Insomnia

Black and Blue Salvia

Like many others, my hubby and I have frequent insomnia.  One of the motivations for this blog was to attempt to encourage other insomnia-sufferers.  The idea was to write in the middle of the night - I may as well be productive if I can't sleep.  However, so far I've been unsuccessful at being cheerful and composed enough during those times to be able write anything meaningful, with the exception of the below.  It is the actual first entry chronologically of this blog and has been edited a bit .....

Sat. Sept. 15, 2012 1:21 AM

Ok, it's begun.  I have decided to write a blog during my insomnia, inspired by an article in Ladies Home Journal by an insomniac who wrote her first novel in the middle of the night while her husband slept.  He was mighty grateful, I suppose, that she stopped inadvertently keeping him awake.  (Later I learned that acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver also wrote her first novel during pregnancy insomnia.)  My husband is in the basement once again nursing his own insomnia, as I write.  In fact, straining my ears while in bed in the dark, wondering where he was and if he was returning, woke me further.  I finally got up and found that he was in the basement.  So I had free reign to turn on lights and the computer.  Now my co-pilot Scout Kitty is purring beside me on the chair.

This was also started because the Lord gave me an incredible gift the same day that He showed me the article in the ladies' restroom of my employer.  He gives me gifts of nature since He knows how much I love His creation.  His gift involved a female ruby-throated hummingbird suddenly appearing and nectaring a mere two feet away from me!!  I was getting the mail from the mailbox and was admiring the black and blue salvia nearby, fresh in re-bloom from the badly-needed recent rains.  Suddenly my eyes caught a movement and it was her.  Hummers are so incredible the way they seemingly hang in mid-air.  She methodically inserted her beak into each flower after first looking me over to verify I was not The Enemy.  I was so awestruck that I froze and held my breath.  She stayed!  She sipped from each bloom, for possibly up to a minute!  The late afternoon sun caught her fresh green iridescence and her soft white feathers elsewhere.  Then she was gone, in an instant.  That is the closest I have ever been to a hummer except when I watched them being banded in southern Illinois a few years ago.

One of the neatest bookmarks someone gave me states the following:  "Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them."  (Psalm 111:2).  It has a neat painting of seashells, another gift He has given me numerous times over the years.  My mom probably gave me the bookmark, since she introduced me to seashells and we share a love of them.  Or perhaps my friend P gave it, since she also knows about the Lord providing gifts from nature.

I don't know if this verse intended the reader to delight in His works of nature, such as seashells, but I do and so do many others.  I think He is fine with that.  That is, as long as we give credit where credit is due:  God Himself.  He created all these lovely things of nature.  The bookmark is marking Psalm 121 in my NASB Bible:

Psalm 121

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

The Lord the Keeper of Israel.

A Song of Ascents.

121 I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
² My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
³ He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴ Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
⁶ The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
⁷ The Lord will ^[a]protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
⁸ The Lord will ^[b]guard your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.

 

Did you catch that?  He made heaven and earth.  He made seashells with all their lovely colors and shapes.  If you would, notice verse four that states that He neither slumbers nor sleeps.  And He protects us.  In verse seven He states that He will keep our soul.  I interpret that to mean He will keep our emotions and spirit intact through storms of ill health, job loss, and relationship upheaval.  Why not really read and meditate on this chapter?  David wrote many of the Psalms from his difficult life.  He just says it like it is.  And here he makes it clear how our Great God can do anything to protect us from the storms of life.  For many months I  read this Psalm every night right before bed to put my mind in the right place for the rest of the night.  I had to read it daily because I need constant reminders.  Now I read other Psalms and other passages as needed, for variety.

The children of Israel had the pillar of cloud by day and of flame by night, God parting the Red Sea, and daily manna (not too much, not too little) and still after all those constant daily signs and miracles, it took them 40 years of wandering in circles and relearning the same lessons to get to their destination.  And Moses was within an inch of getting there, having been brought all along by God, and at the last minute lost his temper one more time with their faithlessness and sin.  He sinned himself by not following God's precise instructions and losing his temper, and that was enough to keep him from the Promised Land.  I am no better than the Israelites.

So here I am in my lack of faith at nearly 2 a.m. rereading The Word and gritting my teeth in faith.  (Actually right now I am really having a good time and not in the least sleepy, enjoying the start of this blog journey), even if I am up the rest of the night and have a full day of chores ahead of me tomorrow and entertaining tomorrow night, He will give me adequate strength for the day.  (Note:  I was up till about 4 a.m.)  How do I know this?  His Word and experience of many years of insomnia.

 

If I can by these writings help even one person, with God's guidance and help, it will have been worth losing all that sleep.  After all, He allows things to happen to us for our good and for His glory.  If He is better glorified by insomnia so that I now have the found time to pray for others or write things to help people, so much the better! 

What I would love to share with people is that He has created some beautiful things in nature here on earth and in the sky.  My friend P has been kind enough to share her own insomnia stories about how she gets up in the night to let her dog out to do her business.  While her dog is outside, P is looking up at the stars and planets and marveling at the One Who made it all.  And He has all the myriads of stars counted, accounted for, knew each one as He made it and when and how long it would be in existence before it would wink out.  How many billions of universes are there?  He knows.  He created them all.

 

Solar Clothes Drying

Homemade clothespin holder

Multi-purpose clothesline - hummer feeders also!

Hang clothes inside out for faster drying and less fading.

I don't know about you, but I grew up hanging clothes outdoors (or indoors in the basement on rainy days) to dry.  My grandmothers also did it.  Nowadays it seems few city folk do that.  It's a shame wasting all that free solar energy.  Plus there is nothing quite so sweet-smelling as solar dried bed sheets to sink into after a long day.  I've seen all sorts of wonderful birds flying overhead while hanging clothes.  Our forebears were environmentalists without realizing it.  Now we live in a culture of what I call pseudo-environmentalism or selective environmentalism:  Prius-driving folks who live in subdivisions with covenants prohibiting something as unsightly as an outdoor clothesline.  One has to be practical with one's environmentalism.  Thankfully I married a man with my same priorities in that department who has taught me numerous new tricks regarding solar drying.  Several of those tricks are depicted in the photos above.  Others are below:

• Check the weather beforehand.  Hang on a day with 20% or less rain chance.  Check the hourly forecast since the daily forecast usually has a higher chance of rain.  Check the radar.
• You can hang in the winter.
• Windy sunny days with less humidity dry clothes faster.  Duh.
• Turn clothes wrong side out.  Jeans dry faster (thanks, hubby) and colors don't fade.
• If you are low on clothespins, double up or share from one item to the next.
• Wipe the clothesline off with a wet paper towel chased by a clean one before hanging, especially whites.
• If you leave clothes outdoors on the line in the rain all day, the wooden clothespins turn dark.  Don't use them later on white or light-colored clothes because they will stain the clothes dark.
• You can make a clothespin holder for free using a gallon plastic milk jug... after you finish drinking the milk. You cut a hole in the side and put a repurposed clothes hanger wire through the top and presto, you have a practical albeit unattractive but free clothespin holder.  You may have to rebend the wire a bit to keep it from blowing off the line on windy days.  Again, thanks, hubby!
• You can dry clothes AND increase indoor non-basement humidity by putting your clothes on drying racks in front of upstairs heat vents in the winter.  Once again, thanks, hubby!
• Clotheslines can be used for other purposes, such as hanging plants, hummingbird feeders (both plastic and fuschia hanging baskets), or winter bird feeders.
• Regarding the latter above, squirrels are not able (at least in my experience) to access bird feeders hung from clotheslines if the feeders are propped by clothesline poles and held in place by clothespins.  However, if the clothesline is too close to a tree branch, squirrels will sit on the branch and neatly nip the clothesline in two in order to access the feeders.  So, that is why our white dogwood tree no longer hangs over the clothesline and is thus lopsided.
• Make sure your neighbor is not burning trash or yard waste before you hang clothes.
• Pokeweed in bird poop washes out of clothes.

Happy hanging!

P.S.  Yes, I DO use the clothes dryer for some items like nice soft bath towels, much to hubby's chagrin.  For one thing, it's a much faster cleanup when you accidentally leave a kleenix in a jeans pocket.  It was a definite patience-building exercise discovering a washed kleenix in hundreds of pieces in hubby's clothes.  He doesn't want his clothes put in the dryer, so I did a lot of hand picking that morning.  But a good memory test for next time.  And my policy is - if I find loose change in his pockets, sometimes it becomes mine....if it's a penny or dime, but not if it's the whole pocketful.

Pipevine

Pipevine, so named because its blooms resemble the shape of a Meerschaum  pipe, was commonly grown before the days of air conditioning.  Its beautiful heart-shaped leaves (like those of a morning glory) densely covered arbors, under which ladies in long skirts sipped lemonade in welcome shade on stifling hot summer days.

I grow it because it is one of only two caterpillar foodplants in Illinois for the lovely pipevine swallowtail.  The native pipevine is Aristolochia tomentosa, or woolly pipevine.  The other larval foodplant is snakeroot, A. serpenteria.  I have grown both species, though more successful with the former.  I see the latter species more commonly in southern Illinois, and the former species scattered throughout the state, usually in dry shady areas.  However, pipevine will do just fine in full sun also.  It's a twiner and will twine around a chain link fence or anything else similar.  If left to its own devices, it can climb to the top of a large tree.

I had one plant that covered the crown of a mature crab apple, smothering it in time.  I was torn between leaving the vine in place to provide caterpillar and bird nesting habitat or cutting it to save the tree.  However, the tree had lived a long productive life. When the ice storm several years ago weighted down the tree, most of the branches broke and I had no choice but to cut the tree down.  Pipevine suckers up to 20' from the parent plant.  Suckers are easily controlled via mowing.  If you wait to mow, the new suckers will grow several inches, providing tender young leaves on which the female butterflies prefer to lay their orange eggs.  Every time I would mow, I would check the suckers and rescue eggs and caterpillars.  Now my husband does the mowing (YEEHAH!!), so I have to remember to check.

Pipevine is not that easy to find, nor is it commonly grown these days.  Those who are into native plants (i.e., IL Native Plant Society, http://www.ill-inps.org/) grow it.  If you grow pipevine, eventually the pipevine swallowtail butterfly may show up.  "Plant it and they will come."  I've done that with all 6 of our native swallowtail butterfly species:  planted their caterpillar foodplants and eventually I would see either caterpillars or butterflies of those species.

Here's another useful link about pipevine with a marvelous photo of a plant covering an arbor:
http://www.nababutterfly.com/pipevine.html

One thing I've wanted to do for decades is plant pipevine "nearby."  Hmm, it wasn't too hard with persimmons.....

P.S.  "Now for something completely different:"  I just saw a sulphur butterfly flying by on this late November day.  It's 57 degrees out!

Planting Persimmons

Yesterday I did something I've wanted to do for decades:  plant persimmon seeds.

For those of you who don't know, properly ripened native persimmons taste like brown sugar.  They can be made into the most delicious quick bread - served warm with butter - mmmm!  Incorporate some homegrown hazelnuts or native Illinois pecans and even better!  Or make persimmon chiffon pie with hickory nuts and you have a real delicacy.  Persimmons are worth the work involved.

But most people think of persimmons as those awful puckery fall fruits because of someone teasing them with a firm unripe fruit, or because of their ignorance.  A ripe persimmon is so soft and squishy it is about one click this side of fermented.

My grandmother made persimmon pudding as one of her annual Thanksgiving desserts after serving us fried quail shot by Grandad and the other men in the family.  Wow!  Nowadays wild quail are very rare.  Little did we realize what a treat we'd taken for granted.  My mother took on the persimmon tradition and I have followed.  I've been pulping persimmons and cooking with them for 30 years now.  I planted a few persimmon seeds in our yard around 8 years ago and one tree bore its first persimmon this year.

See the following link for more info:  http://www.dnr.illinois.gov/OI/Documents/Oct06Persimmons.pdf

But I digress.

Yesterday I planted seeds of the very best early pre-frost (rare and much sweeter than the normal post-frost-ripening) persimmons I've had.  I placed them "nearby" and hope if we are still around eight or so years from now to see some of the surviving trees bearing fruit.  It was so much fun choosing planting sites. The trees need full sun.  The seeds were placed near woods' edges so that their branches would overhang mowed areas, making fruit collection easy.  I chose open areas or areas that would soon be open, such as areas with dead trees, etc.  Persimmons are choice wildlife food and are especial favorites of deer, opposums, and raccoons.  I planted around 20 or 30 seeds, finishing at dusk.  I walked home viewing one of God's gorgeous sunsets.  Life is good.

Caterpillar Rescue

NOTE:  To those of you who don't know me personally, I've never grown up.  I stayed in "the bug phase" that started at age 5.  So, yes, I still raise caterpillars and totally love it.  They are one example of God's fine creation.

Yesterday when it was a rare late fall 80 degrees outside, I found a half grown pipevine swallowtail caterpillar on....the pipevine!  (In IL they eat only pipevine and Aristolochia serpenteria.)  Even after several frosts over the past several weeks, there remains one optimist (or fool) eating pipevine as if winter doesn't exist.  I'd hoped to rescue him yesterday, but could not find him in the dusk as the cold front roared in before the rain.  Today, however, I found him at our peak temperature of around 50ish.  Yes, he was a bit on the cold side, being a cold-blooded beastie.  So I brought him in, breathed hot germy Hall's cherry cough drop-breath on him, and got him set up in a gallon glass jar with some foodplant.  Hopefully he will mature and pupate and overwinter.  At least he has stopped crawling all over the jar and may be settling down to eat.  So far he's produced one piece of frass, always a good sign.

This species is my favorite species of swallowtail butterfly, because of its beauty and because of who introduced it to me:  my nature mentor Stella from southeastern IL.  She was an amazing lady, who got her BS in Botany in the 1920s, and taught nature to people of all ages thereafter.  Stella gave me my first pipevine start, and I've been growing it over 20 years.  My profile photo shows a pipevine swallowtail nectaring on the native cupplant in honor of Stella.

A couple days ago a flutter caught my eye in the back yard:  a freshly-emerged male pipevine swallowtail.  Its wings were so fresh they looked like velvet.  I gently caught him and tried to steer him towards the only nectar plants left, asters in the front yard.  He kept getting away and I didn't want him to use what little energy he had on that cool day in struggling, so I reluctantly released him.  They do not overwinter as butterflies, but instead as chrysalids.  So this butterfly was, in my viewpoint, a little gift from the Lord, since it will perish soon.  It epitomizes the brevity of life, but also the potential for beauty.

This is my first post in my first blog.  One main focus is to highlight God's creation.  This is the most gorgeous sunset I've ever seen.  My parents and I were driving in Florida and I shot the image through the car window.

Another focus is to encourage readers to make the most of their days here on earth, hence the name of the blog, with my favorite Scripture from the Bible:

"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."  Psalm 118:24

My husband is the ultimate Energizer Bunny, running at full tilt from dawn to dusk.  But each morning he nurses a cup or two of coffee first thing, in the dark, by himself.  Often it's on the screened porch, sometimes watching the sunrise.  He gets his thoughts together, his focus for the day, turning his day over to the Lord for His purpose.  He has a good thing there.  Now I am trying to do it as often as possible.  Sometimes the day doesn't start that way, such as when we inadvertently step in kitty barf with our bare feet first thing, but hey, I needed to find it anyway - LOL!  :)