◯ eClips: Heat
We’ve just passed the summer solstice, and the full moon that followed. It’s a bittersweet transition; shorter days are on their way, though we still have months of summer ahead. In Seattle, you can still see a little light in the sky past 10 p.m., and the sun slips in again around 4 a.m., leaving only a small window of complete darkness. Tomorrow night, Saturn will shine brightly to the left of the moon, with its own biggest moon visible through binoculars or a telescope, and on Sunday night, Jupiter will join the two, with Jupiter to the left of the moon and Saturn to the right.
St. John’s wort is growing explosively across Seattle; its bright-yellow blooms remind me a little of fireworks. Yarrow is creeping up through cracks and along fence lines, and feathery fennel is growing tall all along the alleyway that goes by my house. I like to pinch off and eat a few of its leaves when I walk by to enjoy its sweet licorice-like flavor.
I’m back home in Seattle, and slowly settling in. I plan to keep spending time offline and in water, especially as temperatures escalate across the West — we’re not used to breaking 100 around here, and air conditioners aren’t common, so I’m prepped for a sweaty weekend. I hope you’re all finding ways to stay cool, and to make sure your neighbors are navigating the heat safely. I’ll be doing a lot of reading, drinking herbal iced tea, communing with flowers, and giving my houseplants extra TLC.
◯ Emergent Strategy: “Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen.” [This is one of my favorite books to pick up and flip through while I’m in nature, and it’s had a big impact on me over the past year.]
◯ Cold Brew Tea: The secret to making the best iced tea is to cold brew it, steeping tea in cold water for a few hours. [My favorite cold infusion is a mixture of dried peppermint and hibiscus, which I add to a jar of cold water, let sit in the fridge for a few hours, strain, and drink. This combo is cooling and colorful!]
◯ 5 Herbs to Beat the Heat: Try these herbs to soothe the overheated body, heart, and mind. [I’m attempting the recipe for herbal ice cubes this week.]
◯ 5 Ways to Eat a Rose: “Not only are roses a global symbol of enduring love, they are also marvelous food and good medicine.”
◯ How to Make a Flower Press: Build a simple, wooden flower press to preserve the color and integrity of your favorite plants.
◯ How to Make Your Own Flower Essence: “Making a flower essence is a great way to connect with nature and a chosen plant medicine.”
◯ How Many Plants: Comprehensive guides for all your favorite houseplants.
◯ Confetti Cookies: “Cookies with rainbow sprinkles > cookies with chocolate sprinkles and also all other things, ever.” [OK, maybe turning the oven on to make cookies isn’t the wisest thing to do right now. But these cookies that I usually make for the holidays seem fitting for Pride, so I’m off to find some rainbow sprinkles to celebrate.]
Spotlight: Patrice Hein
Patrice Hein is a retired educator and a naturalist. She lives on a little farm along the Elk River in Kansas with her husband, Tom. [Patrice is, in her words, my “mother-in-love,” or the mother of my long-term boyfriend, Nathan. Last week, I was able to visit her farm and sit beside her as she pointed out the flashing shapes the fireflies were making.]
I know you love Solstice, so I’m hoping you can tell me what you love about that day, and this time of year.
I’ve always loved summer, because as a kid, you know, that’s free time, and I was outside every day. TV was a new thing when I was a kid, and kids went outside to play. And as the days got longer, I had more time to be outside. I was a tree-climber, and we had a creek not too far from our house, and we’d go down there and we’d catch dragonflies, and we’d catch fireflies, and the longer days meant more fun. So I think that kind of started my love affair with the solstice.
But then, when I got older and I understood about the seasons, I just thought it was really cool that we were tipped toward the sun as far as we could go, and then we were going to start tipping back the other way. I wrote an article about that, and my sister called me and said, “Please stop talking about that, it makes me feel like I’m going to fall off the Earth!”
I just really like the way our planet works. I like the seasons. I’m glad I live in a place that I get to have all four seasons. It’s a little bit of consistency in all the chaos: Spring will follow winter. So, solstice always was kind of an exciting time for me. And then as I got older and I was the director of a nature center, one of the goals I had was to reconnect people with nature. You know, they didn’t know what the solstice was. We lived in the Kansas City area, so a lot of urban people would come out to the site, and they didn’t know anything about how the planet worked. And so we really celebrated the summer solstice and the winter solstice and each of the equinoxes, just to reconnect people with how things work on this planet.
Did you have a bonfire?
We did have a little bonfire one year. We taught about how people used to live closer to the land, and they celebrated the changing of the seasons, and they believed that trees had spirits. So we would have a summer solstice celebration, sometimes we’d call it a “midsummer celebration,” and we’d have “fairies.” There was a little storyline, people would come out and they would meet a fairy who was lost and had to find her way to the fairy ring, and they had to help her find her way. And it was really fun, and it just grew and grew and grew every year. Kind of fun, but educational, I hope.
What about now, do you have any rituals or celebrations you associate with this time of year?
Well, generally this time of year, I’m outside every day anyway. On the solstice, sometimes I’ll just go around and catalog what’s blooming, what’s changing. Usually, I like to see what flowers are blooming on the solstice. And it’s amazing how it kind of changes over the years, although I guess I’ve changed locations too. But things are just blooming a lot earlier now than they used to, so that’s interesting to see and to compare. But no real rituals for each year. I always talk about dancing naked around the bonfire, but I don’t think I’ve done that in a long time!
What flowers are growing and blooming around you right now?
Well, let’s see, we’ve got grey-headed coneflowers. The oxeye daisies are just about finished, they’ve been blooming. Queen Anne’s lace, and the maypops are just starting to form blooms. We’ve got some spiderwort that’s blooming. Moth mullein and the flannel mullein are blooming. I really like the moth mullein, it’s beautiful.
A lot more will start blooming here anytime. We have gaura out in the prairie; there’s a cultivated gaura that they call “butterfly plant” or something like that. The yarrow is starting to bloom.
I just saw some yarrow yesterday!
I’ve used yarrow, it’s supposed to help with bruising. Boy, I could really use it now! So I’ve made a poultice of it. Just kind of mash it up and heat it up a little and put a poultice on your bruises, it’s supposed to ease them. I might have to try that again. I’ve got several I’d like to get rid of.
What’s growing in your garden?
We had a salad last night that had some of our homegrown kale, and several kinds of tomatoes, and peppers, and onions, all out of the garden. And we had green beans out of the garden. We’ve been eating lots of broccoli, and a little bit of cauliflower. I’m very late in planting my cantaloupe, I just planted it today. We’ve got some pumpkins going, and peas, and potatoes. Okra, leeks, parsnips, lots of herbs.
Are you finding that these cycles of planting that you’ve been used to for most of your life are changing? Do you have to start things at different times, or do you do what you’ve always done?
Well, we find some years, lately, we could put tomato plants out in March because it just gets warm and stays warm. This year, we thought we were going to do that, but then it went and turned really cold. It was very unseasonably cold in May, and rainy, it just rained and rained. We had a late frost. So it’s just unpredictable. You don’t know if it’s going to be hot or cold, but it’s going to be one or the other.
Is there a plant in particular you’re connecting with strongly this year, or wanting to connect with this year?
I really have been babying my eggplant. I love eggplant, and I’ve just been having some difficulties with it, because it was so cold, and then it got so hot, and then we had flea beetles on them — they make all those little holes that make the leaves real lacy, which isn’t good for them. So I’ve been babying them and talking to them. And they do have a beautiful purpley flower. So I love the eggplant, I just think it’s beautiful in all of its forms, the leaves and the flowers and the fruits are really spectacular. So shiny and smooth and beautiful.
How do you like to eat it?
My favorite has to be eggplant Parmesan. It’s really good. But I also sometimes just dip them in some batter and sauté them until they’re crispy, and dip them in horseradish sauce. Oh doggies, that’s good!
You do Citizen Science projects, and I know you’re keeping an eye on lightning bugs right now, so I’m hoping you can tell me a little bit more about that.
Tom and I are both really into science. We met in the etymology lab at Kansas State, so we’ve always been interested in the natural sciences. And places we’ve worked before, we were involved in science projects. So now that we’re not doing that professionally, we like to do it on our own.
So, I’ve always loved fireflies since I was a little kid, and Massachusetts Audubon has a lot of Citizen Science projects that they coordinate. (Lots of other organizations do too, but they just happen to have one that I was interested in, and it’s Firefly Watch.) So people all over the country just go out and survey a certain area of property, usually in their yard, and they identify what fireflies are there and about how many there are. And you just do a survey once a week and send the data to them. And that helps them get an idea of how many kinds of fireflies there are, and what their numbers are doing, if they’re growing or diminishing, that sort of thing. There’s really not been a lot of research into fireflies, because they just don’t really have much economic impact, either negative or positive, so that’s usually the driver behind research. So this is kind of just for fun, although they are pollinators, they visit plants, so they do have some impact, just not as much as other insects might!
So I’ve been doing that. You know, the very first time I went out to survey, I saw what I thought was a Photinus carolinus, which does six — boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop — little flashes in a row. And I have not seen one since! So I think I need to go out later at night. But I go out and garden early in the morning to avoid the heat, and then I’m so tired that I just can’t even stay awake long enough. So, not a very good citizen scientist, am I?
Oh, I think you are.
Maybe tonight I’ll stay up late and see if I can find one again.
How do you tell which species are around you?
I capture some of them and look at them to identify them. You can also tell by the flashes; they have different flash patterns. The carolinus does the several flashes; the ones I saw were six flashes in a row, and then there’s a pause, and then you see six more flashes. But the most common one around here is Photinus pyralis, and they do a J-shape. They’re kind of flying in a loop, so if you imagine that it’s looping up vertically, it starts flashing as it goes into that turn at the bottom and then goes up, so it forms a little J-shape. You see these little glowing J’s all over the yard. So that’s how you tell the species. Those are the males that are doing that. And the females are down on the grass just doing their little flash to respond to the males, if they like the performance.
I know bugs are kind of disappearing, so it made me really happy to see that so many fireflies are still around.
Yes, we’re happy to see so many fireflies and dragonflies, because they’re really kind of indicators of if there are pesticides being used.
You said that, at the nature center, you worked to reconnect people with natural cycles. Can you say more about why you think it was important to do that work, or important for people to be connected?
Oh, I think it’s even more important now. I took a drive through our little town of Howard here, and saw not one child. It was a beautiful day, and not one child was outside playing. When I was a kid, the whole neighborhood, kids were outside every day. And I know the reason why — you know, I’m Irish, I have to tell you the whole story. Marshall McLuhan worked in communication theory — and one of my masters degrees is in communication — so he says technology mediates our senses. So, anytime we have a new technology, it moves us further and further away from experiencing something with our own senses. So, once the TVs were in everybody’s living rooms, then kids were inside more. Now, they’ve got video games and their phones — it moves them further and further away from their senses, and it moves them further and further away from nature. And I think it’s frightening, because we’re going to have all these people who have no clue how this planet works, and they’re going to be making the decisions. I think that’s what’s happening already. It’s not a good prospect.
So, I think connecting people with nature is more important than ever. You know, you have to meet people where they are. So, since I don’t work at a nature center, I’m thinking I’m going to start an ecology club or an outdoors club in my teaching online. And just try to get kids to go outside and explore and figure out how things work. If you don’t care about it, you’re not going to take care of it. It scares me a little bit.
Me too. I try very hard to be connected with these natural cycles, but I’m still enamored with these technological ways of being disconnected. I don’t want to be; they’re just so prevalent.
Yeah. It’s so easy to be entertained and distracted. And I think we’re all going to be distracted to death. It’ll just come to an end, and we won’t notice until it’s over.
And I think people seem to be so enamored with the image of things — “I want to look like I’m this” — instead of the feelings that they have. I don’t know. I think people are so caught up in things that don’t really matter to their well-being — or that are detrimental to their well-being.
If you ever feel a little bit disconnected, or like you need to reconnect, what do you do? Do you have any daily or weekly things that keep you grounded or in nature?
I’m outside every day. I know some people can’t … well, I would think there are very few people that can’t be outside every day. There’s a guy who wrote Last Child in the Woods who talks about a “green hour,” that you can at least spend one hour outside every day. And I would think everyone could do that.
I always feel better if I’m outside. Things seem to make more sense outside.
I know you said you’re often in the garden early, and not staying up late. But do you spend any time following the moon cycles, or looking at the stars, or do you have more of a relationship with the sun?
I’ve always really loved the moon too. When we were little kids, we’d always sing songs about the moon: I see the moon / the moon sees me / underneath the old oak tree / please let the light that shines on me / shine on the one I love. And I remember, as a kid, coming back from places, and the moon would be out, and we would sing moon songs and talk about the man in the moon. The moon’s always played a part in raising my kids too. We always talked to the moon. Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night / sailed off in a wooden shoe — that entire poem.
Yeah, we were always fascinated by the moon. It’s just such a beautiful light that it gives off, that’s just so soft and calming. Maybe I enjoy the moon more now because the sun is just too damn hot. And as I get older, I get hotter — and not in the way you might think!
I loved how visible the stars are where you live. I really miss that.
I remember [my sister] Mari coming out and saying, “Man, you have really good stars out here!” And I thought, “Well, they’re the same stars you have, you can just see them more!”
I have a pretty good-sized telescope. We like to go out and watch certain things that are happening in the night sky. We watch the International Space Station go over — Tom likes to track it: “OK, we’re going to get nine minutes of it tonight, let’s go!” We’ll come out here and watch it, and we’ll wave to them: “Hi! I’m sure I saw them wave!”
The world is so full of fascinating things. I can’t even stand to watch TV anymore, it’s the stupidest thing I can imagine, when there’s endless fascination right outside your door. But I guess there are people who don’t agree with me. And I would say that’s OK, but I really don’t think it is.
You live in a place where animals are roaming about a bit more than in the city; what animals have you been seeing?
It’s nesting time, and having-little-baby time for all the birds, so we see a lot of that going on. Bunnies, oh my gosh, lots of baby bunnies, which doesn’t really help when you have a vegetable garden, so mostly we try to keep them out. But we have lots of predators here too, so that kind of keeps that down. We’ve got bobcats and raccoons and possums and coyotes and hawks and owls — there goes a hawk right now — and we have turkey vultures. So, yeah, there’s a lot of activity out here.
Boy, at night, I have my windows open, and I have those floor-to-ceiling windows, so I feel like I’m right in the trees out there when I have my windows open. And I can just hear all the squealing and screaming going on at night. So, I think, “Oh, there’s one less rabbit.” One night I heard what must’ve been a bobcat that had kittens, because I could hear multiple little snarls going on out here, and I thought, “Oh, they’re learning how to hunt.” There’s just a lot of stuff that goes on out here. And right now they’re all just busy making more of whatever they are.
The other day, in a park near here, my roommates took me to see these two little owlets. We could hear their high-pitched screeches, so we were able to find them, and these two baby owls were so fluffy and cute. But I was like, “Oh, these are baby birds and predators. When they’re asking their parents for food, they’re asking for small mammals.”
Right! They’re cute! Because of my science background, I understand that everything is food for everything else. I think it’s good to understand the system and how it works and how energy is transferred. We’re sentimental, but nature is not. It’s a system, and if it’s going to survive, it has to work that way. So we see a lot of death out here, but if you want to see life, you’ve got to see the death too.
Any other words of wisdom you want to share?
I think I used to be a Pollyanna. I used to really be optimistic about pretty much everything in life. And I’m starting to get a little worried. So I guess that would be a plea: to get reconnected and help others to understand. If we want to live on this planet, we need to understand how it works, and work with nature instead of against it.
I guess that’s a downer. Tell them to get out and enjoy the sun or the moon or the stars, and everything underneath them!