From My Back Door to Yours, the Beauty of Texas Wildflowers

Tags

lupinus texensis, nature, outdoors, plants

The last few weeks have been  a mixture of one unhappy event after another, today I’m putting all the serious thoughts aside, and enjoying the sunnier side of life.  At times taking a breath, stepping back and letting life happen is the right approach.  I intend to discuss all my thoughts of the last weeks but today, I’m heading to the wildflowers in my ‘back 40‘.

My ‘back 40’ is definitely not 40 acres by any stretch of imagination, we have 3 and a half acres and our house and formal (make that somewhat planned) gardens take up the rest.  We do have a large field behind our house.  It could use more tending and if I was a younger woman, oh the delights I could create.  One must have either wealth, youth or be realistic. Making do with what I have and my energy level seems to suit me.

We did take the steps of having the ‘back 40’ seeded when we moved here, not knowing what we really should have done and hiring a man flying by the seat of his pants to do the work, we reaped the not so beautiful results of our mistake.  We were growing every weed seed known to Texas, churned up and brought to fruition;  that was not the plan.  When you tell people your plan and you are a landscape gardener, well, some ‘taking it back’ on my part did take place.  A little humility is not a bad thing, but it’s still not fun!

Texas (Lupinus texensis). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The wild flowers in Texas start if it  is a good season with the outstanding burst of bluebonnets, I had never seen anything like them, they are spectacular and Mother Nature is in control, let me repeat that, Mother Nature (or just nature if you prefer) is controlling this show. Other wild flowers follow, not blue and soft in color but bright and joyous. I haven’t counted the several varieties in our field this year, I’m so grateful that the seeds we did sow years ago have found their way to bloom and give us the best  show to date.  We can’t count on this show for next year, it might bloom but may just as well not.  Depends on ‘Mother’ and it also depends on weed seeds, biannual plants and a wing and a prayer 🙂 So I don’t sound like I’m the only one able to pull off such a riot of color, the roads and ditches of our part of Texas look like a painters palate of color!

Yesterday started as a day of stress in a few areas, my solution is to head to the field, bring the camera, dress for the occasion.  Living in Texas you know that walking in fields with shoulder deep flowering plants you don’t wear your cutest shoes and shorts.  It’s boots, it’s bib overalls, long sleeves and a stick wouldn’t hurt.  Although I arm myself with my camera and I walk carefully.  I’m not afraid of what I might find, I’m hoping I do find something!  Our land isn’t flat so I’m up and down and avoid pot holes (no need to have Hal hopefully searching for me hours later while I languish at the bottom of a sink hole)!  He’s accustomed to me wandering off,  it might take some time for him to realize I was missing:-)  I think a neighbor or two may have seen me poking around back in the field, camera in hand.  I enjoy having just enough land for me to ‘wander’; if I sat down (heaven forbid) I wouldn’t be seen by anyone.  Just think what may go on in that field when we are not looking!  All manner of animal activity, that pleases me.

There are deer paths that I try to follow, even a bedding down place or two.   Not sure why that should make me feel pleasure other than a critter had a nice soft place to sleep and was relatively safe for the night.

Many of the plants grow tall,  over my head!  I’m only 5’4″ so that’s not gigantic but it’s a pretty nice size for a plant.  To photograph these lovelies I need to duck down, hide myself, not from critters but from the unrelenting winds.  If I used better camera equipment like I did years ago I’d perhaps have less problem with the wind, maybe better photos; but my time for fiddling with equipment has passed so I use a simple Panasonic Lumix HD and it serves my needs very well.

I hope that a peek into the wildflowers that have given us pleasure this year also give you a glimpse at how beautiful Central Texas (Cedar Creek) is in the spring, Isn’t it pleasing with all nature can do, good and bad,  it does also entertain us with such beauty?  It pleases me, especially in stressful times.

The East Channel Lighthouse, My Babysitter

Tags

Lake Superior, Lighthouse, Michigan, munising michigan, nature, outdoors, travel, Upper Peninsula of Michigan

The light on the East Channel of Grand Island near Munising Michigan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Times they are a changing, in fact they already have and I suspect the process will continue as long as there are people; we continue to evolve.  Seems at a certain age we look back on the ‘good old days’, time has often softened our memories, which is why they are now good!

When I look back at my childhood growing up in Munising Michigan, a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula it’s always with fondness, even the snow is not so overwhelming; most likely because I no longer have any need to contend with it; even the snow had magical moments.

Munising Bay (Lake Superior) has an extremely beautiful island called Grand Island.  This island for me and for many others holds many special memories.  Families lived on the island, I’m certain they felt it was their own personal piece of heaven and the burial markers that stay in the small cemetery remind us they were there, spent their life, pioneering a heavily wooded, harsh, sometimes icebound island and at that time it was theirs.

Like most islands in large bodies of navigable water this one does have lighthouses to protect ships with their light in the darkest of night.   When I was a child the East Channel Lighthouse felt like it was my own personal structure, it’s light had long gone out.  I knew little of its history, just that my neighbor lady’s father had at one time manned the lighthouse; it hadn’t been used in many years.  It was in terrible condition in the early 1950’s and there were no plans to save or restore it, it was there in my case as a baby sitter.

Ah, a baby sitter?  How can a lighthouse be a baby sitter?  I am here to tell you how that happened to take place.  My mother and her friend Irene VanLandschoot worked during the summer and they had children that needed caring for, we weren’t little girls but we still needed to be occupied during the time of the day our mother’s were working.

When you grow up in Munising you learn to do many things, I don’t even remember how I learned some of my skills, seems they came naturally and many skills did come by trial and error seeing we had much more freedom to explore, and as I’ve mentioned, those times have changed.  One of our abilities was rowing a boat, doesn’t every 10 or 12 year old know how to row a boat on Lake Superior (having learned on smaller lakes I hope).

The VanLandschoot family in Munising, to this day are fisherman, and fisherman set nets way out in Lake Superior (at least they did back then), I believe those laws have changed along with the many other changes that were to come.  Irene, mother’s friend was part of the VanLandschoot fishing family and her daughter Paula Rae was two years younger than me.  Paula had a little brother (his name is Paul but he was called ‘Brother’ at that time) I assume he went with the men on the boat.  It must have seemed a great idea to get these two little girls together for the day and they would be out of trouble and our parents would know exactly where we were!  Problem solved and adventures for Paula and me.  Soon we would be teenagers and most likely wouldn’t have been a way they could have even tempted us to spend the day on the island alone, boring! I don’t remember how many of these trips we took, but enough to give me fond memories and amazement how free we actually were.

On a day that nets were to be set or maybe lifted, I’m not certain, it was a long time ago, it wasn’t one of the fisherman’s longer days, Paula and I would be on the fishing boat, dropped off with a boat to row ourselves onto the beach of Grand Island, pull up our boat and make it safe so the waves wouldn’t blow it away (a real problem) and we settled in right in front of the old lighthouse.   I’m amazed that we even knew how to beach our boat well enough and then to know when we would see the fishing boat returning to get back in our rowboat and meet the boat!  Amazing!  No wonder I won’t leave home without a watch!

We were armed with a bag lunch, some ‘pop’, chips, and cookies or something tasty, our mothers were excellent bakers.  My sandwich was most likely liver sausage and mustard on good old white Bunny Bread.  A great meal for growing girls and as I remember it tasted pretty darn good.   There is something delicious about eating outside!

The freedom to explore an island, walk along the shores of icy Lake Superior, inspect the caves, stand under water dripping from above and to go inside the very ‘spooky’ old East Lighthouse took a lot of time and occupied for the hours we were there. Surrounding the lighthouse  the field was filled with Sweet Williams, still one of my favorite flowers.  My grandmother had them in her garden and at one time someone must have had a flower garden around the old lighthouse.  Have you ever had the pleasure to enjoy the scent of an old-fashioned Sweet William?  I was born a gardener; if there were flowers I would be sure to find them.

Flowers from my garden. Common name: Sweet William Dwarf. Scientific Classification: Class: Magnoliopsida, Order: Caryophyllales, Family: Caryophyllaceae, Genus: Dianthus, Species: Dianthus barbatus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do remember a thunderstorm coming up one day,  if you’ve ever seen a storm whip it’s self up on Lake Superior you would know why Paula and I were a little nervous. We simple got ready and waited watching for the fishing boat and knowing we had to row to meet it.  We always knew that Paula’s father knew where we were and he’d make sure we were safe.  I doubt anyone told us that we were safe, it  was unsaid but understood that Mr.VanLandschoot would let nothing happen to us.

These are wonderful memories; the lighthouse has remained with me always, as special to me today as it is to so many others.  Caring citizens seeing it was going to slowly erode into Lake Superior and of course there are vandals’ even at such pristine and peaceful places have restored it.  It was not long after this time that all Pictured Rocks, which had been free for us to roam, was taken under the protection and preservation of the parks system.  Some of the residents didn’t like this, some did, it is progress and times really do change.

As I write and think about this time in my life all the possible worrisome things that Paula and I could have met left to spend the day on Grand Island with our babysitter the East Lighthouse it’s not with any thought why we were allowed to do such things, It’s how wonderful it was that we could.  Do any of you think that a child today would be allowed to take this venture?  Would parents be considered neglecting their child’s safety?

Pictured Rocks National Park, Miners Castle Photo taken on summer vacation, wonderful weather hot and sunny! hike to misquote bay was wonderful except for of course the misquotes! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)