I went this weekend to a class on composting – regular composting, and my current interest, vermicomposting.  One would imagine that I could most likely read about it, and not have to spend 4 hours listening to someone else tell about it, but the course was offered by local university cooperative extension Master Gardeners (meaning that they would most likely have a clue about the topic), and I wanted the quick input of info with someone to ask questions at the ready. I had an urgent need to know as last week my class got its delivery of worms from the Happy D Ranch.  2 pounds of Red Wrigglers…aka Eisenia fetida.  They are rumored to be some of the best composters in the world of worm composting.  A world I have now entered.

They arrived in a slightly damp Priority Mail box. We opened it as a class, and inside was a white cloth bag, that was breathing – moving up and down, rolling back and forth; slowly, gently heaving.  Hmmmm. 2 pounds of worms was enough to split between two classes so my neighbor teacher’s class came over, and we began the preparation of the 2 large bins that would be their homes while they went about their work of providing castings (worm poop) that would save the nutrient level of our class vegetable garden’s soil. We filled the bins with dry bedding (top secret shredded papers from my house), coffee grounds from Starbucks (our worms would be little barristas), pieces of apples and bananas, leftover uneaten lettuce from the children’s school lunches, and dried plant matter pulled from the mountainous piles at the back of the University made by the Univ. gardening crew. Once this was all layered, we opened the worm bag to peer inside.  It quickly became clear that we would not be “sprinkling” the worms back and forth between the two bins. Actual handling would be required.  The 2 pounds of light pink worms worms were hopelessly tangled with each other in their dark brown soil.  I reached my hand in, and the mass moved under my fingers, but came apart fairly easily… We couldn’t count, but tried to split the worms evenly between the two worm bins. As the children crowded around to see the worms, one student remarked, “They’re so wiggly, and cute and cuddly!”  I’m not sure I would say “cuddly” but wiggly – yes!

Time will show us the work that they do – mini-rototillers, eating constantly, and living without eyes, ears, nose or lungs.  They are the least developed life form to have a brain (albeit tiny – more a brain stem than actual brain), and spend their life living through their sense of light and dark, wet and dry, hot and cold.  We’ll feed them carbon and nitrogen in the form of our leftover vegetables, plants, used coffee grounds, dried leaves, and paper; and they will provide us with nutrient rich castings.  An interesting exchange if you ask me.

The new pup learns to play from the Master

We have a new puppy at our house.  This wee mite represents many firsts for our family. Unlike Winston – our 97 pound Labrador/Rottweiler/Other mix, this Maltese/Yorkie (Morkie), whose entire body is the size of Winston’s head, came from a breeder, and wasn’t chosen on an outing to the pound by our whole family. He came into our home as the charge of our 18 year old daughter as a stage in her move toward independence.  I would have preferred that she had rescued a dog from the pound, but somehow, that parental lesson didn’t transfer.  She bought him, named him (Bentley); purchased a kennel, toys, and food for him.  Ultimately the responsibility (fiscal and emotional) for his care rests with her. It is the first time we have had two dogs in our house, and I am delighted to watch the training up of the younger dog by our older dog.

On day 1, Winston began by feigning indifference to Bentley, but as I watched, I realized that Winston was keeping close tabs on the puppy’s antics.  No matter how close Bentley got, Winston didn’t react…at first.  Later, as Winston walked through the house, and around the back yard, Bentley jumped up and down like a coiled rabbit around him.  Winston growled a low deep growl – no teeth bared, and Bentley stopped his jumping, and began to sedately follow Winston on his rounds.

Day 2 brought more experiments on the part of Bentley to see how far he could push his luck with the big boy. When he tried to take food from Winston’s dish (while Winston was eating), the lesson began with low growling, and when Bentley refused to heed the warning, teeth were bared.  When that failed to slow Bentley’s belly crawling advance toward the food, a short bark, and a snapping of the teeth in Bentley’s direction brought about the desired result. Winston was able to continue his meal in peace.

The puppy has been here for several weeks now – not counting the time he spent recovering at the vet from the dreaded dog illness – Parvo. During that time he has learned from Winston to eat from his food dish, play tug-o-war (with Winston), to do his business in the same area of the yard, and to walk on a leash. Could he have learned these things on his own? I’m sure he would have. Would he have learned them this quickly? That I cannot say.  I do know that as I watch the two of them together I see my adult dog modeling dog behavior for the new family addition.

Conversely, I have also watched Bentley teach Winston how to play fetch. Winston’s greatest doggy pitfall was that he could not grasp the basic tenet of the game – I throw, you fetch, return and drop so we can do it again. Winston would fetch once, but then refuse to give it up – despite our attempts at training. After watching Bentley retrieve and deposit a small ball over and over, Winston began to drop his thrown toy as well. A miracle! 

And while these two dogs are examples of teaching in the animal kingdom, as an educator I cannot help but make the leap to human teaching. I have watched my daughter watch me with the puppy as I play and talk with him. I have some little experience with dogs that makes life a bit easier with them in our house. Her responses to him are changing gradually – and some of them mirror what I am doing.

While I know that going to school and baring my teeth at my students to change an undesirable behavior isn’t an option, there are certainly some pieces of what our two dogs are doing that transfers.  And so, as I go into my classroom tomorrow I can take the lessons learned from our dogs – the teaching behavior that they modeled for me, and I will keep in the forefront of my mind the notion that mentoring and modeling are powerful teachers.

Thanks for the lessons Winston and Bentley.

“Hey! Look at this one over here.”  My son tromped down the hill through the powdery snow to look at the tree that I stood next to. We both wandered around and around it, looking at the spacing of the branches, the fullness of the needles.  “It’s kind of flat on this side. Even if we put it up against the wall, it wouldn’t look so great.” We wandered around another turn, and then, turning our heads, started walking toward the next prospect.

Every year, for the past 15 or so, my family has gone to the mountains to “hunt” and then cut a Christmas tree.  The eco side of me wonders if it wouldn’t be better to leave the trees in the forest, and go “fake”. The traditional side of me wonders if Christmas would be the same without a real tree. The tradition was started by my step-father; our Pop; and he had been going to get his tree for years before any of us came on the scene.

Each year we had to buy a tag for our tree at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office.  When we first started getting trees, the tags were $3.00 which was a far cry from the exhorbitant cost of the trees from the tree farms that we could get in town at a tree lot.  We would pile in cars, filling up the seat belts, and drive up to Caliente, an old Nevada railroad town. After the stop at the BLM building for the tag, we’d look at the map, and start the drive to the designated land. The hunt took hours, and as our family wandered the back- country we laughed, and sometimes got lost from each other, and found and lost many a tree. We learned that if you find a tree you like, but decide to go check on another one that might compare, you cannot ever remember where the first tree is – even if you tie a red ribbon around it, and plot your exact position by the sun, and the surrounding hills.

We ate packed sandwiches, and sipped hot chocolate from our thermoses. We breathed out white misty breath, and peered out from under our stocking caps as we peeled oranges and shared the slices – getting bits of mitten in with the juice. We laughed and took pictures, then attached the tags, and tied the trees to the tops of the cars, and drove back home in the gathering desert twilight-each of us offering up a quiet thanks to the woods for giving us a tree. And once the trees were home we sat in our living rooms in the soft glow of the Christmas tree’s lights and breathed in the scent of the Nevada woods, that rested quietly up North in the deep black night.

This year was a little different. We went to the woods in Utah, near our family’s cabin. Pop has been gone now for a few years. My brothers and I and our kids go, and I heard more than one of us say, “Pop would have loved this one” as we traipsed around a tree, checking its “Christmas tree-ness”. We stopped in St. George at the BLM, and our tag this year was $10.00 – still a deal. Each year the BLM chooses different areas to allow tree cutting, and it can be a bit of a trick to make sure you’re in the designated area. As always there are restrictions on which kinds of tree can be cut, and where, but there is a whole woods to wander through looking for the perfect tree.

We found another honey this year, and as I sit here in the warm glow of the lights I can smell the woods that rest up North in the deep black night.

On my recent Philladelphia trip I took so many pictures of this stonework. I took so many that I am running into a shortage of time in wading through them to find the shots that I like most! I’ll do it – but evidently not tonight.

For me, there is another aspect of looking at and capturing the art of others… I bring to the product, my own view.  With a camera I can tilt and turn, change lighting, add or not use flash. All of my choices, affect the way that I see art, and the way that my viewer sees it too.

Like writing – photography holds my voice as it presents my worldview. Through my voice, others can experience the work of another – in this case the masons. I have some research to do, but I wonder what the voices of the masons are singing…

DevlinInTheDetails

Las Vegas is filled with craziness, and, many would argue, little art or culture, but there are a multitude of opportunities for photography. This Chihuly glass ceiling is in the Bellagio Hotel. To fill the frame with color, rippling petals of colored glass, gives a feeling of movement and floating color.

It is a new idea to put my writing out for all to see…not just my friends, but for strangers as well, although my friend Lynn says that there are surprizingly few people who read the blog posts of others. 

My hope is that the very existence of this blog will spur me to write more often. And next summer, when I go off to Scandinavia, I look forward to using it to post about my trip.

Soooo. Here I go; rapelling down into the cavernous darkness of blogging.  They say that faith is stepping out into the unknown, and knowing that one of two things will happen – either you will find something solid under your feet, or you will be given wings to fly.

Here I go…DevlinInTheDetails