Wildflower Wednesday: White Clover

Posted on by Erin Bartels

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Common Name: White Clover

Scientific Name: Trifolium repens

Habitat & Range: sunny fields and lawns statewide

Bloom Time: spring, summer, and fall

About: Clovers are non-native plants brought over form Europe for pasturing livestock and now, of course, they are found absolutely everywhere. The White Clover is the one that will occasionally produce a four-leaf clover. Butterflies and bees love it for the nectar. Rabbits love to eat the leaves and the flowers. And as a child when I was stuck out in left field during my first year of Little League, I’d eat the flowers too. Just because I could. And I was bored. Good luck controlling these in your yard. It spreads by creeping and by seeds that can lay dormant for years before germinating.

Reference: Wildflowers of Michigan by Stan Tekiela; Adventure Publications, 2000

Wildflower Wednesday: Spring Beauty

Posted on by Erin Bartels

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Common Name: Spring Beauty

Scientific Name: Claytonia virginica

Habitat & Range: wet, shady, deciduous woods

Bloom Time: spring

About: Yes, we’re hurtling toward winter up here in Michigan, but that doesn’t mean we can’t think about spring. A delicate woodland flower that blooms in April or May, the Spring Beauty is found in the southern half of the Lower Peninsula. Its tubers are eaten like potatoes, but please don’t dig these up as their numbers are being reduced by over-gathering. Foraging is a fun thing to do (if you know what you’re doing and don’t eat anything poisonous) but people who foraged for these plants in the past (because they actually needed to) usually did so with knowledge of how to keep their sources producing. A lot of foraging hobbyists may go into the woods these days with only knowledge of what can be eaten rather than knowledge of how it should be eaten and preserved for the future. That said, if you’re lost in the woods for days on end next spring and you find some of these, I’m sure it’s okay to eat the tubers to keep from starving to death.

Reference: Wildflowers of Michigan by Stan Tekiela; Adventure Publications, 2000

Wildflower Wednesday: False Solomon’s Seal

Posted on by Erin Bartels

FalseSolomon'sSeal

Common Name: False Solomon’s Seal

Scientific Name: Smilacina racemosa

Habitat & Range: deciduous woods

Bloom Time: spring and summer

About: We’ve been out in the fields for months, but there are plenty of wildflowers to be found in the woods. Most tend to bloom in spring when there is more sunlight getting through to the forest floor, but in the summertime you can spot lots of them by their leaves and berries. False Solomon’s Seal is an easy one to identify. Long, bending stems look a bit like palm branches with simple, alternating leaves that are even attractive when they’re dying:

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If your local nursery stocks woodland plants like Trillium and Hepatica and Jack-in-the-Pulpit, odds are they will have this too. That’s where I got mine. Solomon’s Seal is also sold in attractive variegated varieties and can brighten up a shady, tree-filled backyard.

Reference: Wildflowers of Michigan by Stan Tekiela; Adventure Publications, 2000

Ideas Are Like Deer…

Posted on by Erin Bartels

This morning spent a very peaceful morning alone walking the woods of Fenner Nature Center with my camera. Pre-motherhood, I did such things quite often. Once you have a child tagging along it is a different experience. Still a good one, but different. As the sun was rising into the hazy morning sky, I walked at my chosen pace with silent steps and no speech, listening to myriad birds singing springtime songs and watching the woods for things to photograph.

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Not too far into my walk I saw the flashing white tail of a deer as it bounded out of my path. So I stopped, then moved forward slowly until I was at a point where I could see her through a little clearing in the trees. She looked at me, assessing the threat level. I was still, waiting for her to decide I could be trusted at that distance.

We looked at each other for several minutes. Then she started nibbling at the burgeoning plant life around her and flicking her white tail. This seemed to signal her friends. She was joined first by one other doe, who regarded me with just a bit of suspicion before she too began foraging. And soon thereafter two more friends joined them before they all moved on into the woods.

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It occurs to me that this is how our ideas come sometimes. We are out enjoying life when a flash of white catches our eye and we stop a moment, then approach the idea slowly so as not to scare it off. We watch it closely, take in its form, maybe snap some photos or write some notes in order to capture it before it moves on. And if we are patient enough, more ideas come tumbling into the clearing in our mind.

Ideas can be timid, fleeting. Push too much and they can be pushed right out of our minds. But patience, stillness, a willingness to observe and record, can capture them forever.

What’s the Weather Like in Your Story?

Posted on by Erin Bartels

WindowviewartsyI feel a bit nervous saying this, as though by daring to utter it I might somehow invite another winter thrashing, but it truly does seem that spring may at last have won the epic battle it has been waging with winter for the past two months. It was finally dry enough and warm enough to spend the day outside, to feel the sun’s heat on my skin and hair, to remember what summer is like. I don’t know how dependable the change of the seasons is in the Middle East, but as a Michigander I feel greatly comforted when I read that God is more faithful than the changing of the seasons.

I think something in us as humans wants to have to contend with something. We want to contend with something and win, or at least endure. And that’s why when outsiders or transplants to Michigan bemoan the weather or are surprised by 50-degree temperature swings in a day or can’t believe it’s still snowing in late April we smugly shrug our shoulders and say “That’s Michigan!”

You don’t like weather? Start packing your bags.

And yet, even I will admit that enough is enough. I knew winter had gone on far too long when I was driving home from Grand Rapids earlier this week and I noticed a farmer’s field covered in bright green and my very first thought was, “What the heck is that?” Two days later I drove back to Grand Rapids in a snow storm.

My own modest gardens have come alive as well. And I saw the first bug smash against my windshield this week, so it is spring for real. Isn’t it?

Maybe because I’ve grown up with schizophrenic weather I love reading stories where weather plays a part or sets a mood. I like to know if it’s sunny or cloudy, humid or parched, burning or icy. Should I be sweating as I read this scene or shivering? If it’s raining, what kind of rain is it? A steady cold spring rain? Drizzle? The fat, merciless raindrops of a storm? Is it falling straight down or sideways? Does it soak me or sting me? Am I managing to stay dry or is my face wet?

Do you make the best use of weather in your writing? Or is that a literary tool you’ve left in your toolbox?

The Past, the Future, and This Unending Winter

Posted on by Erin Bartels

March 16, 2013, Fenner Nature CenterMichigan, like quite a large swath of the country, is in the midst of a depressing cold snap the likes of which puts me in mind of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter. We haven’t started twisting straw into kindling or burning our furniture yet, but one can’t help but feel that everyone is teetering on the edge of that kind of desperation lately.

Last year the temperatures in mid-March were a full 50 degrees higher then they have been during the past week. This was not necessarily good, as it caused massive fruit crop failures when temps dipped below freezing again (for example, Michigan normally produces about 96 million tons of apples a year while in 2012 we only managed 2 million tons). But still, I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn when I say that it would be nice to have temps in the 40s rather than the 20s at this point in the year.

Being stuck in this winter is like being stuck in a story. You get to a certain point where you feel frozen. You can’t push forward. You can’t go back. You’re just…there. Waiting for the thaw in your brain so you can get on with it already.

That’s how I feel right now. Frozen in time. Tired of what has come before. Waiting to see where things will go in the future. Ready to move on. But stuck frozen in place.

How do you hasten spring? How do you thaw the fertile soil of your creative mind? It seems clear to me that we cannot rush the changing of the seasons, as much as we might want to. There are plenty of tips and tricks to get beyond blocks, but sometimes maybe we just have to wait it out, trusting that the thaw will come, the waters will flow, the flowers will bloom, and the story will move on to the next chapter.

A Cruel and Gentle Month

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Sugarbush 2013Oh, March. You fickle month. You bringer of sunshine and rain, then ice and snow. You can’t decide whether to reveal the toll the winter has taken on the earth or to cover it all back up again. The birds sing, the red-winged blackbirds and robins and turkey vultures have returned, the very first crocuses have bloomed and frozen. The sap and the rivers are running, but I am sitting inside with my coffee wondering just how much longer until I can get out in the gardens and start cleaning up your mess.

Here’s a poem about March I wrote in 2007 and have been modifying ever since. I think I may have it how I want it now.

March

Month of crows
Driven rain in slush-filled gutters

All the flotsam of winter’s rage—
Empty bags whipped in wheezing wind

Parking lot valleys in the shadows of
Mountains formed from filth and snow and abandoned shopping carts

The frail sun pretends to shine
A sudden squall and all is beaten down again

But then
quietly
pushing up
through mud
comes the green

Stretching
reaching
hoping
comes the green

The sun shines stronger
the days grow longer
and all my fondest hopes of spring
see fulfillment in one blossoming
flower

 

Anticipation, Distraction, and Writing It All Out

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Waiting for DaffodilsMy distracted mind has not been on writing lately. It’s been on spring cleaning. It’s been on my son’s impending move from preschool to elementary school. It’s been on things I want very much to see clearly (and soon)–on the snow melting, on the sight of green leaves and yellow daffodils, on what the future may bring. It’s been on very physical things. No room in my brain right now for the mental work of writing.

Planning. Expectation. Preparation. Yearning. Possibilities. A desire I didn’t realize until it was spoken aloud. But that’s how writing works, too. Sometimes you don’t realize what you want to write about until you start writing about something else. If you’re not careful, you can write yourself into things you would never have expected.

Are you stumped about what to write about next? Don’t know which way to turn on the road of your life? Can’t see as far into the future as you would like?

Just write. Write yourself into a compelling story. Write yourself into a plan for dealing with what’s bugging you. Write out your dreams. Write the future you want. You just might get to know yourself better. You just might discover you have much more to say than you realized. You just might be able to re-distract your mind until the thing you anticipate has finally happened.

On Marmots and Busting through Writer’s Block

Posted on by Erin Bartels

According to a fat little marmot, we will be having an early spring. But I don’t put much stock in what marmots say, so I imagine that spring will come officially on March 20th and that we in Michigan will still have to suffer the insult of an April snowfall and wait until May to plant our tomatoes.

However, I do know of one thing that will be coming early. One day after I wrote this, I finished this…

The Door

Once I settled my mind on the point of the whole thing, the writing of February’s short story went from slow-drip to freely flowing. And that feels so very good. I’ll leave it alone until my “editor” has a chance to critique it, but I’m itching to get it styled and uploaded to Amazon. I imagine it will be ready around Valentine’s Day. Though I’m not sure of it’s “giftability.”

I’m also eager to get started on my next story. Here’s a peek at what’s coming down the line for March…

This Elegant Ruin cover