Three cheers for volunteers

I have to admire the hardy catalpa sapling growing alongside our driveway, even though I wish it would just give up already. It's in a bad place for a catalpa tree--way too close to the driveway. Who knows how it arrived there? Some bird or woodland creature may have brought the seed, and it keeps leafing out and growing more branches, even though my husband cuts it down every summer.

Catalapa trees are lovely and I wouldn't object to having one somewhere, but just not there. If the branches grow any longer, they'll be scraping against our cars. But how do you get rid of a volunteer that just doesn't want to go away?

From the moment we moved in here 20 years ago, we've had to deal with a host of volunteers, some more welcome than others. In early spring the redbud trees along the edge of the woods provide a burst of color, and even now the heart-shaped leaves look lovely. We've tried in the past to dig up and relocate some saplings, but they do a much better job of spreading themselves. 

The pawpaw trees bring tiny attractive blooms in spring and, if we're lucky, a healthy harvest of fruit in the fall. The fruit gives us seeds that we've planted in hopes of producing new saplings to plant in other parts the property, but only this year have we finally managed to grow pawpaw saplings in pots. 

Other volunteers also benefit by encouragement. Years ago I dug up a clump of daisies and moved them near my driveway, and they've seeded themselves each year until they've formed a swath of cheery blossoms next to where I park. Likewise the wild columbines I dug up from a ditch and transplanted to my front garden: they reseed themselves and invade every available spot, bringing flowers and beautiful foliage and interesting seed pods nodding on their  stems.

Behind the house near the shed we're watching two mullein plants, one much bigger than the other. Mullein blossoms in its second year and only if winter gets sufficiently cold, so this year I'm carefully avoiding mowing them down in hopes that next summer we'll see tall stalks covered in blooms--plus the pollinators they attract.

In the past few years we've had to cut down two massive tulip poplars, but tulip poplar saplings keep popping up to replace their elders. The tiny ones growing amid clumps of volunteer jewelweed close to the driveway won't last, but several others show signs of stepping up to the challenge of survival.

And then there are the hollyhocks. I don't remember how long ago my daughter planted hollyhocks in my front garden, but they eventually died out there--but not before reseeding themselves all over the place. I never know where they're going to pop up, but this year they're blooming beautifully down near the wood pile.

A more diligent gardener would take these wildly unpredictable plants and make them conform to some master plan, but I prefer to stand back and see what they can do on their own or with a little encouragement. And even while that persistent catalpa threatens to invade my space, I have to admire its ability to keep coming back and sprouting leaves despite all our efforts to curtail its growth. Life finds a way! (But we need to prevent it from clawing at our cars.)

 

Brand-new catalpa leaves

Mullein

Stubborn catalpa sapling

Pawpaws growing in pots

Redbud

Tiny tulip poplar sapling

Hollyhock

 

That's what I like about life in the slow lane

Summer break: when time loses all meaning and the days blur together in an amorphous blob. I get up in the morning and don't know what day it is; I have things to do (probably) and I know I'll get to them (eventually), but the sense of urgency disappears as soon as the semester is over. My husband helpfully asks what time I need to get out the door, and the answer, usually, is I don't really need to be anywhere.

Except on Sundays (church). And on days when I have meetings concerning a grant proposal that's eating up a bunch of my time (and will eat up more if it's approved, not that I'm complaining). And on Wednesdays, when I get out of the house bright and early to join a group of colleagues in a room in the library where we sit silently and write all morning. The first Writing Wednesday of summer break attracted seven people, including a few newbies, and I made significant progress on my new writing project. 

An article that originated in Writing Wednesdays a few years ago finally saw the light of day in the journal Pedagogy. "Ink, Blood, Bones" may well be my final foray into academic publishing, as I'm currently working on something more like a personal essay immersed in literature, or a literary analysis immersed in personal narrative. I don't quite know how long it will be or where it will end up but I'm having tons of fun writing right now.

Otherwise the days stretch before me without design. Maybe I'll mow, if weather permits. Maybe I'll clean the bathrooms or go for a hike or watch a mystery on Britbox. And if a curious groundhog comes knocking at the door while I'm doing my own thing, I'll pause for a photo shoot and then carry on.

Because that's what summer break is all about: no sense of time, no urgency, just a gentle plodding forward in the faith that eventually I'll do what needs to be done. 

She's been fascinated with my house all week. Why?

 

The early bird catches the weed-whacker, or something like that

Truth be told, I didn't really want to do any weed-whacking this morning, but I failed to come up with a convincing excuse to avoid the annoying chore until I went to fetch the weed-whacker. There I was, kitted out in yard-work clothes, protective goggles, and earplugs, with a freshly wound reel of weed-whacker line in my pocket, a water bottle hanging from my belt loop, and a heavy rechargeable battery in my hand--stopped in my tracks by a Carolina wren.

I didn't see the wren this morning but I heard it nearby, alarmed at my incursion into its nesting site. The weed-whacker was leaning against the back wall of the recycling shed, its battery compartment filled with a new nest--and I know it's new because I removed a similar nest a few weeks ago, except it was empty. This time I found five tiny wren eggs nestled deep within the nest.

Am I willing to sacrifice five incipient wrens to my need for an orderly lawn? No I am not. I put the weed-whacker back carefully, hoping the birds wouldn't be spooked into abandoning the nest. The weeds can wait. The wrens can't. 

Am I willing to let those weeds keep growing undisturbed for the next couple of weeks? No I am not. Fortunately, we have another weed-whacker, but I've never been able to start it. Since the resident he-man isn't home to start it for me, I'll just have to postpone my weed-whacking to another day.

Tragic, I know, but I think I'll get over it.

 

Meandering away from anxiety

All week I've been studiously avoiding all thoughts of campus, but my subconscious won't give me a break--last night it served up an anxiety dream in which I forgot to teach my freshman comp class all semester and then had to scramble to squeeze in all the work in the final week of classes. Ridiculous, of course, especially since I didn't teach composition at all this past academic year. Maybe somewhere deep in my soul there's a tiny piece of me that misses teaching composition, but giving me nightmares isn't the best way to win me over.

Next week I need to get my mind back on campus tasks, but this week I've been trying to focus on other things. Mowing, for instance, and getting my new phone and internet service set up, and then marveling over the fact that for the first time in 20 years we have both high-speed internet service at home and a landline that's not full of static. We can call people! On the phone! Without having to scream what?! into the receiver over and over! For years I've done all our online banking from campus because our home internet was too cranky to keep me connected, but now I can pay my bills at home! And if I need to remind myself of the differences between grasshopper sparrows and Henslow's sparrows, I can Google it and get an answer right away! I mean, it's as if we've finally entered the twenty-first century, a few decades late.

But I won't be at home to play with my new technology for a few days. This morning I took a meandering drive north to visit the grandkids, and along the way I accomplished a few other non-campus-related goals. I started by visiting the birding area at The Wilds, where I saw grasshopper sparrows at exactly the same spot I've seen them before, plus killdeer and tree swallows and brown thrashers and yellow warblers and towhees and robins and turkey vultures and common yellowthroats and I don't know what else. The fog was too thick to allow good photos, but I exulted in the stillness suffused with birdsong.

And then I meandered my way on over to Amish country, which has grown more touristy since last time I visited. I've been hunting for a desk for months, an essential part of my pre-retirement plan. I'll remove the big empty dresser from the guest room, put a computer desk in there, and finally buy my own computer with a big screen so I don't have to kill my eyes with a tiny laptop screen after I finally surrender my college-owned laptop. But I refuse to buy any more furniture that comes in a flat box and they won't let me steal Edith Wharton's desk from The Mount, so for months I've been actively seeking a desk at furniture stores between Charleston and Columbus. Everything is either too massive or too elaborate or too simple or too ugly, a trend that continued today as I hopped in and out of Amish furniture stores in the bustling tourist towns of Sugar Creek, Millersburg, and Wooster. It looks as if the allure of Amish-made furniture has resulted in a burgeoning market for cheap imitations, so I kept being disappointed until I stopped at a tiny store near Orrville just down the road from the Smucker's factory. There I found my desk, and I even managed to squeeze it into the back of my car. 

Now it's time to focus on the task at hand: fun with the grandkids. If their hijinks can't banish campus anxiety from my thoughts, nothing can. What new wonders will they bring into my life? Only time will tell.

 

My trailcam proves to be an overachiever

The wind goeth where it listeth, saith the King James Bible, but we don't use listeth these days so let's just paraphrase and say the wind goes where it wants, and if it wants to keep blowing some leafy undergrowth toward the sensor of a motion-detecting trail camera during a particularly windy April, then you're going to have to scroll through 9900 images of blowing foliage to locate a few pictures of woodland creatures.

But what great creatures they are! Raccoons and possums and deer and squirrels, of course, and plenty of pictures of the neighbor's cat, but this time we captured on camera a lone coyote--blurry and barely there in the dark--and lots of daylight pictures of wild turkeys.

I'm not kidding about the 9000 blowing-bush pictures, though. Granted, it's been a while since we checked the trailcam, but I had no idea that it could store more than 9000 photos at a time. During the winter when the trees and bushes were bare, the trailcam captured far fewer photos; this time, I deleted photos in batches of 500 at a time. If it had been a burning bush instead of a blowing bush then I might have treated it with a little more respect, but I think it's time to move the camera or trim some foliage.

Still, sorting through all those photos was a suitably mindless task for a lazy Mothers Day. Earlier, I read a book my adorable daughter had sent--Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer--while my husband and son put together an impressive Mothers Day dinner, with grilled bratwurst and zucchini and stuffed jalapenos and salads and pastries. Later we walked up the hill to see what's growing and try to track down an indigo bunting (heard but not seen), and along the way my husband grabbed the memory card out of the trailcam. 

And now all those blowing-bush photos have been deleted and I'm ready to call it a day. Goodnight squirrels. Goodnight wind. Goodnight turkeys that made us all grin. Good night possums. Good night deer. Let's get these 9000 pictures out of here. 

 

I need to set some goals, but not today

Finally, after a week of one  long meeting after another, I've entered a brief season of Nothing much. 

What do I need to do today? Nothing much.

What big plans do I have for next week? Nothing much.

What do I think about the College's new strategic plan? Nothing much.

It won't last, of course. I have some pressing summer projects--both at home and on campus--and I'll have even more if a certain grant gets approved. The new strategic plan will have an impact on the training sessions I need to organize for the fall semester, so at some point I'll need to attend to its demands, and I need to put together a senior capstone class on a topic I've never taught before. And of course I'll want to do some fun things this summer too, like see the grandkids and get out in the canoe and plant things (if the rain ever stops).

So I ought to get to work putting together a plan of action, but just for today, I'd rather not. For one thing, I recently looked at the goals I listed on my annual review last fall and realized that every single one of them became impossible after certain funding and staffing changes were announced, so I'm a little sour on the whole goal-setting process at the moment. And then this week I spent an absurd amount of time performing assessment activities so the College can measure how well we're achieving learning outcomes in a class that has recently been cut from the curriculum, so the whole looking-back-and-evaluating thing feels like an exercise in futility.

That kind of exercise wears me out, so I'm looking forward to a whole week with only one meeting on the schedule--with the company that's going to hook our house up to the new fiber-optic cable recently installed all up our street. Yes: for the first time ever, high-speed internet will be available at my house, along with television service (!!) and reliable phone service not eternally filled with static, all for less money than I'm paying for weak, unreliable service right now. 

I could spend the whole rest of the summer so enthralled with my new tech capabilities that I don't get anything else done, but that doesn't sound like me. Before you know it I'll be busy planning and writing and meeting and digging and mowing and sewing and reading, but just for today the only thing I really feel like doing is nothing much.

And if I can do that outside under the blooming tulip poplar, so much the better.

Learning outside our comfort zones

Final grades were due at 9:00 this morning, but the desperate slog through exams and paperwork did not deter two dozen of my colleagues from gathering at 9:30  for an end-of-semester pedagogy workshop. We started by heaving a collective sigh of relief, and then we got down to the important work of learning outside our comfort zones.

We all work hard to create comfortable learning environments for our students, I explained, but they come into these unfamiliar spaces and we ask them to do things they may have never done before, and sometimes that can be terrifying.

Today, I told them, I'm giving you the opportunity to step into their shoes.

But that required stepping out of our familiar classrooms and into spaces where we were not the experts. First, we stepped on stage, where a theatre professor guided us through some basic stage fighting techniques with swords. They may have been stage swords, but they handled with a satisfying heft and clank. We learned that effective stage combat is more dance than battle and that safety requires close attention to everyone around us. 

Then we moved upstairs to the music department to learn that active listening is also essential to musical improvisation. A music prof introduced basic principles of improvisation and then set us loose to practice on percussion instruments. A few genuine musicians were in the room but mostly we were a motley crew drawn from every corner of campus, making noise and matching rhythm patterns and adding our part to the group effort.

One more flight up to the art department and things got really quiet as a host of non-artists learned to draw blind contours in charcoal. I could feel the concentration in the room as historians and scientists and math geeks and administrators and others tried to draw what they saw and not just what they expected to see. The art professor leading the session offered gentle encouragement and found something worth praise in every effort.

When we went downstairs to retrieve our boxed lunches, the entire building was buzzing. We learned that an accident had knocked out power to many parts of campus, including the science complex where we had planned to hold the two afternoon sessions. We put our heads together to figure out how to do the group problem-solving activity in a different venue, but the chemistry lab experience could not safely be relocated so we had to postpone it until the next pedagogy workshop.

After giving our bodies, brains, and creative skills a good workout all morning, we relaxed outside with our lunches and put those active listening skills to good use. Today we proved that we can work together to make good things happen, even when the power goes out and the building starts beeping. We didn't win all the battles or make the best music or draw the perfect charcoal sketch, but we showed that a little imperfection can't stop learning from happening, as long as we're willing to step outside our comfort zones.

I have some pretty fierce colleagues.

And talented, too.

 

Back to my happy place

I went to the woods to escape the floating anger. It wasn't aimed at me, but on Wednesday I kept walking into the trajectory of this shouty mass of formidable feelings so that by the end of the day I felt wounded.

My students' exams were done (and mostly graded, but don't tell my colleagues who are still slaving over student handwriting). I had no meetings scheduled, no duties to perform--just the need to spring into action if a colleague decided to dump a pile of work onto a committee I'm currently chairing. But I didn't want to sit around my office all day awaiting more angry words, so I took a hike.

First I took a drive--90 minutes to my old stomping ground, Lake Katharine State Nature Preserve near Jackson, Ohio. Arrived early to an empty parking lot and set out on the Salt Creek Trail. This may be my favorite hiking trail in the state. Maybe there are other trails out there that would knock my socks off, but of all the Ohio trails I've hiked, this one is the best.

I knew I was too late for most of the spring ephemerals. Bloodroot, dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, and the creepy-looking blue cohosh blossoms have long gone to seed. But a few valiant trilliums and bluebells were still holding on and I saw lots of mayapples, foamflower, jack-in-the-pulpit, violets, and even three cheery clumps of showy orchis. Running buffalo clover doesn't look like anything special but it was long thought to be extinct, so it's a joy to see it thriving in the wild.

Halfway through my hike I sat on a bench along Salt Creek and just listened for a while, soaking in the stillness. A pair of Canada geese honked and dabbled in the burbling water while birds called overhead and the occasional butterfly flittered past. Is this the most peaceful place I know? For the entire two hours I spent in the woods, I didn't see another person or even touch my phone. 

And then when I got back to my car and checked my phone, I saw that a big load of work had been lifted from my shoulders; my committee will not be springing into action this week. Maybe I can carry the stillness and peace of Lake Katharine with me a little longer as protection against the shouty angry voices. If not, at least I'll have something pretty to look at.

club moss

portal to my happy place

magnolia

mayapple

foamflower

trillium

jack-in-the-pulpit

mayapple

solomon's seal

bear corn (in abundance!)

bluebells

canopy of magnolia leaves

reflections of leaves in the creek

pawpaw blossom

running buffalo clover

showy orchis

bellwort and spider

And we're not doing the Locomotion either

Do I have to retire Allen Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra" just because a few students don't recognize the word "locomotive"?

My American Lit Survey class spends the final three weeks of the semester discussing poetry from Gwendolyn Brooks to Natasha Trethewey, a fun and varied group of authors: Sylvia Plath! Elizabeth Bishop! Li-Young Lee, Yusef Komunyakaa, Amit Majmudar! 

And, of course, Allen Ginsberg. We spend a whole class period discussing "Howl" without touching "Sunflower Sutra," even though it's on the syllabus. We don't always have time in class to discuss every poem listed on the syllabus, but I tell students that on the final exam they'll be asked to write an essay analyzing a poem that we haven't discussed, and if they're doing all the assigned reading, they should be prepared. (That's a big if.)

The exam itself is broken into two parts: a set of discussion questions and a 30-point essay question. Students turn in the first part of the exam before being given the essay question, and they are allowed to use books, notes, and any printed material on the essay question but no technology. (Nobody ever brings a dictionary.)

I really love reading these essays. Students remark on the grime and pollution and "gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery", the sunflower with its "dead gray shadow", the "corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown", and they feel the thrill when the poet shifts from despair to exaltation as he grabs the sunflower and says, "We're not our skin of grime, we're not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we're golden sunflowers inside."

Nearly every student quotes "We're not our skin of grime," but only the brave few try to tackle the locomotive.

It's all over the place in the poem: the sunflower is "crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye"; its "grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives." At one point the poet asks the sunflower, "when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?" All really interesting images unless you're shaky on the meaning of locomotive.

Some students used the word effectively while others avoided it entirely. A few, though, struggled to make sense of locomotive, suggesting that it might have something to do with transportation or walking around or movement. Which it does! But the whole poem makes a whole lot more sense when you visualize a train engine. If a student think locomotive refers to walking around, how do they understand "the smoke of olden locomotives" in the sunflower's eye? I don't get it at all.

In the end the confusion about vocabulary was just a minor distraction; the poem offers plenty of material for analysis and most students do a pretty effective job. But I wonder how much richer their experience of the poem would be if they could see the rusty steam locomotive sitting on the siding or hear it chuffing through the lines. I'm happy to be a sunflower inside but even happier that I'm not doomed to be a bleak chunk of steel machinery unable to choose my own path.

But how can we rejoice in not being locomotives if we don't know the meaning of the word?