The birds of ‘heaven’s hillside’

Posted on by Kelly Lynn Thomas
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This post originally posted on January 29, 2012 on Nature Writing, the group blog for my Nature Writing class at Chatham University.

Male northern cardinal, 1/29/12

On my way out the door around 12:30 p.m. to sit on what I’ve now dubbed “Heaven’s Hillside” because of all the trees of heaven in the backyard of my North Side house, I realized I’d forgotten my camera. As I ran back upstairs to get it, I froze in the kitchen when I saw a flash of red outside the window. A male northern cardinal pecked about the carpet of decaying leaves, searching for his preferred lunch of seeds. Two little song sparrows hopped after him, presumably looking for anything he might have missed.

Up close, I could see that the cardinal wasn’t all red. I’d seen his black face mask before, but now I noticed the black highlights in his wing and tail feathers and he hopped around. His crest stood up and he moved his head around, showing off his bright orange beak.

When he flew out of sight of the kitchen window, I went upstairs and found him outside my office window, still searching for seeds by the fence on the right-hand side of my yard. I cracked the window and snapped a quick photo before he continued his journey into the yard of the vacant house next to mine.

Since Mr. Cardinal was more or less out of range of my camera lens, I went outside and climbed the stairs to my yard. An echoing “hello” gave me pause, and I looked around, trying to find the source. It came again, and I saw my neighbor J., from two houses down to the right.

“What are you doing up there?” she yelled at me from her back patio.

“I’m doing a nature blog, so I’m taking some pictures!” I held up my camera.

“Do you live up there?” She pointed to the row of houses on the street above us. She obviously didn’t recognize me in my bomber hat and puffy coat.

“No, I live right there.” I pointed to my house. Once J. realized who I was, she relaxed and when back inside. Ever suspicious of neighborhood kids breaking things, getting into things, ruining things, or going anywhere near her house or our street, she had thought I was one of them.

Tree of Heaven, 1/29/12

When I turned back around, I caught sight of the cardinal, perched in a bush, watching me. My shouting match with J. hadn’t disturbed him, and he seemed to be waiting for me to leave so he could continue rummaging for food. I laughed to myself and stared back at him.

After several minutes I took a few exploratory steps further into the yard. The warm sun had dried the top layer of leaf carpet and tree of heaven twigs, so my feet crunched before compacting the springy, wet under-layer of composting tree and plant cast-off. At that distance, the cardinal looked almost exactly like a red leaf in the bush. He didn’t move, so I walked the four or so yards to the copse of trees of heaven I like to lean against. When I looked back, he was gone, but an actual red leaf blowing in the wind kept tricking my eyes into thinking he still sat there.

This is the third day in a row I’ve seen the cardinal around noon. Yesterday my husband and I saw both Mr. and Mrs. around 11:30 a.m. at the bottom of the yard. Mrs. Cardinal is mostly brown, but has hints of red on her wings and tail, though not her crest. Friday was the first day I’ve seen a male this year, but I believe I spotted the female last weekend by the retaining wall at the top of the yard. On Friday I saw the male sitting by the retaining wall, looking around, before he flew to the other side of the yard and disappeared behind a privacy fence. I’ve seen cardinals out back the past two winters we’ve lived here, too.

The sun felt good against my face, even if the breeze felt chilly. Wind chimes sang over the constant hum of cars speeding past on I-279, located about half a block down the street. I settled in, and soft bird song emerged beneath the louder chimes and cars.

My attempt to sketch a hairy woodpecker.

Since reading Marcia Bonta’s Appalachian Winter, the cardinals aren’t the only birds I’ve noticed. Monday, from my office window, I saw a black and white bird with a red patch on the back of his head drumming at the tree closest to me. Based on his actions, I guessed woodpecker. I watched as he banged at the tree, paused, banged some more, moved, banged, paused, moved, banged, flew to another tree and repeated his motions. He hit almost every tree in my yard before flying out of sight.

I don’t agree with everything Marcia Bonta thinks, but she makes a good point when she says: If we remove all the invasive species, where will the birds live, and what will they eat?

I checked the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s online Bird Guide and pegged the bird as a downy woodpecker. But later, when I spoke with my mom, she informed me that downy and hairy woodpeckers look exactly alike, but hairy woodpeckers are larger, about 7 inches long with beaks about the same size as their heads, whereas downies are only about 5 1/2 inches long with smaller beak-to-head ratios.

I went back to the Bird Guide and changed my identification to hairy woodpecker. I realized that I know absolutely nothing about birding, but decided to start a bird list like the ones Katie Fallon included in Cerulean Blues anyway, even if it has mistakes or is incomplete:

Bird List: January 23-29, 2012

  • Song sparrows
  • Male northern cardinal
  • Female northern cardinal
  • Hairy woodpecker
  • Unidentified sparrow- or finch- sized grey, red and white birds

Nature Blog: Claiming a hillside for heaven

Posted on by Kelly Lynn Thomas
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This entry was originally posted at Nature Writing  on January 15.

My nature writing class at Chatham has to keep a weekly nature blog. Each of us must pick a place and spend thirty minutes in that place each week, and then write a blog post about it. I encourage you to check out what my classmates are doing, too! I’m going to cross-post my entries here, but a few weeks behind. Entries may be slightly revised, and photographs may vary. I’ll tag each one “natureblog2012″.

Frozen Fungus, 1/15/12

I lean against one of the six or so trees of heaven that have claimed this part of the North Side for their own. Sun-softened snow covers a layer of ivy and decaying leaves, and my feet slide on the ground at the base of the slope of my backyard. The trunk feels solid against my back, but its smooth, gray bark offers no resistance when I shift position.

The hill curves up into a retaining wall, stones crumbling. In front of the wall, a massive trunk, five or six feet in diameter, rises from a tangle of its own fallen branches and chopped-up pieces of fence that have been pushed against the hillside. A brick staircase from the yard’s lower, flat surface leads directly to this wall of impenetrable plant debris. I imagine it used to lead to a terraced garden.

Decorative ivy, gone wild from that garden, falls like a curtain over the lower half of the tangle. Its leaves change from black-green at their center to forest-green at their edges. A yellow fungus forms shelves on sections of log that were thrown up here when part of the massive tree fell and took the neighbor’s fence with it, but now it looks frozen and as dead as the wood it clings to.

Behind me and to the right,  on the flat part of the yard, the spines of a dozen more tree of heaven saplings stand branchless, like support poles for a house that was never built. Dried, stalky weeds, probably the remnants of stinging nettle and goldenrod, hold out their seed pods, waiting for someone like me to brush by and knock them to the ground where they can wait for spring.

Seed Pod Galaxies, 1/29/12

I, too, can see the beauty in winter, the beauty of multitudes of five-pointed seed pod stars clustered in small galaxies, light brown specks against the whiteness of snow. But I do not believe that nature, as Emerson wrote, is a channel by which we can connect to some higher being. Nature is that higher being. Emerson felt alone when he looked at the stars, but I feel connected to everything, and everyone.

Somewhere to my right, a bird starts singing, and that surprises me, though I’ve seen plenty of birds out here before. A man who lives on the street above interrupts his bush trimming to take a phone call. The bird changes tone, but continues. Through the thicket I see a flash of white and brown, but nothing more. I want him to be some rare or exotic bird, but I have to accept the likelihood that he’s a song sparrow since I’ve seen them around before. I never realized how beautiful they sound. A few crows interject loud caws into the sparrow’s refrain, but I don’t see them, either.

Tiny Waterfall, 1/15/12

When the sparrow stops singing, I lean forward to examine the ground in front of me and find a miniature frozen waterfall. The man has stopped talking on his cell phone and presumably gone back inside, leaving me with silence. The sun slips behind gray clouds and that, more than the lack of sounds, makes me feel alone. The sound of my camera lens opening and closing makes me jump and almost lose my footing, but the tree of heaven holds me steady. Honeysuckle vines, still clinging to some rapidly fading green leaves, twist around the fence that marks the end of this yard and the beginning of the next, and I wonder how long that fence will stand.

This nature is not, as Emerson wanted to believe, bending to man’s dominion “as meekly as the ass on which the Savior rode.”  It is slowly eating everything here. The trees of heaven, a widely invasive species that love disturbed urban spaces, have no doubt sunk their roots deep and spread them wide. Even if you leave a small piece of one in the ground, it will sprout up again.

I turn to retrace my steps through the stalks and saplings, and see how heavily I’ve trampled the ground. Blackish ivy and wet brown leaves peek up through the woman-sized boot prints in the disturbed snow. At the bottom of the yard, I grab a tree trunk to steady myself and look over the sheer retaining wall that holds the hillside away from my patio. The roots of two more trees of heaven push on the rough-hewn rocks. The wall will break, eventually, and the trees will take the whole hillside.

—-

Bird identification help by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Plant identification help by the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture

The best place to have an epiphany in Chicago

Posted on by Kelly Lynn Thomas
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The Bean on July 28, 2008. Photo by Kelly Lynn Thomas.

The Bean looks nothing like the tall, straight buildings made of brick and stone that stand around it. The Bean perches in Millennium Park, almost like it floats on the concrete, like it is made of mercury and will change shape and move at any second.

My friend E. and I walk beneath it, laughing at how silly it looks, platinum and shiny in the July sun. When I look up to see my contorted reflection in its surface, I can’t pick my face out of the streaks and swirls of color rushing in all directions. E. and I look back down at each other. I feel a little sick, like the world turned upside down and I wasn’t ready — not like a roller coaster where you feel the track beneath you, pulling you through the loops.

E. and I look back up, and this time we are ready for the world to flip. We see ourselves, sunglasses, short black hair, pale skin, both of us. The Bean pinches our faces, our bodies puddles of black and white shirts and skirts around our skinny chins and foreheads.

The Bean is more properly called the Cloud Gate, but no one calls it that. E., from a nearby Chicago suburb, tells me her whole family made fun of it when they finished it two years ago in 2006. Now, she still giggles at it but calls it “Da Bean” the same way she says “Da Bears” in her exaggerated Chicago accent that’s usually not noticeable. I imitate her, and I think I do a pretty good job.

The outside of the Bean reflects the whole city. Something about it makes me dizzy in a way that looking out the window of the women’s room on the top floor of the John Hancock Center didn’t. From up high, everything looks flat. Inside the Bean, everything bends, but never looks like it’s going to break. I get the feeling things could bend and twist and change forever inside the Bean, and maybe become something new, but never break.

Streams of people in shorts and bright T-shirts walk under and around the Bean. Some are tourists, some are passing through, and some are on their way to cool off in Crown Fountain, the centerpiece of which is a giant rectangle from which water streams and onto which ever-changing images of Chicago natives are projected.

I find the more I look up at The Bean’s center, which disappears into a conical hole in the middle, the less vertigo I feel. The shape reminds me of a singularity. Black holes capture light, and their immense gravity forces it to bend and fold.

When we do leave Millennium Park to catch a train, I look back and see the city bending within the silver of its arch, buildings curving inward, reaching toward a point we can’t see.

 

Adventures in cooking vegetables I’ve never eaten before

Posted on by Kelly Lynn Thomas
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Organic vegetables by WordRidden

My first month as a member of the Pittsburgh-area Kretschmann Organic Farm CSA brought me bunches and bunches of kale, butternut squash, potatoes, beets, red radishes, a daikon radish, carrots, nappa cabbage, red cabbage, three varieties of lettuce, raddichios, onions, lots of apples, rosemary, parsley, thyme, sage, garlic and even some homemade sauerkraut.

Although I realized at some point last year that I can cook whatever I want whenever I want (previously my brain seemed to think certain dishes could only be eaten in certain places or at certain times, like when my mother made them), I had never actually ever bought or cooked kale, radishes of any kind, raddichios, these fancy lettuce varieties, or beets.

Instead of panicking, I did some quick Googling and discovered there are all sorts of unexpected things you can do with lettuce aside from make salads, like put it in soup or even braise it. I also learned that kale makes a nice potato chip substitute and have now become rather addicted to kale chips, and that beets take about a million years to cook all the way.

Since I tend to decide what I want to eat right before I cook it and because I don’t really like following directions anyway, I look at five or so recipes for something and combine them all into one that sounds good to me, making substitutions as necessary. I thought I’d share a few of my adventures that came out particularly well, since if I don’t write them down I’ll probably forget them anyway. I also don’t really measure anything, and I never use salt. Butter is rare.

New Year’s Day Pork and Pierogies

  • Pork chops
  • Pierogies
  • 1 medium onion
  • Approx. 1-2 c. chopped nappa cabbage
  • Approx 1-2 c. chopped red cabbage
  • Dash or two or three of caraway seeds
  • Delicious Kretschmann Farm sauerkraut

Melt some butter or oil in a large pan. Saute onion, cabbages, caraway and pierogies together until cooked. In a separate pan, cook pork chops. When chops are mostly cooked, add sauerkraut to heat.

Beet Salad with Rosemary Pesto Mashed Potatoes

  • Lettuce of your favorite variety (just not iceberg, ever)
  • Beets
  • Chopped parsley
  • Approx 1/2 c. feta cheese
  • Red potatoes, skin on
  • 1/2 c. rosemary
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 tablespoon walnuts
  • Approx. 1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

Wash beets, trim ends, roast at 375 degrees F until tender (about an hour). While beets roast chop lettuce and parsley for the salad. Then chop potatoes, boil them with the skin on, drain, add a bit of milk and mash. Do not add butter. For pesto, blend rosemary, garlic, walnuts and 1/4 c. feta cheese in blender or food processor, then stir in olive oil. Mix as much pesto into the potatoes as you want. When beets are roasted, the skins should peel off. Chop them up, add them to the salad, and top with feta cheese (or goat cheese, if you like). I use a bit of balsamic vinegar for dressing. Serve with the potatoes.

Carrots and Radishes On the Side

  • Carrots
  • Radishes
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • Garlic
  • Chives

Saute carrots and radishes with garlic and chives in eevo until tender. Serve as a side dish.

Slow Vegetable Stew

  • 8 c. veggie broth
  • Kale, chopped
  • Carrots, chopped
  • Potatoes, chopped
  • Onions, chopped
  • Roasted spaghetti squash, stringed
  • 3 or 4 apples, sliced
  • Rosemary to taste

Put everything in crock pot, cook on low 6-8 hours.

Braised Lettuce Open-Faced Sandwich

  • 1 piece whole grain toast
  • 1 oz. goat cheese
  • Some sun dried tomato halves
  • Braised lettuce halve
  • Garlic
  • EEVO

Spread the goat cheese on the bread and then top with the sun dried tomatoes. To braise the lettuce, place an entire head of lettuce in a pan with eevo and garlic for 3 minutes, then flip and cook for about another three minutes. Repeat until lettuce is nice and wilty. Alternately, you can boil it for a minute before cooking it in the oil, but I think that makes it too wilty. After braising, cut the head of lettuce in half and put half on your open faced sandwich(es).

The importance of local travel part two, or You are the places you’ve been

Posted on by Kelly Lynn Thomas
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As I was writing my post on The importance of local travel part one, I started thinking about why I had the reaction I did to these rural, industrial areas (not that Ambridge is exactly rural, but it’s not really urban, either). It’s strange, considering I grew up directly across the street from a steel mill and have family who worked in the steel industry. Steel is still a large part of the economy in my hometown of Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

I have always had a deep affection for that steel mill, and not simply because it made up a large part of the visual landscape of my childhood. Lukens Steel is the oldest continuously operating steel mill in the United States, and the first with a female owner and leader. Rebecca Lukens took over the mill in 1825 when her husband Dr. Charles Lukens passed away and brought it from the brink of bankruptcy to prosperity. The company itself dates back to the 18th century.

Whenever I visit Coatesville now, so much has changed that I feel a sense of unease wherever I go, except when I drive by Lukens. The name is different now (it’s changed many times since Bethlehem Steel bought it in 1997, but to us Coatesville natives it will always be Lukens), and they’ve painted some of the buildings a beige color, but otherwise it looks the same. The barn-shaped buildings, spread out all over the southern and western ends of the city, stand tall against the sky, train tracks spreading out from within them.

So how can I feel so comfortable surrounded by Lukens and the noise of steel plates falling together like thunder, and yet feel isolated, lonely, and depressed in a different area that is essentially just like Coatesville, only a little further West?

I used to tell people I felt so comfortable in Pittsburgh because I grew up in a steel town–Coatesville used to be known as “Pittsburgh of the East,” in fact–but Pittsburgh isn’t a steel town anymore. Pittsburgh, named one of the top 20 destinations in the world by National Geographic Traveler Magazine this year, has rebuilt its image on medicine and technology and sustainability.

I think I’m actually comfortable here because Pittsburgh used to be a steel town. Lukens, to me, represents my childhood and a host of things I will never feel again or have again. To come up against steel, to come up against industry, for me, is to come up against all of those things that I’ve idealized about my past, all of those things that I store in a safe place and only bring out once or twice a year when I drive by Lukens and remember watching Fourth of July fireworks in the park next to the mill with my family while patriotic music blasted from speakers set up all around. In Pittsburgh, I can keep all of that under the surface, at a safe distance.

Nothing overtly tragic or traumatic has happened in my life, but the Kelly who lives in Pittsburgh is not the Kelly who lived in Coatesville. That Kelly believed in Jesus and went to church on Sunday and thought abortion was like the holocaust. This Kelly believes in a goddess and goes to full moon rituals once a month and thinks comparing anything to the holocaust is crass, at best. This Kelly is not very comfortable with that Kelly, who lived across the street from a steel mill, and fell asleep to the sound of metal grinding against metal.

In Northeastern Pennsylvania, I cannot keep any of those things at a safe distance. In Ambridge, I cannot, either.

Here, too, is the importance of local travel. You carry the places you’ve been with you when you go. And those places have power over you. You have power over them, too, but only if you understand where you’re coming from, where you’ve been. Travel them well.