Susan's Hill Country Journal

May 3. The prettiest area right now is the crescent-shaped garden around the feet of the stone St. Francis: the white iris are in full bloom, the St. John’s wort blossoms are a bright, cheerful yellow, beautifully contrasted by a reddish-purple Wandering Jew (Tradescantia). A couple of years ago, the geese (who love to snack on anything purple) almost destroyed that plant—it’s good to see it coming back. The cow parsley that grows in Lazarus Meadow, near the creek, is covered with Monarch butterfly caterpillars, and the fennel in the garden has been nibbled to a skeleton. These plants are host to the Monarchs. It’s lovely to think of all the butterflies that have spent their childhood here and gone on to happy lives in backyards and meadows all over the country—well, within their migratory pattern, anyway.

May 6. We held Story Circle’s twice-yearly Writing From Life workshop on Saturday and Sunday. What a wonderful, energizing weekend! It’s a remarkable experience to be with so many remarkable women, each with a remarkable story to tell. But then, we all have remarkable stories, which is the whole point of Story Circle. I’m seeing so much more about this in the media these days: about the importance of telling and sharing our stories, I mean. It’s an idea whose time has come: the idea that each of us has a story that’s worth putting into some sort of permanent form that can be shared with somebody else. And now that computers and the Internet have arrived, that sharing is wonderfully easy. At the workshop, I showed off Judy Fettman’s little book of stories about her four years of singing with the Choral Union in Ann Arbor MI. Self-published, beautifully done, and created as a gift for the friends she is leaving behind in a move to the West Coast. Story Circle encouraged Judy to believe that her stories are worth telling, her Internet writing circle gave her an audience with whom she can share, and her computer has made it possible for her to put her writing into book form. Such a joy.

May 10. The sweet potato vines (Ipomea) I wintered over in my makeshift greenhouse have all survived, miracle of miracles, so I’m in the pleasant position of having three thriving plants ready to go into containers: the one with dark purple leaves ("Blackie") goes into the planter beside our back door, along with portulaca, ivy, and some bright marigolds; the chartreuse variety goes into the whiskey barrel, which I’ve replanted with some nasturtiums and a red-red geranium for a zingy mix of red, orange, and chartreuse; and the light variegated variety goes into a hanging pot in the shade of the cedar tree. Beneath it is a large Purple Ruffle basil, situated where it gets sun in the afternoon, and a Tropicanna canna. The leaves are orange-striped and the blossom is orange. The sun is so bright in the yard that I like to have lots of green and gray foliage to rest the eyes—but a few spots of bright color are always welcome.

May 18. I’ve been working pretty steadily on Dilly of a Death, the China book that will be published in 2004. Yesterday, Bill and I took the day off and drove up to Garland, to visit a pickle factory. That’s one of the pleasures of writing, of course—doing all sorts of strange research into weird topics. Steve Collette, at Golden Pickle, was a wonderful host. He gave us the grand tour, explained the fine art of commercial pickling, and gave me a couple of great plot ideas. We drove through a terrific rainstorm on the outskirts of Dallas, but of course didn’t get any at home. It’s been very dry here at Meadow Knoll. I’m watering almost every day, and Bill has rigged up lines from the well up the road so we can use both wells. Our aquifer (the Trinity) doesn’t produce at a rapid rate, only a couple of gallons a minute, so we have to be careful to pump out only as much water as the aquifer produces. Always a juggling act.

May 23. I always know that summer is here when I hear the yellow-billed cuckoo call. My mother called this bird a rain crow, and always said that he only calls when it’s about to rain. I wish! He’s been singing all morning—a lovely, melodious clucking that the bird book inexplicably calls guttural and toneless!—and the sky is a brilliant cloudless blue. No rain today. This summer visitor is a shy bird who arrives near the end of May. I almost never get a glimpse of him, but when I do, he’s immediately recognizable: large and long-tailed, with a white underside and flash of russet wings. I’ve read that he loves tent caterpillars, and welcome him to the feast! But this is a much threatened bird, for its riverside forest habitat is being destroyed all across the southern part of the country, from west to east. There’s some really interesting information, and a picture, here: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/species/cuckoo/cuckoo1.html. The bird is the subject of an on-going series of lawsuits designed to protect it and its habitat. I think of these things as I listen to this bird singing in the woods, and feel sad--but glad, at the same time, that "our" cuckoos come to Meadow Knoll every year, at least so far.

May 27. The other member of the cuckoo family who lives with us at Meadow Knoll is a full-time resident: the road runner. (For a great photo, take a look at this page: http://metalab.unc.edu/~ephesus/roadrunn.jpg. ) There’s a family of road runners nearby, who live on one side of our lane and have lunch on the other. Almost every time I wander into their territory, I see them racing back and forth—and they really are fast, almost as fast as the cartoon road-runner the kids used to enjoy on TV! They can fly, too, when they’re startled, but not very far. The male has colorful eye patches: bright blue, with a splash of iridescent red. Often when I see him, he has a small snake or lizard dangling from his beak—he’s managed to catch something larger than he can eat in one gulp, so he works on it as he goes on with his other business, digesting an inch, swallowing another inch, and so on, until it’s all gone. When he (or she) gets back to the nest, out comes the meal, ready digested for the babies.

May 29. And speaking of babies, the nest that the flycatcher built on the front porch in early April is full of little birds again. Either the same flycatcher or another—I suspect that it’s the same one—moved in and laid a clutch of five eggs several weeks ago. There are five babies this time, and they’ll soon be ready to fly.

May 31. Zach and I found a new (to us) wildflower today, growing beside the path across Willow Meadow. I picked a bit and brought it home, and after a few minutes of looking through Geyata Ajilvsgi’s Wildflowers of Texas, discovered that it is called "Sneezeweed" (Helenium flexousum). It looks like a miniature black-eyed susan, with tiny flowers atop a winged stem. Checking in Native American Ethnobotany, I see that the Cherokees made a tea of the roots to "prevent menstruation after childbirth" (hmmm…wonder what that means!), and that the Comanches and Menominees used it to reduce fever. But the most interesting use of the dried, crushed flowers (which gave the plant its name) is as a kind of snuff, to make the user sneeze to clear the nasal passages. The birds must have brought it here, since there isn’t another sneezeweed on the rest of our 31 acres. Also growing nearby, in a marshy spot, is a huge stand of germander (Teucrium candense), which is also called wood sage.