Brave As A Bulldog

To write something for the history books, and keep this whole thing goin’.

One of our newest employees at the gym has left her collection of George Orwell essays, called All Art Is Propoganda. I finally get to read Politics and The English language, amongst other essays. I thought his essay about Salvador Dali, called Benefit of Clergy, was extremely entertaining. There is something very satisfying about a sharp mind lambasting someone in an intelligent way. Like “roasting”, but on a high intellectual level. Orwell roasts Dali in the essay, putting his full brilliance to the task. He writes lines such as, “It ought not to be in doubt that he is a diseased intelligence.” (He being Salvador Dali.) I mean, imagine that George Orwell writes that about you. Imagine that anyone writes that about you. “It ought not to be in doubt that he is a diseased intelligence.” That’s just amazing. And I was just delighted by a similar roast that I read in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes yesterday, and I read this line to several people because I loved it so much. Holmes is giving an aside to Watson, and says, “I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession.”

Sherlock did give Jones his due credit, by following up his roast with: “He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone.” I really love that imagery.

I’m at the climbing gym making some good use of my time here. Nothing much to do, except read, which you know that I’m doing. After Robinson Crusoe, I continue going for the classics, and I had been wanting to reread some Sherlock Holmes, because I remember it being so good, and I’ve really wanted to read something juicy, something totally gas, and entertaining, and it has now been probably five years since I read any Sherlock Holmes. Well a few days ago at the gym, I opened it up, and wow. Not disappointed, as you can see from the above lines. “The League Of Red-Headed Gentlemen.” That’s what’s going on in the Sherlock Holmes world. Taking snuff, cocaine, riding in carriages, wearing disguises, exhibiting incredible powers of brilliance and wit, the King of Bohemia. This is juicy stuff.

Yesterday was a historic day. For the first time, I consumed, literally, the veggies of my labors. It was a bok choi, pak choy, whatever you want to call it. Well, multiple, I planted many. About 500 seeds came in the packet, the seeds being incredibly tiny. They have done well enough. Planted on October 7th, along with radishes. Yesterday, I ate some. Tasted great, super fresh, plucked them myself. That was a historic day. Grown from my front lawn by the busy street, where I dug up the turf grass. Tomorrow I’ll see about those radishes.

Yesterday I learned about yet another invasive plant. There are so many. So, so many. This one seemed to be widely detested, as being a top comment on a Reddit post about invasive plants, and why so many stores are still selling terrible plants that are infesting the local ecosystem and turning it into an exotic jungle mess. This plant was called nandina, also known as heavenly bamboo or sacred bamboo. I thought, well at least I haven’t seen that around (this is what I thought at the computer, yesterday, as I learned about nandina.) And then, guess what? Oh yes I saw it. I’ve seen it twice, already, today. One was waiting for me when I went outside this morning. In the front of my neighbor’s lawn is a large nandina, with berries. Wonderful. They are toxic and can kill Cedar Waxwing, who like to gorge on berries, apparently. And then, as I drove to Kroger from the gym on my break, I passed through the alley behind the strip mall, and in the yard behind the gym, two large nandinas. So, my eyes have been opened to nandina. I still have yet to see one having escaped cultivation here in the neighborhood, but I have no doubt it has because it is listed as a top invasive.

I also learned about Chinese Wisteria, and I see a lot of vine stems (many have lost the leaves now) blanketing and smothing the trees in the lot in front of the gym that look suspiciously similar. This small strip of forest is an invasive haven. I patrolled it this morning before I clocked in, and I find everything. Everything – Japanese honeysuckle, privet, bush honeysuckle, English ivy, etc. It takes only a second. Currently, almost everything green on the edge of these forests is invasive. Tree of heaven as well, forgot to mention. Wintercreeper too. Forgot that, so much wintercreeper. Wintercreeper is really, extremely pervasive. For some reason I have a personal vendetta against this one. It just smothers and is so entrenched. Privet, honeysuckle, they are simple enough to remove. But wintercreeper, no. You are in for a long, long fight. The root system is extensive, the branches of the vine on the tree will last for a long time. They will keep sprouting out of the earth for years. It takes so much time to pull it all up. It’s smothering the trees at Shelby. All over the neighborhood. All over the ground. And you can buy it at the store right now, if you want.

The frost killed all the flowers in my garden. They could handle the low temperatures surprisingly well, I thought they would have given in a long time ago. But the frost, the real cold frost, sub-zero temperature, that did them in. The next morning they were all done for, the zinnias, the cosmos, the marigolds. But they had held on for a long time. The first frost this year was only a few days ago, early-mid November. And it snowed.

There was a girl (should I say woman, I really wonder about this) (female???) who was in here earlier, around my age. My associate Mr. Holloway checked her and her friend in. I was then at the counter when she wanted to purchase a Pelligrino (she said she didn’t know how to pronounce it) and a Kombucha (asking me if I liked them and I had to tell her that I have still never had a Kombucha) (which is not a proper noun, so why am I capitalizing it?). Luckily Mr. Holloway was there to tell her that it was in fact delicious, and the blueberry flavor was the best. I then for some reason, as I was standing there at the drink fridge, opened it up and took out her two desired drinks, and then I realized what I was doing, and I said, “And I don’t know why I’m getting them for you,” laughing at that, because I was absolutely acting on autopilot, and for some reason that’s what I was deciding to do, and then I realized, “Why?” We laughed about that, I was providing a personal service, I suppose. I then took the drink over to the ring them up, and I looked up at her, and then I looked her in the eyes, and noticed that she had really beautiful green eyes.

It’s not often that I feel that someone has beautiful eyes. It’s very rare, actually, that I noticed that someone has beautiful eyes, or that I am struck with that thought. Even when people have commented on my eyes I’ve kind of been surprised, because I have never looked in the mirror and thought anything about my eyes. But her eyes, I noticed. They were green, and they were incredibly sparkley, like they actually had glitter in them. I remember those eyes. And when I was thinking about that, I thought again about Melody, who works here at the gym and was hired on at the same time as me. We were trained together. Melody is a wonderful spirit. And she also has an incredible, beautiful set of blue eyes. Her eyes are also sparkling, like they have glitter in them. And nearly every time I look her in the eyes I think about that. I have wanted to tell her that sometime, and I am reminded again that I want to tell her that.

I interact with many people at this job, and there have been of course a few standouts and memorable individuals. It’s interesting what makes someone memorable. I give just about everybody the same deal, I would say. I like to think I do. I show up as I am and am generally the same with most people, I think, although of course I’m going to meet people where they are and try to appeal to their interests, etc. But I think that from the beginning I am pretty neutral. So then it’s interesting where things go with each person. What they want to talk about, if they even want to talk at all, if they are more jovial or joking, more serious, more grounded, shy, etc. All of these things. Well, DG, one of the most memorable climbers I’ve gotten to know, he was a 19 man from Memphis, Mexican, but born and raised in the US, and speaking almost no Spanish. This was at first a shocking thing to me, but why not? Plenty of Japanese, Chinese, etc., American-born and raised, do not speak Japanese or Chinese. And me, I don’t speak Swedish, and I have a Swedish last name. So there you go. At some point we will all be diverged from our roots. Or our roots are just replaced with other roots. That’s how it goes. He did say that his friends and family were all roasting him all the time, and he was like, “Guys, chill, damn.” DG was a funny guy. He was visiting about a month, and I remembered his name, because he was young, friendly, good-looking, and the name was so easy to remember. His name was like Juan Hernandez. You just don’t forget that name. Or Don Julio. A classic name. So I could remember his name. He was impressed that I remembered his name, and then he wanted to remember my name. And then I think it was the fourth time that he came in, he was just so excited to tell me everything about his life, about his Halloween experiences, about his girl drama and his story of going to a frat, about the brothers asking him “Do you know a brother here?” And of course, he just needed someone to tell all of this to, and I was more than willing to listen, and give him all the appropriate responses, and encourage him, because I really enjoyed hearing his tales. He was animated, funny, self-conscious, genuine – all of these things. He was a real young bro, and he was taking me back to my young days, as I told him. He was very happy to have me as a friend, and then we were homies. I found out then that he was an extraordinary climber, if what he said at least was true, and that he was working on a V13 climb on the kilterboard, which, when I said that to Parker, who knows more about climbing than I do, he said that Mr. Don Julio is one of the top 5000 climbers in the world, and probably one of the top 5 climbers in Nashville. So the next time I was at the gym and he came in, and he was sure to ask what my schedule was so that he could come in and hang out with me while I worked, I said something like “There he is Mr. Top 5000 Climber in the world”, and of course he liked that, and then had to do a lot of showing off for me. But I was talking to him about it, genuinely, and he said, when I asked him about the climbs here, he said, “I’ve climbed everything in here.” So he had done everything we had, and was now doing V13 climbs on the kilterboard because he needed more challenge. I’m assuming that he wasn’t lying to me. And he was extremely strong. He did about 120 pullups, weighted pullups. 30 in a row. With a belt on, with a plate attached. He had the Arnold Swarzzengaer build, I told him so. He was like a young Arnold Swazzenarger. Of course he loved to hear that. He was an amazing mixture of self-conscious and egotistical, which makes someone very lovable. I think that this was really a good man here, this young guy. Where you’re like, “These jeans don’t make me look fat, do they?” And you know they know that they look good in the jeans. Except, girls don’t ask that unless… Well, you get what I’m saying. He was like, “Do I look jacked?” When I commented that he had the Arnold Swarzennager build. And of course, yeah buddy, you look extremely jacked. But he needed to hear it. He was desperate to hear it, in that charming way. So, we were comparing muscles then (extremely bro-ing out), and it was amazing to see what it is to have those bodybuilder genes, such as Arnold has. Because, this young man, Don Julio, he was about the same height as me, just slightly shorter, and I am lean and muscular, and he is lean and muscular, except that, his bones, his shoulder and bicep and forearm and hands, were all twice as large as mine. Basically, we held our arms up together, and his arm, shoulder down, was just the same as my arm, except twice as big. Twice as massive. Every vein in his forearm clearly delineated. That’s just amazing to see.

Don Julio was here washing windows, and he was doing it on the Pinnacle building, which I don’t know what that is, and he was shocked that I live here, and don’t know what it is. But he showed me pictures and videos, of him being up on the skyscraper, in the clouds, over the city, legs dangling, and they were amazing. He was happy to show me that. And when it was his last time at the gym, before going back to Memphis, he was so sad to leave. He was the last one out the door, and was fake crying, and I said I had a feeling we would see each other again someday. When he moves to Nashville. He was hamming it up even as he left the door, he said, “Oh no, the door is closing, no!”

I would put this man at the very top of the characters here. And I thought about him, and how easily and amazingly we were able to bond, in that very, boyish way. It’s a soccer player way, for sure. Like dogs, very much dog energy. By comparing muscles, by talking about girls and adventuring, by joking a lot and ribbing. Basically, being playful and fun. It really did remind me of the soccer players and being on the soccer team. He was like a soccer player in that way. Fraternal. I just love that. It’s just guys being dudes. But, it isn’t so common to get that, always. Not with artists, not with climbers. Don Julio and I are outliers a bit, in that way, in the climbing world I think. It’s that instinct that guys have, to wrestle with each other. You know, they like to do that. I have that urge, to wrestle around, to race, to tumble and take shots, etc. To do some crazy and stupid stuff for fun, in the name of having a good time. To have some little good-spirited competition, in the name of fun. All that kind of thing. And Don Julio had that energy exactly.

There was another man who I connected with, on an entirely different level, and in a much shorter period of time, just a few days ago. Tall, very tall, well-built guy, and he was buying something at the register at the end of night. I commented on his shoes, which were a cool color of electric green, and black, and I had never seen them before. He told me that they were the vegan Scarpas. And I told him that that was awesome, he told me a little more about them, and he said he was a vegetarian too, and he said, he was trying. He said, “You know…” and he shrugged. I can’t remember the exact words, but we both understood, I understood clearly what he was implying. That it’s an uphill battle, that we are fighting a very difficult fight. I told him about how I was a vegetarian too. And I understood him, I knew what that guy was about. You know, that says a lot. That he is someone who cares. In very few words, I could feel that.

Human Comedy // Halloween Show

Last night I picked up a few books. Trying to be a good boy and spend my long dark nights well. Frankenstein wasn’t hitting. A Tale of Two Cities was not what I wanted to read. Robinson Crusoe, no, no. That wasn’t it. So, then what?

I laid around and thought, reflected. Didn’t want to listen to music, didn’t want to absorb any new content, no new intakes, I think. Only reflections, yet I had energy. It wasn’t time for bed yet – what do I do? And I started to read some past writings.

I have to tell you that I have been having some serious grapplings with myself as a writer, my thoughts of writing, my purpose, what I am doing, what I am working for, what I could and should be writing, what I should do with my writing, how I can make it better, etc. And that is somewhat tiring, and has been recently, and I’ve started to just let myself be free from it. That’s good. I read some of my past writing, last night, writing where I just let it all out and spoke some truth, that was entertaining, and honest, and especially what was about people – Nick Harding, my wild ex-roommate, my time at the guitar store, my writing about whatever shennanigans was going on at the time, and I felt that that was the good writing. That was the best writing, that was entertaining, and contained truths and human themes, which we are basically all interested in. My gardening writing, that was good, I enjoyed reading it when it was entertaining, and less so when it was just me reciting new discoveries. Plants are hard to make entertaining, I’ll tell ya. Just the subject matter. No plant-centric writing will be as entertaining as recounting my conversations with my wild ex-roomie about him wanting to fight in the Revolutionary War and watching The Patriot and crushing a White Claw in 7.8 in the middle of a bout of chess, the first game of chess that he had ever played in his life (so he said).

I could write for you about the hundred year old beech trees that CD Paddock showed us in the forest the other day, for my round of invasive plant removal on the morning of Halloween. I could talk about the sassafrass tree and the pawpaws she had planted, the mega-oaks, but, it’s simply not that juicy to write about. You just need to see it. You have to come with me and walk in the forest and stand under the tree and marvel at it. That’s just the fact. I can’t really convey this in writing. But it is an awesome thing.

So, if I think about the most entertaining stuff I can write about, these days, there hasn’t been that much. Human comedy, that is. Or perhaps, I’m just not that focused on it. I am thinking a lot about plants, and the environment, to be honest. A lottttt about plants. (And here he goes. He’s writing about plants now.)

We have a new neighbor, long story with this one, but she was at our house show on Halloween, and after the show I got a chance to talk to her, and I had really wanted to talk to her, because I needed her permission to cut down the final bush honeysuckle tree that was between our two properties, and it was just a few inches too far on her side to reasonably justify cutting it down (even though I had cut down several that were already 100% on her side of the property) (and it’s not even her property of course because she’s renting), but I just couldn’t cut this last one down. It would have been too bold of me. I had to get permission. I should have asked her about the other ones, too, sure, but I was chomping at the bit, and on a war path. Well, she has just moved in, so I figured she probably didn’t care, wasn’t too attached, but I did think she would at least notice that medium-sized trees were being felled along her fence, but I finally got to ask her about it, I said, “There’s something I really need to talk to you about,” (it was one of the first things I said to her), and I said, “You have an invasive tree on your side of the yard that I really want to cut down,” I pointed to it because she was sitting right next to it basically, and she said, “Yeah, cut it down! Is it privet?” And I said, “Some of it is, but that’s bush honeysuckle-how do you know about that?” She said, “My two best friends are botanists.” So there you go. And I told her I had already cut down several but I couldn’t cut this last one down without her permission, and she said she hadn’t even noticed that I’d cut anything down at all.

There is now about 200+ pounds of biomatter laying in our yard that I have eradicated, via chopping, sawing, snapping and breaking, or uprooting. Euonymous fortunei, Japanese honeysuckle, Bush honeysuckle, and Chinese privet.

You see that I am not writing about human comedy, really. Dammit.

I have been given permission by the big boss, the head of the park activities, to go ahead and cut the wintercreeper vines on the trees. I am chomping at the bit to cut these things down. I got up and the next morning, (well the next next morning), I went over to the neighbor’s yard and I immediately cut that giant honeysuckle down, along with many privets, and uprooting copious amounts of wintercreeper that were forming a dense mat on the ground. There is so much work to be done. And this morning, after playing guitar and riffing out, the sun broke through, and I popped over to Shelby to start severing those vines and freeing the trees. I didn’t get very far. First, I just had to take down at least one mature privet on the edge of the park, right by the parking lot, where there are so, so many. I was tearing it down right there on the edge, and I at least did have my Shelby t-shirt on, and I knew that I was going to attract attention, as anyone would with a saw, cutting things down at the park, so I knew I should at least have that shirt on, and a mom passed with a few kids, and the kid said, “Mommy, why is that man cutting the trees down?” And she said, “I don’t know, do you want to ask him?” I heard them saying this, and turned to them, and the kid said, “Why are you cutting the trees down?” And I told ’em. I don’t know if they quite understood, but the mom of course did, and then she was talking to me about it, and she said, “We have a ton of these in our yard.” I said, “Yeah, they’re everywhere.” And there you go. Awareness increased. That’s one more person and some kids who know. Will she take them down? I bet she does. She will at least be thinking about it.

I then moved further in and got to work on the fortunei, the very first one I wanted to take down was a menace. There were several vines wrapped around the tree, huge, thick wooden stems of vines. I had to cut through some privet just to get to the tree. Well, I was working on the third of these thick creeper stems, and was bashing the block of wood that I had cut to try and pop it off, when the saw broke apart. The blade popped out, the pieces fell off. And that was the end of that. I was defeated.

Really, I need an electric saw, at least. A chainsaw is probably too much, because it would easily cut into the actual tree, and you don’t want to do that. But a little handheld electric saw could really speed my workrate up.

There are so many ladybugs around right now, most of them, maybe all of them are asian lady beetles, and I’ve noticed that so many of them have deformed wings. It seems that almost half of them are coming out of their metamorphosis with deformed wings, and I thought this was really strange, and concerning even. Surely something is going wrong here. Well, looks like the answer is a virus called Deformed Wing Virus, and is common with asian lady beetles. How fascinating is that? I should get some photos if I can.

I did see this morning, on a short walk in the neighborhood, about fifty ladybeetles, almost all of them correctly formed, basking in the sun. They were covering a variety of plants that were all on the edge of a yard, and where the sun was hitting strongly, and I’m sure they were all just basking in the glow, and warming up. I could see a full variety of their patterns, as the same ones can have different spottage patterns, some of them even having no spots, or nearly no spots, and just being a bright orange color. They were like little orange gems, or little candies. Much more like little candies. That was pleasing to see.

I learned something about tree of heaven, at the volunteer event, that makes it all the worse. You have heard of (or even seen) one of the newer, most prominent invasive insects of late, the lanternfly.

These are bad business. I saw some when I was in NYC. And I learned on Halloween, that their favorite host plant is the tree of heaven. So, there you go. Evil begets evil.

I’m just hitting you with all of my ecological/botanical/plant updates, I know. I’m sorry. I even set out to not do this. I even set out to write something funnier. I am so sorry.

I can tell you that I played in a show on Halloween, drumming, and it was a great time. And we recorded great footage of the concert, from multiple angels, which our fearless band leader is now compiling into an amazing and expertly edited video. I was rewatching some of the video and was generally impressed with how we did (it’s hard to tell from the other side, but it did seem like things went well from behind the drum seat), and there were three things that were really funny about the show. The first is that (I had completely forgotten about this), but Parker had to tell me that I had really done a great thing, which is that after one of the songs, he had a cringe moment where he said, “Man, I never forget the lyrics to Instagirl and I did it tonight, that’s crazy…!” He says this into the microphone, you can tell he’s beating himself up about it, and it is kind of cringe, the audience doesn’t have much reaction, possibly they are feeling some pity or are cringing. But, I said, audibly, mimicking him, “That’s craaaaazy!” and I hit a ba-dump-tiss on the drums, and then the cringe was over and people laughed. Parker said that I saved him, in his cringe moment there. He was very grateful. I was very prepared to do this, a ba-dum-tiss, and at any moment, awkward or actually funny, or just, if I felt like it, I was prepared to throw out a ba-dum-tiss. That was a good moment for one.

I was extremely tempted, and was having a difficult time resisting a ba-dum-tiss, at a critical moment of the show, where Parker was doing his bit, about Paul Atreyades from Dune. Parker was the main character from Dune for Halloween, and during the show he wanted to do a Dune speech, some lines that the character gives, a scene from the show, which was not intended to be funny, but dramatic, however, when he started doing this, and would pause for dramatic effect, I just could not resist hitting a ba-dum-tiss, every time. It was like popping a balloon. There was simply so much satisfaction in that. And of course, he hated this. It was completely ruining his bit. He needed me to not do that, and he begged me, commanded me, after I had done it for the third time, pleaded with me, said, “Steven, you can’t do that. You can’t do that during the show. Please. Promise me.” He had me shake his hand on it. He came into my room I think later that night, to secure my promise. I couldn’t help messing with him, the poor guy. But I knew I wouldn’t do it at the show. He was going to have that moment, I wouldn’t ruin it. But, it was so funny to see him anguished by the possibility of me ruining his special Dune moment with a ba-dum-tiss.

The second funny thing about the show for me, was that, I was definitely more intoxicated than I should have been, come the start of the show. Ethan Beller from Thailand was crafting up some amazing gin and juices, he had cooked simple syrup on the stove, fresh Kroger limes, and I had had two of those, with some prime Aviator gin, and then I may have had an entire beer, so this was already three drinks before we started playing. That was two more drinks than what I had said would be my allocated number of drinks before playing, which was one. And I had tested the waters during our practice, to see how much I could drink while still being clean on the drums, and it seemed that after two beers in a short period of time, I started to get a little loose, and drop the ball once in awhile, which is unacceptable, of course. So I had the intention of having one drink, but then, we were having a great time, and partying, and I wanted to kill some nerves, I won’t lie, and so I had possibly three drinks. Well, the first song went okay, not so hard for me on the drums, but the second song was signficantly trickier, and required more from me on the drums, and I was fumbling right out of the gate. And I definitely had a small moment of internal panic then, and I thought, oh man, I may have gotten too drunk for this. And that’s not good. Well, I had to summon all of my power to rally, and use every brain cell I had, and made it through that song, and then in the third song, I had locked it in, and then there was a moment where I thought, okay, I’ve got it all in the bag now, and then I had no more worries. But, there was truly a moment where I thought, oh god, I’m going to ruin the show and fumble it all away here, because I had two gin and juices and beer. You can see in the video, I was sipping beer the whole time. After almost every song I went and grabbed my beer. What a rock and roller.

I hit that ba-dum-tiss to save Parker from his cringe moment, and then I ran over and took a swig of beer. That’s what I was up to back there on the drums.

What was the third funny thing? I remember. It was that, I was playing with a child’s drum set, and the crash, I don’t know what the purpose of this crash was, because I don’t even know about drum sets, really, but I think it was meant to be hit once, as a crash, and not many times repeatedly, like a ride would be hit. Well, I only had this single crash/ride cymbal, because the other ride/crash whatever that I had in the kit sounded horrible. It sounded like a gong from China. I didn’t use it a single time. So, my crash was also my ride, and I was hitting that thing, and it was flailing around wildly, and I had forgotten that, but was watching the video again, and you see that sometimes it’s literally at like a 170 degree angle, and unhittable, because it isn’t rebounding in time. I had to focus so much energy on hitting that thing right, and calibrate my strikes, and sometimes I just wouldn’t get anything out of it. I would go for a swing on the crash hear either nothing in response, or just a strange clunk. I got all kinds of sounds out of that crash during the show. It was annoying at the time, but in retrospect very funny. To see it flailing around like that.

This is about what I’ve got for ya. Ethan and I went in to the pinball bar, and when I walked in, I heard multiple people shout, “Shrek!!!!” (I was Shrek, totally thrifted outfit), and there was someone in a donkey suit, and I said, “Donkey!!!!” And we hugged each other and jumped up and down. There was in that party a Fiona and a Lord Farquad, I believe, and a Puss in Boots, but they had no Shrek. I just couldn’t believe that. I was astonished at that. Then, there was a girl who was a “detective” but she was of course looking exactly like Sherlock Holmes, and so at first I said, “You’re Sherlock Holmes?” and she said, “I’m just a detective.” I thought that was so funny. I had thought earlier in the night, it would be funny if I just said that I was an alien, and be like, “I’m just an alien, why is everyone calling me Shrek????” Because I looked exactly like Shrek. Her saying that she was not Sherlock Holmes was just like that. “No, I’m not a ninja, I’m just a sneaky man dressed in black with a kunai knife. Why does everyone keep calling me that??”

I had to wake up early for a shift, a full day shift at the gym on Saturday, the day after Halloween, and I was still intoxicated for most of the shift. At least the whole first half, I was buzzed, at least. I forgot to do half of the things I was supposed to do, including the vibe checks, which I am famous for, and turning on the music. They had been climbing in silence for at least thirty minutes before someone came over and said, “Hey, can you turn the music on?” Well, I wasn’t sweating about this shift, because it was at the smaller local gym, and I figured it would be an easy shift, a leisurely Saturday, and that could not have been farther from the truth. We had 100 check-ins, I had no backup, and probably 15 kids under the age of 12 and their parents showed up, I had to do all these orientations, fill out all these waivers, and sell all these day passes, and give the kids chalk, and watch out for their safety, and talk to them, and I had all my cleaning, everything, and on almost no food, I was starving, and I’ll tell you what – that was miserable. Almost miserable, but it was fun honestly. A special highlight was there was a cool black guy, had a great smile, a military man from Alaska, and he had a young kid with him. They were a cute pair, the kid had a superman shirt on, and when they were getting changed at the end of the night preparing to leave, I asked the guy about Alaska, he said he had been living in Anchorage, and I asked about bears, and he said he saw them all the time, they would just walk through his yard, and he showed me a photo of a bear and a cub, just hanging out in his yard. It looked like the most normal suburban yard ever, with a normal house, and with two bears in it. That was an amazing photo. He then showed me a video of a young moose walking around his front door in the winter. He said he just stepped outside and there was a moose there. He said the moose were scary, they were huge. You forget about moose, meese, sometimes. I do. I would like to see a moose. You would not wanted to be charged by a moose, oh no.

Wild Euonymous fortunei (Wintercreeper) at Shelby Park

Hello all.

This post is simply a documenting of some Euonymous fortunei AKA wintercreeper at Shelby Park. Since IDing this in my yard, I now see it everywhere, all over the trees and Shelby Park and in the neighborhood. It takes over the midsection of the tree, and if you didn’t know better you would think that it was simply part of the tree, and the branches it gives off are the tree’s branches. This is an interesting vine because it can cover the ground and also climb trees, and in tree-climbing mode, can become an enormously thick vine, and put off branches and berries. Even though we don’t want it here in the US, in our forests, it is a pretty spectacular vine. You have to give it that.

*fortunei at the base, beginning to climb*

*the tree dead center is covered with E. fortunei*

*wild grape vine (native) climbing on fortunei*

*large mass of fortunei covering the tree*

*a lot of the green you see here comes from invasive plants from Asia*

“Is that your handwriting?”

Hello world. I am reporting from the desk at (insert name of climbing company here) in lovely ol’ East Nastville. What a beautiful day it is out today! The sun is shining. The birds are singing. The people are working communally. What a dream, what an absolute dream.

We’ve had an exciting day here so far. I am the only staff member at this small local gym, until my reinforcements show up at 2pm. I opened the gym up at 10am, and got to crackin’. A deluge of folks came in right at the turn of the clock, that is, exactly at 10am, they were ready to go. Coaches, youth team, gang of young lads, veteran local climbers, and a couple on a first date. This was a lot for me to handle on this sleepy Saturday morning, I must confess, due to my lack of being properly caffeinated.

This failure on my part to ensure proper caffeine levels in mine bloodstream was because I had planned to drink some expired energy milk drink this morning. There is a chocolate milk energy drink by the brand Hatchers, that is sold in these gyms, called Jumpin’ Jimmy. Jumpin’ Jimmy is a 16 oz. beverage that offers everything that anyone could ever want in a single drink, all for an affordable price and packaged in a container that will likely end up in the ocean and starve a whale to death. One Jumpin’ Jimmy contains 42 grams of sugar, 160mg of caffeine, and 32 grams of blessed protein, and of course wonderful fats, calcium, etc., the normal offerings of milk.

I had scored some Jumpin’ Jimmy yesterday… long story short, I forgot the Jumpin’ Jimmy today, and I was planning to finally drink one for test purposes, to see what would happen, because we do sell them after all, I should know about the product, but I have been avoiding them because I have a great fear that it will make me feel terrible and horrible. Well, I purposefully drank only a small amount of coffee this morning, so as not to overload myself on Jumpin’ Jimmy juice, but then I forgot it. I was then blasted with a good amount of action right out of the gate, at the gym, and when it cooled down, I was doing my general activities, and having cravings for more coffee. I took a can of cold brew out of the fridge three separate times, deliberating whether I should buy one or not, as they were $4.21 post-discount, which was still too expensive for me, and I thought long and hard about this purchase. Did I need this coffee? 250mg of cold brew? For $4.21? When I make $15.50 an hour and should be scrounging every penny possible?

This was such a difficult decision that it took me 45 minutes to decide to pull the trigger. I wrote about it in my journal, to help me through the quandary. I went for it, in the end, it was a small joy, and the timing was right. And here we are three hours later, I am 2/3 of the way through the can, and we can say it was the right decision. That caffeine is turning this Saturday around and got me goin’ right quick.

Immediately after I decided to purchase this can of cold brew, my home boy and veteran climbing staff member guru Luke shows up for some Saturday climbing, and the first thing he does is ring up a cold brew, same one that I bought. And he didn’t think about that for a single second. There was no deliberation there, no hesitation, unless he worked it all out in the car. That is a great place for deliberating, we all know it. I commented on this. (He did end up spilling some of his can, his precious coffee life-blood, lost about 70mg worth of cold brew.) When he rang it up, I noticed that it was cheaper for him, and he said there was an issue with some staff members getting regular member discount rates (10%) and not the staff discount rate (30%). I was getting a member discount rate! I could have saved $1.00 on that coffee! And 45 minutes worth of deliberation! I messaged the Director of Operations immediately and brought this issue to his attention.

The cave lights were not on today. One of the coaches asked me to turn them on, and I couldn’t figure it out, and then I had other business to attend to, and I forgot about it for a while. Then I remembered that that was something that needed to be done, and I asked all the brains in the building, how do we get these cave lights on, because nobody told me and I’ve twisted every visible knob and none of them have turned the lights on. I was walking back into the lobby to contemplate this issue further and see if anyone had answered my plea for help on our communication channels, when I spied Carlin, the herpetologist (who also works at these gyms), and I said, “Carlin, do you know how to turn the cave lights on?” (I should have that there is an overhung section of the gym, where you climb at a 60 degree angle or so, maybe just 45, and that is referred to as “the cave”). Carlin investigated, attempted to turn some knobs, and then began to engage her brain further. We discussed the possible resolutions to the problem, and we then had the hypothesis that these cave lights should be also controlled by the master light switch, which toggles every light on that side of the building. Had someone then manually switched off the cave lights by accident, when they should be controlled by the master switch? I was stumped, when Carlin suggested that I just try toggling the master switch again. Okay, why not — I did so, and would you know it? That worked. Now all the lights were on plus the cave lights. Carlin was a genius. We made many jokes about this, that our technical issue was actually resolved by the classic “Did you try turning it off and on again???”

Another comment was made today about my mannerisms (if that’s what we can call them – my quirks.) Actually, two comments were made today about things that are classically commented on, for me. The first is that I was asked by the 16 year old climb coach why there was a loaf of bread in the office. Many of you may know that I am a bread enjoyer and have no problem with eating an entire loaf of bread. This has gotten much attention in basically every workplace I’ve ever been in. I replied to this young climber coach, “It may be that someone is going to be eating a loaf of bread today.” Something like that. It was obvious to us all that it was my bread. The other girl said that she hoped that whoever would be eating the bread wasn’t just eating bread, and I said, “There may also be some peanuts around,” (that was true). She then called my diet “medieval”. It’s the first time it’s been called medieval, but I think that is actually a pretty great description for my diet, if you don’t want to call it “sparse” or “simple”. I generally use the word “simple”.

Some time after this, I was checking in a couple here on their first date, and the guy said to me, noticing my open notebook on the counter, “Is that your handwriting?” This is another thing that is commonly commented on. I confirmed that it was in fact my handwriting. It has already been outed here at this workplace that I have wild and unreadable scribble and script, as I have left several informative notes at the counter that no one has been able to decipher, even though I used my best handwriting. I came in to Starbucks a few days after my last shift, where I had written a short fictional letter of a man who had been stranded on an island with dinosaurs, and it was an object of interest for the staff, most of whom just looked at it and joked about it, but one friend, Chris K., one of my true homies, he went further, and spent “hours”, so he said, attempting to read my scribble. He had gotten quite far, through pure perseverance and will, and when I showed up for my next shift, he immediately came to me with the notepad and had me read the story to him. He said several times, “So that’s what it said!”

I was shocked then a couple weeks ago, when one of the climb staff members was able to read my handwriting almost flawlessly, with very little difficulty. I told him, “you are an anomaly”. The other team members couldn’t read it and were lambasting it, but he said, “I can read it,” and then he read every single word that I had scribbled on a sticky note. It was amazing. I wrote another message and had him read it, and he read that one too with perfect accuracy.

I was also shocked to see, once upon a time, a bartender who had nearly the exact same handwriting as me. She had almost all of the same patterns and quirks in her handwriting. I like to say that it is a “highly evolved script”, as it has become the way it is to be fast and efficient. Many things meld together and evolve/devolve (depending on how you want to look at it), but are readable to me or in context. It’s not an accident that the handwriting looks this way, and this bartender, her script was exactly the same. I had her write on a piece of paper for me, because we were having a conversation about my handwriting, again as I had a notebook open, and I wanted to see hers. I was amazed to see her writing, to see a kindred handwriting spirit. Right there on the paper, I performed a small analysis of the similarities of our writing. It was incredible.

The man at the gym, he said, “Is that your handwriting?” and he was amazed to see it. He said that his writing was “bad, like a 5th graders”. I asked him what he thought about my handwriting, and he said it looked like a doctor’s writing (commonly said).

It does look like a doctor’s scribble.

Shelby Trip (Oct. 15) – A Lotta Vines

[Note: The photos in the email are compressed and aren’t as sharp. If you want to see the photos in higher quality, read the post on my actual blog site.]

Three days ago now I went to Shelby for my first invasive removal session of the season. We’ve just started up again as the winter approaches. This is prime time for removing these Bush honeysuckles and Chinese privets, as they keep their green leaves and are easy to identify. It’s also not as hot and a lot of growth has died back. I haven’t been in the forest for awhile and with my newfound knowledge, I was able to immediately spy wintercreeper, Japanese honeysuckle, and eventually English ivy on trees and on the ground. Unfortunately, the wintercreeper was everywhere, almost ubiquitously covering the ground, if privet or honeysuckle weren’t taking up the space already. And often, privet and wintercreeper were working together to smother the forest floor.

I used to think, subconsciously really, that there was a clear delineation between “nature” and “human world”. Between nature and civilization, I guess. And that there were places that we would go to, and those were the nature places, and then we would return to the non-nature, the constructed, civilized, human habitat. I think that now I feel much more that we are truly in nature all of the time, whether there is almost no “nature” remaining (in a totally constructed city), or we are in the suburbs, whereever we are. Even in a city, nature is there. Pigeons, insects, plants, growing in cracks and crevices. We are always in nature, whether we really realize it or feel it or not.

I think the flip-side of this is that our “nature” is also not perfectly separate from our civilization, and our activities bleed into these nature spaces as well. The forest at Shelby park once seemed to me to be a bastion of nature haven, a place to get away, unaffected and isolated from the hubbub and artificialness of human society. But, now that I realize it is so covered in plants that we have brought with us, and it is so affected by our behaviors, it is not really a removed place anymore. It is an affected and disturbed habitat.

Our properties are the same. We have a neighborhood, we have our roads, and our downtown, but all of this was built on top of and in an ecosystem, and that ecosystem is still here, albeit heavily affected and disturbed.

I have started foraging. I feel that this is a major evolution, a milestone in my naturalistic journey. The plantain weed is edible, I think I mentioned that, (what the caterpillars were eating), that was sprouting up in my yard and is all over the neighborhood. And not only is it edible, it’s so good for you that it has an article on Healthline (popular internet health site). I was so bored at the climbing gym the other day that I finally picked some and tried it out. There was plenty of plantain weed in the patch of grass outside of the gym, and I plucked it, washed it in the bathroom, and ate it raw. It was pretty good, although some of the leaves were really astringent (bitter and dry). Then, that evening when I got home, I plucked it out of my garden, boiled it up, and ate it that way. It was much better, and almost exactly like eating spinach, with a hint of arugula flavor. Parker had asked if I was going to make a tea, and so that inspired me to also save the water and drink it. That was great too, like a weak green tea.

It was really hitting me then, that I was getting a fresh vegetable, free, harvested myself, and that was growing wildly in my yard. I have a whole patch of it, it all just popped up, and once the caterpillars were done farming it, it’s grown freely and there’s tons of it for me to harvest. For the last four days I’ve gone out there and plucked some, and thrown it in with my pasta. Free veggies, and the only thing I had to do was know that I could eat them. That crucial piece of knowledge.

Walking home yesterday, I noticed some berries on vines hanging over the neighbor’s fence, and they looked like grapes. I went home, searched it up online, and made sure it wasn’t any kind of poisonous lookalike, examined the seeds, and decided that they were grapes, and I ate some. They were sweet and delicious, much like blueberries. Were those wild, or had they planted them? I wonder. They’re just hanging over the fence by the road, intermingled with Chinese privet and other random plants. I wonder what the vine looks like on the other side of the fence. I know we do have wild grapes around here, called Muscadines.

Walnuts and acorns are also falling abundantly right now. On the same walk, I had stopped to pick up some walnuts that were all over the road. There were two older neighbors talking to each other in their driveways across the street, and I heard the one guy say, “Those are walnuts,” to his neighbor (they must have been watching me), and his neighbor said, “Those are walnuts???” Yep, they’re walnuts, and if you know how to prepare them, you can have free local walnuts, to eat and enjoy, bounty of the earth. Walnuts are pricey, too.

I spied many interesting things during our Shelby park volunteer session, and so yesterday I went back and did some photography. Lots of vines, some local wildflowers, and one interesting plant, the snakeroot (Ageratina sp.). One of the volunteers, Will, he pointed out this large patch of white flowering plant, that had popped in an area of the forest that we had cleared previously. Sunlight could now get through, and this snakeroot had taken hold of the space. Cool plant, and apparently killed thousands of settlers when they were getting started here in America, as nobody knew that it was toxic. It has secondary toxicity, where the toxins of the plant saturate the milk and meat of animals. Wikipedia says that Abraham Lincoln’s mom may have died from snakeroot poisoning. When I was reading that, I thought, “I bet the Native Americans knew”, and then the article said that the person who figured out it was toxic learned it from a Native American. So the story goes.

Garden Updates

*Large sprouts in the center are radish sprouts*

Sightings From Oct. 15 Shelby Trip

Goldenrod (Solidago sp.) [TN native]

Frost aster/White heath aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum) [TN native]

*My other frost aster – different species / variety?*

*Frost aster AKA White heath aster at Shelby Park*

Sumpweed???? (Iva annua) [TN native]

Frostweed (Verbesina virginica) [TN native]

Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) [TN native]

Japanese honeysuckle [TN invasive]

Crossvine (Bigonia capreolata) [TN native]

Question Mark butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis) [TN native]

English ivy (Hedera helix) [TN invasive]

Poison ivy? (Toxicodendron) [native]

Muscadine (Grape) Vines

Carolina Snailseed (Cocculus carolinus) [TN native]

Wintercreeper/Fortune’s spindle (Euonymus fortunei) [TN invasive]

*Mostly wintercreeper on the ground, some Carolina snailseed and J. honeysuckle*

*Someone has cut wintercreeper vines off the oak*

*All these branches are the dead wintercreeper branches*

Bush honeysuckle [TN invasive]

*“Chipmunk condo”, pile of destroyed invasive plant debris (mostly bush honeysuckle and Chinese privet)*

Passionflower (Maypop) [TN native]

Wingstem/Yellow ironweed (Verbesina alternifolia)

*Wingstem is also called Yellow Ironweed*

Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)

MORE menaces in the yard: Wintercreeper (and English ivy!!)

“This mode of life gave health and vigor to my body, and amusement and instruction to my mind; and to this day I well remember the delicious sleep which succeeded my labors, from which I was again called at an early hour. If I were now asked whom I consider to be the happiest of the human race, I should answer, those who cultivate the earth by their own hands.”

– William Roscoe

I was reading Washington Irving’s The Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, and he was talking about meeting a man named Roscoe, and how great this Roscoe person was. He went on and on about Roscoe being a man of genius and talents, and finally I had to look him up. Well, now I know who William Roscoe is (smart guy from Liverpool, lived 1753-1831), and while I was perusing his Wikipedia page, the above quote was included. Me, who spent that entire morning ripping invasive Asian vines out of my yard, and has recently been engaged in increasingly greater amounts of earth cultivating activities, thought that this was a special quote, from a considerably smart man.

*William Roscoe portrayed by Martin Archer Shee, 1815–1817 (from Wikipedia)*

Reading this Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, by the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I think he (Washington Irving) is a genius too. This guy can write, man.

So, yesterday I was looking out of the window, looking at the dark green leaves of the tree in front of me, and seeing the little green berries, and thinking: What is this tree? What kind of leaves are these, what kind of berries? It’s weird that it’s evergreen. Anything evergreen is suspect, now, because so many of the invasives are evergreen, and that gives them an advantage as they have longer growing season.

Lo’ and behold, it was not part of the tree at all, even though the branches were so large that they seemed like branches of the tree. They were actually coming from a vine, an extraordinarily massive and entrenched vine wrapping around the tree and producing enormous branches. This mega-vine turned out to be, of course, non-native.

A horrible invasive from China — Wintercreeper.

In terms of weight of total plant matter, the Wintercreeper in my yard might take the cake, for an invasive. Looking around, I saw it everywhere, smothering almost all of the trees in the yard, and also laying a mat of dense ground cover in the backyard. This invasive, killer vine from Asia. Then, this morning, I was sawing away at these beastly vines, down at the bases, severing them, and I cut something off that turned out to actually NOT be Wintercreeper.

Oh no–did I kill a native, Tennessee vine?? I identified it, and, oh, not to worry. Just another invasive vine, competing with Wintercreeper to kill these trees. Wonderful. (That’s the English ivy.)

I’m conducting a great purge. None of these invaders will survive. They must all go. In the name of the great state of Tennessee, this land will be reclaimed!

*Veggie pots (bok choi, spinach, radish)*

*Insane amount of Japanese honeysuckle pulled*

*Example of Japanese honeysuckle root node*

*English ivy dangling from tree in my yard*

*Wintercreeper covering another one of my trees*

*Wintercreeper covering yet another one of my trees*

*Stem of Wintercreeper vine adhered to tree trunk*

*Mostly Wintercreeper vine, in the ground as well*

*Large piece of English ivy I hacked off the tree*

With the discovery of these invasive vines on the trees (and all along the ground, and covering the entire fence lining the driveway), there can’t be much more for me to purge. After the Japanese honeysuckle in the front yard, these massive vines, and with me cutting down some of the last giant Amur honeysuckles and Chinese privet, the purge must be nearly complete. There simply aren’t very many plants left in the yard that I haven’t identified now. I even know about the trees (maybe) – I think three of them are hackberries, one’s a maple. And if you guys want to see something crazy, I’ll show you. I have to take a photo of it, I’ll put it in a future post. Oh, it’s not going anywhere.

It’s a giant Tree of Heaven. And it’s right across the street. I didn’t even know they could get that big. Of course, they are a TREE, after all. But, I haven’t seen one so advanced, ever. It was only when I Googled it that I realized, they can become absolutely ginormous. And then, I was playing drums in my roommate’s room, and I was looking out of his window, and my eyes landed on a tree across the street. A strange tree, with leaves that looked like… oh my god.

It was an adult Tree of Heaven. Jesus Christ.

*Mature tree of heaven (internet photo)*

Stages of Ladybug // Garden Photography

There are a lot of ladybug larvae out and about right now here in early October (Oct. 8th). They’re all over the yard, making their tiny metamorphoses on my front door, my plants, the vines, my car. I was wondering why they would undergo their metamorphosis now, as winter is right around the corner (although we still have 2 months before then, and that is plenty of time to do stuff in the bug world). I read that ladybugs can live for several years and that they stay alive through the winter by hibernating. I had no idea about that.

I told my discerning sister that I had some photos of ladybugs and she said, “Are you sure they aren’t Chinese ladybeetles?” I wasn’t sure. And just now, looking at some photos of the Chinese ladybeetles, or, Asian lady beetle, Harmonia axyridis, they certainly look similar. The internet says that the Asian lady beetle is now in some parts of the US the most common ladybug around, and so these photos probably are of the Asian lady beetle.

There is no difference between a lady beetle and ladybug, they are all in the same family, Coccinellidae, which is a family in the order Coleoptera (the beetles). According to Wikipedia, “Entomologists use the names ladybird beetles or lady beetles to avoid confusion with true bugs.”

(The true bugs are the Hemipterans, another order.) I like saying ladybug, though, personally.

This Persian speedwell has been one of the main plants to dominate the bare dirt of my garden. I’ve just let it go and cover the ground. In the below picture you can also see the Three-seeded mercury, the taller, larger dark green plants. It recently put up some flowers, extremely tiny flowers. They must be some of the tiniest flowers you can find.

I’ve been seeing this Smartweed pop up, which has some interesting flowers/seeds. Are those pink things tiny little flower buds? Apparently the Smartweeds are edible. We’ll have to try some. (We as in me and whoever else I can get to eat it.)

*Mostly Veronica persica, Persian Speedwell*

We also have crazy amounts of a fluffy white bug flying around and covering everything with sticky sap. Those are wooly aphids, and probably an invasive kind (from Asia), the Wooly hackberry aphid. According to the internet if you live in the Southeastern US, that’s probably what you’re seeing right now. And I have I think five hackberries in my yard, and a lotttttt of wooly aphids, so it would make sense.

The Nightmare and Her Ninefold

Two days ago at the climbing gym, I was working my shift, doing my duty to god and country, and I decided to pass the time by reading some Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving on Project Gutenberg.

(If you do not know about Project Gutenberg — it is an amazing resource. You must know about Project Gutenberg. You can read all the classics, for free, online in your browser or via your Kindle. This is an incredible thing and I have read countless classics via Project Gutenberg, including Sherlock Holmes, Sleepy Hollow, Ben Franklin’s autobiography, many old Greek philosophical texts, Voltaire’s Candide, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.)

I was in the first few paragraphs, when I read something that was very interesting. Here is a snippet of the passage:

“The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is from the late 1810’s, and it’s interesting to read these old books and stories and see how the language has changed, and so rapidly. You see that he uses ‘oftener’, which today would be considered incorrect, and is not used. We would say, ‘more often’. But the real interesting part of this passage was for me, at the end.

“…the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

What do you mean her? Who is the nightmare? Irvine is clearly depicting the nightmare as some kind of female entity. What does that mean? I didn’t know anything about that. The closest image or association I have with a nightmare creature is the image of a horse from a Magic: The Gathering card, called nightmare. And a ‘mare’ is a female horse, in today’s language, so is a nightmare then some kind of wicked, female horse?

I never knew about this, and so I had to do some Googling. According to Wikipedia (I know you’re not supposed to cite this, okay):

“The word nightmare is derived from the Old English mare, a mythological demon or goblin who torments others with frightening dreams. The term has no connection with the Modern English word for a female horse.^[5]^”

A mare is a “mythological demon or goblin”! Now, who knew that? And that’s where nightmare comes from. It has nothing to do with the female horse, so says Wikipedia and whoever who the article.

More, from Wikipedia: “Originally, “mare” or “nightmare” referred more specifically to sleep paralysis, in which an experience of terror and paralysis during sleep can be associated with a sense of pressure on the chest and the dreamed presence of entities often pictured as demons, sometimes sitting on the chest. The words also referred to such a “demon,” which was also referred to as a hag and the experience as being “hag-ridden.” The meaning of “nightmare” had generalized from sleep paralysis to any bad dream by 1829.^[1]”

This painting is from 1781. This is what was in their minds, regarding nightmares, at this time. That certainly looks a goblin/demon creature to me. And interesting how there is a creepy horse-ghost in the background. Pretty freaky.

Interesting that the word originally referred to sleep paralysis, before becoming broadly applicable to bad dreams. It makes sense though, because you actually see some evil stuff when you’re having sleep paralysis. I’ve only had it once in my life, when my roommate Adam suggested that I take a melatonin to help me sleep as he did. That night, I ended up having a crazy bout of sleep paralysis, turned sideways, unable to move, and seeing a large, black demon in the corner of the room. After that night, I said Adam, I’m never taking this shit again. That was too freaky.

I think it’s weird that I actually didn’t know about a mare, and never thought about why we say ‘nightmare’ at all. When did the concept of a ‘mare’ get lost? That’s a fun thing to think about. Why haven’t I known about the ‘mare’, sitting on my chest and causing me to have bad dreams? Is that lore gone from our common modern consciousness? Do the older folks know about it?

As I was inn the midst of my ‘nightmare’ investigations, some young lads entered the gym and were checking in at the counter. On the second monitor, my screen was open to the ‘Mare’ Wikipedia page, and one of the guys notices this, seeing that I was deep-diving on Wikipedia, and said, “What are you researching over there?”

I immediately launched into this tale, as I am writing for you, about reading Sleepy Hollow and discovering the interesting line about the nightmare, reading about the origins of the word, finding out about the ‘mare’, (everything I had learned in the last five minutes) and man — these guys were a perfect audience. They were listening with total, rapt attentio, and so I gave them the full scoop. The guy who had originally asked about the Wikipedia page, he said, “So it’s like sleep paralysis.” And I hadn’t even mentioned yet about how the word ‘nightmare’ originally referred only to sleep paralysis, and I said, “Yeah, that’s exactly right!!” and then proceeded to recite more info from the Wikipedia article. It was a wonderful mini-lesson of the etymology of the word ‘nightmare’ that we had over the gym counter check-in right there, and I thought, after they had walked away, and reflecting on how much I had just been geeking out there, “Man, I really am a nerd.” But they thought it was cool.

Now, it gets even juicier than this, people. After learning about the mare, and nightmare and her gambols, I went back to Sleepy Hollow, and read that line again. And then I saw something else that needed to be investigated, which was “her whole ninefold.”

“…and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

Okay, so the nightmare is a female hag, demon, devil spirit. Now we know. But what is her ninefold?

We are digging up some very ancient lore here. Apparently this goes all the way back to Shakespear’s King Lear. (From the 1600’s.) A line from the character Edgar:

“This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins
at curfew and walks till the first cock. He
gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and
makes the harelip, mildews the white wheat, and
hurts the poor creature of earth.
Swithold footed thrice the ’old,
He met the nightmare and her ninefold,
Bid her alight,
And her troth plight,
And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee.”

(The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet? What an incredible name.)

It seems that the nightmare’s ninefold is a bunch of evil creatures, spirits and hooligans that hang out with the nightmare and do evil with her. This picture is by Arthur Rackman, and shows us exactly what the nightmare and her ninefold are all about.

*The Nightmare and Her Ninefold, Arthur Rackman, 1928 color plate*

I think horses must have something to do with a nightmare. They made a Magic card called Nightmare that is simply a demon horse, and there’s a spooky horse spirit in the above Henry Fuseli painting from 1781, and the hag is riding a horse here in this Arthur Rackman illustration. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is about a ghostly horse-rider. Surely all of this horse association is not just coincidence.

I’m glad to know about the ‘nightmare’, now. I feel like it’s something of an evil tooth fairy. I’ll be thinking about this spirit, whenever I heard about nightmares again. The nightmare, and her ninefold.

Plants of East Nashville [Photography Post, 9/20/25]

Maximillian sunflower (native!!!!)

I did a little photography tour of plants around the neighborhood. I thought I captured a lot but then, this really isn’t much. We’ve got so many different species of things here in these neighborhoods. These are some of the common sights around here, right now mid-September. A lot of flowers in bloom, a lot of pollinators out and about. We’ve got plants from all around the world, man.

*Maximillian sunflower – Helianthus maximiliani*

This is kind of a rare one here, this Maximillian sunflower. I don’t see a lot of this in the neighborhood.

*Honeyvine milkweed in my yard (the narrow, triangular leaves) (native!!!)*

*Salvia yangii? (Russian sage) (non-native)*

*Mealy Sage (Salvia farinacea) (native to Mexico and southern US)*

Sage, catmint, lamb’s ear, lavender… all part of the mint family, Lamiaceae. Catmint is common in these yards.

*Goldenrod (Solidago species) (native, good!!!!!)*

*Crape myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica (non-native)*

Crape myrtles are everywhere. They flower for an extremely long time, like many months. I didn’t know anything could flower for as long as these trees flower for. There’s a row of them outside of the strip mall in the neighborhood that has the climbing gym and Ugly Mugs. Unfortunately the are non-native, and do a native tree would be better here. They are fast-growing and easy to grow, have a long blooming season, and they clearly do well here. I read an article that said they should be used more in gardening in the area, for these reasons, but really I think we should be using local trees. Maybe Dogwoods instead? Dogwoods are like our native Japanese cherry blossom trees. Dogwood > Crape myrtle.

I wonder what the most similar suitable native alternative tree would be, to a Crape myrtle. They are a cool tree, I like them.

Apparently endemic to southern Australia. It’s come a long way.

*Cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit) (non-native)*

This cypress vine is everywhere. One of the most sighted plants in the neighborhood, growing on fences and around telephone posts. It is from the tropical Americas and seems to be thriving here. Unfortunately, non-native, and so really shouldn’t be here, but at least the pollinators do love it.

The main issue with non-native species is that local animals often don’t know how to utilize them. They don’t eat the berries, they don’t lay eggs on the leaves and feed on the plants, birds don’t make nests in them, etc. And they will often replace the native plants that say, birds and insects do know how to use. In Shelby Park (and in forests in TN in general) there is a problem with the Chinese privet and Bush honeysuckle completely taking over the understory, and jamming up all the ground cover. TN forests are generally supposed to have clear understory. And this is a problem for a certain forest turtle (the Eastern Box Turtle) that has evolved to wander these clear forests.

You also have the issue of the monarchs, who are specialists and need milkweed plants to lay their eggs on and feed on. There are many insects that are looking for certain plants, and have the chemical signature of these plants dialed in, to use them for food and shelter. Those are the plants that they have evolved with, and know how to utilize.

*Sweet Alyssum (Lobularia maritima) (non-native)*

*My buckeye caterpillar chowing down on buckhorn plantain*

Cosmos Are Popping Off [Garden Post]

The cosmos are popping off now. They add an amazing pop of color to the landscape. It’s actually shocking how much pop they add. Right now things are looking generally brown and crispy, a bit dull, and/or just green. These cosmos are breaking through.

The first one was yellow, and all the rest have been a light yellow-orange. I wonder what’s going to happen to all these flowers with the first frost, which is supposed to be around Oct. 15th.

The bees seem to like them more than zinneas. Every time I’ve looked I’ve seen bees at the cosmos. The butterflies like the zinneas but they have a tough time because of the cars. Every time a car drives by the butterflies abandon the flower, and if two or three drive by they seem to give up on the patch altogether. I feel like the flowers are a bit of a trap for them in this way. But if they can get in when there aren’t any cars driving by they can have a nice feast.

I saw this butterfly on the zinnea this morning, I see this one often around here. Maybe a Pipevine swallowtail? Looking at the pictures online, looks likely.

The marigold has a bud that has grown massively in the last two days. It will bloom any day now. I’m ready. Come on!!!!

My zinneas now have powdery mildew. They must just get it no matter what, because it hasn’t been humid here at all. Hasn’t been rainy. Been dry as a bone. I don’t know how you’re supposed to keep this from happening.

This second patch isn’t having as much trouble with the alternaria though.

Apparently this is the Pipevine swallowtail caterpillar. Look at this crazy thing! And apparently their host plants are pipevines (makes sense), or the dutchman’s pipe, which are also wild-looking as heck. I ain’t never seen one’a these.

I spent more time yesterday pulling up Japanese honeysuckle. Cannot believe how entrenched it is. I start pulling, and there’s more, more coming up, more coming up. It’s hiding, it’s sneaky, in the grass, in the dirt. There’s so much Japanese honeysuckle in the yard, buried, wrapped around stuff. Feels like I’ve pulled up 50 pounds of it.

That’s what I got for ya today folks!