L.M. Montgomery, otherwise known as Lucy Maud Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for writing a series of novels beginning in 1908 entitled “Anne of Green Gables.”  A very favorite quote of mine comes from her which says, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”  I am not sure if it is because I was born in October, but it has always been my favorite month.  For me the fresh scent of mown grass still hangs heavy in the air, only with a promise of slightly chilly evenings and mornings, full moons, bales of hay, pumpkins, giant mazes of corn stalks, and the anticipation of the holidays to come.  My father was born in October and every year he would tease my mother that she just couldn’t wait eleven more days to have me.  (So we would have had the same birthday.)  Like a joke with no end, she would fall for it every time, and my petite, Irish/French, red-haired mother would instantly flush red.  Then my daddy would turn around to wink at me as I struggled to keep a straight face.  I am not sure at this point whether I have mentioned it in past posts, but my father died when I was just 28.  However it was his birthday, rather than the day he passed in March, that became so tremendously sorrowful for me.  I have spent more than twenty years grieving over the loss of my beloved father.  I live in Texas, which as a child, I recall having four actual seasons.  I like spring but the trees are still bare.  Summers here are hotter than Hell’s front porch.  Winter can be depressingly mild or fraught with treacherous ice.  While it seems magical to be blanketed in a couple of inches of snow, Dallas is just not equipped to deal with harsh winters like they are up north.  And then there is autumn.  For me it is a precious scant measure of time where trees still have their leaves and are turning several shades of glorious colors, from green to yellow to orange to red.  In addition the mornings and evenings cool off a bit and are not pizza oven hot.  It is a time for celebrating the harvest, although most modern folk are so far removed from farming I’m not sure they really know what that is.  I decided to look up what was celebrated within this month.  Of course there is the Feast of St. Francis and the Blessing of the Animals.  I am probably one of the few to know National Wolf Awareness week falls within this month.  All Hallow’s Eve on October 31 marks the day before All Saints’ Day and comes from an ancient pagan festival celebrated by Celtic people for over 2,000 years meaning “summer’s end.”  In the northern hemisphere it is about half way between the autumn equinox and winter solstice.  Historically is was widely observed throughout Ireland and Scotland.  I realize it has great significance in many cultures, as “Coco” is our favorite late October movie and involves the country next to Texas that was of course once part of Mexico.  Anyway, regardless of how one looks at it, I hope everyone reading this from wherever there are in the world enjoys the month of October.

I have long associated the days and nights of summer with the sound of cicadas.  As a kid I called them locusts, but I have grown to realize they are completely different and not at all destructive.  I should also note they do not bite.  I used to love catching them and then of course releasing them.  Lady bugs are lovely, “doodle bugs” are delightful, caterpillars are captivating, and many types of spiders spin silk the envy of any seamstress.  I have always delighted in dragonflies and the beauty of butterflies.  For me the most precious and rare of all are fireflies.  I imagine the Praying Mantis to be a type of Crusader Monk from ages past.  Ants have intrigued me, as have bees, and I have a healthy respect for them both.  Along the loose lines of the birds and the bees, I recently discovered these two captured in time.  Cicada “shells” like the ones pictured above hold immense fascination for me, as one can examine the shed exoskeletons in great detail without stressing them.  One can see the intricate delicacy of their eyes, wings, body, and legs with just a cursory glance.  Like Pompeii, they are remnants frozen in time, only they were able to emerge from their proverbial molds.  The 93-year-old Japanese Buddhist philosopher, author, and educator Daisaku Ikeda has said:

Life is the blossoming of flowers in the spring, the ripening of fruit in the fall, the rhythm of the earth and of nature.  Life is the cry of cicadas signaling the end of summer, migratory birds winging south in a transparent autumn sky, fish dancing in a stream.  Life is the joy beautiful music instills in us, the thrilling sight of a mountain peak reddened by the rising sun, the myriad combinations and permutations of visible and invisible phenomena.  Life is all things.

Of the over 750 quotes I have cited since the inception of my blog, this is among my favorites.  For those who proclaim insects “freak” them out or are annoying — I say many are wonderful and incredible and serve purposes which link us all even if we do not understand them.  Anyway, they’re not bugging me.

Those living in warmer climates may be familiar with trees commonly referred to as crepe myrtles.  They bloom in varying shades of pink and also in white and purple.  The front of our house is lined with them and I take just as much pleasure enjoying their blooms in summer as I do their barks in winter.  Each year they grow a little mightier.  A lot of the United States experienced more climate change this past year when much of the Deep South and Southwest was blanketed in almost an entire week’s worth of ice and snow totaling in feet; not inches.  Power workers raced to get limbs off lines while millions were left without electricity.  I know northerners poke fun at the lower states because we tend to shut everything down when it snows.  However we are just not equipped with tire chains, sand trucks, and snow plows.  My father and mother taught me there was always something for which to be grateful.  My little family was so fortunate!  For starters we had hot water, electricity, and a wood burning fireplace.  Now that it’s spring we are starting to see some damage we could not catch earlier.  We have dead limbs, trees leafing out weird, and even one little tree that just couldn’t make it.  It could have been so much worse, and we are incredibly thankful.  Owning a home and having a yard, to me, is a privilege.  This is the only house I have ever lived in, which has been as many years as our marriage.  Right away I started naming the trees, shrubs, and plants.  So we have Big Ash out in our front yard (he is just as his name implies, and is about 40.)  There’s Bud out back (a red bud loosely around about fifteen), and Rosario, our stunning old fashioned bush that blossoms red spray roses which smell like heaven.  Mr. Figgy (our fig tree) died a few years back, God bless him.  When he had to be removed he literally left behind a heart shaped bark, which we still have in our garden to this day.  There’s Laurel (our Laurel tree) and Star, our jasmine which entwines herself gracefully all along the side of our house between our fence of iron and stone.  She is one of my favorites, as her sweet scent perfumes the air all around us on hot summer nights.  We have Cypress and Cyrus who are evergreen (Cypress trees).  I particularly love Asian plants, and we have Mabel the Japanese maple and my beloved MiMi, our Mimosa tree who fans herself out delicately over our koi pond with her pink, puffball blooms each summer.  Whomever starting pronouncing there were “trash” trees is awful in my book.  We are blessed to live next to a creek and I suspect some of our trees “volunteered” themselves long ago.  I enjoy watching the birds get buzzed on our Chinaberry trees each autumn.  And I don’t care:  I love Barry our Hackberry tree.  He is large and tall and provides excellent shade for our home.  We also have Ivy and Fern, as well as Lily and Iris in our pond … but dear reader thank you for sticking with me this long.  I promise I shall not subject you to to naming every living flora we have.  My tastes in landscaping run toward the unplanned “natural” look.  As much as I ADORE Versailles, no topiaries or stringent lines for me in my little garden.  I am only fluent in two languages, so I am always delighted when I attempt to joke in another one — and it is understood!  The picture you see is looking down our row of crepe myrtles which have yet to bloom.  Can you tell the first one has been SERIOUSLY pruned?  It could not be helped; Jack Frost got her.  Still, it pains me to see things “butchered,” and so I was telling our tree crew that what they were doing was considered “crepe murder.”  To my great pleasure, four men’s faces split into wide grins, accompanied by laughter.  Best of all they understood I wasn’t accusing THEM; I realized it had to be done.  Saint Basil once said, “A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds.  A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”  I always strive to reap friendship and to gather love.

It was projector time!  We had all been ushered into our elementary school auditorium and were “shushed” as the grainy film began to click-clack away in the dark.  It stopped midway, but there was always that one kid who could get it to work again, much to the relief of that teacher who was slightly and secretly afraid of technology.  Touting the merits of being “consumers,” the man’s dramatic movie theater voice attempted to extol the dubious virtues of rapacious “utilization” of the earth’s natural resources.  I suppose I remember this film in particular because I recall truly disagreeing with what we were being taught.  The first Earth Day began in the ’70’s, and it seemed like the message was switching concerning stewardship of Mother Earth.  I remember “paper drives” where all us kids would bring in our parent’s neatly stacked daily newspapers we’d saved up for the month to try and fill the giant truck that came to school for recycling.  I think the class who collected the most won a pizza party!  But now we were on the verge of the 1980’s and it was all about consumption.  Fast forward to today where we still have consumerism but we also know the vital merits of conservation.  Recycling has evolved into “reduce; reuse; repurpose.”  I try to live by those words, and guide my little family into doing the same.  This beautiful opal (my birthstone) pictured above was “repurposed” from a ring into a necklace very easily.  I had never owned an opal primarily because I was always given to understand they could easily break.  So proud of the ring my sweet husband bought me two Christmases ago, I always leery of wearing it.  Mama used to say she had her best ideas in the middle of the night.  Awhile back (in that nebulous place between sleeping and waking) an idea came to me.  What if I took my precious opal to the jewelers and had them hang it on a chain instead?!  Now I can wear my opal without being as worried.  The Japanese designer Issey Miyake once said, “The purpose – where I start – is the idea of use.  It is not recycling, it’s reuse.”  When something is “repurposed” it is given new life or perhaps a new intention.  The older I get, the more I think about ways I can become better, more useful; “repurposed.”

The dictionary defines “wonder” as a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.  I snapped this pic of my little one on the fly and I was struck by the look of wonder in her eyes, radiating even through her beautiful little face.  The above definition aptly captures all I felt in her when I saw this picture.  In Dallas, snow is a rarity; therefore I submit it is a cause for joy — no matter what your age.  I understand people who live where there is pervasive snow may view it as a nuisance.  But for those of us down south and to the west; I think it is almost always viewed as a wondrous thing.  For over two hours we watched huge Charlie Brown-type snowflakes continuously come down.  You could actually catch them on your tongue, which we did.  It did not stick because we did not get below freezing … but what a delight it was to watch them softly fall, bringing with it a sense of hope.  After all the ugliness and hardship of this past year it seemed like a gift from God — quietness and purity to blanket things in peace.  I think we may have had as much as three inches if it had actually stuck.  I realize that is nothing to Northerners.  As I have gotten to travel as an adult, I decided never to be reserved about my sense of wonder.  For instance, several years ago we went to a beach in South Carolina and I absolutely fell in love with this gorgeous yellow land crab!  So much so that the picture I took of her is framed in our guest bathroom.  I had no IDEA there were land crabs; I thought they only lived in the ocean.  The locals looked at me with equal degrees of shock, humor, and a non-judgmental form of knowingness as I shrieked and followed her movements.  Something ordinary for them was extraordinary for me.  The American journalist and author Susan Orlean said, “A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.”  The older I get, the more I learn — but, most importantly, the more I am graced with a sense of wonder.

Some years ago our wolf hybrids dug up and proceeded to eat the sprinkler system on one entire side of our house.  Luckily it was “their” area so I just decided to put down mulch and let it go since we had no water.  We have a koi pond though and it has since looked barren.  When I think of a garden my mind goes to an English one.  However gardens as we know them date back historically to about 10,000 BC.  Egyptian tombs have provided evidence of ornamental horticulture dating back to the 16th century BC, with lotus ponds surrounded by acacia trees.  The “paradise garden” is of Iranian origin, with one of its most important elements being water for ponds, canals, and fountains.  It spread throughout Egypt and the Mediterranean during the Muslim Arabic conquests, reaching as far as India and Spain.  Scent was also an essential element, with flora being chosen specifically for their fragrance.  I love the perfume of jasmine, honeysuckle, lilies, and old-fashioned roses which still smell like heaven.  It is said the cultivation of garden roses began over 5,000 years ago.  During the Roman period roses were grown in the Middle East.  I was surprised to discover that in the seventeenth century roses were in such high demand that royalty considered rose water as legal tender.  For me, an ideal garden contains roses.  However, I have come to learn that “gardens” come in many forms.  There can be flower gardens, woodland gardens, water gardens, butterfly gardens, edible fruit and/or vegetable gardens, rock gardens, and even bottle gardens.  Recently our little area went from rather dull to absolutely enchanting.  In our backyard we now have gravel, stone, and river rock around the pond, which has waterfalls and water lilies.  We also have a small designated area planted with my beloved roses.  The picture you see above is the result of an old cement garden knickknack I had which was buried under a pile of leaves and debris.  Now my tiny trio of howling wolves is nestled amongst leaves which produce grape-like fruit clusters.  Our little garden just about has it all:  water, trees, plants, flowers, butterflies, rocks, and bottles.  We didn’t spend a ton of money; we made better use of what we had.  Cory Booker, the United States Senator, said, “You’ve got to be one that, wherever you are, like a flower, you’ve got to blossom where you’re planted …”  One can bloom regardless of the circumstances, location, or time.  Witnessing the transformation of our little back yard has helped me better learn to utilize what I have, weed out the bad, to not allow stagnation, and to cultivate the good.  In short:  bloom where you’re planted.

From the time I was around three to the time I was seventeen I lived in a small two bedroom apartment with my parents on the edge of Dallas.  We did not have a even have a pool, but we had something far better:  all three of our windows (the living room, my bedroom, and my folks’ bedroom) faced an enormous, undeveloped field.  The wildflowers grew taller than I:  there were Queen Anne’s Lace, sunflowers, “Indian blankets,” and Black-Eyed Susans that I could identify.  I have countless fond memories of watching the voluminous tall stems dip and sway in the wind.  It was the ’70’s:  the last of an era where kids could run wild.  When I was little I rode FAR on my Big Wheel which I loved more than anything.  As I became older I rode my bike.  Every night I would pick a small bouquet of wildflowers for Mama to put on the table.  She cooked everything from scratch and I was to be in by the time Daddy got home.  I never realized what a tremendous blessing I had in that field.  There were no houses, no lights, no wires … just unmown flowers as far as the eye could see.  My dream was to get married, be a mother, and have a house on a creek bank not far from where I grew up.  God was gracious and my husband was able to buy our house when we got married.  It sits on a hill and just opposite it are miles of greenbelt with tall trees rising up from the creek beds.  It is one of the only places in Dallas where one may still encounter something natural.  By that I mean no concrete, no “helpful” stone erosion barriers, and no professional landscaping.  I have taught my little girl to recognize Morning Glory, to savor the scent of wild honeysuckle, and to value “trash” trees like the Mimosa which are considered an invasive species and are now undesirable.  Trees and shrubs improve soil and water conservation, store carbon, moderate local climate by providing shade, regulate temperature extremes, increase wildlife habitat, and improve the land’s capacity to adapt to climate change.  Any time we see a field while we are driving I shriek at my child to REALLY look at it.  “Undeveloped” land in the city is a rare and priceless thing.  I find it mostly remains on flood plains.  A favorite poet of mine, William Wordsworth, once said, “How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold?  Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.”  I brought my little girl to the place where I grew up, and it was so rough she was wary to leave the car; not out of snottiness — out of fear.  I had her and my husband get out and we walked into the field pictured above which was my childhood and the life which formed me.  If I could grant one wish for my precious child it would be this:  for her flower to be free down to her root, and in that freedom she be bold.  I grew up with nothing and yet I had everything:  I had a field of flowers.

If you could, would you take anything you’ve done back in your life?  I think I would … from minor to major things.  A couple of days ago I came across this praying mantis outside our door.  He looked so ebullient and I suppose that is what caught my attention.  A short distance away from him was a shell of his former self.  I mean that literally, as I hope you will enjoy comparing the split picture above.  My little girl and I were fascinated and we began to Google praying mantises.  I have long enjoyed studying the intricate shells of cicadas, but I believe they only shed once.  To my surprise I read that mantises shed six times until they become fully mature.  Each time that praying mantis emerges from its cocoon, s/he is better equipped to deal with life.  The five-star American General of the Army and Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur (who played a prominent role in the Pacific during World War II) said, “Life is a lively progress of becoming.”  What do you want to become?  I have many things … a better person, a better Christian, a better wife, a better mother, a better friend, a better advocate, and so much more.  I believe I have said here before that my daddy used to say the two saddest words in the English language were, “If only.”  While we cannot change our past, I believe we can determine the shape of our future.  The biggest part for me is in letting go.  I want to shed my defensiveness, forget about the names I have been called and the people who have hurt me so deeply.  I like the praying mantis for several reasons:  it is a visual reminder by a living creature to pray, with each struggle it becomes stronger, and when it sheds its skin it does not look back at what it once was … instead, it revels in the next chapter of its life.  I aspire to be like the mantis, to strive forward, and to achieve the process of becoming.

When I was a little girl I remember my mother having a fancy soap “dish” in our bathroom with a fancy bar of soap in it.  I believe she got it from her time in Florida when she visited an aunt and uncle after high school.  As I was going through her things I found it.  An integral yet insignificant part of my childhood, it was was at once both ordinary and extraordinary.  Cradling it gently in my hands, I studied it.  I knew it was some type of shell … abalone or Mother of Pearl maybe?  I know I always found it exotic, having never been to the ocean as a child and having grown up in a land-locked city.  I associate abalones as being my beloved blue, while I think of Mother of Pearl as being white.  This is an exquisitely delicate, smooth pale pink which I remembered so well.  I recalled it being studded with tiny “seed pearls” (or some other type of shell which I still cannot identify) and noticed with a trace of melancholy some had fallen off and were missing.  Turning it over, I saw it was just as smooth on the back and I noticed the clever little detail that had always fascinated me:  one of the pointed, spiraled little white shells had been glued at just the precise spot underneath so as to make it level.  I confess I had not immediately given thought to the rise in recent years of “anti-bacterial” soaps in plastic containers.  I now know that eliminating ALL bacteria is actually not a beneficial thing and can leave one actually “weakened” in terms of immunity and protection against germs.  And then there is the issue of all the disposable plastic.  Somehow I figured since we were recycling them it would be OK.  For years I have been concerned, worried, and progressively terrified for our earth’s health and environment.  Of course I’ve been recycling for as long as I can remember, starting with newspapers.  The first Earth Day commenced the year I was born.  But it has only been within the last five years that I began carrying “permanent” bags.  My dad once told me when he was a kid he could remember his grandmother carrying things in bags made from old grain sacks.  I have not eaten seafood since I was three and I have always ADORED shrimp — not to eat, but rather as pets.  They are just so darn cute and I cannot help but think of Jacques the “cleaner shrimp” in both “Finding Nemo” and “Finding Dory.”  For the past several years I have read about all manner of sea creatures dying from pounds of plastic in them.  The plastic accumulating in our oceans and on our beaches has become a global crisis.  According to the Center for Biological Diversity nearly 700 species from seals and birds to turtles and whales have been affected.  I understand it has filtered all the way down to the ocean’s bottom feeders like shrimp and even the tiniest of krill, who are ingesting our used plastic as well.  It seems to me that folks don’t really care enough until they discover that same plastic winds up going back into them.  I have belatedly realized that simply recycling is not enough; real environmental change lies within consumption itself.  I thought back to how much Mama treasured hand-milled soaps.  I realized that, although I had not really used them in years, I had inherited my mother’s affinity for them.  One of the funniest memories I have of my husband is the first time we traveled together.  We were in a lovely hotel and, before he had put his things away I managed to sweep the room like a crime scene.  I can still see him coming out of the shower with water dripping from his tousled, dark hair.  Holding his towel around his waist and looking bemused, I remember him saying, “Hey Baby Doll, this must not be a very nice hotel … they have no soaps!”  Of course he has since caught on to my penchant for keeping small toiletries.  In part, they are mementos of places we’ve been fortunate enough to visit.  Just opening one evokes the scent of that moment and time … Paris, Venice, Santa Fe, San Antonio, New York, Montreal, Québec City, New Orleans, San Francisco, Vancouver, Colorado, Alaska, Florida, London, Spain, Mexico, the Bahamas, and Guatemala that I can recall.  The song, “Everything Old Is New Again” springs to mind.  Among the lyrics:  “Don’t throw the past away, You might need it some rainy day …”  But the part that really sticks for me is, “Let’s go backwards when forward fails.”  I feel we are going “backwards” in many ways and that is not necessarily a bad thing.  We are returning to aboriginal remedies Europeans tried to eradicate (witness the recent bush fires in Australia; Native lands were not touched because they understood the proper burning techniques) as well as a return to ancient gardening techniques used by the Mayans and Aztecs where plants and fish fuel each other symbiotically.  I distinctly remember watching a film in elementary school which touted that Americans were consumers.  I knew even then that simply to “consume” was not a good thing.  And so I have decided to place Mama’s seashell soap dish in our guest bathroom; a small return to my childhood I hope my little girl will enjoy the way I did.  I may only be one person, but I believe together we all can make a difference.  I am going to start being even more conscious of what I put out there, and I am starting by going back to the bar.

Recently my little one and I went to her best friend’s birthday party at the Texas Discovery Gardens.  It is located on the Texas State Fair grounds and, when I was their age, it was essentially the botanical gardens for the city before the later arrival of the Dallas Arboretum.  I vividly remember going with my parents and absolutely loving it.  The two-story building was almost all glass and jammed with all sorts of tropical plants.  I can still feel my feet winding up and down the two narrow, steel staircases tightly spiraling from the upper to the lower level.  They were hidden behind rampant foliage in two corners.  Some would not even attempt them.  Over it all the rush of a roaring waterfall could be heard and I remember delighting in being able to walk behind it.  It was pure enchantment in the days long before the Dallas World Aquarium would have a five-story waterfall plunging dramatically down into a pool of sea turtles and manatees.  I had not been in ages and things, as they are wont to do, had changed.  Now it housed an entire place dedicated to the breeding of butterflies.  It is the first public garden in the state of Texas to be certified 100% organic by the Texas Organic Research Center, maintained using sustainable methods that conserve water and help protect the environment.  Much to my lament, the waterfall had been removed.  I believe they repurposed the basin, as it held a twinge of memory for me from so long ago.  As I wandered the familiar paths I discovered they had an emergence chamber for examining butterfly chrysalises and moth cocoons.  I was glad they’d labeled many of the plants and trees, as I had absolutely no idea what they were.  There was also a honeybee “tree” where one could observe busy bees in their hive making honey through the safety of plexiglass.  I remember at the Dallas Zoo when I was a kid they had an aviary one could enter, with all different sorts of birds flapping wildly all around you.  This was very much the same.  Only the butterflies were so fragile and so ephemeral, we were cautioned to watch where we stepped and not to touch them.  My favorite butterfly has long been the blue morpho, having glorious, bright iridescent blue wings edged with black on one side, while underneath its wings are a plain brown.  Their natural habitat is Central and South America and I learned they actually fly skyward when faced with predators and their wings become shockingly invisible.  Seeing it demonstrated was incredible.  Another species I fell in love with is the owl butterfly, which I was lucky to capture a picture of here.  Known for their huge “eyespots,” they truly look like the eyes of an owl.  Their camouflage, like my beloved blue morpho, is nothing short of amazing.  The American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”  I noticed the kiddos chasing butterflies came up crying and empty-handed.  But for those who sat quietly, their reward was the delicate stir of butterfly wings so close they could reach out and touch them.  I learned a lot from this experience with my child.  There is so much left to discover.