“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

–Maurice Sendak

Rest in Wild Peace, Mr. Sendak.

For more wonderful Sendak quotes and memories, see Freshair Remembers Maurice Sendak.

Meanwhile, today is Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day.  I don’t often go in for the celebrity-chef-days-of-whatever, but Jamie Oliver is cute as pie, tells the truth, and cooks like a madman.  Let’s celebrate.

I am writing at my desk in mid-July, wrapped in a blanket and wearing two layers of socks.  Even for Seattle, the summer has been cold.  A “hot” day has been one that hit 70, and those have been very few.  The tomatoes–always touch and go in the Pacific Northwest–are shivering.

I don’t know about y’all, but this weather has totally messed with my gardening plans.  The broccoli was supposed to be grown and eaten in time for the tomatoes to be planted.  But this spring and early summer, even the broccoli took its time coming to fruition, and was not ready by tomato-time.  Where would the tomatoes go?  I decided to just plant them in the middle of the broccoli, eat the broccoli whenever it decided to show itself, and remove the plants in time for the tomatoes to grow large.  Gardening often requires a creative abandoning of the best-laid plans.

So yes, we were eating the winter vegetable, broccoli, in early July.  It was tasty and sweet.  The broccoli’s leafy plants are gone now, and all we need is some sun to shine on the other poor, confused vegetables.  And sun or no (today’s prediction?–July 15th?–high of 62, and cloudy…) our spirits lift with the blossoming of the first sunflower.

And last week:OK, yes, I love it.

And while we’re about it with the “found” trellises:  After pruning our runaway corkscrew willow, I saved some of the beautiful curving branches, and am trying one of them out as a trellis for the flowering Cypress vines we planted.  One of the seedlings already found it’s way to a low twig.  (My photographer/husband is complaining about the unforgiving midday sun, but you get the idea.)  This might look pretty, eventually.  Any creative trellising ideas in your garden?

Remember when the Flopsy Bunnies ate so much of Mr. McGregor’s lettuce that they fell into a deep sleep?  Mr. McGregor was able to pick them right up, put them in a gunny sack and take them home, where Mrs. McGregor vowed to cut off their heads, skin them, and use them to line her coat.

“It is said that eating too much lettuce is soporific,” Beatrix Potter wrote.

I used to think that Potter’s sleep-inducing lettuce  was a plot device, but the milky sap released by cut salad greens is indeed known to calm the nervous system, and to possess a mildly soporific, sometimes euphoric effect. Lettuce is actually named for this sap.  Lactuca, the genus name for both wild and domestic lettuces, is rooted in the Latin lact-, milk, and though our garden varieties were bred by modern agriculturalists to have less of this bitter  substance, plenty of it is still released when we cut into the base of most lettuce heads.   Lettuce sap contains the chemical Lactucarium, a non-narcotic sedative and analgesic, structurally similar to opium, but not nearly as strong.

In ancient Greece, guests were served lettuce soup at the end of a meal to help usher them into dreamland.  Turning this notion of hospitality on its head, the Roman Emperor Domitian was known to torture his guests, who were forbidden to fall asleep in his presence, by serving them heaps of lettuce at the beginning of state dinners (Domitian was assassinated in the year 96–”perhaps justly,” writes Jack Staub in 75 Exciting Vegetables).  And of course throughout Europe salads are still traditionally served at the end of a meal, an homage to lettuce’s sedative properties.

There have been modern scientific studies concluding  that the sleep-inducing qualities of lettuce is simply superstition, but I am somewhat more inclined to believe centuries of cross-cultural medicinal usage above a sterile lab result.

(A Beatrix Potter aside:  I am a fan.  I have heard her dismissed as “Too Cutesie,” which is a terrible midsreading.  Yes, those bunnies are pretty darn adorable, but no cuter than a real passel of sleeping baby rabbits.  Potter’s animals are perfectly wild beneath their ill-fitting clothes, and her reading of the human-wild relationship is wry, biting, and clear-sighted:  “Don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden.  Your father had an accident there.  He was put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor.”)

Esmeralda. Marigold wouldn't stay for the photo...

It was a very cute little scene, but also an essential reminder for the urban chicken farmer.  In the dripping Seattle winter, there is not much dry dirt to be found.  Where is a girl chicken to bathe?  Chickens need dust baths to keep their skin healthy–fluffing in dry soil helps to release essential oils in the skin, and prevent nasty ectoparasites.  They also just seem to enjoy it, finding a calm comfort in excavating and inhabiting their earthen holes.  In this wet/snowy weather, let’s all remember to keep some outdoor covered space for the chickens where the dirt will stay dry and loose.  A propped-open cold frame is perfect, as my girls taught me, and I’m also keeping the space under the coop open and available to them.

Wishing a peaceful winter, warm baths, and healthy skin to all–feathered and not.

Not sure what came over me, but a few years ago I decided to surprise everyone by serving ham.  I went to our local food co-op where I knew the meat would be “natural,” and surveyed the section–bone in, bone out, spiral cut, cured.  I’d never bought a ham before, and had no idea what any of this meant.  I hailed the nice Meat Lady, and explained my situation.  You would have thought I told her I was about to give birth.  She grabbed my arm and said, “This is wonderful!!”  She called to the back, “Rob, this vegetarian woman is buying a ham for Christmas dinner!”  Rob ran out to join in the celebration.  I spent about a gajillion dollars per pound on a round piece of meat that, in its incarnation as a pig, had her own nanny, an electric blanket, enjoyed stimulating games, got plenty of exercise in a sunny meadow, ate only local organic grain and vegetables prepared by her personal chef, and had bedtime stories read to her by the farmer himself.  It was, I heard, the most delicious Christmas ham in the history of Christmas hams.  (I heard?  OK, I know–I am after all a vegetarian for ethical reasons, not because of any dislike of ham, and there it was…I sneaked a dripping taste when Claire, a true veg-evangelist, wasn’t looking.)

That's me hovering on the left, while my cute sister Kelly expertly oversees the operation.

I’ll serve ham again this year.  I’ll fix it with a simple maple syrup-orange-mustard glaze.  My guests will be over-the-top happy.  I will feel conflicted, but still strangely pleased with myself, and reminded once again that life is not reducible to black and white and right and wrong.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all creatures.

Thanks to Flickr users Brent and DaveKav.

"I don't want to be a pie!"

Well,  around here it’s Chicken Walk:

All of our chickens were raised by hand, growing up in a corner of our kitchen from the time they were 2 days old until they were ready to move out to the coop.  They all like to be held and scratched at the nape of the neck, but none of them more than Marigold the Buff Orpington.  If you are in the coop, paying attention to another hen or doing anything other than holding Marigold and carrying her around, she will peck your leg until you pick her up.  So now whenever Claire goes for walks around the neighborhood, she scoops Marigold up and carries her along.  Marigold loves it, cars slow for a closer look, people point, and many stop to chat.  Marigold has become an ambassador for the community backyard chicken movement.

Real Amanitas have white stems rather than brown, but Claire didn’t have any warm clothes in white, and we made a bet that the general public wouldn’t notice.  And of course we were fortunate that Tom, fresh home from Burning Man, was well-versed in the art of adornment-via-luminescence.

Friends have asked, “Do you think it’s odd that she takes such an interest in toxic/hallucinogenic fungus?”  It’s true, Claire’s named her goldfish Amanita, Bolete, and, yes, Psilocybe…But no, I’m not worried.

We  just love this holiday.  Isn’t it wonderful that Americans do something as beautifully earthy as carving a real live squash,  lighting it from within, using actual flame?

Happy Halloween.

As autumn settles in, I am getting busily to work on my new book called, in its working-title,  The Urban Bestiary. It’s a wonderful project (if I may say so!) that explores our constant continuity with the wild earth through our daily coexistence with wild animals (as well as other animals that are breaking down the clarity of the old urban/wild/rural boundaries, such as goats and chickens…).  Various urban-wild creatures,from coyotes to hummingbirds, are explored through myth and lore, science, natural history, personal encounter, and what I call “home practice”–the things that we can do in the places we dwell that help to cultivate meaningful, creative, intelligent coexistence with the more-than-human-world.

I’m hoping y’all will help by sharing your stories–what encounters have you had with urban-wild animals?  Has a coyote eaten your chicken or your daschsund?  Have raccoons come in through your cat door?  Has a hummingbird fed from the flower-barrette in your hair?  How did that go for you?  What do you do in your household to navigate the complex tangle of urban and wild with a sense of grace?  I would love to hear your unique, absolutely true stories, with any kind of urban creatures, not just the flashy ones.  Share them here on The Tangled Nest, and/or email me:  urbanwild-at-thetanglednest.com (with URBAN-WILD in caps in the subject line, please).  No promises that any stories sent will end up in the book, but they will help jangle the ideas in our collective brains.  Many, many thanks.

If I can stop watching the animals long enough to actually write it, The Urban Bestiary will be published by Little, Brown in 2012.

Thanks to Flickr users mybulldog, indigtaylor, and AVernon.

Meanwhile here we are, back in the spring flicker-drumming season.  “I’m going to blog about them,” I told Tom a few days ago.  “Um, honey,” he replied cautiously, “you already did blog about them.”  Good thing one of us has some brain cells left.  Tom was right–back when my only reader was my mother, I did blog about this raucous spring behavior.  Hope y’all don’t mind a timely reprise:

This week I received two e-mails from friends who want to know what they can do about their “nemesis”–the woodpecker that is maniacally drumming their house at all hours. This is a frequent spring complaint about Northern Flickers, the most common urban-suburban woodpecker. They are beautiful fawn-colored birds with black spots, long-ish bills, and pretty, dolphin-like faces. Unlike many birds, woodpeckers don’t sing–instead, they drum to attract a mate in spring, and to proclaim a territory. They rap their bills repeatedly and rhythmically on the loudest surface they can find–they love metal drainpipes, electrical transformers, AND the most resonant parts of our houses. They drive many people completely nuts.

Remember that the flicker’s goal is not to destroy your house, and they usually don’t cause serious damage–they just have a hormone-driven need to make noise this time of year. To deter them, you can tack something simple, like a length of cloth, over the bird’s favored drumming place. Birds don’t like things that move randomly, so a windsock, or a trash bag cut into streamers and hung near the birds favorite spot will help discourage them. My own tack: run outside waving a broom, and yelling, “Bad woodpecker! Go away!”

We can also try a gentle attitude shift. I truly believe it is a privilege and a delight to live alongside native, wild animals, but allowing urban wildlife to thrive sometimes requires us to tolerate a little discomfort. Woodpecker drumming usually doesn’t hurt anything (besides our nerves–oh, and of course the small matter of the 1995 Space Shuttle mission that was delayed when flickers tapped six little holes into the Discovery’s external fuel tank!). These woodpecker rhythms are heralding the season of light and fertility, and the noise is temporary (once they get into nesting they stop drumming). We can try to relax, and celebrate the role that our households play in the cycles of nature. Think of the unseen cavity-nest full of fluffy little woodpecker babies that will be helped into existence by the resonant capacities of our very own dwellings!

p.s. If flickers are drilling holes into your house, they may be seeking food rather than noise. In this, they rarely err–check for termites or carpenter ants.

There’s an essay about the spring habits of urban woodpeckers in my first book, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds.

Nice photo by Flickr user Greg7 (no pun intended). Thanks Greg7!