With a Little Help From Our Spider Friend

It never ceases to amaze me how nature finds a way to balance itself ...and us.

Michael and I were enjoying an early morning breakfast on the deck with our niece Paige who was visiting. We made her our favorite homemade oatmeal mixed with yogurt, granola, and berries, alongside juice and fresh coffee from our latest travels to North Carolina.  Paige was filling us in on her freshmen year experiences at University of Vermont and she was happy.  It is energizing to talk to a young adult who is  happy with where they're at and where they're going. Paige has decided to switch majors from NeuroScience to Biomedical Anthroplogy...who even knew that was an option?  Sounds exciting!  Spring is in full bloom and the feel of summer was felt in the warm breeze coming across the table. We remarked how glorious of a morning it was...what joy...we're all smiles. The breeze gets breezier and brings pine needles down upon us...pine needles and something else pelleting our skin, like seeds of some sort.  We are curious to what is blowing in the wind and it takes a delayed second to realize that what is falling down on us is moving...teeny, tiny white worms, all curled in fetal position, landing on our arms, in our hair, in our oatmeal and juice...literally, there were hundreds of them...think Hitchcock here.

Okay, so gross.  A delightful morning turned horror film.  We scurried indoors, picked off any of the curly critters we could find, and searched for them on Google.  Bagworms or Winter Moths...both like Birch trees and Pine trees, both of which have boughs hanging high above our deck.  We have since found out that they are Winter Moths and after they chomp on all the leaves they can find, these Eric Carle caterpillars will burrow in the ground and hibernate until Fall. Ugghh!

We have now found them, bigger and plumper, foraging away at our beloved roses.  Winter Moths also love rose bushes. This is not good.  The Birch and Pine trees are bad enough but the delicate rose bushes have us worried. We pick them off and squish them by hand...much easier to stay calm around these Hitchcockian creatures when they are not in hordes. Daily, we find at least a dozen...but yesterday we noticed a most intricate silk thread design between the lattice fence and a rose leaf...a spider friend has come to save the day.  This is how nature figures it out.  Worms eat rose bushes, spiders eat worms, and the beauty of nature prevails. Can it be this simple?  I think often times it can.  It may not be as perfect as a red, red rose,but we too, can figure it out. We do have the insecticide with the picture of the worm handy, but our friend Charlotte taught us nature's greatest lesson...patience.

This leads to one of our other trials of gardening...our first year wildflower garden...trying to recreate a wildflower field reminiscent of the field we pick from, that Michael picked from on the morning of our wedding. We sowed seeds from several packets eight weeks ago and believed all we had were weeds.  I know many of you feel that a weed is a wildflower looking for a home, and that can be true...but these were not flowering weeds, and, well, we wanted a colorful wildflower garden.  The spiky Candida Thistle were not yielding to be picked for an airy bouquet. Not all weeds are created equal (but that's writing for another day). Here comes the patience part....we discovered a poppy in our field...it was rolled into a little orange conical hat, and there were several of them.  Today they opened to the sun.

"Adopt the pace of Nature.  Her secret is patience."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have patience carrot friends!

Patience of a Raisin

It takes one month and twenty-three days for a cluster of grapes to become raisins.  That is how long it took us to make our own raisins.  We were staying at a chic boutique hotel in NYC last month and ordered oatmeal for breakfast, our favorite. Atop the milky oats, were the plumpest raisins we've ever seen, and we were surprised when we had trouble getting them on our spoon.  That is because they were still attached to a stem. Homemade raisins...what a great idea!

We like to take something of our travels back home with us, and not always something material, but a creative idea or an inspiration sparked by our experiences. Our stay at this boutique hotel gave us the idea to keep a large bowl of walnuts to crack on our counter.  The bowl says come in, crack a walnut, let's have conversation. We were also inspired to make our own raisins.  So our next bunch of grapes stayed on the counter for fifty-three days.  We never imagined it would take so long, but how interesting it was to watch the gradual process of grapes shriveling to become a gourmet oatmeal-topper.

The drying stems turned to gnarled talons clinging to the ceramic fruit carton on the counter. The green fruit tinged brown and turned browner by the day, the week. Dehydration and depletion isn't pretty. A small reminder to drink plenty of water and also a thoughtful pause on the aging process.

 A youthful grape takes on the renewed life of a ripened raisin. It is sweet!


And in honor of National Poetry Month here is a poem for you...happy poetry reading and sweet patience!

Patience by Kay Ryan

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.