Maybe I'm still a larva

There's just so much I didn't even imagine I didn't know! Here I am, almost all grown up, and I'm just learning the life cycle of ladybugs.

We've discovered a ladybug tree at school.  All the stages are busy on this one crepe myrtle tree just outside the school office. Here's an adult emerging from its pupa. My larva photos did not turn out. For extra fun, there are black ladybugs with two red spots. Holy metamorphosis, Batman!

Crepe myrtle trees provide reliable landscape color through the hot season  in north Texas. You can spell it "crape", too, but it never looks as classy in my humble O. Crepe myrtles have interesting bark.

This morning I woke to news of a fast-flowing hip-deep Martian stream. Billions of years ago it deposited rounded gravel that became cemented together to form a sedimentary conglomerate rock. Not that my little students ever sit there like clueless lumps staring up at me with all the spark of soggy pasta...

I had to look it up, but gneiss is not a sedimentary conglomerate. Gneiss is a nice way to describe a metamorphic rock. It's gneiss to have nieces. Both my nieces are gneiss.

gneiss

   [nahys] 

noun

a metamorphic rock, generally made up of bands that differ in color and composition, some bands being rich in feldspar and quartz, others rich in hornblende or mica.

I love that the Mars rover is named Curiosity, and I hope curiosity is contagious! Every teacher would love to ignite more sparks of curiosity.

Gneiss probably comes from German and Old Norse for spark. It's an igneous rock transformed by heat and pressure. And, of course, igneous derives from ancient word roots for fire with a sacrificial connotation.

It's hard to explain "knife" to young readers, you know? And now it seems that "gnocchi" is more closely related to knuckles than ignition. The pasta is pronounced either nockey rhyming with hockey, or nyuckey, which doesn't sound all that appetizing.

gnocchi 

1891, from It. gnocchi, pl. of gnocco, from nocchio "a knot in wood," perhaps from a Germanic source akin to knuckle. So called for their shape.

Gnow don't get me started on rhymes, as I've got to go talk to Gepetto.

head and shoulders gknees and toes
head and shoulders gknees and toes
eyes and ears and mouth and gnose
head and shoulders gknees and toes
gknees and toes

And to complete this ramble, here is Andy Williams singing Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Gneiss To Come Home To"... you'd be so nice by the fire...

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Hark, hark, we must ponder bark

Backward brain slowly notices the nursery rhyme setting the rhythm for my walk around the Galatyn trail. Backward brain wonders about the chicken or the egg.  First?  Seeing bark everywhere? OR the rhythm?

Unwinding from the high-pressure multi-gabilliozon-dollar world of a Montessori spring festival set designer.  Oh!  The glitter!  The press!  The enquiring minds!  Holy cow.

But back to the bark.  Om.  It's unseasonably warm and dang muggy on the trail.  I'm getting a bad case of sweaty cap hair.  This trail is a little "gem" preserved between a telecom business district and the DART light-rail train line.

Hark, hark, the dogs do bark!
Beggars are coming to town,
Some in rags, some in tags,
And some in velvet gown.

What does this mean???  For answers, I checked here. And it was "some in rags, some in jags" in early versions.  Jags are those slashings in the sleeves of Tudor costumes!

That is all the pondering for now.  Happy walking!

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

It's a woodchipper day in the neighborhood

They're back!  They're whiny!  No, not the preschoolers.  Not even the cedar waxwings.  It's the condo lawn service pruners and their woodchipper truck.

Pretend it is Hendrix playing guitar...

What would Mr. Rogers do?  WWMRD?  I'm still having those "Fargo" associations, but I know Mr. Rogers would want me to celebrate these helpers in my neighborhood.

This helper dude is cutting back the soapberry tree on my back alley neighbor's patio.  The soapberry is a volunteer tree that has grown rapidly in the nine years since a shade tree fell down in a big wind.  Some would call the tree a "trash tree", but it makes red admiral butterflies and cedar waxwings very happy.

I suppose the waxwings will cope just fine with their diminished soapberry.  The ring-necked doves will adjust slowly as they are not ever going to be academic scholarship recipients. I worry about the hummingbird that had preferred seating on a branch that is now gone, but its arrival is many weeks in the future.

Back in high school I joined the Columbia House Record Club because of those ads in the Sunday newspaper.  What a lesson in consumer skepticism that provided!!  Oy.  I can't go into it here.  One of the albums I purchased by choice rather than default was an LP set of the history of jazz.  One of the selections was Woody Herman's "At the Woodchopper's Ball".  Check out the groovy dashikis on Woody's band members in this 1969 video!  I want to see the ring-necked doves it these outfits.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Filberts frugging in an endless fog

Still in Willamette Mission State Park north of Salem, Oregon I had a Bob Fosse moment. Be glad you didn't see me attempting the "Rich Man's Frug" from "Sweet Charity". I was just angling for a better macro shot of the filbert catkins on the trail to the Willamette River's bank.

The Filbert Grove Day Use Area seemed like a nice place to picnic on a balmier day.  In a fog about filberts along the Willamette River.


Now, back in the real world of Google I find filberts are a type of hazelnut, and a cup of hazelnut coffee sure would be nice.  The Frug was a dance back in the Laugh-In era.  It is not an overpackaged squeezy fruit puree kiddie lunch product. Don't get me started on that!  Well, I'm already started.  We consume way too little fiber, and now our children are moving from an apple a day to a squeezable fruit puree that costs a buck a serving???

So, I wonder as I wander out under the filbert trees down toward the Willamette River what in the hey-ho is wrong with the world.









My sister and I have been on a collision course of wandering wondering about the Christmas LP recordings remembered from childhood.  She sent me a CD of this old Firestone album my dad probably got with a new set of studded snowtires:

If I had the energy to crawl into the far dark back of the bottom kitchen cabinet there might be an old tree trunk nut bowl and cracker.  Tonight I'll go nuts in other ways. Nighty-night.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

My what big i

The Occupy Alphabet owl protesters have made their point. Now it is time for them to move on and work within the system.

These hand puppets were a happy accident preschool art class project.  If you haven't drawn across corrugated cardboard with a Magic Marker lately, you owe yourself some sensory fun.

My blog muse donated a craft pack of corrugated cardboard and a how-to book with a basic puppet plan.  Never thought of cutting places for the little kids' thumbs, but I can see clearly now how that improves the design.

Already had a roll of wide wale corrugated paper.  Also the bag of tiny paper cups that fell on the floor months ago.  Too dirty for drinking, but too good to throw away, the cups became "art supplies".  The playing cards for wings just happened to be in the same bag with the cups. Beaks are Styrofoam grocery trays, but of course!  The great horns for the owls should have been shorter strips of paper, but they add to the owl personalities.

Blackland Prairie Raptor Center will present a program with birds of prey tomorrow.  That's always a highlight of my school year.  Glad the owl art helped the little kids get psyched.

Last evening I attended the condo homeowners  annual board election.  Whoooo was elected?  Thankfully, not me.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

All Gaul...

...is divided into how many parts?

I always have to look these things up.  It's exasperating, vexing, and occasionally chafing that I can't remember from year to year.  gall2 v. 3. 

Galls are bizarre and common occurrences in the natural world.  gall3 n.  An abnormal swelling of plant tissue caused by insects, microorganisms, or external injury.

This Oak Gall was bigger than a ping pong ball, and still intact.

It was ninety-three degrees, but I needed a stress reduction walk at Oak Point Nature Preserve.  My dad's Guide to Nature in Winter, by Donald W. Stokes, has thirteen pages devoted to galls:

The closest we can come to explaining gall formation is to say that the insect disrupts the normal growth of a plant either through physical irritation or chemical secretion.  Around the insect, the plant grows a deformity, which the insect then uses for food and protection while developing.

Stokes says about 1500 types of gall-makers are known on this continent, and over half are on oaks.  Most oak galls are formed by wasps.  The galls in my photos seem to be Oak Apple Galls.  I avoid wasps whenever and wherever possible!  They do not play well with others.

This gall on a sapling just down the trail was hollow.  The galls were a tricky usage trail to follow:

• Of all the gall...  This was an expression my mother used quite often.

• He had the gall to...  impudence He had the gall to say he was my friend after being so rude to me.

• It galls me to think...  to annoy (a person) very much It galls me to think that he is earning so much money. 

• Gallbladder n. Also gall bladder.  A small, pear-shaped, muscular sac located under the right lobe of the liver, in which bile secreted by the liver is stored.

• Gaul, though, is divided into three parts according to Caesar.  Julius was quite the propagandist/spin doctor.  [De Bello Gallico bk. 1, sect. 1]:

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.

Why is yellow the color of bile?   

In the medical theories prevalent in the West from Classical Antiquity up to the Middle Ages, the body's health depended on the equilibrium between four "humors" or vital fluids: blood, phlegm, "yellow bile" (or ichor) and "black bile". Excesses of the last two humors were supposed to produce aggression and depression, respectively; and the Greek names for them gave rise to the English words "cholera" and "melancholia". Those same theories explain the derivation of the English word "bilious" from "bile", and the meaning of "gall" in English as "exasperation" or "impudence".

And what was the deal about crossing the Rubicon?

• Kenny Roger's song, "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" has always given me acid reflux.  The You Tube is worth watching just for the 1972 white patent go-go boots and tambourine.
• The Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday was one of the first songs I heard on KLMS radio after Santa Claus brought me a transistor radio and ear phone in December of 1966.  

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Who's bringing the car around?

I hope someone will take pity and give me a hint as to the identity of this small ornamental tree now having these rather exotic looking blooms.  The central part resembles small yucca blooms, while the long red thingies look like mimosa eyelashes gone extreme.  I'll be pretty embarrassed if the answer is something obviously Texan, like a mesquite.  One nurse said she thought it was a mesquite, but she wasn't a native, either.

Dad was very anxious to go outside today, although he insisted on two blankets on his chest and legs.  The temp in his room reminded me of erupting sunspots, but he was chilly.  He self-propelled his wheelchair until he ran aground in the grass.  The sun felt good to him.
"Okay, I'm ready.  Let's go.  Who's bringing the car around?"

"Aaaaauuuuhh, nobody.  We aren't going in the car."

"I'm ready to leave.  NOW."

"I understand, Dad.  I do."

"What's the plan?  Who's bringing the car around."

"Well, Dad, we just are where we're going to be, so let's enjoy the sun."

Ever since Dad decided he was adopted and living in the parsonage, he's been trying to find a way out.  He kept phoning me at work Monday wanting to know when I would come pick him up "at the church".  By the time I arrived at 3:45 he was about to come out of his skin, furious, violent, endangering himself and others.  If I'd had a taser, I might have used it.  Cooler heads gave him some Adivant. 

Over the hour and a half it took Dad to relax and become dopey/groggy, he kept asking me the name of "that retreat on 70th" where I used to meet him.  Mystified, I went through names of golf courses, parks, pizza restaurants, hospitals, churches, assisted living, and high schools in Lincoln to no avail.  My seeming unwillingness to reveal the answer really ticked him off.

Unlike my time with Dad in the hospital after his second hip break in 2007, he was delusional, but not hallucinating.  He's come unhitched in time and space, and he is manic and aggressive.  He wants to sit at the bus stop and wait to be picked up, getting seriously pissed because I'm so inconsiderately late, but he just thinks we are all blocking him from getting to the bus stop.  He's not the charming yet suspicious guy who saw the little girl sneak into the picture show and steal all the candy just before he ripped out his IVs and chatted up the aide for a 2 a.m. sandwich.  These are distinctions I'd gladly have gone forever not perceiving.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Trees in bloom, and in knits

Maybe this is an April fools joke, or perhaps somebody at the Woolie Ewe yarn shop had too much coffee.  Either way, it was an eye-catching sight in the grocery parking lot.  When I jumped out of the Buick to take some photos, a man obligingly moved his pick-up truck.  First he asked, "Are those supposed to be upside down pants?"  Might be Dr. Seuss's pale green pants with just a tree inside them.














This azalea is a quinceanera tree.  Well, not really, but the blooms look like the gowns of sweet fifteen years olds having portraits made in the gardens of the Dallas Arboretum.  Usually the gardens are full of photo entourages in wedding attire, but Sunday it was the quinceanera photo crowd.  The gowns tended toward magenta or purple, shaped like a doll cake.  Caught in the wind, the full skirts rang like Disney Fantasia flower bells.  The bodices usually laced in the back.  Matching flowers and tiaras had to be carted around in boxes and bags in the drizzle.  The completed looks lost something as the bare-shouldered honorees had to be wrapped in whatever blanket was in the trunk of the car.

The Arboretum's azalea vale was a flood of color.  I was surprised by the orange and yellows.

This might be wisteria.

The hawk was mysteria wistifed, sitting in this tree in the parking lot after an unsuccessful chase of a smaller bird.













For a joke today, it should get up to eighty-five degrees.  Have to turn off the furnace AGAIN. 

Happy April!





© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Sad berries, beauty berries, always berries

Physical/spiritual: 

life is very strange when we forget or are unable to pry them apart.

I will keep this message from my dear friend, along with the memory of our last visit about elephant jokes and bubble bath toys.  Nancy was very tired, worn out from "this dying gig" that had gone on for so very long.  Still, her quirky sense of humor was intact.  So was her skill at noticing the sublime in the ordinary.  Failing physically, her spiritual center was glowing and inspiring her friends.

Our ice storm began just hours after Nancy posted her email.  All day Tuesday I sent whatever it is I send out to wherever it is I send it requesting that Nancy's spiritual might be pried apart peacefully from her physical.  I tromped through the icy park in the howling wind to take some winter berry photos for her, and had the strangest sensation that she was sending me the berries.

I am grateful to Janie for forming and nurturing our little band of three library junky MOBOs all born in '55.  I am grateful to Steph for suggesting Muriel Barbery's Elegance of the Hedgehog, which prepared me to find "the always within the never".

This is the most true and lovely obituary I have ever read, so I include it almost in its entirety and without any permission whatsoever:

  Rush, Nancy Chandler Passed away peacefully on February 1, 2011, after long illness. Nancy was born on March 17, 1955 in Amarillo, Texas, where she graduated from Tascosa High School. She earned a B.A. in Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin and a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law in 1980. Nancy began her career as an Associate with the Dallas firm, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, and was among that first generation of brilliant women to enter prestigious law firms in force. She was admitted to partnership in 1991. Married in 1981, Nancy is survived by her husband David S. White, her children, James D. White, Pfc. Michael J. White, and Pfc. John S. White, her parents ... and a large extended family. Nancy was a devoted member of Greenland Hills United Methodist Church, where she served faithfully in the shared work of worship, education, and mission. She enriched the lives of all she knew. Throughout her illness, Nancy never wavered from knowing in her bones that God is good all the time. Her courage and love for her family and friends inspired us all, especially in her final months. A memorial service celebrating this remarkable spirit will be held on Thursday, 10 am, February 10, 2011...

I Google "tascosa", knowing my ever-curious friend would also want to know if her high school name was related to the Aztec word for "cedar brake", "tascotal".  The Handbook of Texas Online indicates the cowboy town of Tascosa, Texas, was named for Atascosa Creek, and that "atascosa" is Spanish for boggy.  Ground in a cedar brake can become boggy when cedar tree's shaggy bark sheds and covers the ground preventing the growth of other species.  This gives rise to a monoculture, as explained by Dr. Geoffrey Stanford in the Texas Native Plant Society News, Vol. 5, No. 2, March/April 1987 .   

It is easier to Google boggy than to have a good cry celebrating the always within the never of berries.  A coincidence brought me the gift of Nancy's friendship, and I will hold it always in my heart.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Fleeting and barking

My clean kitchen won't last unless I never set foot in it again.  Trouble is, the kitchen is the only route to the laundry room.  Well, I could go around back and climb over the privacy fence and pick the lock on the back door, but that would set all the condo dogs barking.  Someone might call the cops.  Jumping over the fence with a basket of dirty clothes would be a true-life Olympic sport.

  
As soon as the drip pans are out of the dishwasher, I will reassemble this into a model of efficiency and cleanliness.  Even the top of my refrigerator is fuzz-free!  I'll be keeping it clean until after my sister's visit.  She's never seen my condo, even though I've lived in this complex since 1997.  A big sister needs to set a good housekeeping example, therefore my major cleaning efforts.  True, I've never been in her current home.  Maybe it would not pass the white glove test and we would be even in the sibling ledgers.

 
Hark, hark, the condo dogs bark!
It's been a great week for bark, particularly cedar and sycamore:






© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Breakfast for my neighbors

I fell asleep on the couch early last evening, during Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" trip to Liberia. I meant to watch his new trip to Rome, but I was a drowsy travel companion. That meant I was ready to catch the early bird's worm.

The sun was just sneaking down to the creek between the condo buildings when I started the second half of my loop. That's the slow half for photos and activating the senses.

Maybe I looked hungry, because a squirrel on the ground grabbed half an osage orange fruit in its mouth and ran up a tree. That's the equivalent of you or I grabbing a bed pillow in our mouth and running.

Half an osage orange is the size of a large toasted sesame bagel from Einstein Brothers with tomato/basil cream cheese. Maybe I was hungry. Or the fruit is the same size as a small grapefruit if you are dieting.

My dad called Osage oranges "horse-apples". We used to see them near Willow Creek in Pierce, Nebraska, when he took us wading. My dad didn't think horses really ate them.



The strange yellow-green globes were more common when we lived along a creek in Edmond, Oklahoma. I tried to cut one open, and ended up with a rubbery, caulky substance difficult to remove from my kitchen knife. That must have been in early summer, as the fruits come apart more easily this time of year.

Each time I walk along my North Texas creek I find signs that animals are eating the osage oranges. Some animals must pick them apart while they are still on the tree. Little bits of yellow come floating down. Others wait to nibble the fallen fruit.



My Visual Reference Guides : Trees book by Colin Ridsdale has proven again to be fairly useless beyond the pretty pictures. It states osage orange fruits, or "syncarps" can be 14 inches in diameter! A men's regulation basketball is 9.39 inches in diameter. Syncarp is correct. That's an aggregate or multiple fruit like a blackberry or pineapple. The yellow bits falling down look like pineapple snow. They would be the "drupes", the individual fruits packed tightly together in the syncarp.



In the early morning light the fruit bits look more green. And the glare I got from another squirrel when I stopped to photograph this one was pretty mean. Believe me, I didn't want his breakfast.

The squirrel didn't feel safe returning to nibble on the ground. As soon as I reached an acceptable distance, the squirrel raced to the nearest fruit like a football player trying to recover a fumble. It grabbed the fruit in its mouth and raced up the tree.



Osage orange trees have several other names:

• Bois'd'arc, pronounced bodark.
• Hedge-apple, more accurate than horse-apple, as the trees were used to make hedges on the prairie.
• Bow-wood refers to Native Americans use of the wood for making bows.
• Maclura pomifera
• From now on I will call it the Squirrel Bagel tree.
  
  

According to Wikipedia, squirrels only tear the fruit apart to get the seeds. Also, the fruits are not poisonous to humans but would cause vomiting. And, interestingly, the fruits float. We can test that last bit of information in preschool next week.

As usual the Tree Notes blog has intriguing information on the subject of osage orange trees. The tree provides a very good firewood.

My breakfast was hashbrowns with fresh cilantro, mild salsa, a fried egg, corn tortillas with a black beans and pepper jack cheese, avocado, Greek yogurt, coffee, and orange juice. Don't tell the squirrel.

Have a lovely day, and eat more breakfasts.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder