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Citizen Scientist – “Do You Get A Badge For That?”

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Lifelong learning keeps things interesting and while I love being able to find information at my fingertips through the internet, nothing beats the discoveries that can be found in an afternoon walk if one is willing to slow down enough to see them.

I take a lot of photos many of which you never see, but I thought you might enjoy hearing how my observation and impromptu photo session of a Violet Oil Beetle turned me a citizen scientist.  It seems these beauties are in serious decline in the UK along with three other varieties of oil beetles, a discovery I made when I went online looking for information to help me identify the hungry bug below.

I told John that I was going to send my photographs along with other requested data to Buglife, a conservation group that uses the information to track the distribution of oil beetles in the UK and I added that the site referred to people (like me) as “Citizen Scientists.”  I smiled as I said this feeling a bit grand about my little bug photos thinking how they might be helpful in tracking the declining numbers of oil beetles … and I may have even mumbled the words, “citizen scientist” under my breath before hearing John say, “Do you get a badge for that?”

He was of course teasing me ever so sightly and referring to scout merit badges but I didn’t get that until later. I pictured instead a freckled-faced girl in shorts wearing a secret decoder ring from a cereal box with a plastic badge pinned to her t-shirt with the words, “Citizen Scientist” on it.

His badge comment reminded me a happier part of my childhood where decoder rings really felt magical and an afternoon spent outside could be an opportunity for daring adventures and bold discoveries.

Pausing for a few grass munching beetle photographs led me to some fascinating research on oil beetles and their special relationship with bees. One of them likes to treat the other like a taxi service and an all you can eat food bar. You can find out which one by clicking on Buglife.

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Breaking Down Walls When A Sledgehammer Won’t Do

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Yesterday morning I walked down the hallway from our bedroom to make coffee like I do most mornings leaving my husband John behind to sleep a bit longer. The path into the kitchen is not straight forward and as I stepped from the hallway onto the landing and then back through another door into the kitchen, I thought about how by the end of the day, the wall blocking easy access from the hall to kitchen would be gone.

And then just like that I went from visualizing breaking down physical walls to thinking about the emotional walls people sometimes put up and how I deal with them. Frankly, even I think that’s too much for a 6:00 am wake-up and certainly too much for me to be mulling before my first cup of coffee, but I couldn’t help myself.

Some of you already know that I grew up in a home of extremes, a place where my memories until I was 14 alternated between silence and shouting, and anger was meted out in harsh physical ways by raging adults who didn’t bother to hold back. Once I was safely out of my mother’s house and living with my dad and step-mom, my mother cut off all communication with me. I’m not sure there’s a bigger wall than a total lack of communication unless it’s death.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time and money learning how to break down the protective walls I used to put up. They serve no useful purpose after a time and much like the convoluted path from our hall to kitchen, it’s a waste of energy.

Not all barriers can be overcome, but given the right approach and commitment, the results can be obvious.

There are times when a committed attempt to chip away at an unnecessary wall will yield good results given the use of focused energy and proper tools.

One person can only do so much on their own and progress can be slow, but once a breakthrough occurs it may be difficult for the person on the other side to turn their back on the possibility of letting in the light.

Breaking down walls is hard dirty work. You use muscles that you may not have worked with in the past and even with progress towards a common goal, things might appear slightly cloudy at different points.

You may find you feel boxed in and think it better to try to climb over the wall taking a shortcut to a place where it feels easier to move and breathe.

But then you realize that breaking down walls can be easier when you work in tandem with someone else and when both people are committed to the outcome, the results can be seen much faster.

It’s good to know ahead of time that there will still be rough edges to smooth out after the walls are cleared away.

Decisions will usually still need to be made afterwards as you consider which doors you’ll walk through and which you’ll close off.

As you finish for the day, you’ll feel amazed by how much more open things are without the wall and you’ll remember that until it wasn’t until you tired of walking around it that you realized it did not have to be there forever.

Who knew that renovation could be a form of therapy … perhaps there’s a new business model in all that dust.

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Making Space For Something New

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There’s an echo down the hallway that sounds empty and loud from where I sit as I write. What John likes to refer to as the ‘East Wing’ is being readied for demolition … well, parts of it anyway.

It’s actually the hallway that’s been emptied because it connects to a wall that won’t be there after Wednesday and … then there’s the kitchen too. It’s having a pretty major redo over the next few months and I’d like to share it with you.

Here’s a few before photos before I show you our breakdown in progress.

(The sink, dishwasher, hidden fridge, cooktop, and oven are staying in the same place. The countertop/worktop and the tile are going to be changed and we’re adding a new extractor fan/hood over the cooktop. The table and chairs in the photo below are being changed as well. We like the table, but not the chairs so they are on their way out. The table may stay … at least for a while.)

If you came for coffee right now you’d see a house with dishes and china scattered through several rooms. Our dining room table is dismantled and leaning against a kitchen wall, and spices and other foodstuffs are sitting temporarily on the coffee table in a space where they’re likely to have to be moved as the big work begins.

(The right corner wall is being taken out which will give us more room for the dining area)

What began as plan to open up a space and gain more room for the dining area has morphed into a major kitchen remodel. I am tickled to pieces having never had an opportunity to have a say in any kitchen design and my head is spinning now with possibilities and the decisions we need to make.

(John’s been taking things apart to get ready for the builders and in addition to our mess, you can see where the fridge and dishwasher are located.)

(The windows are being replaced along with the dated Artex ceiling and we’re adding hardwood floors)

Maybe I could run a few ideas past you to see what you think after I do some more research.

If you have a dream kitchen you’d like to share or maybe what you wish you could change in your own, leave me a comment or a link and I’ll put them all together in some posts to follow. As always, I appreciate your thoughts.

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Life Without Laundry Baskets – Breaking Bad Habits

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Laundry baskets used to be the catch-all for all odds bits of stuff in my life and while they do sell them over here, I’ve not been in a mad rush to go out and buy one. That’s right … there are no laundry baskets at all in this house.

In my previous life, clean clothes rarely seemed to make their way out of the baskets and into the dresser drawers. I’d fold the clothes, put them back in the basket, carry the basket to the appropriate room, and there it would sit until it was practically empty because I hated putting up laundry. These days,with no laundry baskets in the house and no tumble dryer for me to hit the refresh button, things tend to go directly they belong.

An added benefit to our no basket approach is I no longer have a place to stash miscellaneous stuff to sort out later. It either goes into the proper place for it or it finds a new home.

You may be thinking with only a drying rack and an outdoor clothesline … how do they transport the wet stuff?

I snapped the photo below the other day to show you how we do it here. The sun was shining so it we had a big wash day and after filling the clothesline you can see hanging in the very back, I moved the drying rack outside too to take advantage of the weather.

When you live in a place with frequent rain and no dryer by choice (John’s choice, not mine, but I’ve adjusted) you learn not to put things off. And with only one very old baby’s bathtub to get the wet stuff from washer to clothesline, it gets used and put away afterwards so it’s always empty and at the ready for a good wash day.

John’s been using his niece’s old bathtub to transport washed clothes outside to the clothesline since he found it in his dad’s attic after his father died in 1997. The plastic bathtub’s former occupant turned 29 earlier this week and while she looks great, the plastic on the tub is beginning to crack.

If I know my ‘use it up or wear it out’ husband at all, I’m betting we’ll use it another year or two before we buy something more traditional like the one below.

Internet Image

Having had time to learn the new behaviors I mentioned above, I think I’ll be okay having a laundry basket in the house again, but only if we stop with just one.

 

 

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Saving For The Future – Yellow Gold

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Daffodils remind me of my great-grandmother. She always referred to the golden beauties as Jonquils, a name you’re more likely to hear in the American south, and one which actually refers a variety of the Narcissus flower. I think she would have been very impressed with the mix of daffodils growing in and out of the Cornish hedges. For the longest time I thought that like many flowers they had hitchhiked their way to the hedges, forgetting that they are bulbs and as far as I know, must be planted.

John watched a television program the other night that explained why there are so many different types of daffs improving the views in our narrow lanes. Before WWII, loads of daffodils were grown in Cornwall and exported for sale with bright fields of different varieties harvested each year by hand.

The picture below is one from the National Trust website for Cotehele and shows the harvest.

Photo Credit - National Trust

From Field to Hedge

During WWII, Britain’s food was mostly homegrown so the daffodil fields were quickly changed to fruit and vegetables. When the bulbs were taken out of the soil to make room for something more edible, the farmers didn’t want to waste them so they put them into the hedges where many varieties from before the war still grow every spring.

While it’s not the kind of gold that can fund your retirement, I’m going to enjoy the blooms that much more knowing the history of how they came to be there.

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Then & Now – Two Grandfathers With 82 Years Between Them

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This photo from 1930 was taken in Polperro by John’s father, Victor Winchurch when he was about 16. John’s grandfather, Percy is sitting on stone in front of the house with his wife and mother in-law on either side of him and John’s aunt is the child off to the left. I probably should add that when this photograph was taken, Percy was not a grandfather yet and would not be until John was born twelve years later. (you can double-click for more detail in the image)

I didn’t get the angle quite right, but I took this yesterday of John sitting in the same spot as his grandfather eighty-two years earlier. It’s pretty amazing that the fence in front of house still looks the same.

This photograph was taken in 1932 and has John’s father in the image. You probably can’t pick him out since John looks more like his mother. Take a guess and I’ll tell you later in a comment on this post. One more thing, if you look up to the right you can see a white structure on the hillside and it’s in the photo below with John.

Here’s the same white building in the image with John’s dad and his friends taken eighty years later with John standing near it. The next time we go to Polperro, I’m going to get John to sit where his dad was sitting and shoot it from that angle. I like to do this when I can and have several posts where you can see a then and now shot.

If you click on this link from 2010, you can see a sweet one of John as a boy and some black and white images his father took before John was born alongside my photos of the same places eighty years later.

After seeing the photo on the rock, John and I had almost decided that there was a great deal less vegetation leading into Polperro eighty years ago until we had a look at this photo of his father’s group of friends cycling into Polperro taken on the day of the rock photograph. We walked up this road on the way back to Lansallos yesterday and it’s interesting to see that it’s actually changed very little.

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Through The Valley Of The Sheep – On The Path To Polperro

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John and I set off yesterday on a coast path walk that was new ground for us. While we’d been to Polperro in the past, we had not walked the path we took yesterday. This shot reminded me of a trip I took the summer of my 20th year to the dusty Greek island of Ios. The lone tree with all the sheep around it took me straight back in time except it was cooler here and green, with the only dust being that our feet kicked up in a few well worn places when we picked up the path later.

It’s always easy to spot when you’re in an area where you may run into sheep. Walking the coast path can sometimes take you through farmers fields and while you are free to walk on the designated path, you must be very careful not to do anything that scares the sheep if you stray off it. Dogs have to stay on a leash and there can be serious repercussions if a farmer catches a dog chasing the sheep.

Sometimes following John can mean diverting from the path … ‘ Don’t mind us,’ I tell the sheep as we walk right through their seaside café.

He can often get ahead of me when I linger to take … ‘ Just one more photo ‘ an expression he’s heard me use many times since we met. You can see John in the distance if you look to the right.

Here’s another shot of John that I took while running to catch up.

Because we were walking through a field, we had to hop a fence or two to get back on the coast path … John went first.

Then I showed him my technique for climbing over barbed wire fences.

Not long after, we walked into this lovely space as we came down the coast path.

I stopped to touch the nose of the chestnut colored horse on the way down to the beach.

Before I went down, I turned back to photograph the horse on the hill. I liked the balance in the space between the horse and the tree.

There’s John off to the right … waiting for me, again.

This is one of my favorite shots of the day. I loved the lines in this photograph … that’s John enjoying the view for a minute before continuing on into Polperro.

Polperro is one of my favorite fishing villages in Cornwall and is different from others in a few ways I’ll come back to in another post.

We walked into the village next to the harbor coming from the direction near the tip of the trees you see slightly off-center in this photograph. You climb up and down a lot of hills on the path to Polperro.

We were halfway back to where we started by the time we reached this spot. Our goal was a visit to the Talland Church on the hill before going on to where we left the car. From here it didn’t look as if we had far to go, but as anyone who drives through the lanes here will tell you, a quick trip can take longer than you think and even more so when you are walking rather than driving through the lanes.

I was in a hurry to get to the church before the sun changed too dramatically as I was worried about losing the light. We took a wrong turn that carried us right past this view and I loved the way I was able to show the church and the fairy balanced in the same shot.

After a few more hills we reached our destination, although not our final one of the day.

The church was locked which is generally not the case with village churches at least during the day, but we didn’t mind so much after finding a well placed bench with a view of the sea.

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When Memory Fails You

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The Ghost Next Door by Wylly Folk St John. Illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman

I’ve read Kyran Pittman’s work for longer than I can remember beginning with her first blog, Notes to Self. I think I found her around 2006 when I discovered there was a community of folks doing something called ‘blogging.’ Her talented husband, Patrick created a logo for me back in 2007 which helped me track time through old emails, but I’d be hard put to come up with an exact date.

All this chatter about memory, dates, and Kyran Pittman is due to a comment I left on her  website, Planting Dandelions a few days ago.

It turns out that in addition to our expat identities as women who married and moved for a love met online, we both collect owls.

Owls you say … stifling a small yawn perhaps.

I’ve loved owls from childhood when I read a book written by my Aunt Wylly called The Ghost Next Door. Kyran recently wrote about her owl collection and asked if any of her readers had collections as well. I left a comment sharing a brief bit about how my aunt was responsible for the start of my owl collection and how her book had influenced my choice of collectables when she’d asked me around age eleven if I had a favorite animal I might like to collect.

Everything I said was true except my memory of the book cover which is ironic when you consider that it’s been sitting on a bookshelf in every place I’ve lived over the last 40 years  except for those that occurred during my transient time in the military.

In my comment I said there was an owl on the cover with love in its eyes, but as it turns out the book cover I was recalling was not mine above, but the one below, a reprint from much later and one I’ve only seen online.   

See what I mean … there’s the ghost child Miranda holding the owl with love in its eyes.

Kyran left a followup comment to mine asking where she might see the book cover and it was then I remembered that my first edition copy had the owl on the title page and not the cover.

You’re probably thinking ‘ so what ‘ unless you write or read memoir and know how important it is that your memories are accurate. Kyran will know exactly what I’m talking about as her book, Planting Dandelions is a memoir and is as she says ‘ … about becoming a family, while still belonging to myself. ‘

I write a lot about family and sometimes I can check in with them to see if our memories match knowing that while some of our experiences may mirror each other, how they affect us and what we remember, may vary a great deal.

Writing memoir is tricky. There are some things you can never forget as much as you might wish you could, while other memories shift just as my cover story did leaving me with an uneasy feeling about future stories. You can bet I’ll be tighter on fact checking in the future.

My brother-in-law, Leon is a writer, editor, and blogger and he has a cute disclaimer at the top of his blog that reads: ” Warning: The following contains opinions and ideas. Some memories may be accurate. ” I loved the ‘ may be accurate ‘ when I read it thinking how clever his warning was, but after my little mixup I wonder now if perhaps he was being more serious than cute.

There are things about The Ghost Next Door and my aunt that never get confused and I’ve written about her impact on my life and inadvertently my daughter Miranda’s in other posts on my blog. You can find them if you use the search space. (I’ve left you a clue below)

Aunt Wylly’s books were always mysteries filled with the kind of delicious clues a curious girl needs growing up, particularly when her home life is such that she needs a more pleasant distraction. Her books made me think and it does not surprise me that the still unfinished novel I began during NaNoWriMo has evolved into a mystery with a fantasy twist. As much as memoir appeals to me, I do like the freedom of making things up as I go when sorting out the plot lines in my novel.

Gifts From Wylly Folk St John

Gifts From Wylly Folk St John

I’ll leave you with the image above of two owl gifts that my aunt gave me when I was a girl. Both sit on a bookshelf in the studio space where I do most of my writing. The book is written in French, a language I never learned, and I’ve had it since it arrived in a birthday package on my 14th birthday.

I kept it all these years because it was a gift from Aunt Wylly never knowing that 34 years later I would marry a man in another country who would speak French and be able to read it aloud to me.

There are loads of memories that connect me to my aunt, some of which I may remember differently from time to time, but all tender and all connected to love.

Margaret Harper, Wylly Folk St John, holding Pam Jones, & Elizabeth Harper

Margaret Harper, Wylly Folk St John, holding Pam Jones, & Elizabeth Harper

This photo was taken at my aunt’s home in Social Circle about the time I made my owl preference known. I couldn’t know then how much influence she would have on my life or how she would affect my writing years later.

Looking at her smiling in these last two images, I can’t help but notice there’s a bit of an owlish look to her and I’m surprised I never saw it before.

Thomas St John with Wylly Folk St John

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The Gifts Of Friendship

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Tell me I’m clever, Tell me I’m kind, Tell me I’m talented, Tell me I’m cute, Tell me I’m sensitive, Graceful and wise, Tell me I’m perfect – But tell me the truth.

~Shel Silverstein

Searching through a virtual mountain of photos of my dear friend Patrice, it was this image that made me pause and get a bit teary-eyed. Taken last September when she was here for a visit, it illustrates what I consider one of the best parts of our relationship … the quiet moments of earnest conversation and sharing.

Not long after Patrice and I first met, she gave me a tour of her home telling stories about different things as we went from room to room in a way very similar to what I might do. Knowing early on that I was a big reader and lover of books, we stopped in front of a bookcase where she had several books that were special to her heart.

At least one was written by Shel Silverstein, an author I knew about, but had not really read and it seemed meant to be somehow that this quote jumped at me when searching for one on friendship this morning. I smiled when I read it knowing that she would understand exactly why I chose this one.

Today is Patrice’s birthday and even though I can’t be there to help celebrate, I wanted to remind her how much I love and appreciate all the ways she has enriched my life with her sweet friendship. I celebrate the light she brings to my life and the many ways she has helped to illuminate the truth.

Happy Birthday, Patrice!

Patrice ... Celebrating the Light!

You can go here to see more photos of Patrice’s trip to Cornwall last year.

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Unlikely Friendships

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” Francis, Francis, why do you always wander away when I’m trying to talk to you?”

“I know she’s back, I can see her at the wall too, why don’t we waddle over and say hello, come on old boy, what can it hurt? ”

” You must think I’m crazy, Giovanni … that is a dog and it does not want to play! It looks as if it wants lunch! ”

 ” Francis, could you just try to get on with others a bit better, it’s a big world out there and I think we should explore more than this patch of water. What about a little trip to see what’s on the other side of this pond?”

” Alright fine, but just remember who’s leading this expedition!”

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There’s a place I like to walk where I always look for these two unlikely seeming friends when I pass by. In mild weather they sit in the river on one side of the house and in winter you can see them in the back garden at the edge of a small pond.

It seems funny to see a drake and gander always hanging out together like two good old boys who don’t seem to need anyone else. I like to create little vignettes when I see them and I find their constancy very comforting in a world where things often change faster than I would like.

I gave them names from history for today’s post and wondered if any of you might recognize who they represent?