The Nature of Things

In 2022, I read Barbara Kingsolver's book The Bean Trees and I loved it, awarding it four out of five stars. When I heard  realized that Kingsolver had written  a new  another book featuring some of the Bean Tree characters, I wasted no time getting hold of it. I'm happy to say that it did not disappoint. This one, too, is certainly worthy of four stars. Once again we meet Taylor and her (maybe not legally) adopted daughter, Turtle. They are happily living in Tucson. Taylor is White with perhaps a drop of Cherokee blood from a great-grandparent. Turtle is a Cherokee child who had been "given" to Taylor in Oklahoma by the child's aunt who was trying to rescue her from an abusive situation.  The events of this novel take place three years later. When Turtle is witness to an accident and a Cherokee lawyer named Annawake, who has a personal stake in the Indian Child Welfare Act, becomes involved and learns of Turtle's story, the lawyer realizes that things with ...

Here's a lovely ode to the morning sun, the star that "just happens" to be where it is in the universe and that spreads its light even on "the miserable and crotchety." Enjoy. Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who make the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and crotchety– best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light– good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment :  It's butterfly season in my backyard. The cohort is led by Cloudless Sulphurs like this one feasting on one of my Hamelia patens shrubs. These shrubs with their tubular blossoms are great favorites with butterflies and with the hummingbirds that are now passing through. In past years, there would be many Monarch butterflies among the cohort. Not this year. So far this October I've not seen a single Monarch. *~*~*~* South America is experiencing a historic drought and the Amazon is drying up. *~*~*~* Some of the world's poorest nations are very rich in Nature. They need help protecting it. As the COP 16 conference meets in Colombia, delegates will push to ensure that protection . That need is urgent because the world's nations are lagging behind on their expressed goals. *~*~*~* New discoveries lead paleontologists to speculate that the origin of dinosaurs dates back much further than had been believed...

 Having previously read and enjoyed two Richard Osman mysteries - The Thursday Murder Club and The Last Devil to Die - I couldn't resist when I saw he had a new one out. So, once again, I abandoned my planned reading list and jumped right on it. In We Solve Murders , Osman introduces us to some new characters: Amy Wheeler is a private security guard who works at protecting VIPs. She is married to Adam, a man who she almost never sees. At the time that we meet them, they are on opposite side sides of the world. Strangely enough, it is a very happy marriage. (Or maybe that isn't so strange.) Her closest relationship seems to be with her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler. Steve is a widower who is still grieving for his beloved wife and still talks to her every day, telling her about the events of that day. He is a retired cop and presently a private investigator. He is known at his local pub as a quiz and puzzle expert. He is a lover of cats, especially his own, named Trouble, and h...

Let's have another Mary Oliver poem, shall we? One that celebrates the season and the plant much loved by bees. And me.  Goldenrod by Mary Oliver On roadsides, in fall fields, in rumpy bunches, saffron and orange and pale gold, in little towers, soft as mash, sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers, full of bees sand yellow beads and perfect flowerlets and orange butterflies. I don’t suppose much notice comes of it, except for honey, and how it heartens the heart with its blank blaze. I don’t suppose anything loves it, except, perhaps, the rocky voids filled by its dumb dazzle. For myself, I was just passing by, when the wind flared and the blossoms rustled, and the glittering pandemonium leaned on me. I was just minding my own business when I found myself on their straw hillsides, citron and butter-colored, and was happy, and why not? Are not the difficult labors of our lives full of dark hours? And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far, that is better than these light-filled bod...

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : This is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week , the Upland Sandpiper , a bird of open grasslands, hayfields, and prairies. It is one species that seems to be doing well; its numbers are increasing. *~*~*~* Is the carbon sink that keeps Nature in balance failing ? *~*~*~* A botulism outbreak in California has caused mass bird deaths . More than 94,000 birds have died. *~*~*~* These thirty-four species are not "new" but they've only recently been discovered by humans . *~*~*~* A reforesting project is revitalizing Rio . And in Ireland, one landowner is rewilding his land in hopes of changing an area that had become an ecological desert. *~*~*~* Here's how scientists use a wind tunnel to study bird migration .  *~*~*~* A new marine sanctuary has been created off the coast of California. *~*~*~* And halfway around the world, here are some of the creatures that call the Atlantic Ocean home....

Leaves are falling. Great heaps of them lie on the ground waiting to be removed to the compost bins. They are a rich harvest. Small animals will be glad for the heat of their decaying this winter and afterward garden beds will receive them. Nothing in Nature is wasted. Gathering Leaves by Robert Frost Spades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons.   I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer Running away.   But the mountains I raise Elude my embrace, Flowing over my arms And into my face.   I may load and unload Again and again Till I fill the whole shed, And what have I then?   Next to nothing for weight, And since they grew duller From contact with earth, Next to nothing for color.   Next to nothing for use, But a crop is a crop, And who’s to say where The harvest shall stop?  

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : Ruby-throated Hummingbirds continue passing through in migration, but I've still only seen immatures and females like this one - no adult males yet.  *~*~*~* Do you live in a "fun state" ? (I note that Texas is #7 on the list.) *~*~*~* Wildlife populations are collapsing in many areas.  *~*~*~* That collapse may be exacerbated by the fact that Earth's vital signs have reached record extremes. *~*~*~* Meanwhile, in the Sahara Desert, a rare deluge of rain has fallen.  *~*~*~* Back in this country, the Supreme Court has refused to block new Biden administration efforts to address climate change and air pollution. *~*~*~* A UN biodiversity summit in Colombia will assess the progress made on countries' promises to help save the developing world's ecosystems . *~*~*~* The Northern Lights have put on quite a show this week. *~*~*~* The highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains had been named aft...

A new book by one of my favorite authors will definitely cause me to cast aside my planned reading list and jump right on it! So it was with Elizabeth Strout's latest, Tell Me Everything . I regret nothing. Strout takes us back to Crosby, Maine, to check on some of the wonderful characters we have met in her other books. There's the iconic Olive Kitteridge , now in her nineties and living in a retirement community at the edge of town. There's Lucy Barton who now lives with her ex-husband, William , in a house by the sea. And there is Bob Burgess who has developed an abiding friendship with Lucy. The two of them go on walks where they talk about their fears and regrets and how they came to be who they are.  The first lines of the book introduce Bob:  "This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time that we are speaking of him. Bob has a big heart but he does not know that about hi...

So Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize for Literature . I read her book, The Vegetarian , back in 2017 and gave it five stars. In 2019, I read The White Book by her. Also five stars! I very seldom have five-star reads so obviously I was impressed, just like the Nobel judges. I see she has a new book, We Do Not Part , that will be out in translation next January. I'm putting it on my read list now.

This book has three timelines, 2012, 1983, and 1950, and the narrative goes back and forth among the three. The setting of the story is an old tuberculosis sanatorium in northern Iceland and it involves the murder of a nurse and the apparent suicide (or maybe it, too, was murder) of the chief physician in 1983.  In 2012, a student named Helgi who is a lover of whodunits, has returned to Iceland after finishing his studies in the United Kingdom. He begins work on his Master of Arts dissertation on criminology and takes as his subject the murder and suicide (or possibly second murder) that took place at the sanatorium back in 1983.  The murder was never actually solved. The detective assigned to the case, a man named Sverrir, was eager to close it as soon as possible and he arrested the facility's caretaker on the flimsiest of evidence. Detective Hulda Hermannsdóttir had misgivings about her superior's action but did not have the authority to prevent it. A few days later th...

October is usually one of the most pleasant months of the year for us here near the Gulf Coast and so it is (so far) this year. Beautiful blue skies, goldenrod, gold and scarlet fallen leaves, and temperatures that generally top out in the high eighties Fahrenheit. It is, indeed, the best of times. October's Bright Blue Weather by Helen Hunt Jackson O suns and skies and clouds of June, And flowers of June together, Ye cannot rival for one hour October's bright blue weather; When loud the bumblebee makes haste, Belated, thriftless vagrant, And goldenrod is dying fast, And lanes with grapes are fragrant; When gentians roll their fingers tight To save them for the morning, And chestnuts fall from satin burrs Without a sound of warning; When on the ground red apples lie In piles like jewels shining, And redder still on old stone walls Are leaves of woodbine twining; When all the lovely wayside things Their white-winged seeds are sowing, And in the fields still green and fair, Late ...

  A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : The Eastern Bluebird  is an always welcome visitor to my yard. *~*~*~* It's that time again - time for Project Feederwatch . Sign up to document the birds around your yard and contribute to the accumulation of knowledge about their ranges. The count begins on November 1. *~*~*~* Humanity has a finite carbon budget and wildfires around the world are burning right through it. In South America, huge tracts of land are being decimated by fire and the skies are shrouded by smoke. *~*~*~* Meanwhile, the southwestern United States is being scorched by an exceptional heat wave. Temperatures as high as 117 degrees F. have been recorded. *~*~*~* Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has had a profound effect on how the public views chemicals , creating, in some instances, an irrational fear of them.  *~*~*~* Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad has been called the "Frida Kahlo of environmental geopolitics." ...

Weyward tells the stories of three women from three different centuries, women who are tied together by blood and by the common sanctuary that each of them found in a place called Weyward Cottage. We meet and get to know Kate from 2019, Violet from 1942, and Altha from 1619. Perhaps most importantly we get to know the cottage that is worlds away from the unhappiness and abuse that those three women experienced in their lives. Kate had inherited the cottage in 2019 from a great-aunt whom she barely knew. The inheritance came at a fortuitous time as she needed to escape from an abusive relationship. As things became unbearable for her, she fled under cover of darkness to the cottage where she had never really spent any time previously. It felt to her like coming home. In 1619, Altha was charged with witchcraft. She was accused of having murdered a local farmer by causing a stampede of his cattle that had trampled and killed him. Her mother had taught her knowledge of the natural world a...