Long-Awaited Photographs

I've been out of town a lot lately, so I haven't had the chance to watch my yard gradually transition into its current state. Not that springtime generally suggests "gradual transition" anyway; each hour, something new and different has popped up in my yard or changed color or unfurled into a huge leafy fern. Still, leaving for a few days and returning has reminded me anew that the yard of sticks and starkness of wintertime becomes a Pennsylvanian jungle come spring.

Last week, one of my friends and readers mentioned to me that to those of you who haven't been to my backyard might like to see more pictures of the setting. I must say, I would have hoped to describe it well enough to not require pictures (nudge nudge, wink wink). However, being perfectly honest, now that I have a new--that is, functional--camera, I can get over my actual hangup and capture some of images of my very photogenic backyard.

To begin, a view of the vegetable garden, shaded by the ash tree. Behind is the housing development that used to be a small woods.

The strawberries refuse to grow within the garden fence, but here they are, preparing to switch from white blossoms to sweet red berries.

Next, what we call the Fairy Garden, perfect for relaxing with a glass of wine on a summer evening.

Then, of course, the famous view from the garden swing.

In my opinion, the existence of phlox is proof that God loves Pennsylvania. Whether in cascading millions along the driveway border...

...or as a single blossom, this native wildflower is one of Pennsylvania's greatest treasures.

The forget-me-nots, too, are as spectacular en masse as they are alone.

Our shade garden, however, is one of the most Pennsylvanian squares in the yard. After we moved in twenty years ago, my mom spent hours and years transforming it from a solid mass of packed clay to a display area for wildflowers lovingly transplanted from her uncle's woods.

Buttercups...

Mayapples ... and a bleeding heart peeking through the leaves...

...all make for a lovely bouquet.

Lovely enough even for the wookiee to enjoy.

Dirty Feet

My feet are dirty and I couldn't be happier.

Yesterday, I returned home from a weekend in Philadelphia, staying with a couple of dear friends in their 7th-floor apartment across from the Art Museum. My feet kept going numb all weekend. Something about walking on pavement, I think.

Today I wore sandals and rolled up my jeans before taking a walk around my remarkably green backyard. The thicket of bushes that Mom and I once christened The Fairy Garden looked hopelessly dead all winter -- so dead that you may have noticed I never mentioned it -- and the mockingbird that camped there all winter had poor camo for hiding in a transparent cluster of empty sticks. Between Friday morning, when I left for Philadelphia, and yesterday, when I got home, the Artist spilled his green paint on the Fairy Garden and even added some blossoming crabapples for good measure.

When I came in, I had to wash my feet.

This afternoon, I wore sandals again to aerate my compost bin and add some grass clippings from last week's first mowing. I encountered the wookiee birdwatching behind the garden shed, but for all his wookiee-like aggression, he's more of a gentle giant. He chases squirrels from bird feeders and leaves the birds alone.

When I came in, I had to wash my feet again.

And then this evening, I went completely shoeless while scrubbing up and hosing down the window screens. Hose water + the backyard = muddy feet. It also = clean screens, which is glorious for the sudden spring weather. I washed my bedroom windows and put in all the screens. I was 1/3 through washing the living room windows when it began to rain.

I should probably have stuck my feet out the window for a natural wash, but I didn't. They're still dirty.

One Sunday morning when I was living in Baltimore, my friends and I were walking from the car in the parking lot to the front door of the church. Between the parking lot and the foyer, however, was an open yard of grass. I kicked off my dress shoes and walked barefoot across the grass. It was maybe ten steps all together, but those ten steps held me through another week of pavement and downtown.

I got claustrophobic in my friends' apartment this past weekend, and it's not a small apartment by any means. But for all its square footage and windows, I felt like I was in a shoebox in the middle of a crate stacked in a storeroom in the bowels of a strip mall.

This past Sunday, while they were driving along a woodsy country road, my grandma looked out the window at the trees and said to my mom, "You know, sometimes I think we get too far away from nature."

And you know? My dirty feet and I think my grandma was absolutely right.

Dog-Sitting

My neighbors went on vacation this week and asked whether I'd like to watch their dog.

The answer, initially, was no way, but I didn't tell them that. I'm not much of a dog person, and this particular dog has a bad reputation. But I did agree to at least meet the canine and let his owner walk me through the basics of vacation care.

The dog loves me.

I don't know why, but he has taken to me like a mockingbird takes to a new birdcall. And their yard, just three doors up the hill from mine, is like a different environment altogether. As the dog sniffs around his yard and does his thing, I get to watch a different set of birdfeeders, observe a different view of the horizon, and listen, listen, listen.

Yesterday, there was a rufus-sided towhee whistling in the trees. Today, I could see elk on the next hill over. Even the wind sounds a little different from that part of the hill.

Tomorrow is my last day of watching the dog, mainly because I myself am going out of town for a few days (if you're lucky, you might get an update about it on my travel blog). But I think that I might still venture up to my neighbor's yard occasionally this summer when I am in town. It's funny how a slight change of angle can give you a whole new perspective on a familiar place.

A Final Reflection

For those of you without a syllabus to refer to, next Saturday I will email my final assignments to my course instructors and pray for good grades to complete my first semester of grad school. Our final blog prompt for the semester asks us to reflect on our experiences and what we’ve learned, but it’s such a fitting close that I imagine I might have taken a stab at it without the assignment. (That is, if I would have let myself take the time away from other assignments to do so.)

My three courses have intertwined themselves like the English ivy on the walnut trees, so that I’m not sure what one class has taught me outside of the others. I do know that, of all times in my life to be forced by school to go outside and simply be, this season in my life was the when I needed it the most.

Nature is cruel. Nature keeps winter from disappearing from my region when I just want sunlight. Nature left a pile of feathers behind the garden shed after a hawk caught her dinner. Nature tears shingles from rooftops, floods creekbeds, and brings on cancer and heart attacks and grief.

But nature is kind, too. It’s connected; we’re all in this boat together. I’m not the only person to lose her father suddenly and unexpectedly and on the eve of the most family-oriented holiday of the year, and that knowledge, while not making the loss any less sad, still helps me keep some perspective. Nature is cyclical. Seasons change. Transitions happen. Sometimes, like a democracy, the change in season happens peacefully, without you even noticing. Other times, the passing season refuses to let go its hold. But it still can’t stop the change. Even when there are remnants of cold, the warmth shows itself in little ways.

My life is a series of settings. I track myself based on where I am, not necessarily on who I am or who I’m with or what I’m doing there. What I’ve read this semester and observed in my backyard has reminded me that setting, so strong a character in my life, should be as strong in my writing. As the seasons change, I’ll learn the trick of establishing place.

This backyard won’t be in my family forever, but my family will be in it. It has my dad and my mom and my brother and me stamped in every inch of its soil. Our pets have been buried here, fresh veggies have been harvested, firewood has been stacked and wine has been sipped in the flickering light of mosquito candles and the shining summer moon.

I’ve always loved my yard. I took photos of the yard with me to Germany, and I bragged about my yard when I missed having space to breathe in Baltimore. But after a semester of simultaneous stress and grief and healing, I love this yard like I would love a doctor who cured me of a disease. Still, a big part of healing is getting past the healing and back to a normal life.

This morning, I watched a pair of hawks soaring on the wind.

Backyard Healing

You might be surprised to learn that, for all I like to preach about the healing properties of nature, I seldom believe them, myself, when I really need them.

Like yesterday. It was a bad day. "Bad," as in (1) I am desperate to find time to go visit the friends in Baltimore whom I terribly miss, (2) I've reached the point in the semester when nothing I write has any future beyond the paper shredder/compost bin, and (3) we received notice from the county yesterday telling us they're changing our house number (... since it hasn't been functioning properly for the past twenty years?).

I took a moment from the Essays That I Wish Would Write Themselves to go to the kitchen and refill my water bottle, when I realized it was 6:00 and almost sunset. I hemmed. I hawed. I reeeeeally needed to work on those essays. I reeeeally didn't feel like taking off my slippers. I reeeeeally wasn't in the mood to put on extra layers to go outside, after the past four or five months of the cold. In the end, I left my water bottle on the counter, my Microsoft Word window open (it was blank anyway, not like it's going anywhere), and pulled on a pair of boots and a jacket.

The black-capped chickadees behind the garden shed welcomed me with chirping, and the hill of neighbors' lawns behind the house are greener by the day. It was cold, so cold, but after moving around the yard for a little bit, I felt warmer, and I thought of the line in Die Lorelei: Der Luft ist kuhl und es dunkelt (the air is cool and it's growing darker).

The wookiee, thrilled to have someone outside with him, popped out of a bush and grabbed my ankle before running across the yard. He's getting older now, and I'm not in very good shape either, so we gave up the game of tag after a few more minutes. I took some veggie peels to the compost bin and watched the clouds puff across the eastern sky like exhaust from a steam engine, tried to find the source of a unique bird call, and eventually returned to the house when it got too dark and too cool to merit remaining outside.

What's more: I felt better. Whether the essays write themselves or not, they'll get written. They may not be any good by finals week, but they'll stick around until I'm ready to revise them in another year or two. My friends will always welcome me in Baltimore, and the end of the semester (and along with it, some free time) is coming nearer so I can afford to see them again. And you know, even if they're changing my house's identity, they can't change the house. The yard is not defined by the number on my mailbox, and this weekend, that is the most important part of this little wedge of land.

:45°:
:partly cloudy skies:

On Bugs

Yesterday I said that no one likes bats. Today, I'll add that no one likes bugs. Even when we talk about bats and all their beneficial contributions that we humans should appreciate, these contributions usually begin and end with, "Well, they eat bugs. And nobody likes bugs."

A week or so ago, my classmate Kristin talked about Stink Bugs on her blog. I was surprised (and a little relieved in a weird sort of way) to know that I wasn't the only one in our class who 1) has been finding stink bugs in her home, or 2) is afraid to kill them because of their unfortunate name. Around the same time Kristin was writing this post, I discovered a stink bug lounging on my laptop when I came downstairs to work on schoolwork. My first line of defense, the indoor cat, was no help at all and just looked at the bug and started playing with my pencil sharpener. I ended up scooping up the bug on a piece of paper and running out to the driveway with it. There may have been some shrieking involved, but it's all a bit of a blur.

In general, I'm one of those weird people who doesn't like to kill anything, even stink bugs, without a really good reason for it. Am I going to eat the bug after I squish it? Good heavens, no. My usual M.O. involves scooping up and throwing out. The one time I ever played camp counselor, the girls in my cabin got a kick out of my extermination method for some cave crickets that had found their way onto one of the girls' beds. (Cover it with the trash can, slip paper between it and the bed, tape the paper to the trash can, run far from the cabin, and release. Process also involves shrieking.) Hey, the rest of the week was cricket-free so something went right.

On top of just not wanting to squish a bug, I also think said bug would have to be more useful outside of my house anyway. Out there are birds and plants (and bats!) who would benefit from an insect's presence in my yard. In the house, all we have are a couple of humans and the indoor cat, none of which need the bugs for our immediate survival. Share the wealth!

And so, I support insect repellents for inside your home. But not just any repellents. As I mentioned yesterday, bugs that have eaten insecticides are probably one of the major reasons for bat decline, and bees and birds aren't faring too well from it, either. There are little plug-in things for electrical outlets that send out a high-frequency wave thing that makes bugs just not want to come near. That's good repellent: no deaths or harmful chemicals involved.

Also, my mom has tried this herb cocktail that she says has helped keep the bugs out of the house. Once our herb garden begins to thrive this spring, I plan to take some cuttings and scatter them around my desk and see how I rate it. But if you want to try it yourself, this is what she uses:

• Pennyroyal
• Painted daisy (pyrethrum)
• Santolina
• Cedar
• Lavendar
• Peppermint
• Rue

All-natural ingredients, shouldn't hurt your housepets or kids, and smells a whole lot better than indoxacarb.

In short, I don't think it's asking too much to want the bugs to stay out of the house. I do think it's wise for bugs to be all over the place outside. But just in case they do get in, I don't want to kill them for the invasion. I just want them to think that, just maybe, it's a little more pleasant on the exterior side of the doorjamb.

The Indiana Bat

Nobody likes bats.

I say this, knowing perfectly well that one of my readers has a Bats from Europe and North America sitting on her shelf, but she and I notwithstanding, raise your hand if you can honestly say this is cute:


This particular bat is myotis sodalis: myotis meaning mouse ear, and sodalis meaning companion. Small and unassuming, eaters of destructive flying insects like alfalfa weevils and gypsy moths, the myotis sodalis, or Indiana Bat, is truly the ideal overhead nighttime companion. It’s endangered, probably due to habitat loss and insecticide, but in some areas, it still thrives.

Bats, like myself, are creatures of the night, and the sounds they make—high-pitched beeps and screeches to assist in echolocation—can only be heard by a select few, rendering them typically silent in human standards, easily forgotten, ultimately ignored.

The Indiana Bat is named for the state where it was first discovered and described, but a colony of them thrives near my home in Pennsylvania. They have found a hospitable spot in the kind of place that I, myself, have consistently found hospitable, especially when I’m far from my home: a church.


This little white church sits on the windy country road to Canoe Creek State Park, casts its shadow over a cemetery where lie several of my ancestors, and literally has bats in the belfry—thousands of them. Home to several thousands of Little Brown Bats, this church, which hasn’t held a human worship service in decades, also plays host to a few hundred Indiana Bats.

My mother used to take my brother and me to Canoe Creek to swim in the lake, and now that I’m older, I enjoy piloting a canoe around the surface of the lake or hiking through the woods along its edge. Its historic limestone kilns are worth a hike to see, and apparently the bats think so, too. Their population around the lake is divided between the church and the kilns.

I used to dislike, maybe even hate, bats, but I find myself feeling a kinship with myotis sodalis. In its displacement from the land it was named for, it still seeks companionship under the eaves of a church, just as I have each time I have found myself living in a new place. And even in the face of adversity, these bats congregate together near lakes and other bodies of water before setting out on their own.

They may be tiny and unassuming, but myotis sodalis carry a message of strength and hope on their little skinny wings.

An Affair to Remember

When I was twenty years old, I had an affair with Marburg.

In a way, it would be great, truly great, if Marburg were actually a man, but Marburg is the town I studied in when I was in Germany my junior year of college. I had no real affairs that year (or any year, actually), but the footprints I left on that town’s cobblestone streets correspond to the footprints the town left on my entire being.

Marburg was mysterious and foreign, and don’t women stereotypically fall for the “strong silent types”? Marburg was strong: the town remained virtually unmolested through two world wars and a few centuries of architectural revolutions because of its silence. It was love at first sight. I wanted to learn every street, every alley, every staircase and passage that I could tread on my daily rambles.

I wandered regularly. I made a habit of it. The town’s pedestrian-friendly setup encouraged me to head out without a destination in mind, or if I had a destination, to find the most circuitous route there. Wandering slowly through the veins and arteries infusing the medieval town, I truly saw where I was. Discovering a fountain behind a forgotten cemetery was like discovering a freckle on your lover’s toe: a delightful surprise that just added to the elements that made the town unique and lovable.

Too many times, now that I’m back in the States, I realize I don’t truly know where I live. Just beyond my backyard, the road I drive every day to get into town is almost completely unfamiliar. I have never walked it slowly, watching for the wildflowers growing from the roadside gravel, noticing the flowerpots sitting above my neighbor’s kitchen door, or delighting in the way the road dips and curves with the valley floor.

Marburg was a temporary affair, as I knew all along. When the summer semester ended, I returned to Pennsylvania, leaving behind the body and soul of a town I knew almost as well as my own. When I consider my future, I wonder if I’ll ever return as a permanent resident to that town, or whether I should establish it in my heart as a deep and abiding fling that can sadly never be repeated.

I believe that, no matter where it ends up being, I’ll know I’ve found home when I can feel the same intimate connection with a place as I had with Marburg. And that one will be an affair to remember.

Sign of Spring

I couldn't wait to leave my hometown until I came back after my first year of college. It was leaving and returning that gave this place roots in my heart. But despite those roots, I still don't think of this area as also being the stem, leaves, and flower. I still don't really know where "home" is for me at this point in my life story, or even at which part of the plant (to stick with the previous metaphor) I am just now.

If home is where you keep your stuff, then this is definitely home. And if home is where you spent your childhood, I’m in the right place. The garden swing by the back fence hangs from the same metal frame that we once called the swing set, but the sliding board and gymnastic rings are long since gone. So is the sandbox, which was overgrown years ago by the tenacious trumpet vine planted by previous owners. I wonder how many little green army men are still buried in that dirt, forever entwined in the roots of the trumpet vine.

Those memories of childhood are asleep now, cuddled under a thick blanket of snow, and I’m glad. In a few months, the snow will melt and water the ground, go up into the roots and trunks and stems of the plants and burst open the buds on the trees and flowers. The grass, crushed by the snow and ice all winter, will suddenly spring up, bright green, vibrant, and ready to be mown.

I dread the spring.

In the past month or so, I’ve sort of gotten used to my dad being gone. His absence from the house is still felt, but it’s getting more normal each day. Each morning, we wake up to a clear driveway thanks to the kindness of neighbors and their snowblowers. We get fewer phone calls for his business on our answering machine each day as more and more clients realize the truth. Not having Dad in the wintertime is starting to be emotionally acceptable.

But when the snow is gone and our wonderful neighbors begin mowing the lawn instead of plowing the snow, when I can sit on the garden swing and look over the verdant lawn toward the sprouts in the vegetable garden, when my mom and I have to waterproof the wooden garden fence and deck that my dad built so many years ago when we first moved in ... when we decide where we want to scatter his ashes ... I wonder if grief will be as compatible with that season as it is with this.

Yet even as I sit on the garden swing, now in shadow from the sun which has just dipped beyond the mountain behind me, I gaze east over our yard, past the vegetable garden, over the neighbor’s yard and over the next valley. My neighborhood is in a brown shadow now, but a thin band of yellow and pink trees glows on the next hill. Beyond them, black tree trunks blend with the white snow to make a crest of gray, and beyond that, an azure mountain, reflecting the full glories of a setting sun I can no longer see.

In this terrain that feeds the roots of my life story, I am given hope. The sun may have set for now on my yard, but it still shines brightly on a distant mountain.

Westsylvania

In the 1700s, my corner of Pennsylvania, most of what’s now West Virginia, and a slice of modern-era Kentucky, formed a plan to become the fourteenth state: Westsylvania. To those of you impertinent enough to think, “Fancy name for Pennsyltucky,” I must say . . . you’re absolutely right.

A glance at the topography of the region tentatively christened Westsylvania reveals the sense behind such a division.


To the east, the natural barrier of the Appalachians; to the west, the Ohio River Valley. And in between, a unique landscape and a mindset to go with it.

Think back to your American History lessons in eighth grade, and you’ll recall that by the Revolutionary War, the only populated areas of the colonies hugged the coastline: Philadelphia, Boston, New York. In Pennsylvania, when most colonists reached the Allegheny Mountains, they settled at their foot, uninterested in crossing the mountain range and establishing homesteads in the wilds of Fort Pitt or Kittaning. The insert on this map shows that, by the 1770s, the region of Westsylvania still wasn’t considered a proper part of the thirteen colonies.

The Europeans who made their home on the western side of the Alleghenies felt—quite naturally—separated from the rest of the colonies, and a political separation logically followed. However, the interruption of such minor events as the drafting of a certain Declaration and a rather conspicuous bullet shot in Massachusetts put an end to these plans.

But despite northern Westsylvania becoming western Pennsylvania, the inhabitants aligning themselves with the politics of Philadelphia, the landscape of the Alleghenies remained a sharp contrast to the comparatively easy hills in the east.

And the people who chose to live in this rugged and remote environment matched the land they now called home. My ancestors made their living by logging and making moonshine. You may remember that it was the Monongahela Valley where the Whiskey Rebellion originated in the 1790s. The residents simply wanted to be left alone. The rebellion all started because the feds dared to tax the whiskey coming out of the Monongahela region. They didn’t appreciate interference from the Outside World.

To a degree, that mindset still reigns supreme today, at least in the less urban areas outside of the Pittsburgh metropolis. The influences of the Internet are still suspect; immigrants, and even fellow citizens from other parts of the state, are looked on with a wary eye; and social interactions are forced, as though one is thinking, “I don’t know this person’s entire family history because they [or in my case, on of my parents] didn’t grow up here. What can there possibly be to discuss between us?”

But this makes the area where I grew up sound negative, and I’d rather not end on that note. For, as Thoreau wrote, solitude isn’t such a bad thing, and I think my fellow rural western Pennsylvanians have embraced this truth. The Alleghenies surround, compose the topography of my neighborhood, and one must really want to see one’s neighbors to climb a steep grade to reach their home. And even though the nation west of us has since been settled and turned into cities and suburbs quilted with threads of highway, something still feels remote about this region, as though we still might not belong to the rest of the United States.

And, just maybe, this is the truth that the original settlers knew when building their homes (and whiskey stills) in these mountains: we’re all just visitors on this earth, and this is not where we ultimately belong.

The Solitary Cooper's Hawk

The hawk who has attracted my fascination this winter flew overhead last week as I took a chilly and exhilarating ramble through my backyard.

First she glided, inches from the snow, into a thicket of bushes in my neighbor’s yard, where I had seen a colony of sparrows enjoying the bounty of a birdfeeder moments earlier. Then, she burst from the bushes, flapping over my head, then soaring over my roof, across the street, and into the yards beyond. I don’t know if she had caught any dinner; I was too busy watching her tail. It was rounded and not square.

I sprinted through shin-deep snow back to my house and turned to the Hawks page in my bird book. The tail distinction was what I needed to identify her, definitely, as a Cooper’s Hawk.

I watch her sit first on the peak of my neighbor’s A-frame house, then glide in lazy circles over our yards, then disappear over the crest of our hill. She returns with her talons full of a freshly caught creature and settles on a branch of a leafless tree to pick out a meal from her catch.

I never see another hawk, and my bird book says that they’re often solitary. And this may explain why I am so fascinated with her.

When I moved back to my parents’ house in June, I intended to leave in September or October after a brief and restful summer of reassessing the direction of my life. I had my family, but I no longer have my friends, who all moved away (as I did) after graduating from college.

I wonder if our Hawk considers her stint in my backyard as a temporary situation, as I still consider my stay here. She probably thinks, as she soars on the winds from the hills and mountains, that at some point, soon, she’ll fly away and find herself, if not a colony of Cooper’s Hawks, at least one other one.

She seems content here for now. But she sees the sparrows, blue jays, woodpeckers, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers, and knows that they may all be birds with wings and beaks, but they are not the same as her. Maybe she enjoys being the Only One of Her Kind watching over the activity of the neighborhood yards, but I think she’ll get lonely pretty soon. I think that someday I’ll notice she’s gone, and she’ll have found the place where she does belong, after a brief and restful winter in the bosom of my backyard.