)
Quinque- (five)
Multi- (many)
Per- (through)
De- (from, of)
Ex- (out of, from)
With that, see how many of these words you already know… (EDIT: I’m not sure why the boldfaced type got so messed in the text that follows — my entry looked fine, but it’s showing up differently.)
Foliage (leaves, leafage; cluster, especially as in tree or forest or shrub)
Foil (a leaf; a thin sheet of metal) Sure you know what foil is, like aluminum foil. But did you know it came from the latin root meaning “leaf”?
Exfoliate (to peel off in layers or flakes, as the bark of certain trees) Golden-cheeked warblers use the exfoliated strips of the Ashe Juniper to build their nests.
Texas Persimmon’s exfoliating bark is remarkably beautiful.
Defoliate, or Defoil (to deprive of leaves; to cut or pick off leaves prematurely) Insects and caterpillars can strip a plant of its leaves, but bonsai gardeners sometimes purposely defoliate their trees, too, to force the growth of a new set of leaves.
Folium (leaf, especially a thin leaf) Thin enough to let the light shine through!
A folium is also a specific algebraic curve, such as the Folium of Descartes.
Foliation (process of forming into a leaf or leaves; the way leaves are arranged in the bud). Here’s a budding Mexican Redbud from last spring.
Trifoliate (having three leaves) Wood sorrel is a fine example of a plant with three leaves.
Trifoliolate (divided into three leaflets) There are many well-known trifoliolates, including Columbine…
Wafer Ash, or Hop Tree (even its scientific name shows that it’s 3-leaved: Ptelea trifoliata)…
And of course, Poison Ivy.
Trifolium, or Trefoil (Clover, a plant with 3 leaflets) Good ol’ Clover. Of course, clover is also technically a trifoliolate.
Quinquefoliolate (having five leaflets) The Texas Star Hibiscus is one such quinquefoliolate. Just look at those 5 long fingers…
Virginia creeper typically has 5 leaflets, too, though it sometimes has 7.
Some plants can be 3-foliolate, 5-foliolate, 7-foliolate, or just plain multifoliolate. Dewberry is one of those plants — 3- or 5-leaflet sets all on the same vine.
FYI, sometimes people use “foliate” and “foliolate” (with their prefixes) interchangeably, but technically “foliolate” refers to leaflets. There just aren’t many plants that have a single leaf or two leaves total — there are some orchids, though, that do qualify. But “foliolate” is more accurate for plants with leaflets. It’s just annoying to say.
Here are a few more foli- words:
Bifoliate (having two leaves)
Bifoliolate (having two leaflets)
Defoliant (a chemical substance that causes leaves to fall from plants, such as Agent Orange)
Foliaceous (belonging to or having the texture or nature of a leaf; having leaves intermixed with flowers; leaflike; consisting of thin layers)
Foliar (consisting of or pertaining to leaves) Many gardeners use compost tea as a foliar spray to give nutrients directly to leaves.
Foliate (adj. of or relating to leaves; leaf-like; v. to hammer or cut into thin leaf or foil; to produce foliage)
Foliated (having leaves or leaflike projections)
Foliate papilla (areas of the tongue with taste buds)
Folic acid; Folate (form of Vitamin B9, found in leafy vegetables)
Folio (leaves or pages of a book formed from the folding of a larger sheet)
Foliolate (having or relating to leaflets)
Foliose (leafy; having many leaves)
Folious (like a leaf; thin; unsubstantial)
Perfoliate leaf (a leaf with the base united around and apparently pierced by the stem)
Portfolio (case for carrying loose sheets of paper, manuscripts, and drawings)Quadrifoliate (four-leafed) Four-leaf clover
Quatrefoil (four-lobed) Four-leaf clover
Unifoliate (having only one leaf)
Unifoliolate (compound in structure yet having only one leaflet, as the orange)
After awhile, some of those foli- words start to sound the same, don’t they? But my favorite is quinquefoliolate. My granddaddy, always a fan of long words, would have loved that one.
I’ve recently learned to recognize pokeweed, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s on our school campus (the picture above isn’t from school; it’s from a recent visit to McKinney Roughs). Well, shortly the plant won’t be at the school any longer. All parts of it are considered highly toxic to humans, and for our kids’ safety, the plant has to go (it was right by the Kindergarten wing, as well). I apologize to the nearby birds — I’ll plant three more berrying plants in my own yard just to make up for it. It’s such a shame — what a great native wildlife plant.
I did get the pokeweed berries off right away, since they might look enticing to a hungry youngster or foolish adult, and I’ll pull the whole plant out very soon. Then I did what any good mom would do — I took the poisonous berries home right away to do a project with my kids. No, not that kind of project… geez!
According to multiple sources, fermented pokeweed ink was used to write the Declaration of Independence, as well as letters during the Civil War. (Edit: Thanks to Dana R., who contacted the National Archives and found out that the Declaration and the Constitution were written in iron gall ink — this means another ink-creating experience awaits me!) Native Americans used the berry juice to decorate their horses and dye cloth, and even used it for war paint. But given that the toxins from the juice can be absorbed through the skin, you won’t find me recreating that part of history.
What did appeal to me, however, was making ink. I donned gloves and carefully crushed them to all sorts of juicy greatness.
I then strained the mixture through pantyhose into a funnel (this last part was cool — with my gloves on and all the red juice squeezing out from the stained lump, I looked like a surgeon massaging a heart — granted the heart was about the size of that of a chicken, but still it was c-o-o-l cool). And from the funnel, the juice flowed into a small bottle.
Next I added a pinch of yeast to the liquid to help it ferment. I’m keeping the liquid out of the sun, too, so that it doesn’t turn brown right away from the UV rays. That cork is just there for show right now, as I need to let the gases escape during fermentation.
I’m going to teach the kids a little calligraphy, I think, to go along with the ink. Hopefully in a few days I’ll get to update the ink report with sample writing. What fun! (EDIT: My son ended up using the ink for a nifty visual for his Social Studies project on the American colonies.)
Note: I talked to a teacher about making this a lesson for the Social Studies classes at school, but the timing was all wrong for either studying about Native Americans or the later American history. Perhaps if I still have ink, I can share it with them then. Or maybe I’ll be able to find some more pokeweed berries elsewhere and enjoy another project.
Last spring I was given a bunch of poppy pods for arts and crafts projects. Months later, they were still sitting in the same bag. So the kids and I decided to create a poppy head army for our container plants.
Pod Power!
Our pod soldiers are as cool as they are powerful. Superheroes, even! They protect our castle with determined focus and fair justice.
They stay planted in their belief that goodness will always prevail.
They encourage hope and inner peas to grow, and they root out evil.
Most importantly, they defend our indoor plants from the villainous doings of alternative-litter-box-seeking kitties. Yes, they are anti-poop poppy pods.
Security pods defend the treasure of the Money Tree.
Nanny pods will watch over the growth of young seedlings in the nursery each season (thanks, Bonnie, for your great suggestion).
Nay, the tenacious tendrils of evil will not take hold in this home. Poppy pods, you are the light against the shade. Away, all seedy characters! The Pods of Justice reside here! First inner peas, then World Peas! Just think of all the other good that could stem from this.
Little buds, such defenders of good, welcome to the family. May you never leaf us.
Oh, Happy Days!
I finally got around to painting this old wooden chair I picked up at a consignment store years ago. We called it an antique commode chair for years — whether that was its original purpose, we have no idea!
For us, it’s been both a plant holder and a cat bed. I used to keep an ivy in it, letting the vines twine around the seat-back posts. But while painting it, the kids and I decided it would be a perfect spot for our young Golden Barrel Cactus.
When this cactus gets big, it’s going to be a painful pin cushion, that’s for sure.
I’m still deciding whether I want to add other colors to the potty chair besides the purple, as was my original intention. I like the way the cactus stands out with the purple as is, so I might just wait awhile.
Now to figure out where to put it!
Other people might get their ducks in a row, but they’re just amateurs.
Look at that rogue cicada shell. Get back in line!
And oh my gosh, don’t click on this picture of these naughty cicada shells unless you are 18 or older. Do you think the adult cicadas fell in love?
Seriously, don’t you think a more stable place to molt might be the preferred choice? Then again, the little hooks on those cicada shells can really hang on for a longggg time. Oh well, to each their own!
EDIT: I’m adding a picture of an adult cicada to show how it looks out of the shell. This one looks quite gray, but I usually see ones that are light green in color in Texas. Other species have yet other colors, as well.
There’s very little in nature that disturbs me. I can watch with fascination the way predators stalk their prey, study the little bones left behind in owl pellets, and look at snotty-faced hogs like they’re as cute as bunnies.
I adore spiders, all of them.
It would never occur to me to kill one, unless my family was in danger from a venomous one. Some of them make such beautiful webs — incredible works of art and science and skill all rolled into one, though to the spider it’s a just a normal way of life. I’ve walked into more webs and had more spiders in my big mass of hair than I care to admit, but I still love them.
I could cuddle with the biggest of snakes.
I’d probably prefer not to have to outrun a taipan or to fall flat on my face in front of a rattler, but that’s life or death — and that’s different. I guess I’m not a fan of ticks, either, but then who would be? They carry terrible diseases and suck your BLOOD. But they don’t invoke fear in me. Not that feeling of panic that makes you shriek and want to flee far away. Well, there was that time in a deer grove near Uvalde that I looked down to see hundreds of ticks crawling onto my shoes — I’ll say that I did stare for a moment with fascination before doing the big “Get These Terrible Ticks Off Me” dance. None managed to reach my skin, thank goodness.
I study flies and bees and slugs with equal amazement. Animal carcasses you find on a trail? Gross, yes, but the stink would drive me away before the sight would.
People say bats, and I run outside with a camera. I love the feel of slimy earthworms in my hand. I’ve been stung by a scorpion and lived to tell the tale. I’ve dealt with wasp hives and hornets and learned to appreciate the creepy-crawling of the zillion-legged centipede. I’d curl up with a lion if it wouldn’t eat me.
But there is a creature that gets to me. Perhaps that’s a poor way to word it.
The freak-out creature for me used to be a roach. I still remember the horror from my childhood of waking up in my room in the middle of the night, freaky shadows cast on the walls by oleanders outside the louver windows, their leaves and branches swaying eerily in the strong wind. In a moonlit spot on the wall, I saw a dark spot, and as my eyes adjusted I realized it was a the biggest roach I’d ever seen (and living in Corpus Christi at the time, I was no stranger to roaches). But this one was clearly the Big Bad Brown Roach from Dark Forces of Evil, and it was watching me. I could feel its little eyes staring at me from across the room.
I stayed as still as I could, trying to muster the nerve to call out for my mom, or better yet flee. But it held me trapped by its dark gaze, long antennas wiggling all around, and I’d never felt such an intense moment in all the five years of my life. And instinctively I knew something was about to happen, and I grabbed the edge of my blanket in my hands just as that giant roach flew across the room directly at me. FLEW! I had never seen one fly, but this sucker did, and my screams of terror from under my blanket must have woken up the whole neighborhood and probably utterly panicked my poor mother who had to find out what was torturing and trying to kill her youngest daughter.
My grandmother’s house had lots of roaches. Little ones and big ones. Driven by that roach’s attack on my childhood innocence, I went after them with a vengeance whenever I was visiting and saw them. By the way, I can slap a mosquito with the best of them. Grandmother had an infestation of crickets, too, but I could tolerate them somewhat. That reminds me of the year of the grasshoppers, when swarms of giant grasshoppers covered northern Texas, and they’d fly at us across the water when we tried to go sailing, a big white target for long-legged flying green grasshoppers. Shudder. I remember my stepmother shrieking over and over again while holding up a big towel to keep them from landing on her. A few years later, it was the year of the crickets, and stores had to sweep them out by the thousands onto the sidewalks and streets. They’d make a wall look black as they crawled up the sides.
In a biology lab in college, I once had to dissect a live roach. Not those flat little scurrying things we all find to be pests from time to time. No, this was one of those big fat roaches from the southern U.S., Georgia as I recall. We had to basically dismantle it body part by body part, including the fat globs of marshmallow creme, until it was nothing but head and gut tract — and it was still alive! Its little jaws just gnawed away. THIS is why roaches will outlive humans by millions of years.
In case you are wondering, I was a Zoology major in college. We weren’t given a choice about dissecting things, and I won’t list them all here. But the scientist side of me took care of business, and really, the internal organs were just as fascinating as the animals themselves. Bodies in general are works of wonder. Beyond that, I tried not to think too much about what I was doing.
I do recall the Giant Rat in high school. One night I was closing the curtains on our louver windows (I will NEVER willingly have louver windows in my adulthood, given the horrors they bring) when I saw a fat scaly tail hanging from the curtain where the drawstrings were. MOM! A giant rat! Neither of us wanted to try to get it out of there, and it wasn’t budging on its own, and all we could see was that terrible tail dangling. So we decided to leave the door to the garage open to give it a chance to leave on its own (it probably came in through there). And we went to bed. Next thing I knew, my mom was nudging me awake, whispering that the giant rat was in her room. Why on earth she left her bedroom door partly ajar with such a monstrosity loose in the house, I’ll never know. This time we went in with brooms in hand, ready to defend against and drive out the small intruder with giant freaky tail. It turns out that it wasn’t a rat, neither giant nor little, but the cutest little baby possum (sharp teeth and all), and it was just as scared as we were. We gently helped it outside.
But while I might squeal at the sudden scurries of little mice or the unexpected appearance of a snake around a corner, none of it disturbs me, and my reaction turns fast to interest. But the creature of all creatures to utterly unnerve me is this. The Harvestman. The Bogeyman, if you ask me.
Some people call them daddy longlegs, or granddaddy longlegs. But whatever you call them, don’t call them spiders. Because that’s what they are NOT.
The harvestman is an arachnid, yes, but not a spider. Its body segments are closely joined to seem fused into a single oval.
And they’ve got those freakily long legs. If they just stayed still, I could MAYBE get used to them. But…
The way they bob up and down and quiver as they walk, they way they gather in black throbbing blobs on walls, the way they move their long legs around when threatened– EEEEEK. I never really cared for them before, but visiting the narrow cave at Enchanted Rock in college and crawling in dark spaces only to look above and realize the ceiling is quivering, and then to realize with horror that you have thousands of pulsing harvestmen inches from ALL YOUR HAIR, and yeah, that’s what did it for me. The word for the masses is “aggregation,” a term you never want associated with creatures that freak you out.
It’s the quivering. It’s the way they move. I really should capture a video, but I’m feeling pretty weirded out just by how close I had to get to take the pictures. Why? Because when I got close they started to move! They freaked out and started moving and pulsing up and down and then waved their long second legs around like antenna at me, and then I freaked out and I’m just lucky I didn’t fall off the ladder I was standing on. Did you know that the legs can keep twitching after they are detached, due to little pacemakers in the first segment? I read that — I did not try it out. Apparently detaching their twitching leg is actually a defense mechanism to help them escape from predators.
But in researching them, I reluctantly have to admit that they should probably maybe sort of go on the list of a garden’s beneficial creatures. They are predators and scavengers both, and if they’d just stay out of sight, they’d be kind of sort of tolerated in my garden. They can’t hurt me or my family, other than to give me a heart attack! But no, they are currently on my house, and if their numbers start to increase and my heart starts getting that fight or flight feeling too many times, they’re going to have to go. I will not have big quivering wiggling black masses making me relive my cave experience over and over again! THIS IS WHAT NIGHTMARES ARE MADE OF, PEOPLE.
Let’s jump right in with a new poem shall we?
O Harvestman, My Bogeyman
© 2009, Great Stems
I think that I should never see
A Harvestman coming straight at me
Even worse is what I fear
That thousands of them gather here.
Lurking, bobbing, on the wall
Legs that make them ten-feet tall
FYI, I’m not actually scared of the harvestman. I won’t really run screaming in terror when I see it. But it does creep me out a lot, a LOT, and you won’t catch me hanging out around it for long. They might creep me out, but I don’t really wish them ill will. I just wish them a new location.
So I’ve told a long tale, and in it confessed my nature weaknesses. What in nature freaks you out?
———–
EDIT, same day: A funny thing happened after I wrote this post. I finished saving it and got in the car to head to a swim meet. I was still all creeped out after writing the post and doing all those pictures, so I was still thinking about the effects the harvestmen have on me and I started thinking up new lines for the poem. Well, I was driving on a rather long empty road and a cop pulled me over. It was a beautiful blue snazzy “police chase” kind of car, too — one of those new ones that make your jaw drop. Part of me thought it was kind of cool to be pulled over by the most awesome police car ever. Of course, I was in a mini-van — not so cool. Well, the dialogue went something like this:
Ma’am, do you know why I pulled you over?
Ummmm… (serious pause here) maybe I was driving too fast?
Yes, ma’am — that stretch of road is marked as 45, and you were going 60.
Oh. (pause) Well, I was thinking about something that had me freaked out. It was
those harvestmen, those daddylonglegs. And they were all on my house. And they were
quivering and bobbing, and I’m still creeped out by them. And I guess I didn’t know
I was driving fast. I’m not a speeder by nature.
Please sign here, ma’am.
Here? Okay.
Thank you, ma’am. Well, this is just a warning about your speed. It would have been a ticket, but in all my years, I’ve heard lots of stories, and I’ve never heard one like that before.
By the way, Austinites, don’t speed on McNeil, that part near the railroad as it heads toward Wells Branch. Mr. Cool Cop Car might be there waiting for you, but if he is, he’s really nice.
Inspired by this day of love, it was a perfect time to complete a long desired project — bee boxes to provide nesting places for our native Texas solitary bees.
We drilled several holes into an Ashe Juniper log obtained from a friend, and since we had an extra, we decided to replace the decaying hackberry branch holding up the habitat sign with yet another bee box.
We ended up making a third bee box, this time from pine and bamboo, the latter of which we cut down from the yard of our neighbor across the street. She was quite willing to share, as she loathes the bamboo that is encroaching into her lawn from the house next to her.
But won’t it make such a nice resting spot and nesting spot for little bees in need?
I heart bees. Thank you, hubby, for making these boxes for our little pollinating buddies. Happy Valentines Day, everyone!
