What makes me come alive -

There’s nothing but emptiness,

Or so it seems…

It’s what we say when something is missing,

Isn’t it.

If the liquid is missing from the glass, it’s empty-

But, of course, it isn’t.

It’s just filled with air.

The same as when I say my life is empty,

It really isn’t,

It’s just filled with things that don’t turn me on at that                 moment.

Isn’t life a bitch at times?

I think my drive to be all I can be putters to a stop at the end of the driveway.  It’s the boundary of where I am allowed to be 100% myself…my sanctuary.  While I’ve never been much of a joiner, I’ve given all I have at being a doer .

I respect and care about all living creatures, but my Achilles heel has always been cats with a few dogs thrown in.  I’ve seldom fostered an animal that didn’t melt my heart into giving it my home forever after.  I’m a sucker that way.

There was a time when I added a cat living in my front garden to the group of six cats and two dogs I already had as rescues.  It quite literally was the straw that broke my spirit of caregiving.  I was worn out within six months, six months of never finding her a forever home until we finally made it happen with the help of friends.

Its hard work, but I’ve always known it wasn’t an option to bail out.  Where I have gone my pets have gone…Nevada, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Panama, Central America, and Tennessee.  No one has ever been left behind.  I always knew I would be able to make it work, and I always have.

Its hard work, as many of you know, putting in the effort of taking care of one’s pet as its aging process enters into that territory of your heart ever so slowly breaking as their journey is coming towards its end.  It’s like living with joy and sadness bundled together within ones heart; your heart breaks and your heart rejoices each moment they are with you.

Tuckered Out

No doubt in my mind that the nondiagnosable problems 

Dustin has been experiencing is dementia.

It matches the episodes when he wonders aimlessly around,

exhibits problems of brain fog or being in a stupor,

and has a difficult time remembering commands.

I never approach a challenge in life with the feeling that I might fail, but fail I do.  Although told I was as knowledgeable and productive as those above me, the lack of a college education beyond the first year became a concrete fortress around climbing any ladder of success.  I climbed ladders in menial jobs, and escaped their emptiness and boredom at the end of day.  My deliverance was my home life, such as it was.

Alone most of the time, I cherished my rescues keeping me company, although the responsibilities of their care was draining at times.  I made it my mission after reading an article about Audubon International’s program for the everyday person, to become an environmental steward of my property and work towards certification.  I achieved the designation of ‘Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary” on December 2, 1998.

June 19, 2003 Audubon International notified me it’s time to recertify my home as an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary – but this time for good.  Instead of being a part of the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Backyards, I could still be a part of the Audubon International family as a valued individual supporter.

I continued supporting them for a few years until it became obvious by their newsletters that they had no time for small potatoes, and had moved on to certifying towns, golf courses, and communities.  Although I was a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, the program nor support any longer existed.  I was left in the wake of progress to bigger and better things.

The bronze plaque stating my yard is a ”Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary” is still displayed at the beginning of my driveway, and has been a life saver at keeping city and neighborhood complaints away, but I do miss the program immeasurably.  I still garden as if Audubon International is hovering over me at every step of the way.

My backyard always appears incomplete, and I’m beginning to feel it will continue that way eternally.  In winter it looks as if a disastrous mudslide settled in, but at the early beginnings of spring, a mudslide that is coming to life with the first flowering plants…WEEDS.

Weeds to me are wildflower I’d rather do without, but the lovable do exist among the usually nonnative unlovable.  I just live with the whole mess, and pull out the totally obnoxious.  It’s a compromise I’ve accepted in my older age of slowing down.

I tried to annihilate the daffodils at some point of going native, but they have pulled themselves down into the tangled web of roots so well, it’s a feat that never totally happened.  The aggressive ones no longer exist, but I do have stragglers of lesser ones that pop up each spring and are left alone.  I have a sweet fondness for them.

It’s fair to say, I suppose, that my life has always been somewhat lesser that greater, but for someone who never fulfilled many of her dreams, my spirit is surprisingly okay with that.  I am content to begin another spring of taking in the exhaustion along with the serenity of living.

N. x odorus 'Plenus'

Double Campernelle Daffodil

Cassata Daffodil

It was found face down on the ground after a rain.

I cut it, removed a slug from its face, and popped it into a vase to enjoy.

Littleleaf Buttercup

Ranunculus abortivus

A native plant

An erect to spreading biennial or short-lived perennial

Hairy Bittercress

Cardamine hirsuta

Non native annual or biennial species with exploding seed pods

Creeping Speedwell

Veronica filiformis

Non native and invasive

Purple Deadnettle

Lamium purpureum L.

Non native winter annual

This ones a mystery to me.

Viola sororia var. priceana

Common Blue Violet

Viola sororia

Flower opening up

Viola all chewed up

Beauty Mark

I think it is a a Blow Fly

Empty Lily Seed Pod

Common Golden Alexander

Zizia aurea

Hugging the ground and blooming 

Columbine leaves unfurling

Mr. Dandy Lion

Virginia Bluebell flowers preparing to open

Trillium leaves opening with flower bud

Dutchman’s Breeches

Dicentra cucullaria

The corms were planted years ago, but no blooms yet. 

Bloodroot

Sanguinaria canadensis

With an aphid

Leaves clasps the bottom of the stem.

(Out of focus here)

Allegheny spurge 

Pachysandra procumbens

Female Spicebush Flower with Housefly

House Fly wings can beat up to 1000 times a minute,

but they're generally slow fliers, 

maintaining a speed of about 4.5 miles per hour.

Mourning Dove tracks

Snowstorm March 12

Keep Your Passion Alive

With love from me to you

x

This Post is Linked to:

My Corner of the World

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Wildlife Gardening

"How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall, till I can see so wide,

River and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside.

Till I look down on the garden green, 

Down on the roof so brown--

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!"

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Swing

Gliding on the front porch swing, I'm resting after an afternoon of planting wildflowers as the sun sits low in the sky.  The twinkling of lightning bugs creates a magical moment that will dwindle as the sun sets until it's dark and the twinkles fade into just memories.

I remember those tall swings at the playground.  Holding tight with a long chain in each hand, I pumped myself higher and higher until I was lying on my back at the top of the ride.  Life was simple as a child; then I grew up and complications grew up with me.

I garden because my parents gardened.  It would have been better, for my sake, if I had been raised in a gravel yard with a sea of dandelions at my feet.  Around twenty-nine years ago, I figured an easy peasy hobby would be to surround myself with gardens like the ones I played in as a child.

Of course, being the perfectionist my dad raised me to be, the easy way never seemed to be my way.  It was only after I established the perfect green yard of nothing native, that I was drawn into the Audubon International Backyard Wildlife Program vortex.

I swear the application was the size of a small book with a dozen pamphlets of information and a workbook thrown in about land stewardship to create water, food and shelter for wildlife; including what was being done inside my home to improve the environment on the outside of my home.  Saying it was quite intensive compared to most programs around today, is an understatement.

Literally, it was removal of the old and in with the new.  While I'm not poor, I'm also not rich; so from my perspective, I think gardening is expensive.  Bare areas mean weeds; you know, those misunderstood wildflower that come for a visit, take over your space, and stay until you die.  The whole undertaking had me feeling at times like I was gasping for my last breath of air before drowning.

With the certification of my yard, Audubon International became my mentor.  Yearly updates and spreadsheets of projects to improve my property were encouraged.  A website was provided to enter our wildlife garden information, maps and photographs.

My guess is that it was an experiment that morphed into something much bigger, and a decision was made to make it all about towns and golf courses, leaving the backyard portion to be dismantled.  It was a shock being dumped, but it was my start in land stewardship which has never left my side to this day.

In suburbia, as most were cutting down their trees, I was planting mine along with an under-story of shrubs and perennials where the lawn once lived.  The grounds were off limits to pesticides, so I felt as if I lived through two eternities of aphid and green worm hell, until the good blended in with the bad, and a balanced ecosystem began to emerge.

While it's not cost efficient to place a string trimmer in the middle of my bed of wildflowers and turn it on, it's also not time efficient to place myself in the same bed and pull up a bazillion weeds one at a time.  Weed management is purgatory, because, well.....because it IS purgatory.  Sometimes it's more conducive to my well-being to just spritz an herbicide or paint a bit of concentrate on an individual nuisance and call it a day.  

I garden to attract wildlife to my fourth acre plot of land in the suburbs just south of Nashville, and it's wildlife more on the smaller than larger size.  Wildlife like song birds, hawks, squirrels, opossums, rabbits, butterflies, spiders, beetles, snakes and lizards.  I may have left out a few, but you get the jest of what's happening here.  Even though its not a large area, it's packed with native plants that support a small variety of residents that come and go throughout the years.

The downside of attracting wild things is that boundaries mean nothing.  A company had to be hired to install steel gratings on the foundation and roof peak vents to prevent nesting under the house and in the attic.  A mountain of strategically placed rocks walled up open areas around the heat pump to send a visiting skunk on its way.  While its rather amazing - that other world that wakes up after darkness falls, you'll only see me as a bystander at the edge.  It's unnerving not knowing what's occupying my space in all that blackness.

My type of gardening draws attention, and not always good attention.  I call it the manicured countryside look.  It stays manicured to keep the health department and urban court out of my life.  While I have a lot of drought tolerant plants, that doesn't mean they're drought proof.  I water just like everyone else to keep it healthy, lush, and complaint free when the neighbors walk by.  It's a delicate balance between pleasing myself and pleasing the neighborhood, although I do push the envelope quite a bit. 

So.....as I sit motionless on my front porch swing in the peach glow of end of day, I watch the cardinals fly in for that last bit of seed in the feeder.  I'm finally at peace with becoming a wildlife gardener all those twenty-nine years ago.  It's been a personal experience with nature I've sometimes called hell and other times called heaven.  If I could go back in time and change anything.....would I?  

Who knows..... 

"In summer; the song sings itself."

~William Carlos Williams