But I Don't Dwell

I have spent the last two weeks writing the final two chapters of The Great RV Adventure, the story of a three week, six thousand mile RV trip across this beautiful country of ours. My traveling companions were two beautiful ladies, my mother and Lori, a friend of my oldest and much adored sister Patti’s. The purpose of the trip? Moving my mother, whom I call Momma — yes, I know that is not the way it’s spelled, but it is the way I spell it — moving Momma from her efficiency apartment in Pennsylvania to Patti’s home in Arizona.
From the navigator’s seat I got to see many things and take a lot of photographs; somewhere over seven thousand of them, which allowed me to embellish my story.
“Your pictures make the story come alive for me!” Momma commented.
For Patti…I know Patti wanted to make this trip with her friend Lori and reading the story made her feel a little bit a part of it.
Because I had worked so long and so hard on finishing the story, I haven’t been out enough to collect new stories but I have continued to walk the dogs so I have a ton of photos to show you.
I had this pale yellow iris, or flag, on my desktop for a while.

Right now my desktop is adorned with wild roses.

Roses were Kat’s favorite flower and now I can’t look at a rose without thinking of her.
I picked a sprig, along with some honeysuckle and brought them home for my fancy cinnamon jar vase.

Speaking of Kat, I received another letter from one of her organ recipients. This lady, a lady named Chancee, received one of Kat’s kidneys and her letter is so full of the blessings this gift has given her that she calls it a ‘true miracle’.
Chancee has had diabetes since she was six years old and now, having fought the disease for over thirty years, was not doing well. A four year struggle with dialysis and blood transfusions has left her with very little hope of a transplant.
Then the call came.
As soon as the transplant was over, Kat’s kidney started doing its job and Chancee is doing better, faster than anyone expected.
“It’s perfect for me,” she wrote, “and I will take care of this precious gift.”
Chancee has a daughter, a senior in high school, and with this new kidney she will be able to be active in her daughter’s senior activities.
“It’s given me such a better life,” she wrote.

Did you know that 22 people die every day waiting for organ transplants? That 120,000 men, women and children are waiting for organ transplants? More than 1,000 of them are under the age of 10?
On the upside, 30,000 people began a new life in 2015 thanks to organ transplants. Some from deceased donors and some from living donors. 48,000 people have their sight restored through corneal transplants each year. I think that is just fabulous. Can you imagine being blind, then being able to see again?
As sad as we are to lose our loved ones…
It is strangely satisfying to know that they aren’t all dead. That a part of them lives on in this world. That something good has come from their deaths.
As thankful as the donor recipients are to have received these gifts of life and sight…
They struggle with survivor’s guilt.
All of these things are just words. I don’t know if you can truly understand the feelings I am trying to impart or if it is something you need to experience firsthand. Heck, I don’t even know how to put into words the way I feel sometimes! A ball of molten lead in my heart might come close to describing the feeling — if I dwell too long on Kat’s death.
The one year anniversary of Kat’s death is coming up soon. I am thinking about re-posting the story I wrote about her and wondered what you all think about that.
Post it? I’d like to read it again.
Wait a few more years? It’s still too fresh in my mind.
And don’t go thinking everyone else will answer me because then nobody does.

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Let’s get on with my walk-abouts with my girls Itsy and Ginger.
The neighbor’s yard has a lot of wild garlic in it and since no one is living in the house, it has been allowed to grow. I’ve picked and dried some of it and I’ve been watching for the garlic to bloom it’s tiny flowers so I can take pictures.
Then one day, walking past, I don’t see any garlic. What in the world… I wondered. I walked over and looked where the garlic patch had been and I didn’t see any! None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. I ranged out a little further and found a couple of stragglers and that is where I took this photo.

A few days later I’m walking the girls up past the neighbors again and a whistle pig runs out of the grass, across the driveway and down over the hill — to his den, I’m sure. Do woodchucks eat garlic?

“Why don’t you Google it Peg?” you say.
Okay. So I do. I did. I Googled it and according to what I can find, they do NOT like garlic. One place has even suggested planting garlic around their hole to encourage them to move on.
Well, I think circumstantial evidence shows they do eat wild garlic! At least the bulblets. He plucked the top from each and every one of them.

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In 2011 they completed a short section of highway between us and the bypass. This spring that road has been absolutely beautiful with flowers.

“I wonder if they planted them or if they are wildflowers?” I wondered aloud.
“They’re wild,” Mike surmised. “If they had planted them, wouldn’t they have planted on both sides of the road?”
The other day our friend Margaret was with us and Mike found a pull-off and let me get out and take photographs. I picked one and brought it back to the Jeep where Margaret waited with Mike.
“I wonder what they are,” Margaret said taking the flower and looking it over.
“I don’t know.”
“When you find out, let me know.”
Margaret these are tickseed coreopsis, a member of the same family as daisies and sunflowers.

“What’s that bug on there?” you ask.
Boy! I’m so glad I anticipated that question! That orange guy there is a soldier beetle.
Mixed in with the tickseed were these large purple beauties.

“What are these?” Margaret asked when I brought her one.
“I think it’s a lobelia,” I answered, but I was wrong. This is a beard-tongue. And I’ve been taking pictures of bead-tongue for weeks now! Only the beard-tongue that I’ve been seeing are white and a lot smaller. This guy has flowers that are two inches long!
Our ride-about with Margaret took us down a dirt road.

Mike stopped and I got out and took pictures of other wildflowers. After taking a picture, I plucked one and handed it to Margaret. She didn’t know what it was and I don’t either.

I brought all of the flowers home that I picked that day and made them a home in an empty applesauce jar that was rinsed and waiting for the recycle bin.

I saw this guy on another walk-about on another day.
That’s a scape moth, I thought and as I picked my way across the fallen branches, rocks and leaf litter trying to get a closer shot, he spread his wings and took off.

A little further down the road I saw another one!
I was taking picture after picture, edging my way closer and closer and he didn’t take off on me. Then I realized he was busy with a little spider and I was able to get several shots of him.

Cool! I thought. Bugs doing something photos are way more interesting than bugs doing nothing photos, don’t you think?
When I was getting around to writing this letter blog and getting my ducks in a row, so to speak, I checked the Missouri Department of Conservation web site and this is not a scape moth; it’s head is way too wide. I sent the photo to Kristie at the MDC and I was worried I wouldn’t hear from her in time to make this edition but I did. I heard from Kristie yesterday.
“I want you to know that before I bug you, I try to identify these things first,” I wrote her. “Your online field guide is a great resource for me and I thought this was a scape moth but it’s head is broader than the ones I see online. I wonder if you know what it is. He’s got a spider, or does the spider have him?” In my picture it looks like the spider has the scape moth’s antenna in his pincher. Had I thought about that for even a nanosecond I would have realized spiders don’t have pinchers. But I didn’t. I went on thank Kristie for all she does. I mean, it’s got to be a pain to identify bugs and flowers for people all day long.
Then yesterday I got this from Kristie: “Our resident bug expert found your photograph very interesting and sent it out to his colleagues, so I expect to write to you again about this photo.
In the meantime, however, this is a net-winged beetle facing off against a pseudo-scorpion. Pseudo-scorpions eat very tiny invertebrates, so we’re not quite certain what might be happening in this photo. But my bug expert is curious to find out if the two species have some kind of interesting relationship.
I hope this helps.”

And it did help. I Googled net-winged beetle and found other pictures of my bug, in different colors too. Then I Googled the pseudo-scorpion and found out the same thing that Kristie told me. They eat little things. So what are these two doing? My money is on the net-wing. I bet he’s trying to make a meal of the pseudo-scorpion.
Ginger! Oh my gosh! Ginger loves the pond now more than ever. She likes to jump in and walk in the shallows. I don’t know if it’s the fish or the frogs or the snakes or what it is but she gets so excited and strains at the leash.

Sometimes I’m mean and make her wait just to show her who’s boss.
It was at just such a time when I got to noticing all these beds on the bottom of the pond. Above each one was a fish swimming in circles and they were defending their beds against other fish too. Whoever has the best bed gets the girl, I guessed.

“There might be eggs in the beds already,” my youngest and very handsome son said when I showed him.
“So those are females protecting them?” I asked.
“Most of the time it’s the males who protect the eggs,” Kevin answered.
So Ginger comes out of the pond and is wet up to her gills and likes to have a rub in the grass to dry off. I didn’t realize she was rolling around the first time this happened and I kept walking. When I felt the weight on the leash, I looked back and saw her wriggling in the grass and as I pulled her along she made no effort to get to her feet.

She likes it! I thought.
Ginger got up, took a step or two and threw herself down again, snorting in happiness, as I continued to pull her along in the grass. She wriggled around on her back, flopped onto her side and wriggled, kicked herself over to the other side and wriggled some more, then she was done. She gained her feet, gave herself a great shake and I never missed a step. I think she was smiling. And now it is our habit for me to pull her through the grass as she rolls.

“Don’t you choke her if you pull her?” you ask.
No. The harnesses that I have on my girls go around their front legs and is adjusted so there is no pressure on their throats at all.
The birds were hunting at the pond, in the evening of another day, on another walk-about with my girls. They were flying around in circles, diving and swooping and occasionally dipping into the water. I’m not as good at identifying birds as I am bugs and flowers, so I don’t know what these are, but I spent a lot of time (much to the chagrin of Ginger) and took a lot of pictures trying to get a clear shot with their reflections. Unfortunately, out of fifty some pictures, this is the best I got; and they’re not very good.

Mike and I had taken the RV back up to Columbia (again) during the period I was working on the RV story. We are having problems getting an oil leak in our leveling system fixed. It was late as we came home and I got a pretty sunset photo with cows in the foreground. I had two photos that I liked pretty well so I enhanced the color on them and asked my Facebook friends and family which of the two they liked the best. It was my intention to only use the winner in this letter blog and this is the one that won hands down.

Bird’s-foot trefoil.

Snake skeleton?

Garlic with a little bee.

Wild four-o’clock. 

Crown vetch.

Moth mullein in both white and yellow.

One of my favorites - beebalm.

This is a smooth spiderwort.

 I was trying to get a close-up of it’s center because I am often amazed at the complex and intricate designs of flowers. Look at the centers of these; don’t they look like tiny little jonquils in there?

A flower garden in the center of each flower. Who came up with this design?
Oh yeah. God did.

There’s purple clover.  

Summer azure.

Fleabane.

 Cinquefoil.

And look what I saw at the pond!

I wasn’t very close to him and with my zoom, this is it, this is the best shot of him I got.
What is it?
It’s a beaver! He’s got a leaf-covered branch in his mouth and he’s taking it home. I am not 100% sure, but I’m pretty sure this is the first beaver I’ve ever seen in the wild. I hope they don’t shoot him because I know of at least two landowners around here who do shoot them.
But I don’t dwell.
Let’s call this one done!