A Nip of Fall

Fall arrived almost a week ago, but we haven't needed to turn on our radiators yet--although tonight it will be tempting. We had the boiler checked out on Monday and the man said it's good to go. This has been a week of checkups--yesterday we had the van serviced and the mysterious "Airbag" light tracked down--it was a blown fuse, which also was keeping the rear wipers from working. Next time I'll check the fuse box myself before having to pay the dealer's hourly labor fees!

We think all of the hummingbirds have left for warmer gardens. The last visitor we had to a feeder was on Saturday morning. Also, this morning a humongous flock of grackles, at least 200, landed in our yard and the neighbors' on each side. Usually hummers keep other birds, even those much larger, at bay. After digesting maple seeds and draining the birdbath, all of a sudden the entire flock rose and flapped away to the north in unison. Maybe it's global warming? The turtle last week was going the "wrong" way, too. Meanwhile, our Cardinal Flower vines on the back fence (above) have finally decided to bloom, after twining all over themselves for most of the summer. The flowers are much smaller than we expected, but en masse they are striking. Of course, we planted them to attract more hummingbirds, not realizing they would bloom so late.

Our geraniums are also glorious right now. Every year I vow that I won't bring any of them in or take cuttings to root, and every year I wind up cramming them into the upstairs south window in the sewing room. This ivy geranium (right) is the deepest red I think I've ever seen. Yesterday I just sat on the front porch and read for two hours because it was warm and calm. Those days will come to an end soon, but I'll take advantage of each one that comes along.

Sam and a Turtle

Today we got to keep Sam, Doug and Matt's miniature poodle, all day and take him to the groomer for a haircut. Actually he wasn't all that shaggy: his coat was just past the nappy stage, bordering on curly, but his nails were long. We hadn't seen him in about six weeks so we enjoyed being greeted with Sam's enthusiastic tail wags when Matt brought him by at 7 a.m.

As Sam and I were heading out to get in the van for the trip to Norma the Groomer's, we saw this turtle, marching across the driveway toward the backyard fence. Someone in the past had painted a red blotch on its shell, so it may have been a pet, or perhaps noted in a scientific study. I remember the annual spring and fall migrations of turtles in Tulsa, where I grew up. It always was a mystery to me how they got through fenced yards, and I wondered how far they really traveled. By the time I dropped Sam off, ran some errands, and came home an hour later, there was no trace of this determined reptile anywhere in the yard. It was headed north so I hope if it got as far as the busy street, it made it across all right.

Norm mowed the lawn and then the sky started to look threatening. Our whole area was under a tornado watch, but all of the rough weather went south of St. Louis today. Sam came home from the groomer smelling sweet, with coat like soft, sheared velvet, but he wasn't in much of a mood to sit still for a picture. Matt came by after work and had dinner with us before he and Sam headed back to Edwardsville. Having Sam around makes us just a bit nostalgic for the days when we had a dog of our own.

Doug's Voice on MP3

Doug Harrison, whose blog averyfineline.com was two years old last month, is becoming recognized as a writer and critic in the world of Southern Gospel Music. This past weekend he attended the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, and wrote several posts on his blog about the experience, including one in which he reflects on Southern Gospel and its role in shaping American culture. If you want to check Doug out in his own words, you can visit his blog and link to his 5-minute interview with Chuck Peters of sglive.com, an internet radio station that plays--southern gospel music. Or you can just copy and paste this link: http://www.southerngospelreporter.com/nqcavery.mp3

This probably doesn't work too well with dial-up but it's easy to access if you have any kind of high-speed connection.

Klondike in Missouri

For more than a year, our friends Mike and Sandy Dixon have been trying to get us out into the far corner of St. Charles County to a treasure of a place they have discovered called Klondike Park. Friday we managed to make the trip. True to its golden name, the goldenrod was in full bloom!

The park is located at the site of a former sand quarry that dates to 1898. It was a source of fine silica sand that was used to make glass at a plant in Alton, Ill., across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. The fishing lake now fills the deepest part of the quarry, where St. Peters sandstone was found 120 feet from the surface. Remnants of this fine silica sand still ring the lake today. The sand is very similar to the fine white "sugar" sand that lines Florida's Gulf Coast beaches.

Mike led Norm and me on a hike around the lake while Sandy read and relaxed in one of the picnic shelters in the park. Then we drove to the park headquarters and Mike, Norm and I hiked up a steep hill to the top of the park overlook.

The exposed top of this hill shows the upper layers of yellow sandstone and other rock that were above the prized silica sandstone layers. We could look out on the valley below, and we were above the Katy Trail. Down below, Sandy was using a field guide to figure out what kind of flowers were growing in front of the Dixon's van in the parking lot!


The quarry closed in 1983, and the area was developed into today's park, which opened in 2003. We enjoyed spending this beautiful late-summer/early autumn day with these dear friends. We also ate lunch in Washington, Mo., stopped at Centennial Farms in Augusta and picked up apples, honey, apple butter and three perennial plants to take home, mementoes of a golden afternoon.

At Last, Thursday's Child Speaks

After ambitiously starting two blogs in August, it has taken until now for me to get anything more posted to the other one, Thursday's Child. Maybe I can update it every Thursday? We'll see. If you want to take a look, you can click on View My Complete Profile; the profile page has a link to it. And feel free to add comments or let me know what you think. Thanks for checking in to Home Stories; many of you have written or commented and I'm grateful.

Florida Nature Up Close

Today Norm and I visited the Calusa Nature center, right in the middle of Fort Myers, while Doug was preparing to teach his classes tomorrow. Almost all of Southwest Florida appears to be wetland, and this of course is the rainy season, so it's even wetter than usual. They are 8 inches above normal for their year, while back home in Missouri, we are 8 inches below. Nothing looks like drought conditions here! This boardwalk (at left) is on one of the three trails through the preserve. The other two were under water and we would have needed hip boots and a crocodile pacifier to get through them, but they are open in the dry season from December through May. Trails vary from one-half mile to one-and-a-half miles in length; this was the shortest one.

The boardwalk in this section (above) goes through a stand of cypress. The forest varies from cypress to slash pine, depending on the elevation (which varies 10 feet at most!) and the amount of water standing. This part of Florida was heavily logged in the 1930s, so almost all trees are the same age. Trees grow tall and thin here, in competition for light. Their height helps them, the slash pines especially, resist fire. Apparently fire is a persistent danger in these parts, although it's hard to believe on a day like today. In fact, it rained hard this afternoon and is still raining tonight as I write.

At right is an epiphyte anchored to the bark of a cypress. Quill Leaf, (Tillandsia fasciculata) lives off nutrients in the air and moisture from the high humidity and rainfall.


Other epiphytes in this area include the ubiquitous spanish moss. At left is a spectacular colony of ferns that was growing in the cypress swamp. The light green fronds seemed to capture and re-transmit the sunlight that filters down from the canopy. The whole experience was not unlike visiting the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden, but with the added attraction of many birds, including blue jays, pileated woodpeckers and some tiny gray flitting bird that I plan to look up in my bird book as soon as we get home.

We learned quite a bit about the ecosystem from exhibits in the visitor's center, including the fragile nature of the local aquifers that provide fresh drinking water, just a few yards from the salt water of the Gulf. We are looking forward to visiting this area again in the dry season (winter to mid spring) and also the beaches of Sanibel and Captiva islands, which we skipped on this trip largely because of the really, really hot sun. Midwesterners like us will undoubtedly appreciate that high sun index more in winter than right now.

Palms on Pine Island

We took a field trip today to Pine Island, one of the barrier islands to the north west of Fort Myers. This view is of a fishing pier at the north end of the island, which is also home to lots of palm plantations and an historic site of Indian mounds built by the Calusa Indians, a people that disappeared from the area sometime in the 1700s. It was really hot, so we didn't take the interpretive trail but it would be a good project for a winter visit here.

A close up of the Royal Palms, right, shows just how majestic and huge they can be. On some parts of the island we saw huge downed trees, leftover damage from Hurricane Charley, but this area looked good.














Doug took a picture of me and Norm, left, in this historic preserve.

This was one of many palm plantations on Pine Island. These are Royal Palms. Nearby we saw a tall nesting platform, and over Pine Island Sound we saw two large dark birds with white heads circling...perhaps they were among the 10 or so eagles known to be nesting on Pine Island this year? We enjoyed the area because it had a real mix of uses and didn't seem as manicured and packaged as some of the tourist areas.

Updated note: I apologize for the strange gaps between pictures and copy on this post. I have studied the HTML code and I think by hitting the Return key too many times I inserted some code I don't need. But I'm too chicken to try deleting it; I'm afraid I'll lose the whole post. Live and learn.

On the beach, among other places

Saturday morning we visited Ft. Myers Beach, which is located on an island separate from the mainland. Doug drove us over a high causeway to get here. The settlement is full of beach houses, hotels and small tourist trap businesses painted in the signature colors of South Florida--yellow, orange, hot pink, turquoise. The beach was mostly deserted, because there has been a bloom of red algae. The Gulf of Mexico here looks as big as the ocean to landlubbers like us, though.


Before we arrived at the beach, though, Doug gave us a walking tour of Florida Gulf Coast University. Sure enough, it has a lot of lakes, and this sign emphasizes the unique status of the alligator in the ecosystem.


Doug's office is in the library; the newest faculty have offices there because the school is beyond capacity at this point. FGCU has 8,500 students enrolled and about 3,000 live on campus. The office has a door that locks, but the walls don't go quite to the ceiling. Nevertheless, professor Harrison looks quite at home in his new space.

Florida Weekend

We arrived Friday evening at the Fort Myers airport to be greeted by one of South Florida's famous "rainy season" thunderstorms. The attendant at the car rental counter helpfully upgraded us from a compact to a minivan at no extra charge, so we decided that Florida can be welcoming, after all!

Saturday morning's sunshine greeted us and we set out to visit Doug's office at Florida Gulf Coast University and Ft. Myers beach. Doug's apartment on the far eastern fringe of Ft. Myers is very comfortable. The second floor unit in the picture is his.

Behind his place is a lovely view, including a small lake. It is posted, as are all waterways in Florida, with a warning that alligators reside within. So it's not exactly a wading stream. One obvious feature of the Florida landscape is its total flatness. People who think Kansas prairies are flat really need to come to Florida. All of the water, just lying in marshes or running the the myriad canals, would be a welcome sight in Missouri, Oklahoma or Kansas right now, too.

Festival Weekend

Labor Day weekend in St. Louis features many festivals and events. Our favorite is the Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden. We went on Sunday afternoon and not only saw and heard the Taiko drummers (Judi's favorite) but also glimpsed part of the Chihuly blown glass exhibit that has been the talk of the town all summer. The yellow sculpture at the left is at the entrance to the old-fashioned rose garden. During the storms on July 19 that knocked out power all over the metro area and destroyed numerous trees, including over 50 valuable trees at the Botanical Garden, none of the outdoor glass sculptures were damaged.

Dale Chihuly 's works are found throughout the Garden. Most of them can be viewed inside the Climatron for a separate admission charge. Among those on general display are these floating bulbs in the lily pad gardens in front of the Climatron. If you have ever been to the MBT, you'll recognize the Climatron's reflection in the photo at the right. (Note: Chihuly's works are copyrighted. Permission has been given to photograph them for educational and noncommercial use only.)

The highlight of the weekend for us is the Japanese festival. Judi has a "thing" for Taiko drummers! This ancient art started as a defense tactic. Villagers would beat their drums loudly to fool an attacker into thinking there were more people there to defend the town than actually were there. It was revived as a performance art a few decades ago. The Festival has had guest groups from San Diego and Hawaii, but St. Louis now has its own talented group of Taiko drummers and they performed an entertaining program in the 80-degree sunshine. During the festival, we got in at least a mile of walking, counting the distance from our parking place to the entrance and various tours around the grounds. We also saw a procession, women practicing for a kimono fashion show, and an exhibit of Ikebana flower arranging and Bonsai. We had a good time and the best part was Judi waking up on Monday without a stiff knee! The wounds from the laproscopic surgery in June are slowly but surely healing up and the full range of motion is returning. Next week we will be visiting in Florida for a few days, and looking forward to a long walk on the beach, if the next hurricane will just stay out to sea!