Category Archives: The Great Outdoors

“Go, go, go said the bird…”

19 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, In the Garden, Life at Home, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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There is promise hovering in the cold Oklahoma air that may soon carry us south.

I have been longing for the sight and taste of a place I called home for twenty years.  This morning, after two months of wishing, I picked up the phone-cum-magic wand to make my dream come true.  

My husband and I are not traditional ‘snowbirds, what coastal Texans fondly (and not-so-fondly) call migratories of the human kind who descend south for a winter perch.  Instead, our stay will be the barest of interludes.   We hope to steal away for a few days in Advent, during that lesser known liturgical season preceding Christmas on the church calendar.  Our arrival at Surfside Beach within this prayerful season of holy anticipation and waiting seems entirely appropriate, given that the word Advent  — which derives from the Latin word adventus  —  means “arrival” or “coming.”  

I have come to regard a certain white cottage that graces the eastside ocean front as our home away from home.  Like all beach front property, the house is built on stilt-like pilings, which makes for spacious views.  In the dark morning hours, I watch the fireball of the faraway sun shoot out of the ocean to break fast over darkness.  A little later, I watch the graceful gulls and pelicans skim the ocean surface to break fast in their own way.

I understand their taste for seafood — except for breakfast and a few pilgrimages to The Dairy Bar in nearby Lake Jackson —  it will be a seafood diet for me.  Hopefully, we’ll bring back some lovely Gulf Coast Shrimp as souvenirs.

 

There are other souvenirs to pick up and gather.  Like any familiar place that holds precious memories, a new trip to Surfside allows us to reconnect past dots of everyday life — memories of our children playing in the sand, a few sandy family picnics and even my husband’s proposal of marriage under a starry sky as we searched for Haley’s Comet.  The beach reminds me of walks on the jetty with my friend Terri, as it reminds me of all my friends in and around Lake Jackson.  Some I pray to visit.

Surfside is in the rhythm of our lives in the same way that the sun comes up  and goes down, in the way that the waves sweep in and roll out and in the way that we breathe in and breathe out life itself.  Even now I can taste salt air on my tongue and my mouth waters in anticipation. 

Surfside invites me to encounter life beyond what I can truly know, beyond the wide blue sometimes brown sea yonder.  At Surfside, I descend to the deep, where life below the surface is Real, no longer just an attractive shimmer on the surface.

It’s a good perch to watch and ponder life.  To look back and forward and in and out.  To stay still until I’m filled and it’s time to fly back home.  

“Go, go, go, said the bird:  human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”   – T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Civil War Daffodils

02 Monday Nov 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, Mesta Park, The Great Outdoors

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Empress

Empress Daffodil, 1869

There are so many outside chores this time of year, it’s easy to get out of focus.

I go out to spread a new layer of fresh mulch to remember the need to plant my new Daffodil bulbs.  I plant the bulbs to remember the desire to  transplant my tender herbs into containers; when freezing temperatures hit, I plan to move my herbs to the basement so I can continue to use them for winter cooking .  So I get that done to notice the leaf debris nesting under the shrubs and perennials.  I clean up the leaves to remember my desire to sow fall seeds, like Poppies and Larkspur and Delphinium.  And by the time I finally get to the mulch, it’s almost too dark to spread it.  Daylight Savings Time is spent.

This morning, rather than continue with my backyard mulching project, I decided to shift gears and head out to the front to rake leaves.  Our old neighborhood is full of tall deciduous trees — Sycamores, Elms, Sweetgums and Oaks — and right now, it’s the season of raining leaves.  If I don’t rake, the leaf cover can suffocate Cinderella’s fescue lawn.  So today I’ve raked 390 gallons of leaves!  And we still have a good four more weeks of leaf fall with another 1000 gallons of leaves. I should be in shape in time for winter.  

In the meantime — terribly out of shape and with the last two day’s work — I’m exhausted.  So after deciding to call it ‘quits’ for today, I let myself  into the back yard to put up the leaf blower.  I take a few steps up the driveway and run straight into one of my brand new daffodils  —  one of  three I planted yesterday afternoon — sitting on the driveway, naked and alone.  Left for dead.

However, to say Daffodil doesn’t quite tell the whole story.  This Daffodil is no regular big box store bulb.  I have those too. They were not disturbed.  No, the bulb I found sitting on the driveway was a rare Empress Daffodil, —  a plant introduced shortly after the Civil War  —  one of this year’s garden splurges that I ordered from Old House Gardens.0708CatalogThumb

I surmise Cosmo (my Holy Terror who’s been known to dig holes in the garden) was my Daffodil tomb raider.  And knowing Terriers as I do, I know that there’s no use beginning  a civil war that can’t be won.  So I pick up my little bulb, and with freshly manicured nails, but without gardening gloves, I quickly dig a new hole for my rare little beauty. 

For now, the little Empress is safe and sound from Scottie attacks.  And with luck, she’ll stay that way and I’ll not see my rare Daffodil again until it’s time for Spring’s resurrection.  If only Cosmo will turn over a new leaf and become a patient gardener.

Somedays, I do feel like I live in a cartoon. 

A Lingering Fall

21 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Mesta Park, The Great Outdoors

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Yesterday I noticed dramatic change in the color of the Autumn trees lining the two lane highway between Norman and Tecumseh.  Last week the bright red Sumac tree caught my eye; yesterday it was the glorious orange foliage of one continuous stand of native Oak trees. In a week’s time, the sumac red had faded to a wallflower rust.  I wonder how many more weeks will pass before this vintage of Sumac will cover the earth and lull the tree to rest. 

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Outside my Mesta Park Window

Closer to home, our Chinese Pistache tree is turning orange, from the inside out.  And the Shumard Red Oak is also beginning to ripen on its outer tips.  But, as it does every year, the massive American Elm just across the street begins the Fall leaf parade on our street.  To my surprise, last month it began dropping its yellow ticker tape leaves with autumn’s arrival.  Yet still today, it’s covered with more yellow leaves to drop.  I guess this American Elm likes to linger rather than bid a quick goodbye.  

Not so with the Sycamores, which cover the width and length of our old neighborhood.  Here and there, the tall Sycamores with their huge leaves are beginning to drop in mass.  It’s almost like the leaves are green one day, and brown on the ground the next.  The Sycamores remind me a lot of the autumn behavior of deciduous trees  in south Texas — it’s a hurry up and be done with it — Fall in one fell swoop — an Autumn in a mad hatter rush like the Alice in Wonderland hare who is late for an important date. 

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The Sycamore begins piling its leaves

I’m glad Oklahoma trees linger through the days of autumn before whispering their sweet goodnights.  Just as I’m glad that Daddy is taking time to linger before falling into his winter sleep.  Yesterday Daddy surprised me by pulling my head down close to his ear and whispering ever so slow and sure his ….I…..love….you.

No two ways about it, whether tree or human, lingering Falls produce priceless gifts to the senses.