August Yummy Blues

Blueberries

Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!

Robert Frost (excerpt)

Lowbush wild blueberries grow in the poor shallow soil that covers much of the Canadian Shield. We have vacationed many times in Ontario's near north and have spent hours crouched in the scrub picking the small blue fruit. It takes considerable time to gather a quart, especially when the biggest berries end up in your mouth.

Between Parry Sound and Sudbury, blueberries are sold by native Canadians along the highway. When we come home we stop to buy a basket of these relatively expensive berries. I don't mind paying the price and freeze them on a tray before I bag them. They are used up too quickly in a pie. I add them to pancakes and muffins or top my oatmeal with them in the morning. Because they are smaller than cultivated highbush blueberries, they hold their shape well in baked goods and do not explode.

Do you recognize this fruit??

Birds and bears as well as other wild creatures depend on wild berries for food. The berries above are covering bushes along the back entrance to the hospital. Robins, Cedar Waxwings and Cardinals are among the birds spending the day in the area. I am not sure what kind of berries they are. Elderberry leaves are serrated and these leaves are smooth. I may try some if I am sure they are not toxic.

Science is proving how good berries are for us, but I eat them because of their delicious taste!

What is your favourite berry?

August Blues Festival

Our city hosted the annual Blues Festival this past weekend. It has been so successful in the past that extra stages were added this year in the downtown area so three gigs could run concurrently. The main street was closed and vendors sold food, music and handcrafts under tents between the stages. Friday night's weather was perfect but Saturday was a very rainy day. But the show went on regardless and die-hard fans enjoyed their favourite performers.

We went down on Sunday afternoon and the rain started as we arrived. People sat in the audience with umbrellas and full rain suits. We stood in the shelter of the nearby city hall where we could listen to the music and keep dry.

Blues music makes use of blue or worried notes:- flattened 3rd, 5th and 7th notes of the scale. The African American style is a lament expressing a desire for a better life. But by putting sad feelings to music, the blue feelings are overcome and successes of life are celebrated. The blues have been a great influence in modern music.

I like the mellow sound of the blues and live performances with real instrumentalists (rather than sound tracks) always interest me. Even with the rain, the mood was festive, not blue. Music is very powerful.

The Becka wrote a post about the festival and included a short video clip here.

August Blues: Depression

One of my patients painted the above picture
when he was struggling with depression.
I was fascinated with the use of colour and abstract design.

Why is blue associated with depression? The question was asked in the comments on the last post. I contemplated the possibilities and came to some inconclusive ideas. Blue is a cool colour and cold can make the skin take an unpleasant bluish hue. Illness and death also cause the body to become blue. No one at the hospital looks forward hearing "Code Blue" which is called over the intercom in the event of cardiac or respiratory arrest. Others associate blue with storms and rain. Blue is a peaceful and calming colour, but too much calm may cause melancholy.

I work with many depressed elderly people. Our Geriatric Assessment Unit admits patients with physical problems that are often compounded with moderate to severe depression. Treatment may be pharmaceutical or a combination of drugs and behaviour therapy. Many people respond to group activities, music or art therapy, spiritual care, exercise, pain management, or just having a routine to their day. Meals are taken in a dining room and patients forge friendships with each other that are often mutually beneficial.

Mental illness is poorly understood by many people yet its effects can ripple through generations of a family. A patient's daughter reported that her mother had been depressed for fifty years. She is now in her nineties and was recently started on a low dose antidepressant. Her daughter came to me and said,

"My mother just smiled at me and told me she liked the colour of my nail polish!"

She did not remember seeing her mother smile spontaneously and had not heard her give a compliment. How sad!

Our facility uses the short Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) to assess a patient's mood and their response to treatment. A score above 5 indicates further assessment is warranted. A score greater than 10 is strongly indicative of depression. The bold responses are scored. Here are the questions. (The full test which includes thirty questions can be viewed here.)

Choose the best answer for how you have felt over the past week:

1. Are you basically satisfied with your life? YES / NO

2. Have you dropped many of your activities and interests? YES / NO

3. Do you feel that your life is empty? YES / NO

4. Do you often get bored? YES / NO

5. Are you in good spirits most of the time? YES / NO

6. Are you afraid that something bad is going to happen to you? YES / NO

7. Do you feel happy most of the time? YES / NO

8. Do you often feel helpless? YES / NO

9. Do you prefer to stay at home, rather than going out and doing new things? YES / NO

10. Do you feel you have more problems with memory than most? YES / NO

11. Do you think it is wonderful to be alive now? YES / NO

12. Do you feel pretty worthless the way you are now? YES / NO

13. Do you feel full of energy? YES / NO

14. Do you feel that your situation is hopeless? YES / NO

15. Do you think that most people are better off than you are? YES / NO

August Blues

I have the blues...waiting in the rain for my master

Blue is my blog theme for the second full week of August. Language is such an interesting study. Blue seems like such a basic word but its meaning stretches from colour to emotion to music style to political stance. I speak only English but imagine the word has nuances in other languages as well.

I will have to work on my personal colour challenge and see what comes up in the next few days...

BLUE
Noun
1. The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between green and indigo, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 420 to 490 nanometers; any of a group of colors that may vary in lightness and saturation, whose hue is that of a clear daytime sky; one of the additive or light primaries; one of the psychological primary hues.

2. the colour of a clear unclouded sky

3. anything blue, such as blue clothing or blue paint: she is clothed in blue

...the Mourning Cloak butterfly rests on a blue car
(with a name like that I wonder if it has the blues too!

4. a sportsman who represents or has represented Oxford or Cambridge University

5. Brit informal a Tory

5. out of the blue unexpectedly

Adjective

[bluer, bluest]

1. of the colour blue; of the colour of a clear unclouded sky

2. (of the flesh) having a purple tinge from cold

3. depressed or unhappy

Noun, pl

the blues

1. a feeling of depression or deep unhappiness

2. a type of folk song originating among Black Americans

Shades of blue...sun umbrellas for the rain

Weekend Adventures

Samuel looks above the Doon Mills Ruins

"Rain, rain go away..."
Last year we chanted "Rain, rain come again..."

My eleven year old cousin Samuel wanted to go birding on Saturday. The probability of rain was 80% but the morning dawned sunny and bright. He was ready to go quickly and we drove to the trail he wanted to explore. Within fifteen minutes, dark clouds moved across the sky and a light rain fell. We sprayed ourselves with insect repellent and headed towards the river under a canopy of dense leaves. I have walked this trail dozens of times but the undergrowth is like that found in a rain forest this year.

Giant ragweed towered twice my height above the ground.
Trees downed by recent storms lined the sides of the path.
Himalayan Balsam, and invasive weed stood tall and was in full bloom.
I pulled several out by their shallow roots.

Arrowhead

Samuel found some Broadleaf Arrowhead blooming at the river's edge. I have never seen this wild plant which is also known as duck potato or wapato. Its tubers are edible and were eaten by indigenous people. Sam identified it readily when he saw it.

The birds kept our minds off the buzzing mosquitoes...Wrens, Cardinals, Blue Jays, immature Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Herons, Swallows, Woodpeckers, Orioles, Goldfinches, Chickadees and more chirped, called, sang and flew above our heads.

Young Great Blue Heron

The ragweed was making Samuel sneeze so we left and headed to the swamp where we could see from the car if the rain continued. The swamp never disappoints and we were able to walk along the edge during a break in the weather. A juvenile Great Blue Heron flew in front of us and landed on a high stump.

It rained most of the afternoon and evening. Whenever I see the sun shine these days, I rush out to enjoy the light. I managed to walk a trail on Friday evening as the sun was going down and dusk came.

House Wren in evening light

House Wrens are very visible lately and I sat on a fallen tree to watch the antics of a pair of them in the nearby brush. My feet rested on the ground and I watched the grass part as a young skunk approached me. It came right up to me and sniffed my comfortable Keen sandals (thanks Beth). My camera was in my hands but I sat there without flinching a muscle.

What does it take to startle a skunk?

I didn't want to experiment with the click of a camera. The skunk moved away confidently and went under the tree I was sitting on. Perhaps there were others beneath me. I left carefully wishing I hadn't been afraid to take a picture.

Saturday evening heavy rain accompanied thunder and lightning. But at sunset a full rainbow filled the sky above our house. It was impossible to fit the entire arc in the viewfinder of the camera but the colour and clarity made it the most spectacular rainbow I have ever seen. It was only a week ago that we chased the last rainbow. We are getting used to rainy weekends! I still prefer this summer to the hot, dry variety.


(See Samuel's account of our outing on his blog here)

Friday Flowers: Yellow Coneflowers

Last weekend we walked by a reservoir on the grounds of the local university looking for water birds. (At least that is what I was looking for). Yellow Coneflowers were blooming along the banks of the little lake and had grown so high and thick as to obliterate the foot path to the water's edge. My husband is not one to stand in a field of flowers but I couldn't resist this shot which looks like a scene from the movie Across the Universe. (We were never hippies or flower children but that was our generation)


Many grasshoppers and butterflies were flitting about, few staying still long enough for a picture. I have Purple Coneflowers in my garden but none of these lovely yellow cousins. (They may also be known as Sneezeweed but I did not analyze the leaves well enough to make a definite identification.)


We finally made it to the water's edge and found what we were looking for. Great Egrets are passing through again this year and a single bird stood gracefully in the shallow water watching for fish. Once again, wildflowers and birds won the day's prize for the image of beauty and serenity.


Have a beautiful and serene weekend!!

What's for dinner?

"What's for dinner?" How many times have I been asked that question over the years? Perhaps thousands of times! I only prepare one meal a day for the family now. Everyone is responsible for their own breakfast and lunch. Some days it is a struggle to come up with a menu that can be prepared quickly after work. I have a meat-loving husband, a virtually vegetarian daughter who may eat a morsel of poultry a few times a year, and another who declines onions and all ground meats. So dinner usually involves making two different entrees. We get take out only a couple of times a month, perhaps a Friday night pizza or a meal from our favourite Thai restaurant.


Human diets are complex and our eating is a highly social activity. How much easier it would be if we ate like birds. Peanuts for the family... nice and simple...no salt please. Our Chickadees are easy to please.


Mayflies may be a bit awkward to swallow but one this mother caught may feed a couple of small Yellow-throated warblers. Yum!


The male yellow warbler could chirp loudly with a bug in his mouth. When he finished bragging about his catch he swallowed it.

A Song Sparrow perched proudly with its freshly caught moth. A drink may help with the dry, fuzzy wings.

Birds spend much more time in a day searching for food than I do. The Cardinals in our yard worked from dawn to dusk getting grubs for their youngsters. We have many food choices, likely too many, and decision making, not the acquisition of food wears us out.

Now for dinner tomorrow....just wait a see.

Blogger Comments- I am getting email notifications of comments that are not showing up below the posts. My responses to comments today did not load either. Cheryl D, I got your comment on the 'The World without Us". Hopefully it will appear later.

The World Without Us

One of my daughters brought a book home from the library called The World Without Us. Author Alan Weisman discusses "how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence." He uses New York City as one example and describes in detail how long it would take for human structures to deteriorate and for the environment to return to a naturalized state.


It would happen surprisingly quickly. Ancient monuments such as the Pyramids in Egypt would last far longer than the Empire State Building. Modern man challenges nature, rerouting rivers, building below the water table, using flimsy materials rather than working in harmony with the earth. New York City's decline would begin as filters clogged and water pumps failed beneath the pavement. The subway tunnels would flood and building foundations would be compromised. It takes constant vigilance and maintenance to keep a city from deteriorating. The book is not apocalyptic but instead reveals the regenerative power of nature.


Manitoulin Island has many abandoned farms. Crumbling barns and houses dot the landscape. Across the road from the camp, such a farm stood, the old house far too dilapidated to enter. I wondered what creatures took shelter within the leaning walls. Farm implements rusted in the fields and cement foundations of buildings that were long gone were visible beneath shrubs and grasses. I was fascinated by these remnants of the past and wondered at the complete abandonment of home and livelihood.


Anyone who is a home owner knows the cost and time involved in keeping a place up. The forces of water, ice, light, wind and of small things like insects are cumulative and break down man made things quickly. The author discusses the plague of plastic on the planet, particularly in our oceans. But even plastic will break down eventually.

Our lives are fleeting and our possessions become valueless in a blink of an eye when compared to the timelessness of creation.

Something to think about...and an interesting book to read.