Apr

29

By Peg

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And on the fifth day of vacation…

The bumblebees waited, making lazy and noisy circuits of the front porch.

I brought in Homestead verbena, already a sprawl of outrageous purple flowers. Miss Huff lantana, a smallish perennial with a deceptively Old South name that will put out hot orange and golden flowers, sometimes with a hint of blush, eventually filling up the landscape even in the hottest of summers, as deceptively demur Southern belles will sometimes do. For spice, fluorescent pink ice plant, which folds its gaudy flowers every night and flings them open again every morning.

And out of sheer recklessness, a nice-sized lilac bush whose fragrance will leap to compete with a nearby magnolia, which has more than a dozen fat buds lush with promise.

After they were all in the ground, I set right the leggy rose bushes that had bent double in a recent storm. To show their appreciation, a dozen buds opened this morning, watercolor red.

The verbena was barely in the ground when the bumblebees gathered ’round. By late morning, the butterflies had come – one very chic in black with iridescent blue trim, a shy one in white, others in orange and yellow to show solidarity with Miss Huff. Coming in with authority, a plump chickadee in formal-wear perched high in the five-gallon maple that has already leafed out in rich green.

Sometimes when I garden, I understand why God went on for days. Who would want to stop? Let there be this…let there be that…and watch the magic that follows.

Apr

10

By Peg

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Alpha behavior and extinction

Disclaimer: I do not advocate killing off  alpha males. And I’m not necessarily saying that aggressive, hostile men are baboons.

Once upon a time a tribe of 62 baboons were living a very typical baboon life in Kenya. Like most baboon communities, the Forest Troop was dominated by a small number of large, nasty-spirited and bullying male baboons. These dominant males made the women and the smaller, less aggressive males miserable by abusing and mistreating them. And as sometimes happens, the baboons who were being abused by the biggest and meanest were taking out their frustration on the younger and smaller members of the community, who were then bullying those even younger and smaller than they were.

We know all this because the Forest Troop was visited and studied every summer by Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford.

Then, about 20 years ago, nature proved that the survival of the fittest may not always look the way we think it looks.

Because they were big and strong and aggressive, the dominant males in the Forest Troop fought off the competition for what seemed to be a major coup: a nice, big juicy pile of meat. Which happened to be tainted with bovine tuberculosis. Oops. All the alpha males in the Forest Troop died.

One might think that the others in the community who had been oppressed for so long would now step up and take over all the chest-thumping behavior. Not so. For 20 years now, the community has maintained a peaceful and nurturing atmosphere, even to the extent of communicating to incoming adolescent males from other, more typical baboon communities that mean, nasty behavior will not be tolerated in the Forest Troop.

I first heard this story on a National Geographic documentary about stress. This small part of the bigger story fascinated me and I Googled around until I found a New York Times story that referenced the same research. Although the study in question was about stress, I also see a wonderful object lesson about the potential for all the mean-and-nasty among us to make themselves extinct with the very attitudes and behaviors that they believe make them kings of the hill.

I’m not holding my breath, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if the human race could prove itself to be wiser than a tribe of baboons by learning the lesson the primates had to learn the hard way?

Apr

5

By Peg

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Life as a Social Media Op

I almost missed one of my Top 20 Moments to the impulse to capture it so I’d never forget it.

Four and a half years ago, I went to the Outer Banks. I arrived late in the afternoon and decided to hit the beach for a long walk. I headed south, saw a wash of purple in the west that signaled incoming rain. Still, I walked for a half hour or so before heading back. About halfway back, I saw the beginnings of a rainbow. A good harbinger for my trip, I thought.

This rainbow seemed particularly vivid to me, and it continued to grow…or reveal itself…until it spread from one horizon to the next.

Absorbed in the miracle stretched above me, I began to see what was surely a trick of my imagination: a second faint shadow of color arcing just above the first rainbow. As I walked, the second rainbow grew more vivid and more visible in the late-afternoon sky. I sat down in the sand to watch it as it also stretched from horizon to horizon.

Soon, everyone on the beach became aware of what was happening overhead.  The sky had begun to spit rain, but nobody left the beach. Everyone was too busy pulling out cameras and cell phones to capture what felt like a once-in-a-lifetime photo op. For a moment or two, I questioned the wisdom of just sitting and watching when I could be running back to my condo for a camera.

But it came to me that in their frenzy to snap photos, some of the people on the beach that day were missing the moment itself. And no photo could ever recapture that scene, visually or emotionally or spiritually.

During this month away from Facebook, I’m realizing how often my first thought when I have a memorable experience is how cool I can make it sound for my FB friends. I am, in effect, taking myself out of a moment that can never be captured and projecting myself into a moment when I’ll try to do just that in words that will no doubt be entirely inadequate. 

I wonder: If the skies opened and Christ stepped into view, how many of us would lose ourselves in Tweeting it or updating our status or grabbing an image on our I-Phones, never realizing what we had just given away by not being present for that precious moment?

Mar

20

By Peg

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A No-Brainer Weekend

Four days at the cabin. Countless wheelbarrows full of gravel spread. In the ground: one maple tree, three azaleas, two rose bushes, two rosemary plants, four juniper shrubs, four asparagus plants, one crepe myrtle, one coreopsis and three speedwell plants. One pair of brand new medium-duty garden gloves from K-Mart, already coming apart at the seams.

I was fully present with my arms as I raked gravel, my right hip as I leaned into the shovel, my back as I dragged plants and soil amendments into and out of the back of a vehicle. I sweat. I felt the sun on my arms and the breeze on my face and clay clinging to my hands.

I sat on the front steps with a tiny lizard. I played live and let live with the dirt daubers who are building a mud hut somewhere around the porch. I stood for five full minutes trying to determine if the snake across the driveway was alive and dangerous or dead and somewhat less threatening before I took another step. I listened to the cows who live a half mile down the road.  I napped with my cat.

Most of the time, I live in my head. I am, therefore I think. I think more than I feel. What a glorious thing to get out of my head for four days and into my body, into the earth, into the moment.

I’m not even going to probe that for some deeper meaning. I am content to feel it and be grateful.

May

16

By Peg

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All Talk, No Action

Stepped out on my balcony last night, plate in one hand, glass of iced mint tea in the other. Not yet late, but overcast, so it was neither too hot nor too sunny for comfortable dining out.

As I pulled out a chair, the bistro table lit up at the very instant I sensed a flash over my shoulder. Before I had time to name it lightning, thunder exploded like rifle shot, so loud and so close I expected to whirl around and see a limb cracking and falling from one of the giant trees beyond my third-floor balcony.

Nothing to see. But I knew a declaration of war when I heard one. I covered my willow rocker, took down my red umbrella, brought in the folding chair, retreated to my dining table. The sky remained calm, the wind never picked up. In the end, I could have stayed outside, dined to the music of birds and the hum of traffic from the nearby expressway, let the day fade out. But when nature roars, I’m not bold enough to call the bluff of a natural world that continues to prove it is cruel and capricious.

Tonight, without the all-talk-and-no-action fireworks, it has begun to rain here at the intersection of afternoon and evening. A gentle rain, no wind, even. I’m going to sit out on the balcony and wait to find out if nature — unfeeling as ever — waters my tiny garden or if I’ll be up doing it myself tomorrow morning.