Better elephant news: babies!

Better news for elephants today, from the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. When we were in Nairobi, we visited the elephant orphanage at Sheldrick, an incredible day. The mama and baby elephants in this video are at their preserve in East Tsavo. The orphans were rescued as babies when their mothers are killed, almost always by poachers. They are growing up and having babies of their own. Watch the community welcome the new baby. It’s really something special.

You can also read the story with photos and find out about fostering baby elephants here.

few things incite me to want to do violence

…like cruelty. Things like this make me fear and hate humans and our capacity for wreaking terror on other people and animals alike. For a buck. To beat the spirit out of this baby elephant, while her mother watches, screaming so she can be ridden by tourists. Full story:

Baby elephant tortured into submission before illegal smuggling from Burma to Thailand.

baby elephant tortured in the name of "training"

Sick irony, no? I should want to right this wrong, understand the economic factors beneath the horrific reality in this scene. But I want only to beat the head in on the guy wielding the stick, then his helper.

The photographer mentions two organizations doing work that could stop that scene from happening again; what, how many hundreds more times? Contribute to one of them if you can.
Elephant Nature Park and Elephant Conservation Network
It should go without saying that if you’re visiting Thailand, please don’t ride the elephants!

Elephant lives and habitats are at risk in every place they call home, and in Africa they’re being maimed by poachers’ wires if not killed outright. You can help baby African elephants orphaned by poaching, and assist strong conservation work by giving to the Sheldrick Trust. Knowing this place exists, and having seen the sweet babies playing together and the love of the care givers firsthand, helps a little.
But their mothers are still dead.

Influence: my mother’s windowsill

My mother always had something rooting in little jelly jars on the kitchen windowsill or in the sunny back windows.
She still does.

In frosty days

We dream of happy coneflowers…

Photo by Piet Oudolf, from his Hummelo garden.

For more see

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/02/10/garden/20110210-garden.html

First snow, Chicago

Saturday. Fortunately it melted so that on Sunday I could plant the 20-odd Iris histrioides bulbs that I relocated here and that did not desiccate on the kitchen counter. ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ will be a welcome taste of NY home come March or April.

Happy Monday in the Sonic Arboretum

“A collection of horned speakers, made from compressed recycled newsprint and dryer lint, created by sculptor and instrument-maker Ian Schneller and composer/violinist Andrew Bird, are installed in the MCA’s atrium to create a unique sound garden. Bird records the initial compositions on-site at the MCA and sends musical information to different groups of horns via multiple loops. He layers and changes the compositions throughout the remainder of the installation off-site via computer technology.

On December 21 and 22, Bird performs in the space. These Sonic Events are not traditional concerts: Bird plays violin and manipulates the sounds while people move through the installation space.”

Andrew Bird and Ian Schneller’s Sonic Arboretum from WBEZ on Vimeo.

-heard on WBEZ radio. Too bad the concerts are sold out.

if they can do it…

so can I.
Bloom that is, now.
Right as the frost is getting serious, when the ratio of gray to sunny feels 20 to 1.

What the heck is this tree and why does it have the temerity to bloom its head off now?

Shards of fall

The radiators in this 115-year-old house are cranking, the drizzle is drizzling, weatherman says it feels like 27 F outside, and temps are trending downward into December. It feels like we just got here, but on a sunny walk through this usually leafy city neighborhood the other day it was obvious: fall is losing its grip. (click a pic to see is a slide viewer.)

outing

shards of fall in the local community garden

the enviable and full community garden a block away

pumpkin humor

no-mow moss

nature’s leaf stencils in the city

I find the gothics grim

pink hanging on outside our front door

Happy Monday: Rolling On

I didn’t forget about you. How to rekindle things here has been on my mind often, but how do we catch up after 6 months, especially after so much has happened? You can’t all just come over for coffee and cake. I’ve got an ever-closing baby nap window to work with, a short sunny day, and a beagle desperate to get outside, so a simple list feels right just now.

1. Our baby was born in April, healthy and perfect, though he did keep us waiting until Good Friday night, a good 11 days after we expected him. I haven’t decided yet how to name him here in blogland. He is our joy, but he hates to nap.
2. In those early busy baby days I missed being out in the spring garden but made peace with not getting much done. It helped that we had four years’ worth of digging and planting out there, and the garden kept right on blooming without any help. There are photos to prove it, but I couldn’t say where they are just now. There were many blog posts I did not write,  like the one about how we first brought the baby home at the start of apple blossom time. A low drooping branch hung a cluster of buds right outside the window near the couch where I nursed him, seemingly all day. And as time went by, I’d tell him about how beautiful the opening blooms were, then how tiny the green apples, and how they were getting bigger, then actually a little brown and bug- or bird-bitten. When I finally thought to take a photo, the fruit in question had fallen to the ground, just the leaves left. Might have been a story in 5 images, a memento of our first weeks together.
3.  My honey accepted a job offer that meant a move from the fields and forests to the city, a real big one, so in hours stolen between oogling the baby, diaper laundry, the listing and showing of our house, and the other distractions of a major move, we soaked up green trees, clear country air, and crystalline black night skies full of the Milky Way. And fireflies. I never photographed them, either.
4. And here we are in the south side of Chicago. It has its charms. The car stays mostly parked since we can get most of what we need in the surrounding blocks. Walk a bit farther, and there’s that Great Lake, looking for all the world like the sea. The color & tenor of the water and sky have seemed different every time I’ve walked the shore. Perhaps I’ll find it changes with the seasons, too; an aqueous meadow maybe?
5. My SLR with the mirror that fell off just before our move is fixed and ready to document this new path we’re on, which seems to include some fetching plants and unexpected gardens–the city’s known as a botanical hot spot after all. Morning Glories twine around ironwork over windows facing the alley. Raspberries grow in our small backyard, near evidence of peonies. Asters and goldenrod decline in a wildflower demonstration garden in the park nearby. There are trees I am tracking down the names of. I imagine some of it is blogable.

In short, life is blessed and rolling right along. For one of us, that’s literal. More coming soon. I hope you’ll stay in touch. ~Lynn

Happy Monday: Revving up

I know it’s Tuesday. Not the first time I’ve been late.
Have some Sam Beam while I check under the hood and see it I can get this thing revved up again.