The Bees are Back

In mid-February the camellia at the northwest corner of our house began to bloom, and as soon as the last polar vortex swept through and the weather began to warm, honey bees were on the flowers. Yesterday I saw bumblebees for the first time this year; two or three bumblebees having joined the honeybees in gathering pollen from the mustard flowers in our large vegetable garden. They should be enjoying the white clover that is beginning to bloom, too. Clover has spread in large patches throughout the east and north sides of our property, and I usually mow around most of it, leaving flowers for bees and the tender leaves for rabbits. This weekend I found two four-leaf clovers, plucked them, and placed them to dry in a paperback copy of Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire. Last year I found twenty or so four-leaf clovers over the course of the spring and early summer.

With highs in the 70s (Fahrenheit) this past week, I was tempted to begin spring gardening, so I took out a couple of packets of nasturtium seed. The directions advise to wait until all danger of frost is past...and another cold front is heading across the country, with a low in the thirties predicted here for Monday night. Will it frost? I don't know. But I planted some nasturtium seeds anyway in flower pots on my patio. I suspect that they will be fine.

The red salvia and blue-gray salvia have sprouted and are leafing out, violets are blooming, johnny jump-ups that reseeded from last year are blooming, and the tender green shoots of bulbs are beginning to poke above ground. We are waiting to see how devastating the freezes have been to our citrus trees, banana trees, lemongrass, and variegated ginger. None of these plants are showing signs of life yet. The white-flowering althea in our back yard is shyly showing a bit of green, unaware of the cold weather still in store for us.

We are still pulling carrots and turnips from the winter vegetable garden; green shallots are flourishing, but the purple mustard greens and other winter greens have been afflicted with tiny bugs. Tom transplanted leeks in the vegetable garden; they seem to be very slow-growing plants. All his habanero, serano, ghost peppers, and tomatillos have sprouted in their temporary containers. He thinned tomato sprouts yesterday, moving some of the extra sprouts to another container for a friend.

The ground remains too wet to do much weed-clearing in the flower beds. Tom dug a hole yesterday in which to plant a live oak sprout, and the clay bottom of the hole quickly gathered water. He emptied the rain gauge and noted that it measured 2.85 inches of water from the last week-and-a-half, and we're expecting more rain this week. Soon, however, temperatures will begin to rise quickly. I hope we'll get a few dry days in a row so that I can have everything ready for some serious planting.

Time to finalize my summer garden plans.

The February Garden

After the bitterly cold weather caused by "southern excursions" of the polar vortex, here in southeast Louisiana temperatures warmed into the upper 70s this week, reminding us of how quickly the weather can change. If the soil were drier, I might have been tempted to get started with spring planting, but another cool spell is predicted, and the soil is just too wet here to do much serious gardening. The Florida parishes, of which St. Tammany is one, are the wettest parishes in the state. Walking in our backyard is like walking on a spring board, only the springs are broken, and one "splooshes" instead of "spronging" in all but the highest areas. However, for a brief window of two or three days, I managed to get some weeding done in my flower and herb beds around the patio and in my 8'X8' raised beds.

Chickweed is especially abundant in the neglected winter garden, and though I have recently learned that it is a tasty green, according to some, I have viewed it as a very pesky and resistant weed, and I spent hours trying to pull it up, as it had spread prolifically over the winter. As I tried to get all the tiny, clinging, web-like roots out of the ground, I noticed I was scattering the seeds everywhere, so I have only ensured a vigorous return when my weeding guard is down. According to a weed management page of an organic gardening website out of the UK, chickweed is very resilient, its buried seed remaining viable "for at least 25 and probably over 40 years." In addition, "individual seed capsules contain around 10 seeds and the average seed number per plant is 2,200 to 2,700." Perhaps I should just develop a taste for chickweed salad.

Because spring can sneak up on one here, I was anxious to do what garden repair I could before the next rainfall. (We discovered that we had already waited too long to plant Irish potatoes, as we hadn't yet even ordered the seed potatoes.) I trimmed all the bushy bits I had left through the fall for the bees and their brown remainders through early winter for the white throated sparrows to hide among--the branches of Mexican marigold mint, red and blue-black salvia, and the mountain mint near the garden shed. Though we hope our banana trees will re-sprout from the roots, nothing above ground survived the freezes, so I hauled off three or four wheelbarrows full of dead banana leaves and rotting trunks. I also removed all the composting pine needles that I had placed on the pathways between my 8'X8' herb beds, putting down a layer of bark from the water oaks Tom has been chopping up for firewood and a layer of fresh pine bark I raked up in our yard and a neighbor's lot nearby.

sprucing up the garden paths--a layer of bark and then a layer of pine needles (hope I'm not creating cozy homes for slugs)

Then it was on to pulling weeds from the flower bed around the patio and rearranging the outdoor display I re-work every spring, among which I place my potted plants, which are staying warm yet in the sunroom. As soon as the weather settles, I'll move those plants to the north side of the patio and plant seeds--especially nasturtiums--in my other flower pots.

patio arrangement, northside--pots and bottomless basket waiting for seed planting

garden art: folk artist Butch Anthony's square globe and my cousin Karen's earthen habitats

I tried weeding the circular bed around the cedar post bird feeder, but the ground was still sloppy wet. Dill seed had sprouted during the winter, and though the plants had been beaten back by freezes that dipped into the teens, several plants had survived, so I pulled out the weeds around them and left the rest of the flower bed for a warmer and drier day.

Forecasts for next week are suggesting that we will have lows in the twenties, so I'm glad that I postponed any planting or moving the biggest pot plants outdoors. At 6 p.m., today, however, the weather app on my computer tells me that the temperature is in the low 60s, and tomorrow will be a sunny day for the local Mardi Gras parade. I'm just happy that the rain forecast for the end of this week has waited to make its entrance--according to an updated forecast--to Sunday, and I was able to take advantage of these drier, warmer days here at the tail end of a Louisiana winter.

flower bed at the north end of the patio--I'll move the potted plants out here when the weather has settled.

east side of the house: 8'X8' raised herb beds, new pole with bird feeders on the right, new bluebird house in the back

Persephone taking advantage of a warm afternoon on the patio

one of two baskets of tomato seeds that Tom the federal worker planted --they sprouted in the space of two warm days on the patio

Gulf Coast Toad--I caught this fellow out early one morning

Tom's row garden still producing turnips, carrots, onions, mustard greens, some lettuce...and chickweed

Dispelling the Winter Blues

The weather widget on my computer tells me that it's 60^oF outside as I type late this morning, but I've got a fire going in the woodstove in the study. It's just a dreary, rainy, January day, and a fire's cozy warmth keeps the soggy damp and its accompanying winter blues at bay. January is an awful month here in southeast Louisiana--rain, rain, rain. "With an annual statewide-average rainfall of approximately 60 inches per year," writes John M. "Jay" Grimes in "Precipitation Patterns Over the Bayou State," only Hawaii receives more rain on an average statewide basis." January and June vie for the title of rainiest month of the year. Our yard, inhabited by subterranean warm-blooded creatures that like to burrow, soaks up this rain like a sponge, all those tiny tunnels filling with water and creating a surface that makes one suspicious of its ability to hold one's weight. I tried pulling winter weeds on Saturday, and the first layer of soil just peeled back like a Gaia facial peel, the thin layer of topsoil rising intact with the webby roots of the weeds.

Another antidote to the winter blues is the occasional sunny day, such as the one we experienced yesterday, clear, cool, and balmy by noon, when Tom the federal worker and I decided to pack a simple lunch and go on a hike. Every time I think of retiring to northern Minnesota, where we lived for two years, I remember that such a day is never available in January in the Land of 10,000 Lakes--unless global warming gets a lot worse in my lifetime (which I understand might be possible).

We drove to Boy Scout Road in Lacombe, LA, and parked in the gravel lot near the boardwalk that winds through this portion of the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. Several vehicles were already parked there, and a large family of several adults and young children disembarked a double-cab pickup as we drove up. That group decided to take the boardwalk while Tom and I opted for the gravel surface of Boy Scout Road which follows the edge of the grassy pine savanna that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains with prescribed burns.

Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, pine savanna at Boy Scout Road, Lacombe, LA (12 Jan. 2014)

We took our time, pulling our binoculars out of the backpack to get close-up views of yellow-rumped warblers and red-bellied woodpeckers. Robins also flocked the woods, startling into flight ahead of us, and on our walk back mid-afternoon, we were serenaded by red-winged blackbirds, heard flickers and doves calling, and  got a glimpse of a ruby-crowned kinglet. We took one of the side roads into the timber until the water got too deep for us to venture much further without getting our feet wet and returned to the main road.

wet timber road on Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge

the high, dry, and recently graded Boy Scout Road

The road continues to a lookout point over the marsh and Lake Pontchartrain toward New Orleans and then winds through pines that eventually give way to hardwoods as the road gets closer to Bayou Lacombe. When we got to the Bayou, I lay flat on the ground, soaking up the afternoon sun while Tom took some photos of the old broken bricks that lay scattered on the banks.

Tom took this photo of the view of New Orleans from the observation deck on Boy Scout Road

On our walk, Tom had pointed out "borrows" filled with water, where road crews had dug up soil to build the road. And he remembered an old professor at Louisiana State University telling a class that he couldn't understand why these holes were called "borrows," as the soil was never returned to its point of origin. When I had stopped to take a photo of a small pond, Tom told me that the depression was not natural, that it was what remained of a clay pit. Someone had told him that local clay had been dug out there to make bricks which were then carted off on boats to build the French Quarter. In a later brief search on the Internet, I couldn't find any support for the claim that the bricks had been used to build the French Quarter, but I did find lots of references to brick-making from clay in the area. And the bricks on the banks of Bayou Lacombe attested to that, as well. I also found a downed tree whose roots were exposed and wrapped around old pieces of brick.

Tom took this photo of bricks on the banks of Bayou Lacombe at the end of Boy Scout Road.

We lingered there at the banks of Bayou Lacombe, lazily waving at a boat full of people that passed on its way up the bayou from Lake Pontchartrain. And now as I remember the clear sky and warm sun, today's gloom seems a little lighter. The fire has been reduced to a few glowing embers in the woodstove, and the temperature has climbed one degree to 61^oF. I think I'll let the fire die and save the wood for a colder, gloomier January day.

First Notes of January

January 2014

The last time I posted an entry on my blog, bees were still visiting my herbs and flowers. Now we're already almost two weeks into the new year, and the polar vortex that covered so much of the northern and eastern parts of the country left its print on southeast Louisiana as well. For two nights, temperatures plummeted into the teens. We covered our citrus and fig trees with blankets, old tablecloths and sheets to keep them from freezing. The banana trees will have to come back from the roots. Last night's rain has created a soggy mess in our yard and gardens. I went out this afternoon for a few minutes to note that the small dill plants that had sprouted earlier in the season are droopy but still living, and much of my flower and herb beds are covered with winter weeds.

This is a dispiriting time of the year in our area. Even when the weather is temperate, such as it was today, soggy ground prevents one from clearing out weeds and debris in the gardens. It's difficult to imagine how beautiful and green the gardens will be in the spring, but this is the time for that kind of dreaming.  Gardening catalogues get me through January. By late February, I should be out in the garden preparing for spring.

Meanwhile, we are excited to have had frogs move into the little pond near our patio. This is a pond that previously had been in a half-whiskey barrel on the patio. We took out the plastic liner and dug a hole for it in the bed near the patio, so now that it's at ground level it's within hopping reach of frogs. The chirping of the frogs brighten these dull January days. Today I managed, after several tries, to get the song of the frogs on video. Just as I would sneak up to turn on the camera, the frogs would be startled and become silent, but I placed the camera on a windowsill in the house, overlooking the patio, and took this video through the glass (and not so clean) window. However, Tom the federal worker is not convinced that these are our pond frogs calling. They might be tree frogs near the house. (Note: The frogs calling are spring peepers, not the ones that are in our patio pond.)


Our cat, Persephone, spends much of the winter days lounging in the house. "Talk to the paw," she says in the photo below.

November in my Soul

Unlike Ishmael in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, I don't get a hankering to go to sea when the drizzly weather of November sets in. For one thing, November in southeast Louisiana (and other southern places I have lived) can often be very pleasant, sunny, clear, and cool at the beginning of the month and nippy and perhaps a bit frosty at the end. Also, I am a November baby; November is my state of being, a bit melancholic to begin with,  and so the shorter days and longer nights leading up to Winter Solstice seem right homey.

Here in our little patch of southeast Louisiana, we've had some cool weather dipping into the Fahrenheit 30s but no freeze yet, and so the fall tomatoes we planted with little hope this year continue to bloom and have set tiny fruit, the banana trees still bear their small green fruit, and the basil and red salvia are still attracting honeybees and bumblebees. On cool evenings, I will find several bumblebees clinging to basil flowers, soporous with cold. They will be gone in the warmth of next day's sun.

This morning Tom the federal worker,  who gets out of bed at an unholy early hour, fired up the new woodstove we had installed in the fireplace that is now in our study. The fireplace didn't move, but our study did. The previous owners used the room with the fireplace as a bedroom, and so did we for two years. This made sense, as the room led directly to what is commonly called the "master" bath. We have never understood, however, the modern convention of making the bedroom so comfy that one would want to spend waking hours holed up in it, so two weeks ago we had a woodstove installed in the fireplace and one week ago we moved our study into the room with the fireplace and our bedroom into what was once my study. Now we can work at our desks in this comfy room with radiant heat. And with a bit of cozy seating, we can enjoy a fire while reading a book or visiting with the young'uns who plan to wander in at various times during the holidays.

The bees have to wait for their radiant heat, but we can create our own.

This morning's fire--the day will heat up enough to let this fire die down, though.

November in southeast Louisiana is still gardening weather. Summer's zinnias have browned up and gone to the compost, but their seedlings are flowering. Flower spikes on the basil tower four or eight inches above their still leafy stems as seeds begin to dry and scatter. The tithonia, towering above the cedar post on which we've placed a flat pan for bird seed, is brown and withered, but a few flowers and green leaves remain. Underneath it have sprouted many tiny tithonia plants, its hopeful children which will likely not survive a freeze unless I cover them. The fall and winter plants are doing well in our big garden: a half row of mixed greens are already making fine salads; the green onion leaves are bright and stiff with oniony goodness; turnips roots are growing; mustard greens have already been mustered (sorry!) into delicious stir fries. We hope to have radishes soon.

Last weekend we dug 86 pounds of sweet potatoes from the big garden. Moving all that furniture did a number on Tom the federal worker's back, so I did most of the digging. But Tom couldn't resist turning over some of that dirt with a garden fork, then scrabbling through the upturned soil for the red and pink gold underneath. We had our first baked sweet potatoes not long after; I like to add butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar on mine. Soon I will be making sweet potato pie, and Tom the federal worker will make sweet potato biscuits and his wonderful red lentil soup with baked pieces of sweet potato added.

86 pounds of sweet potatoes

November in southeast Louisiana--with its occasional cool and clear days, occasional wet and gray days and fall garden bounty--does not inspire me to wander. The hot, dry days of August and September do that....creating a melancholic depression no frosty fall or somber winter day can match. If I ever get the hell out of the South again, it will be during one of those summer months, when November seems far away and my soul dry and shriveled like the meat in an overlooked pecan shell.

Sweet Potato Pie

2 cups cooked and mashed sweet potatoes

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon butter, melted

1 tablespoon flour

2 teaspoons cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon nutmeg (oh, what the heck, I usually add 1 teaspoon)

1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 can evaporated milk

Mix these ingredients and pour into an unbaked pie shell. (I always make my own). Bake at 425^o for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350^o and bake for 30 minutes or until done. (Insert a toothpick to check.)

Here is another variation of sweet potato pie that my family likes, as well.

Another Slightly Different Version of Sweet Potato Pie

2 cups sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed

1/2 teaspoon vanilla (I usually add 1 teaspoon)

1/2 cup cream (Mama uses evaporated milk, as I do)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter, melted

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (again, I tend to be a little generous here)

2-3 eggs

Mix all together, beating well. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Cook at 350^o about 35 minutes or until done. (Mashed sweet potatoes can be frozen for future use. Cook and mash and place in freezer bags, enough in each for one pie.)

There are fancier sweet potato pie recipes, but I have found that my family prefers these simple recipes. I have smashed peppermint candy and sprinkled that on top before baking, and that's good, too.

Autumn Note: The Pollinators that Remain

mist flowers, my favorite fall blooms: They fill the ditches in Louisiana.

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the climate would collapse into chaos."  E. O. Wilson

There were a couple of fairly cool days during the government shutdown, one in which Tom the federal worker and I went kayaking on a local bayou, but shortly after that, as if in sympathy with the inflamed rhetoric on Capitol Hill, warm weather returned. Then clouds rolled in as federal employees returned to work, and rain followed on Friday evening and Saturday morning. However, by noon today, blue sky began to show through the clouds and cool weather prevailed. Highs have been in the 70s, and I am beginning to get over the malaise that usually visits me (in the South) off and on from mid-July until the first really cool day of fall. The work that paid the bills might have been on hiatus, but the work around our house continued during the shutdown, and I noticed that many pollinators were still buzzing around the herbs still flowering in my herb beds.

I had noticed that these beautiful blue-bodied skipper butterflies began showing up, attracted particularly to the purple hyacinth bean flowers in one of my herb beds. The bumblebees, while still present, seemed fewer in number, and slower, as if they were at the end of their lifespan and were saving energy to keep going a little longer. I would see them clinging to basil and salvia flowers, inert for long minutes at a time.

bumble bee on basil: The bumble bees seem tired, slow to respond at the end of what might be their life spans.

When I startled these bumble bees, they would eventually fly off, illustrating that they still had it in them to keep going for a while longer. Others seemed a little more energetic, collecting pollen and nectar from the one tithonia that had survived from the seeds I planted in late spring. In his book, A Sting in the Tale, Dave Goulson writes that while queen bees hibernate for the winter, males "are doomed to be short-lived, for with summer's end approaching, they have no way of surviving the winter."

bumble bee on tithonia

Honeybees are still very energetically visiting the blooms that remain in the garden: a few portulacas, basil, tarragon, purple hyacinth beans, tomatillos, blue and red salvias, and some lilies with very deep throats, too deep for the ordinary honey bee snout to reach. From Dave Goulson's book about bees and from research online, I have learned that bees will compensate for their lack of long snouts by biting deep-throated flowers at the base (or stem) of the flower, going directly to the nectar and bypassing the whole gathering-pollen bit: not so great for the flowers depending upon pollinators to help them multiply, but pretty canny of the bees. Thus, I was quite excited to see this bee behavior in action in my herb garden. The thick necks of some lily blooms, too tough for puncturing, however, seemed to perplex the honeybees. Several spent hours buzzing around these lilies, trying to get at the nectar deep within the the throats of the lilies.

Honey bee gouging the base of a blue salvia flower, going straight to the nectar.

The honeybee's snout is really no match for the deep throat of this lily.

However,the bee was very determined. After watching for several minutes, I pulled the petals apart a bit to see how he would respond.

Here is a side view of that determination.

Face-off 1

Face-off 2

As the days get cooler, I plan to keep close watch in my gardens to determine just when the last pollinators bid farewell to the final flowers of fall. Until I began paying attention to the smallest creatures in my yard, I had never really thought of how much of life continues around us, affected by how we treat the environment but not much concerned about us, otherwise, in the daily struggles (and, perhaps, even joys) of existence.

Life as Usual

photo by Tom the federal worker

Tom the federal worker got the call from his boss just minutes before time to leave for work on Thursday morning. Of course, he was already dressed and ready to go by 6 a.m., since we had read online the evening before that a debt limit bill was close to passing, that a vote on the continuing resolution to fund the government under sequestration would also pass, and that federal employees would be expected to be at work the following day. Tom spent the entire day, he said, trying to catch up with a project that had been put on hold, that required public meetings to be rescheduled. I spent the morning preparing a bed for some loropetalum bushes Tom was planning to transplant as a screen along our property line behind the newly-built wood rack. The soil was a little compacted there, and Tom had dug up the area the day before; I broke up the clods of dirt with a shovel, turned over the soil to fluff it up, pulled out the grass, and added compost. We planted the bushes that evening after Tom got home from work.

And so we're back to our usual routine.

One of my Facebook friends referred to these two weeks as "paid vacation" for federal employees. It's often difficult to judge tone accurately in FB posts, even with emoticons, but the response, following as it did a comment from another friend who expressed sympathy for those who had gone without pay for two weeks (and longer, as paychecks won't be on schedule for a while), struck me as flippant--similar to the unsympathetic attitude folks often have about public school teachers and summer break. Teachers may not get paid well, but at least they get the summer off, these people often say when teacher compensation comes up in conversation. Of course, as most of us know, especially those of us who have been teachers, the hours are very long, as one inevitably takes the work home, and many weeks of the summer months are spent preparing for the following school year.

In retrospect, now that the shutdown is over, and Tom and other federal workers are on the job once again, getting back pay, the two-week duration seems almost like vacation--but it certainly didn't feel like vacation at the time. Our vacations are often long-planned events, in which we save up money to get the hell out of Dodge. During these past two weeks, we couldn't go far, as Tom had to be ready to return to work as soon as Congress and the President could clinch a deal. And how about those federal employees  living from paycheck to paycheck on salaries near the bottom of the federal payroll? Did worrying about imminent bills feel like a vacation to them? Many were also concerned about work piling up, important duties not being performed. And since no one knew, really, when the shutdown would be over, anxiety about those bills and commitments remained high throughout the ordeal.

The sequester, which many Americans probably don't think about at all, further fuels the anxieties of federal workers. As The New York Times explains, the sequester:

emerged from the refusal of House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 without significant deficit reduction. In response, the two parties agreed to the Budget Control Act, which cut domestic spending over the next 10 years by about $1 trillion. Democrats refused to agree to more cuts without additional revenue from taxes, and Republicans refused to agree to tax increases.

Instead, Congress set up a committee to find further deficit reduction. To push the committee to reach a deal, negotiators established a fallback mechanism meant to be so onerous it would never happen: $1.2 trillion in across-the-board, automatic cuts to both military and domestic programs, set to begin this year. (Jonathan Weisman,"Answers to Questions on Capitol's Top Topic," The New York Times  21 February 2013.)

So the sequester sets up this 10-year, 1.2 trillion, across-the-board, indiscriminate schedule of cuts, $85 billion which was to be put into effect this year. As the Times article points out, the cuts can't be targeted toward particular ineffective or redundant programs: all programs suffer. This deal was supposed to be so catastrophic that Congress would be forced to agree on a budget.....but that hasn't happened yet. Republicans want even more cuts, and Democrats want to raise taxes on those who can afford it (those who came out of the economic crisis with even more of the American pie). With the Budget Control Act, Republicans got catastrophic cuts with the sequester, the Democrats, not so much. Thus, we have the Continuing Resolution of the sequestration, under which the government is currently funded. That is what was up for a vote by the end of September; that's what shut the government down first--the Republicans' wanting to tack onto the CR outrageous policy demands: defunding (essentially, getting rid of) the Affordable Care Act (aka, ObamaCare), privatizing Medicare, approving Keystone XL, preserving all the Bush tax cuts while slashing funding for food stamps, among others. The vote on the CR ran into the deadline on the debt limit, which, if defaulted, would have been even more catastrophic than a shutdown.

Thus, the view that Republicans were holding the country hostage to radical demands from the far-right is not an exaggeration.

The sequester has already impacted federal programs. People have lost their jobs; others have faced furloughs (before the shutdown) and reduced pay. This is what federal workers also had in the back of their minds as the country went into shutdown mode. (For an objective look at the effects of sequestration, you can go to the website of the Pew Charitable Trusts and search "impact of sequester.") Tom the federal worker had a meeting with his colleagues and bosses in the summer to discuss how the cuts under sequestration would affect jobs in his particular branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The conclusion: uncertain, not good. Advice: keep your eyes open for other jobs in the near future. This is happening all throughout the federal government, and people are worrying about their livelihoods. These worries were there before the shutdown and were exacerbated by the shutdown.

Another shutdown looms as the next deadline for voting on the CR approaches in January. Radical Republicans will still probably use the lives of federal workers and their families (and those of millions of Americans who benefit from federal programs) and the economic stability of our country as bargaining chips in their demands.

Yes, life has returned to what counts for normal these days.

On the 16th Day (NOT "home watching Netflix or whatever")

morning run

Yes, Tom the federal worker has been home these 16 days of shutdown of the United States, but except for our usual internet-accessed film viewing through Roku in the evenings (saw 56 Up last night on POV; League of Denial on PBS earlier in the week), he has not been vegging, as Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) imagines federal workers doing all day while they've been locked out of the work that pays the bills. Tom has continued chopping and splitting the wood from the downed water oaks, and the newly built wood rack is filling up. I spent yesterday cleaning up the mess of having two water oaks expire on our lawn, picking up all the limbs not big enough for firewood and stacking them on a pile for burning (which is legal to do in this small Louisiana town as long as the fire is out by night), raking all the dead leaves and spreading them as mulch around our little citrus grove, and then mowing the yard. The lawn mower gas tank that Tom ordered was delivered, and Tom repaired the lawn mower for me. He also sharpened the blades. And he expanded the wood rack. It was a busy day.

Today has been much the same.

Tom has also begun training this week for the Rock and Roll marathon in New Orleans, scheduled for February 2, 2014. When he is working and being paid by the government, he runs in the evenings, with longer runs on weekends. But since he has been home on weekdays during the shutdown, he often runs in the mornings. I accompanied him on my bicycle this morning for a four-mile run. Although rain is forecast for this afternoon and later in the week, it was a beautiful clear morning, with a light breeze. Fall-blooming flowers brightened the edges of The Tammany Trace.

I especially love the fall-blooming mist flowers and the dainty asters forming delicate, lacy sprays. The south portion of our property is full of fall-flowering plants: dog fennel, mist flower, asters, goldenrod, clematis (probably an exotic).  Before we bought the property, the area was kept less weedy by the presence of azaleas. We allowed the previous owners to remove many azaleas after we bought the lot, and, unfortunately, the man who did the work for them created deep, compacted ruts in muddy soil, making the area impossible to mow with an ordinary lawn mower. Last year, I cut down all the weedy growth twice with a swing blade, but this year, I didn't, and the area is almost impenetrable. It wouldn't be so bad except that exotic mimosa is also growing freely among the native plants. In very early spring we marked with pink flagging all the native plants and azaleas that we wanted to keep, with plans to clear the area, but we were too busy with other projects. I imagine that we could keep many of the fall-flowering plants--even the dog fennel, which Tom doesn't like much--to create a soft weedy edge to the lot, but it will take a lot of work and planning to do so--maybe during the next government shutdown--which seems as likely to happen as this one has.

Dog fennel and goldenrod on the edge of the south lot

The day is not over as I'm typing this, and while a debt ceiling deal seems to be in the works, the votes aren't in. But the government shutdown isn't the only threat to paychecks of federal workers. Sequestration has already negatively impacted federal jobs and will continue to do so. All the brou-ha-ha and crocodile tears of some Republicans over national monuments being closed was laughable to anyone who has been keeping up with the effects of sequestration.  It's just so much theater for people whose jobs and livelihood aren't affected.

Meanwhile, here in southeast Louisiana, Tom is still waiting for that call (on his personal phone since he had to turn in his work phone before leaving the office October 1st) directing him back to work. We sure are getting a lot of chores done.

limbs too small for the wood rack go up in smoke

the wood rack complete, with two stacks full

How many more government shutdowns do we need to get this wood split?

On the 13th day of the Shutdown of our Country

Tom splitting wood

 Although his work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is piling up as Republicans refuse to fund our country to pay its bills as long as their extreme policy demands aren't met, Tom managed to get quite a bit of work done here at home. He made some headway into the huge chore of sawing up and then splitting the wood of the two water oaks downed on the south side of our property, and he started stacking split wood in the wood rack that he built yesterday. My job was to gather up wood in a wheelbarrow and tote it to the wood stack, where Tom could then stack the wood. He's the professional woodstacker; I just loaned my muscles for the grunt work.

After a few days of cool weather, warm weather had returned, with highs in the upper 80s. 

Tom's wood rack

One of the disappointments of the weekend was the cancellation of Wildthings, an event that thousands of people look forward to every fall; it takes place on the grounds of the Bayou Lacombe Centre, the headquarters of the Southeast Louisiana National Wildlife Refuges. Last year about 5,000 people attended, many of them children. The event includes a wildlife art contest, with participants from nearby schools, vendors, lots of activities for children, music, food, and opportunities for people to explore Bayou Lacombe on canoes that launch into the bayou from the Centre's grounds. Many people at the headquarters worked very hard for months to make this year's event the best ever: only the event was cancelled, as so many such events are being cancelled around the country.

We heard from our son that his research at a flagship university in Texas has also been affected by the shutdown. His grant is funded by a company that has a contract with the Air Force; he received a work stop-order on his research until this year's budget is approved by Congress. He cannot order any supplies with the designated grant money. Such halts on research are happening all over the country. James Fallows has been sharing readers' reports on just such issues: See "Weekend Shutdown Reader: Lest We Forget," and "Sunday Shutdown Reader: Harold Varmus on Self-Destruction in the Sciences," among others.

Hard work, however, helps keep us emotionally and mentally balanced here on our one acre of land in the middle of a small town in southeast Louisiana. I just worry about the many people even more vulnerable than we are to the vicissitudes of irresponsible, radical politics.

By late morning, Tom has almost filled the first tier of the wood rack. (I should add here that he didn't split all this wood in one day.)

By afternoon, the first tier of the wood rack is almost full.

By early evening, I've hauled cut wood from the front of the lot to the wood stack, and the second tier is beginning to fill.

But there was still time to play.

Final note: As James Fallows writes: "And the situation could have been solved at any point if John Boehner had only brought a budget measure for a vote in the House. "

On the 10th Day of the Takeover of our Country by the Minority Party

Today the sun is obscured behind a damp, gray sky. Tom made coffee and biscuits, and we sat on the patio talking about the events that have led to his being home on a weekday. When the local school bus passed, Tom said, "It's weird to hear the school bus," as he is always long gone to work with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service by then, always arriving at his office by 7 a.m.. He began to notice other sounds of the weekday morning that he is usually not home to hear, such as the strange "Close Encounters" chime of a business or school ringing through the woods [I've yet to identify the source]. Yesterday, on the 9th day of the takeover, he began the process of repairing our lawn mower, which had sprung a leak in the fuel tank; he ordered a replacement fuel tank, and began the work of repairing the grass deflector on the side of the mower. He measured the chimney so that he could calculate the amount of steel lining we would need for the wood stove, which he also ordered. He planted bok choy seeds in the garden, hoed some weeds, and in the evening, went for a six-mile run. Today he plans to continue chopping wood and begin building a wood rack.

Meanwhile, I will continue the fall clean-up of the garden areas that I began yesterday, trying to keep at some emotional distance my increasing dismay over how the Republican party has brought our country to a halt. This is no longer just a "government shutdown" to me; it's a hostile takeover, a hijacking of the democratic process and an attack on a million American families whose breadwinners work for the federal government. Republicans are trying to put the blame on President Obama, but since they've been playing this card since at least 2011 and planning this takeover for months, only the politically naive, ideologically blinkered, or easily bamboozled  are convinced. In 2012, President Obama won re-election with a majority of the American vote. Not able to win the presidency at the polls, even with intense gerrymandering, Republicans have resorted to holding the whole country hostage to their policy demands. First, they wanted to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., ObamaCare); now they're talking about cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Remember the sequestration (which we are still under)? The cuts brought on by sequestration were already affecting the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service; we weren't sure whether or not Tom's job would continue beyond next year. The takeover and total shutdown of the government on October 1st just adds more to that insecurity.

Need a review of the sequestration? Links below.  I have a yard to clean up.

• February 20, 2013: "The Sequester: Absolutely Everything You Could Possible Need to Know, in One FAQ," by Dylan Matthews, at Wonkblog, The Washington Post.

• February 21, 2013: Answers to Questions on Capital's Top Topic," Jonathan Weisman, The New York Times.

• February 28, 2013: "A Graphic Guide to the Sequester," Christie Thompson, ProPublica.

• May 7, 2013: "Everything We Know About What's Happened Under Sequestration," Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica.

Tom surveys his fall vegetable garden on his 10th day off work

Some Thoughts on Public Lands (from a kayak on a bayou)

(photo by Tom)

On the eighth day of the government shutdown, we went fishing....or rather, Tom did. I took along pen, paper, a book about bees (A Sting in the Tale, by Dave Goulson), and a camera. Although we thoroughly enjoyed our approximately nine miles of leisurely paddle, Tom didn't catch anything worth keeping, and listening to NPR on the drive back home, we learned that Congress hadn't passed a continuing resolution to keep last year's budget, and the country was still heading toward default on the debt. But at least we had spent a pleasant day paddling in our kayaks on Bayou Lacombe. I drifted for a while and wrote the following (slightly edited):

We headed to Bayou Lacombe some little time before 8 a.m. and set in at the Main Street boat ramp in Lacombe, south of US 190. The morning was cool and bright. Our plan was to paddle upstream toward the back door of the Bayou Lacombe Centre, the headquarters of the Southeast Louisiana National Wildlife Refuges. Because of the shutdown, the front doors were closed, but the waterway is state land, open to the public. We weren't going to go on the refuge--just peek in the back door from the bayou.

Bayou Lacombe

The first lesson we learned is one we knew but hadn't heeded sufficiently--bayous are twisty and tricksy. We got all the way up to a low bridge on US 190 before we realized we had been traveling a tributary. The bridge was not only too low for us to go under it easily; the water on the other side was not our destination. So we turned back and paddled almost to the boat ramp, finding the branch of the bayou we needed to get to our destination. The US 190 bridge over the main tributary has a much higher clearance, and we made our way under. We still found ourselves going in a circle, as we circumnavigated an island just north of 190, near a house we had looked at when we were house-hunting in 2010. However, the signs of the national wildlife refuge soon appeared. Tom found a shady spot in which to cast his fishing line, and I paddled upstream, taking photos. Kingfishers flew ahead of me, skimming the surface of the bayou. I startled up some mallards, and several anhingas crossed overhead, their necks taut with alarm.

Bayou Lacombe

I am writing this now while in my kayak, drifting. Tom is still trying to catch some fish, though he isn't having much luck. He caught a couple of sunfish that he threw back. It's probably near 1 p.m., if not a little after. We aren't too far from I-12 [we were actually farther than I thought; the bayou twists and turns through the landscape], as I hear traffic in the distance, as well as heavy machinery on the cleared land we passed. I wonder if that's the site of the new waste transfer facility that local people tried to prevent being located too close to this waterway. [still not sure what the cleared area is]

On Bayou Lacombe, one is never far from the sounds and impact of "civilization," but the lands of the refuge provide a respite from the crowd-weary and a haven for wildlife. It's in places such as this, I think, that one can really see the benefit of public lands, lands that are easily accessed by people living in urban areas not so far away. Kids of the middle-class, working class, and working poor in New Orleans can attend the educational events at the Bayou Lacombe Centre. The waterway is accessible to them and not just to the rich folk with their pleasure boats and huge yachts tied up to their docks downstream.

Big boats and little boats on Bayou Lacombe (photo by Tom)

 Wilderness has its pleasures for those with the leisure, modes of transportation, and camping gear to access the backcountry, but wild life refuges at the back door of urban areas provide access for those with limited resources. This is one of the true purposes of public lands--beyond the purpose of maintaining wild areas for the native flora and fauna that would otherwise disappear under the heel of unchecked development. Without these public lands, only the wealthy and well-connected could enjoy the beauties of land kept undeveloped with their monied interests. Every scenic view would be occupied by those who could pay dearly for the privatized pleasure.

Bayou Lacombe

Those who support the radicals in their pursuit of a government shut down and debt crisis don't seem to understand this. They complain about major monuments and national parks being closed yet do not appreciate the human power that maintains those public spaces, from the person who cleans the toilets at the visitor centers to the person who manages the staff who conserve and care for those lands.

duck box and its reflection on the edge of the refuge

During this shutdown, many people have complained about government websites that have been shut down, too. Well, I think every government website should be shuttered as long as the shutdown lasts: those websites are created by content experts as well as computer technology. Those content experts are federal employees, scientists and educators whose expertise is made available to the public. Without adequate funding this expertise would not be shared so readily. Let the public see how our lives would be greatly diminished without these resources, without these public lands, without the government funds that pay federal employees  . . . .

One of the casualties of the shutdown, cancellation of an event that thousands of people look forward to every fall at the Bayou Lacombe Centre

Michele Bachmann has been on the  radio talking about how these are the "End Times," and how we should be happy--"Maranatha, thank you, Jesus," she says. It is very disturbing that people such as she are eager to shut down the U. S. government and not raise the debt limit. Chaos just brings them closer to heaven. Is it any wonder that far-right Christians are anti-government? They don't really think they need to examine the long-term consequences of their actions. They think Jesus will rescue them from their folly in clouds of glory. [I grew up in a similarly End-Times-infused culture, so I know about its power and appeal.]

illuminated cypress and its reflection on Bayou Lacombe: what's up and what's down?

Having written down some of the thoughts that had been swirling around in my head, I finished the paddle in a more optimistic frame of mind, despite the less than cheerful news we heard later on the radio and read online. We pulled our kayaks out of the bayou around 3:30 p.m. Tom caught only a gar and several undersized sunfish. But it was a good day.

Tom showing off the gar he caught; he let it go.