NN/SOTS: Observe What Happens When Country Girls (and Guy) Go to the City and Let Go

Yesterday, before the forecasted rain fell (?!), Daughter suggested that we take a walk in the neighborhood. She sighed just a little when she observed me heading outdoors with the camera in hand. It tends to make our walks last a little longer than originally planned. So what? I take a casual approach to walking, among other things. Our home is "in the country," at the edge of a growing community that I'll bet doesn't qualify as a city for all intents and purposes. We don't even have a real post office, just a counter tucked away in a discount grocery store! There are very few zoning restrictions here. Some of our neighbors take a more casual approach to landscaping--once planted, let it go and grow...

Whilst others work for hours to sculpt their properties into showplaces bursting with magnolia and azalea opulence.

My approach falls somewhere in between the two extremes. I don't care much for perfect lawns, and I'm perfectly happy to let wild verbena grow in this soil that grows things in fits and starts. If verbena was good enough at one time to be considered holy and carried by priests--really! it's in my dictionary--it's welcome to bloom religiously and take over my lawn if it wants to. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think it might be Verbena tenuisecta that greets my feet when I walk around my yard.

Most of the blueberry bushes that SAM and I planted last year have survived a sweltering Florida summer and are now blooming to beat the band--something we hear practicing again, by the way, on the high school football field nearby. A soil sample I took to MG class last week for analysis showed a pH of 6.54, a bit high when the recommended range is 4.0 to 5.5. I was hoping for some gentle rain to soak in some more acidizing fertilizer with sulfate to the row of shrubs. Somehow I miscalculated the amount of fertilizer necessary to bring these bushes up to speed when I applied it just a few weeks ago.

Oh well; they're blooming and leafing out just fine for now. Besides, the soil they're growing in has been amended with mushroom compost, and our Fearless Leader (Extension Agent and Teacher) assured me that the compost itself may be what is skewing the pH level. Not to worry, though. A little acidizer will balance things. Now if only that rain would have come as promised...

The pink grapefruit trees that I thought were goners for sure are showing signs of life now. We put some corrugated, perforated plastic pipe around the trunks to keep the cat and the weed trimmer from wounding the tender bark, and I guess it saved the trees from freezing to death. I actually did something right for a change. Will wonders never cease?

Wait a minute, though. Just as you begin to think that this walking family has all of its ducks in a row, it goes to Tallahassee--two weeks ago--and makes a spectacle of itself. We visited Florida's Historic Capitol building on a Sunday afternoon when another threat of rain dampened our plans for a hike. As you can plainly see, we country people tend to let go when we visit the city. Can you guess who the three fools are behind the cutouts? They change positions, so observe carefully.

The devil is in the details, as they say.

Careful observers may foretell the hour

(By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower:

While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er

Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more...

(from Jonathan Swift's "A Description of a City Shower," 1710)

From now on, maybe I should pay more attention to tell-"tail" signs like the cat's level of activity than the official weather forecast. We made that trip to the old capitol building on a day when the showers were few and scattered, and today the rain made a very brief appearance. A high pressure system has now taken over the weather pattern, and the sun is shining brightly again. The cat took a brief nap inside when it clouded over, but now she's out and about looking for a natural scratching post or something to chase. Well, at least SAM and I should have some good hiking/kayaking weather this weekend in Tallahassee.

A View of the Ceiling at Florida's Historic Capitol in Tallahassee

Please visit Ramblingwoods.com for this week's Nature Notes/Signs of the Seasons post and links to posts by other bloggers who write about their latest encounters with nature.

NN/SOTS: Essential Oils, 'Instruction's Pleasant Air'

...Where being come, Instruction's pleasant air
Refreshed my senses which were almost dead,
And fragrant flowers of sage and fruitful plants
Did send sweet savors up into my head.
And taste of science appetite did move,
To augment Theory of things above...

(from Rachel Speght's A Dream, 1621)

Now that Spring is fully engaged and gainfully employed, I begin to notice the somewhat less pleasant effects of this engagement and employment: Allergies! There is pollen in them thar Camellias and other lovelies we find so attractive at first and then a bit annoying. SAM says he has been taking a Claritin tablet every day to keep from wheezing and coughing. Apparently, Tallahassee is renowned for its pollen and subsequent effects. When we lived in Illinois, Spring was my season of misery. Yes, I know; it's supposed to be a joyous occasion of renewal and celebration. It is, as long as you have an arsenal of weapons to fend off those annoying allergens. Some people choose manmade chemical weapons; some of them choose a more natural approach. Guess which one I choose?

When the handwriting is on the wall--or the bark, in this case of a pine tree--I see evidence of a great force at work in the Creation/Nature. What protects a tree from the likes of invaders such as the destructive pine beetle? Plants have a natural defense working for them 24/7: Essential oils. It's not clear why sometimes this natural defense works and why it sometimes fails. I try to employ it as often as I can. It makes more sense to me to glean from nature what works for nature than to rely on manmade chemicals produced in the laboratory.

SAM gave me a gift at Christmas that I just redeemed today: a massage from my favorite licensed massage therapist (besides Daughter). She incorporates specific essential oils into this Raindrop Massage and targets areas of imbalance in the musculoskeletal system. Boy, do I have a lot of imbalance going on there! She found it, using more pressure on areas where I needed a lot of help: the lower spine, scapular area, calf muscles. I was tempted to jump off the table at times, but I practiced something I learned in childbirth class years ago: deep breathing. It helps with the removal of toxins and relaxes the body. The oils she used found their way into my tissues via the skin as well as my respiratory system, a double whammy of introduction. The last time I got a massage from Tina Brito Stebbing, she chided me for not breathing deeply enough. I did not hear any complaints this time so I must be learning how to behave as a client. Sometimes all it takes is a little Instruction.

Please visit Ramblingwoods.com for this week's Nature Notes/Signs of the Season post and other bloggers' links to the same.