High Marks for Progress--Lessons for Me on a Tutorial Tuesday

To show you that I have a softer, gentler side, I present these Celosia flowers blooming with abandon in my mother's yard. I drove a few miles down the road this past weekend to visit her in Southeast Missouri, while Hubby finished up his 80-plus-hour week at the rig in Southern Illinois.


I hope that these pictures of Celosia can soften what now appears to me as a rather harsh comment left on TC's site, The Write Gardener. Maybe I should avoid visiting other blogs on Mondays. Those days invariably bring out the worst in me for some reason. It must be from the effects of the moon that gave its name to Monday.



My mom's hybrid tea roses are just about finished blooming for the year, but I found a single rosebud holding itself proudly above the rather tired looking leaves of the shrub. It's fresh and lovely.



Now here is a full-blown rose showing evidence of its encounter with some kind of marauder. Whoever he was, he must have felt sorry for the old gal and left her in peace for the rest of her show. She will live for a while longer on my blog.


I took my mom to lunch in Cape Girardeau at this historic eatery, Port Cape Girardeau. I wonder if the Coca-Cola being advertised so boldly on the side of the building contained at one time a secret ingredient to combat fatigue. Amazing, isn't it, how prices have changed?





After lunch, we took a stroll on the street-side of the Mississippi River floodwall. The wall has become a showpiece for the city, inviting visitors to take a step back in time.



Looking back up the hill from the floodwall, I could see the Common Pleas Courthouse, still in use today as a site for the administration of justice. It was built in 1854 and has witnessed a lot of pleas since that time.




Turning back to the floodwall and going back a bit farther in time, this panel on the wall captured my attention. Perhaps justice was more blind than usual in this instance.




At the edge of the wall, the river-level gauge bears witness to progress. Skeeter had an interesting remark about progress in her comment on my last post: Arrrgh! The river's dimensions, course, and boundaries have been fiddled with for years by a certain government entity known as the Army Corps of Engineers. They have made a valiant effort to spur economic progress to the area with barge traffic. Unfortunately, nature has a way of foiling the efforts of even the most dedicated public servants.



Cape Girardeau proudly proclaims its heritage and progressive attitude to any passersby who happen to be traveling on the river. It is a beautiful city with friendly people and a thriving healthcare industry, a virtual medical mecca for folks coming from hundreds of miles away.



This piece of progress came just in the nick of time for millions of travelers like me who cross the river from Illinois to Missouri. The old bridge was a crumbling bit of high anxiety that I dreaded every time I drove to Missouri to visit my parents. The kids in the back seat learned to pipe down whenever mom gripped the steering wheel in anticipation of the crossing. Two narrow lanes (one each way!), somehow, for many years accommodated heavy traffic which included semi-trucks. Horror stories about near misses occurring with great frequency kept this driver on her toes.



Crossing the bridge now seems like a cake-walk compared to the old days of white-knuckled driving. I felt confident enough to snap a picture (while driving!) of my approach to the bridge while heading back to the Land of Lincoln on Sunday afternoon. Kids, please don't attempt this stunt. Only (idiot) drivers with plenty of experience crossing dangerous, old bridges are qualified to perform this feat.



On the road home, when no other cars were in sight, I snapped another picture of the floodwaters which have almost completely disappeared from the floodplain on the Illinois side of the river. The wetlands tried to make a comeback this year and almost succeeded.

A Wetland on Its Knees

"I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible Natures in the universe. But who will explain for us the family of these beings, and the ranks and relations and distinguishing features and functions of each? What do they do? What places do they inhabit? The human mind has always sought the knowledge of these things but never attained it. Meanwhile I do not deny that it is helpful sometimes to contemplate in the mind, as on a tablet, the image of a greater and better world, lest the intellect, habituated to the petty things of daily life, narrow itself and sink wholly into trivial thoughts. But at the same time we must be watchful for the truth and keep a sense of proportion, so that we may distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night."
(Epigraph to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Adapted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge from Thomas Burnet's Archaeologiae Philosophicae (1692).

A visit to the Cache River yesterday with hubby left some deep impressions on me. I was struck not only by the beauty of the place (a swamp?) but also by its fragile existence, its importance in keeping the environment healthy, and its unfathomable mysteries.

Though this national treasure was in danger of disappearing forever, various government entities and nature enthusiasts have worked together to purchase farmland and let it return to its natural state. The Cache River was once a meandering waterway that provided a home for countless species of plants and animals and acted as a natural sponge, sopping up flood water in the floodplain of the Ohio River. When people began to settle in this area, they found the soil rich with promise for crops and forage for their livestock. The huge oaks and cypress trees which once covered much of the area were chopped down and hauled away for building towns and cities near and far. To make it easier for the wood to be shipped down the Ohio River, a channel was cut from the Cache to the Ohio. Draining the swamp seemed like a sensible idea to the farmers and lumber companies, and "progress" was the mantra of the day.

We took to the trails at Heron Pond to view the swamp firsthand but not before stopping at the impressive Wetlands Center for a little background information. The park ranger in charge of the operation showed us a short film about the area's history and plans for the future. After the film, I asked her something that I've been curious about for quite some time: What purpose do cypress knees serve, other than calling to mind those mythical creatures known as gnomes? She responded that "no one really knows for sure" and that various theories have been devised but none have been proven conclusive. One theory is that the knees provide stability in the trees' somewhat unstable watery environment. Another theory is that they allow the trees' underwater roots to access more oxygen. A little investigation by me online turned up an interesting but still inconclusive article by Christopher H. Briand, "Cypress Knees: An Enduring Enigma." Briand admits that "after nearly 200 years of speculation and research, the function or functions of the knees of cypresses remain unclear. Darwin referred to the origin of the flowering plants as an 'abominable mystery'; it appears that the function of cypress knees is another. The truth may be that cypress knees evolved in response to past environmental pressures that no longer exist, in which case their function may be lost in the depth of time."

In other words, the discovery of their purpose is still around the bend, submerged in the curious mind of some unknown child. It's just waiting to be picked up and put to good use for solving some problem like cancer or maybe providing some insight into the real causes of global climate change.

As hubby and I strolled along the trail to Heron Pond, we encountered a young couple with an energetic child in tow. We observed him hacking away mercilessly at the trunk of a small tree growing next to the trail. His father was recording the "cute" behavior on a DVR and laughing as the tyke imitated the actions of a lumberjack from the past or maybe those of a modern firefighter in California cutting a fireline (something he had obviously seen in a movie or on an evening news broadcast). I held my tongue until we were out of earshot and then railed loudly to hubby against the lax attitudes of parents today. Instead of recording his son's antics, that young father should have been gently dissuading him and using the moment to teach him a valuable lesson about taking care of nature. Don't get me wrong. I applaud the parents' attempt to immerse the youngster in the midst of an environment in peril. I think this kind of parental effort is sorely lacking today. Most parents would rather recline in air-conditioned comfort while their youngsters sit enthralled in front of the movie screen, getting their life-lessons from Hollywood. Still, I wish that young father had told his son that striking the tree bark could damage the tree's "skin" and perhaps make it sick and unable to grow big and tall like the trees all around it. If parents today don't act as a bridge to the next generation, leading them to love the world they live in, our world is indeed "doomed to destruction," as the media are so fond of insisting.