Spiders and Decay

 It’s weird. Spiders climbed all night, but their trajectories kept missing the desired lamp lit window, landing instead in a tangle of crystal clear wind chimes lost in the shadows. Iridescent tones gave away their location. No outline of the glass tubes was visible, only the distortion of moonlit silver threads as it magnified the web and then disappeared.

In contrast to their gentle music, the breeze that helped weave this curious scene, was anything but light and peaceful. Heavy with the stench of decay, it carried the story of dead swine laying in the ravine below. Turning to climb the steps back into her RV, she wondered if the spiders were trying to escape it as well. The air inside seemed more sane once she closed the door.

What drove those wild hogs to their death? She knew the locals wouldn’t miss them. Their population had exploded in recent years, causing damage to property and crops. Hunters were having little success culling the herds. The sharp contrasts of the night echoed the imbalances of the world today.

Solitude, peace, clear sky, shadowy music,… decay, sickness, pandemic, mental illness… The howl of a feral cat outside the door sends ripples through randomly drifting thoughts. Wild life is trying to clean up a mess that is too big for all of us. 

After the Rain

Cedar needles

Juniper berries

Spider web

Palafox

Yaupon berries

Yaupon berries

Dirt road in a rain drop

Wild Berry Jelly

Beauty berries 

Beauty berries 

Black gum berries 

Greenbrier berries 

Greenbrier berries 

I made jellies out of these last fall with stevia, local honey, and arrowroot.

 

Foraging

I've been trying to learn about and identify all the local edible flora. 

This is a salad that I made today with some of the plants I found on my walk this morning. I'm really enjoying the new flavors I'm finding. Salads were starting to get really boring. That motivated me to look into foraging. The woods where I'm collecting has never been sprayed with pesticides or fertilizer, and the soil has never been farmed. My hope was to get a more diverse variety of phytonutrients than what I can get at the grocery store. The interesting flavors are turning out to be an added bonus.

This is spiderwort. The flowers have a really light flavor that seems like a blend of fruit and anise. The leaves have a stronger flavor like kale or broccoli. I've read that spiderwort is supposed to help with allergies.

 This is greenbriar. The leaves taste like a cross between green beans and asparagus. It's supposed to have anti-inflammatory properties.

In addition to spiderwort and greenbriar, I put cucumber, onion, spearmint leaves, and sunflower seeds in this salad. For dessert, I put strawberries, blueberries, and juniper berries (also foraged), and local honey in a blender, and then poured it over pecans. Juniper berries are a great anti-inflammatory. I could tell right away after the first time I tried them.

These are juniper berries with yaupon in the background. Yaupon is the only naturally caffeinated plant in North America. The leaves can be used to make tea, but don't eat the berries. Yaupon tea used to be a very popular tea generations ago.

A Peaceful End...

 ... to a crazy year.

It hailed three times, two tornadoes, and one month straight of 100+ degree weather during a drought that brought an onslaught of aphids and their sticky excrement. No rain to wash that syrupy poop off my camper, car, and door steps where it got tracked indoors in spite of hosing things down. Then came the stink bugs to feast on the aphids. They invaded all the campers here in this campground like something from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. They were followed by the Asian Beetle that shouldn't even be on this side of the planet. After a two month long Bugaggedon, my camper was splattered with little yellow stains (from the Asian Beetles) and smelled like a sweaty metal work shop (the stink bugs). I'm not sure who won. I'm still finding their carcasses everywhere. 

For the first time in my 3 years of being a full-time RV-er, I was not a happy camper. But, I'm over it now, and these pic show why. They were all taken walking distance from my camper door.

Outsider

 Today, being the outsider is a good thing.

Happy Camper

My life is changing dramatically now. I've left everything behind, bought an RV, and moved to a campground in the middle of the East Texas woods. There are some kinks in my plan that still need ironing out, like internet connection problems and no phone service, but I'm so happy to be away from Houston that these things don't bother me.

I have no address now, though. Does that make me a homeless person?