Namely Marly

My husband and I came across an unusual find in the garden recently. A monarch caterpillar. He was so striking we had to run and get the camera.

Caterpillars are such amazing creatures. They are the larvae of butterflies. As larvae, their main job is to eat and eat and eat. Hmm, sounds like an interesting job description!

After they’ve finally eaten their fill, the caterpillar will search for the right spot, anchor itself, and create a chrysalis. Here is where things get really interesting.

I’m a fan of O Magazine’s Martha Beck and she wrote an article called Growing Wings about what goes on inside a chrysalis. She described how if we looked inside a chrysalis we might expect to see a caterpillar that goes through some linear process of becoming a butterfly. But that’s not the case. What happens instead is that the caterpillar sheds it’s outer skin and becomes a sort of “bug soup.”

I should probably talk a little quieter. I think I’m causing the poor fella to get a little distressed.

Beck says, “in that glop are certain cells, called imago cells, that contain the DNA-coded instructions for turning bug soup into a delicate, winged creature—the angel of the dead caterpillar.”

The process from which caterpillars become butterflies is called metamorphosis, a wonderful metaphor to our more human experience. The problem can be that as humans we tend to be a little more linear. We see the butterfly eggs, the larvae (caterpillar), the cocoon, and then the butterfly. A linear progression of neatly unfolding events.

As a result, we sometimes expect the same things in our own lives. However, Martha Beck reminds us that the butterfly-making process is more like the sausage-making process. It’s not for the faint at heart.

Sometimes we find our lives embroiled in our own bug soup. Digressions from the linear progressions of our own expectations, otherwise known as personal setbacks. Some of this change can be so profound we begin to lose the sense of our own identity.

Martha encourages us to hold on. Her article gives ideas to help foster your life’s bug soup into a time of transformation. Just like this little guy is about to go through.

Caterpillars make marvelous metaphors, and it helps that they’re so photogenic too.

My job today is to weed the flower bed. It’s my one task for the day. Well, it’s my one yardwork kind of task at least. It shouldn’t be too difficult of a task either because I have lots of weeds to choose from.

I hate weeding. Do you?

I’m amazed by all the ways I can distract myself when faced with doing something I hate. In graduate school, even cleaning sounded better than studying. That’s bad!

Speaking of bad, that’s the way I would describe the weeds in our flower garden. I made the mistake of buying a box of seeds. Mixed Perennials. Problem is, how are you supposed to know what’s a weed and what’s a flower? It takes someone more botanically informed than me. I think at this point we’ve reached the conclusion that whatever is growing in this patch, it’s not flowers.

But look at this little treasure I found when digging through the weeds.

I used to call this a locust when I was a kid. In fact, everyone I knew called them locusts. It’s a side effect of growing up in a small, rural town. Getting the name of something right is not as important as saying it often.

In fact, my aunt had a locust tree which seemed to be chock full of them so I figured that must be where they come from.

Now I live in the “city.” It’s technically a suburb, but compared to where I grew up, this is a big city. Here, people don’t call them locusts. They’re cicadas.

We live in the part of town where the houses are really old. We have lots of locusts. Oops…I mean, cicadas.

Shakespeare once said that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. I’m here to say, that a locust by any other name still is really loud.

Break time is over. Time to get back to weeding!!

I hate squirrels

You know I live in a constant state of confusion. That’s true in many ways, but particularly when it comes to the topic of squirrels. I’m a vegan. I love animals. It’s true because it says so on my FAQ page. It’s right there in black and white, “I love animals.”

But I don’t love squirrels. Bitter bile builds up in my system at the mere sight of them. They stand for everything I’m against such as selfishness. It’s probably why they’re so squirrely. And that brings me to another probable reason I hate squirrels. My sisters used to call me “squirrely” when I was a kid. We could go into some psychoanalysis about what this really means, but I think I have cookies in the oven.

Another reason I hate squirrels is that I have three fruit trees in my backyard: a pear, a plum, and a peach tree (I didn’t plant them, but I do love the alliteration). In the many years I’ve lived in this house I have only had one pear. That’s it. This year I hoped would be different. I sprayed cayenne pepper religiously. I even gave an offering to the squirrel gods hoping they would have mercy on me.

Squirrels are not merciful creatures. In fact, they would taunt me while perched on the bough of one of the peach tree limbs sagging heavy with burgeoning fruit. No matter how many times I would run out to the backyard arms flailing yelling non-obscenities (I don’t want to offend the neighbors), I would barely get back to my kitchen window before they were back at it again.

Although I started the summer with high hopes, this year has been no different than the others. All the peaches are gone. All the plums are gone. We are left with only three pears…which I am guarding with a wire contraption (I can tell you more about that later). My dreams of making peach cobbler have been foiled yet again.

Then one day I took an unexpected journey to my family farm in southern Missouri. My dad left this land to me and my sisters last year. For many reasons I hadn’t made it to the property but most of all I think it was hard to return because I knew how special this land was to my dad. And now he’s gone.

Imagine my surprise when I trundled past the waist-high undergrowth (OK, weeds) and saw to the left of the barn a peach tree. And it had some ripened peaches ready for the picking. My spirits lifted immediately.

I thought to myself, “I think I’ll have to steal a couple of those peaches.” And then I realized that I wasn’t stealing. These were my peaches growing on my land. A gift to me from my dad. The trepidation of this trip and the agitation of my “unfruitful” summer vanished. At that moment, I knew everything was as it was supposed to be. It was all worthwhile.

Do you ever find yourself in a place where you think to yourself, “Why didn’t I come here sooner?” I was thinking those words this weekend when I found myself on an unexpected journey. I arrived at a destination that I hadn’t thought I was avoiding. It was a place I needed to be, but for some reason I didn’t want to go there.

This weekend I did. And I went there all by myself. Another flash of reminiscing hindsight tells me that was how it needed to be.

When my dad died last year, he left to his three daughters a tract of land in the rolling hills of his birthplace, southern Missouri. I remember traipsing through this land of my uncle’s farm as a child with a wild adventurous spirit, unbridled enthusiasm for the land around me. I had no fear for the possibility of what could go wrong. Neither did I have a premonition that some day this land would be mine. But is it really mine? I could show you a piece of paper with my name on it that says that it is.

My dad was so talented in many ways, but he was held back by invisible hands that kept him from reaching his full potential. He did, however, pass on his genes to four children and he passed this land on to us. He didn’t even earn the land himself, he inherited it from his brother. Nonetheless, he was proud to give this gift to us and he talked about the land at every opportunity.

I hadn’t been to the farm in years and I had always been a passenger on previous trips, never the navigator. Unexpected journeys don’t always allow time for planning routes, and I was restless to get this trip started so I set my GPS to the nearby town of 300 or so people and off I went. Hundreds of miles away from the place I called home, I walked into the nearest and oldest-looking gas station I could find. The men at the counter looked like people you would see in a movie, their etched features worn with the years. I was proud to tell them my last name that I knew would be recognized in this area. Although my uncle died over 10 years ago, they knew him and gave me “as the crow flies” directions to the rural road farm.

I drove down the winding gravel road as they instructed and some 20 minutes later I arrived at our family farm. When I was with my dad at the farm I thought he seemed like a trespasser on my uncle’s land. Now I felt the same way about myself. A second generation trespasser. But then I realized we’re all sort of trespassers on the land. So I decided to walk the land and get to know it. Let it get to know me. And with this approach I hoped over time, each would come to own a little of the other.

I’m at the very early stages of getting to know our bucolic acreage in Southern Missouri. As with any new relationship, my emotions are euphoric (and certainly not realistic). I can’t wait to spend more time away from the city noise and lights. Country skies display stars so thick that one has a difficult time picking out city-familiar constellations like the Big Dipper. No matter what difficult work may be ahead in owning this land, I welcome the opportunity for a place of refuge and with any luck, more unexpected journeys.