8.21.24 ~ eastern tiger swallowtail Cedar Falls Park, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
We are all woodland people. Like trees, we hold a genetic memory of the past because trees are parents to the child deep within us. We feel that shared history come alive every time we step into the forest, where the majesty of nature calls to us in a voice beyond our imaginations. But even in those of us who haven’t encountered trees in months or even years, the connection to the natural world is there, waiting to be remembered. ~ Diana Beresford-Kroeger (To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest)
At last! A day arrived with low humidity and a chance for a walk in the woods. Though I was tempted to visit the botanical garden I was drawn here to visit a new-to-us park we had discovered some time ago while out running errands in the heat. We found lots of interesting things growing under the trees in this lovely park.
Asiatic dayflower (beautiful but invasive)
The trees at Cedar Falls Park are typical of an upland forest in the Piedmont, with oak and hickory predominating and here and there a pine tree. Second growth trees with a brushy understory line both sides of the trails near the northern part of the park. ~ This Way to Nature website
red chanterelles
sweetgum seedling (thanks to Debbie for the identification)
a tiny blue feather
upside down indigo milk cap with a tiny snail
leaf just landed in a cobweb
fall preview
They would worry about wearing me out, but I could also see that I was a reminder of all they feared: chance, uncertainty, loss, and the sharp edge of mortality. Those of us with illnesses are the holders of the silent fears of those with good health. ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey (The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating)
the biggest of the many cobwebs we saw
The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here. ~ Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams)
partridge berry and moss
a puddle of water left in Cedar Fork Creek
dry bed of Cedar Fork Creek
Finding the snail moving across the blue mushroom and then the patch of partridge berries simply filled me with delight!
A new beginning is a welcome thing. A new week, a new job, a new term at school. Each brings the thrill of a clean slate, a shining start. The heart leaps up at the chance to try again, to do our best, to sow the seed of something that will grow. Autumn is when we plant the promises of spring, unsullied, pure and perfect. ~ Sally Abbott (Call the Midwife, season 12: episode 6)
welcome center rose
We have successfully made the move from Connecticut to North Carolina! What a wild, hectic, chaotic and exciting time these past few weeks have been. But somehow, with lots of help from family and friends, we managed to pull it off.
passion flower, a new flower
One kink in our planning was Tim developing bouts of shortness of breath and chest pressure on exertion. He spent a morning in the emergency room before we left where they determined he wasn’t having a heart attack and advised him to follow up with his cardiologist. So Larisa and I did our best to keep his activity level as low as possible while we scrambled to tie up all the loose ends.
Kat checking her VTech KidiZoom Smartwatch
After we got down here we repeated the process, spending a morning in the emergency room which thankfully resulted in an appointment with a cardiologist the next day. We really like him. Through the magic of “My Chart” medical records he had thoroughly acquainted himself with Tim’s cardiac history. He suspects that 15+ years after Tim’s by-pass surgery scar tissue may have built up and is starting to block the flow of blood. So he has ordered an echocardiogram to see what is going on in there before he decides what needs to be done.
insect hotel
In the meantime our plans to go out walking in our new adopted home have been put on hold. But I am comforted with the feeling that he is in good hands medically, UNC Hospitals being highly ranked among the best in the country.
an olive egger chicken (a chicken that lays green colored eggs)
Dima & Larisa have made us feel so comfortable and welcome and it is a delight having our grandchildren here to talk to and play with every day. Our real estate agent already has us under contract with a buyer for a selling price higher than we ever dreamed possible. Soon we will be able to find our own place down here. We’ve already started looking online.
Finn, lost in thought
I’ve gone out on a few short walks around this cohousing community with the little ones. (Cohousing is an intentional community of private homes clustered around shared space.) This is a magical, nature-loving neighborhood with birds singing all day long. There is a very loud frog outside who has croaked us to sleep for a few nights. Deer are allowed everywhere and help themselves to the abundant greenery.
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice. ~ Wisława Szymborska (Nothing Twice)
I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable lines between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves — we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny. ~ Mary Oliver (Upstream: Selected Essays)
A lady, with whom I was riding in the forest, said to me, that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds until the wayfarer has passed onward: a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (History)
I have learned through walking with my dogs here that there is an unspoken law. Always send a warning. Never surprise the animal life in the forest. So walking along without the noise of the jeep, it is wise to whistle a little tune and give the creatures some kind of an idea that you are approaching their area. This gives them a chance to adjust and find a place to hide, so they can watch you from their position out of your view. It is wise to follow the rule of the forest. ~ Neil Young (Waging Heavy Peace)
Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust – we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. ~ Albert Einstein (The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929)
Go out of the house to see the moon, and’t is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)
We tap our toes to chaste love songs about the silvery moon without recognizing them as hymns to copulation. ~ Barbara Kingsolver (High Tide in Tucson)
The moon is quite a show off given the chance. The stars make a sound when they shine so bright. Water so blue and so black. ~ Dave Matthews (Twitter, February 16, 2009)
At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. … That’s why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory. ~ Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits)
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. ~ Albert Einstein (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
In my last post I described the part of my journey from eating animals to only eating animals that were humanely raised and slaughtered. Still, even after seeing EARTHLINGS, and thinking I was doing enough, my intuition was telling me that this was not the end of the story. So I starting searching at Amazon.com and settled on a book called Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian by Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers. It is available on Kindle so I got it within moments and read the book in record time, neglecting my blog-mates and many of my chores in the process.
Hundreds upon hundreds of scientific articles from around the world demonstrate that a healthy vegetarian diet is the single most powerful thing individuals can do to promote, protect, or improve their health. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
There it was, right in the first chapter. As many of my readers know, my husband survived a heart attack and had triple-by-pass surgery four years ago, and we are both taking a host of drugs to deal with hypertension and high cholesterol. Also I’m being treated for osteomalacia and migraine. Trying to keep on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet isn’t helping those stubbornly high numbers to come down. But not one doctor has ever suggested a plant-based diet to either of us, in spite of countless scientific studies indicating that this would be the best route to a healthy lifestyle.
I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives. ~ Dr. Dean Ornish (Reversing Heart Disease)
I am so excited about possibly getting off all of these expensive drugs! Apparently eating even humanely raised animals is not good for us! I used to believe that since the animals ate each other nature was teaching us that it was perfectly natural to eat them. The circle of life. But while some animals are predators, there are many others who are not. The following information came as an enlightening surprise to me:
While humans can digest flesh, and it is likely that our ancestors did consume small amounts of meat infrequently, our anatomy much more strongly resembles that of plant-eating creatures. Like all plant eaters the human colon is long and complex, and our intestines are ten to eleven times longer than our bodies. Meat eaters have a short and simple colon, and in order that putrid meats pass quickly through their bodies, their intestines are only three to six times longer than their bodies. Human saliva contains digestive enzymes; meat eaters’ saliva does not. Our teeth resemble those of other plant eaters, with short and blunt canines, as opposed to long, sharp, and curved canines of the big meat eaters. Additionally, the meat our evolutionary ancestors consumed was wild game, which has less fat content than our modern domesticated meats. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
Once again science and spirit come together in my life. As I shared the results of the scientific studies mentioned in the book with Tim, he seemed to be open to the idea of trying a vegan diet. And then came the next question, “What’s for dinner?”
This book, to the left, has nothing to do with having pigs for dinner, but is a heartwarming true story about a very special pig. It is called The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood by Sy Montgomery. Christopher Hogwood was a wise old soul, a teacher to everyone in the community who melted under his spell. He was a good good pig! I hope you will read it if you haven’t already!
