Clammy Groundcherries, Everted Opossums, and Art

I go on to the second barn, but find it full of honest machinery. It's a better barn with a better roof. I guess I like the skeevy one better. It tells more stories. 

I go a bit farther beyond the second barn and see a huuuge whitetail buck in the hidden meadow.

It's interesting how I have come to be able to tell a buck from a doe, naked eye, at such a distance. To judge the relative size of an animal that, through my iPhone, is but a dot, and know that it's really large, or at least larger than a doe would be. And darker. Bucks tend to be darker and bluer than does in fall.

 I long for my telephoto lens. I can count ten points on his antlers through my pocket Swarovski binoculars. 

Busted, he takes off. Wish I could do better than this, but I can't run with a 70-300 telephoto weighing about 8 lb. You can just make out the bone-white tips of the tree of antlers on his head.

Hope he made it through gun, bow, youth and muzzleloader seasons. Oh, and the three-day December shootin' spree. 

Chet and I move on down the road, noting a very nice patch of wild ginger still showing yellow- green! I hadn't known the leaves persisted so long into November. 

At the point on this beautiful road where I can see the little church, I always start to sing "Little Brown Church in the Vale," one of the songs my dad would sing as he took my mom, my sister Micky and me on long drives into the Virginia countryside when we were kids. 

Oh how I loved when he would sing. He could carry a tune, but his rhythm was a little off. It drove my mom crazy. Dale! You skipped two measures!

Of course we all sang along. Micky was really good at harmony.

I strove to be as good as she was.

She also drew better than I did.

Consider these things, how having a talented older sibling can burn a hole in the younger, less gifted one, make her long to excel.

My father knew about that.

It occurred to me as I uploaded these photos that I have never crossed the creek to snoop about in this church. For one thing, it looks like it's locked up tight. 

But maybe it's not. 

Shiver of delight if not.

Big disappointment if so.

I think that's why I haven't tried.

In such a public place my guess is it will be locked and barred. 

I'll get back to you on that.

It sits, a little jewel in the landscape. This spring I will go and see what's blooming around it, 

even if I can't get inside to sing and dream.

In November,  the damp bank of the stream was full of clammy groundcherries, Physalis heterophylla. 

I became enchanted by these members of the nightshade family. 

They were so similar to the tomatillos I'd grown all summer (which I adore; like a crisp, citrusy tomato!) that I wondered if they were edible.

Sites differ on that point. This one (Ohio Perennial and Biennial Weed Guide) states that the plant and unripe fruit are toxic. Yikes. Let me quote them directly: 

 Leaves and unripe fruits of groundcherries are poisonous and even fatal if ingested by humans. However, ripe fruits are not as toxic and can be made into jellies, jams, and sauces. 

Now, would you eat something that was described as "not as toxic?"

Pfft.

Me neither.

I'll settle for admiring their beauty. Don't miss the church, behind...

Ooh, ahh.

I'm going to try one next time I find them. Ain't skeert.

Speaking of not being skeert, I found an unfortunate animal. Do you recognize this foot?

Yes, that is an (almost) opposable thumb. But this animal has not developed an alphabet, 

nor learnt to grow grain.

Still, it is a marvelous foot.

We have not many truly scaly animal tails. By now, you have guessed whose foot that is, no?

If you are easily grossed out, you may want to put your hand over this next photo. I will tell you that this is what a turkey vulture does when it processes a Virginia opossum. Or a raccoon, or a cat or a groundhog. It turns it completely inside out, leaving only a head and the skin, the spine everted, and all the tasty bits gone.

 Which, if you're a Science chimp, you love, even as you gag a little.

Ready?

here it comes

 So now you  (gag) know. I took the color saturation down a bit.

 It helped.

Sometimes I wonder, if I were some big-deal photographer with a New York gallery show, if I put a huge print of a photo like that up on a well-lit white wall, with a label that said

Requiem: Didelphis

and there were long tables of wine and cheese and some helter-skelter jazz trio playing, would skinny young people in heavy horn-rimmed glasses and long black coats assume they were missing some Greek literary reference they really ought to know, gather around and speak in low tones of the immense loft of my artistry?

Then I trot on

behind my little black dog

who remembers where we parked.

Just below the tiny community hall where he inspected the privacy booths, and we'd voted, first thing that November morning.

Big Day: Sights Along the Way

Liam carries Harry Potter along, just in case it gets dull while we're birding.

We aren't just looking for birds when we go on a Big Day. We look at everything. These handsome horses looked back.


Behind them stood the cutest donkey, whom we didn't even notice until I was done taking horse photos.

About time you took my picture. Notice my eyelashes, and fetching withers markings.

I thought she looked like she needed to pull up her stockings. You know, the kind with the rolled top that only come up to your knees, like my grandma used to wear.

We had a lucky encounter with some shorebirds that, until I got the photo on my screen, I thought were lesser and greater yellowlegs. Only problem: the smaller bird has greenish-gray legs and a prominent eyering, which points to solitary sandpiper. Both lesser yellowlegs and solitary sandpipers were feeding with the greaters that day. I really wanted the two yellowlegs to line up side by side and thought I had the shot, but it's a cool picture, anyway.


In Newport, we stopped to get ice cream at the Jug, home of Jugfest, whatever that is. Happy Mother's Day! Show us your jugs!


Back to the woods--the phoebe nest on a cliff, right across from the Church in the Wildwood.


A closer look showed that it was about to explode, so we backed off. You don't want to get too close to a phoebe nest where you can see faces. They're spooky little things when they get near fledging age, and might fledge prematurely.


My father, now gone since 1994, used to sing "The Little Brown Church in the Vale" when we'd go on car rides. He could sing, but he had no rhythm, and you never knew how many times he was going to sing the word "come" when he sang "Oh, come, come, come, come, come to the church in the wildwood, oh, come to the church in the vale." We'd get so tickled trying to sing along with him, especially my mom, who is a good singer and does have rhythm.




Down along County Road 12 not far from our home, we found The Church in the Wildwood. It has been cleaned up over the past year, and it was nice to see it looking cared for. We like to stop there because there are always yellow warblers and phoebes on the stream bend in front of it.

Dad would have been 97 on June 18. I was the last of five children, and the nurse thought Dad was my grandfather when she came out into the waiting room to tell him I'd been born. He was only 46, but that was considered pretty old at the time to be hanging out in a delivery room waiting area for your child to be born. He'd been out pheasant hunting and was still in his boots and mackinaw. We lived in South Dakota.

I like to stop there because when I look at the church, I can still hear my father singing. Happy birthday, DOD. Wish you could talk to these kids.