I’ve just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. It is the account of her family’s one year experiment in eating locally grown food (theirs and others nearby). In order to do this, they moved from Arizona to Virginia. They already owned an old family farm in the Virginia countryside, so they didn’t have to worry about finding a suitable place.

The writing is lively and sprinkled with recipes and anecdotes from her daughter, who is a student at Duke. However, they are not vegetarians, and they consumed their own eggs as well as locally-produced meat.

I’d like to see such an account written by someone who lives in a temperate climate with a cold winter, and who observes the (Asian) vegetarian diet–no eggs, no meat, no fish, but including milk products.

Yesterday we traveled to Barkcamp State Park, just past St. Clairsville, Ohio. The lake was formed from the damming of a creek (1963).  I observed two different species of hawk and a great blue heron. One of the hawks, the one with the longest wings,  swooped down and snatched something from the water.  It was a beautiful clear day and the water was stirred from time to time by a refreshing breeze. The children enjoyed diving down to the sand and finding some snails. One species had a large spiral shell several inches in length, and another species resembled a tiny, one-half inch clam. Although this encounter with nature was planned, the encounter with the snails happened serendipitously, due to the presence of other children, and provided another opportunity to interact with nature from the child’s point of view.

Our neighbor has begun the mowing of the hayfield above our place.

A mother deer and her tiny spotted fawn are browsing in the orchard in the morning and before dusk.

Wood is my teacher,
wood is my tool,
my sustenance,
my Holy Rule.

Wood fires my furnace
and my soul.
Through wood
I have achieved my goal.

—-copyright Ms. Rural, from The Basketmakers,
in honor of Connie & Tom McColley

    The catalpa tree (”catawba,” “Indian bean”) is in bloom. Two large ones are on the Ghosh family property, and a huge one is just across the street from the front entrance to the Palace. I don’t know if they are Southern or Northern species. Here is a photo of the lovely blossoms.

horizon

pasture

The yellow poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), commonly known as tulip tree, is in bloom.

a pair of cedar waxwings

    “Thoreau was a self-taught naturalist and writer . . . and he had learned how to use both his learning and his imagination to uncover the hidden life of places. For him writing was a form of discovery . . . and like him we can learn to use writing as a window into nature, a way to help ourselves and our students discover the variety, intricacy, and wonder of our home landscapes. . . . Consider ecological relationships, which although never directly perceptible, largely determine the character of any landscape. . . . We may disregard near-at-hand nature because we have not been taught to appreciate certain types of landscape” (Tallmadge pp. 1-2).

Leslie, Claire Walker, John Tallmadge, and Tom Wessels. Into the Field: A Guide to Locally Focused Teaching. Great Barrington, MA: The Orion Society, 1999.