Blog – Page 20

October 2, 2013April 25, 2015

Wednesday Wild: Sphinx Moth Caterpillar

My daughter found this monster caterpillar in our yard, halfway between the grape vines and an apple tree. It was moving faster than you’d think a caterpillar could move in grass, but I managed to catch up for a photo. The markings (“cinnamon with pale white to yellow spots enveloping abdominal spiracles” and “generous peppering of minute black dots”) and the proximity of grape vines make us fairly confident it’s a Pandorus sphinx moth caterpillar. And since this particular cat had a button on its rear (instead of a “tin and coiled horn”) we’re pretty sure its in its final caterpillar stage. This explains its quick jaunt through the lawn: it was most likely searching for a safe place to pupate.

The Princeton Field Guide CATERPILLARS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA, from which quotes above were taken, suggested we throw a sheet on the ground beneath the grape vines, because then “the presence of hornworms will be revealed by an accumulation of elongate, deeply furrowed, fecal pellets.”

Honestly, who needs a TV?

Happy Wednesday!

September 24, 2013April 25, 2015

Studying Structure

It is not a stretch to say that I’ve spent most of my waking moments since 1975, the year I learned to read, lost inside written stories of one kind or another. If I know anything about storytelling, it was soaked up from these stories, good ones and bad ones, over the past four decades. This knowing has worked its way into my brain, and I draw on it when I write stories of my own. I’m sure of this. But talking about this mysterious knowledge? Articulating why I make certain choices in certain books. (Why a second person narrative in Citizen Scientists? Why that book-ended structure of The Hive Detectives?) Well, I find it hard.

As a writer who spent her career training days studying yeast cells in a laboratory instead of reading the classics and writing stories, I’m always a bit sheepish about talking shop. What do I know about writing? Only this: there is a beautiful logic to storytelling, and it is possible to feel this logic on an instinctual and mostly subconscious level. Which is a really fine way of saying: uh, not much.

But—and here’s the point of this post–I’ve decided to start talking about them anyway. I’d like to understand my own choices better, actually, and doing so is going to involve studying the logic that guided the choices. Deeply.

(Hey … maybe I’m maturing as a writer? One can hope.)

Anyway, since my years of writing children’s nonfiction has helped me realize that the key moment in my writing process is the discovery of the structure a story should take, I’m going to start my study there. In this all-important moment—I swear there is an audible click!—all the ideas and facts and interview notes and people and places I’ve been researching settle themselves into a clear pattern. A structure. And this structure dictates how I’ll write the story. I’m going to spend some time in the coming months thinking harder about this moment, about structure I’ve used in my books, and about the structures that work so well in the books of children’s nonfiction I admire.

You, dear reader, can join me if you’d like. Stay tuned …

September 20, 2013April 25, 2015

My Bees Around Town

[ted id=1822]

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: keeping honeybees is much harder than writing about them. In the year since I became a beekeeper, I’ve struggled to keep my very small apiary buzzing. I currently have two hives, but one of them is in trouble. It won’t live through the winter. (Lost its queen, began to dwindle, and is now infested with wax moths. Ugh.)

I’ve decided, though, to keep at it. I love what the hives are teaching me (patience, for one, but also the most amazing things about insect communities and the way they respond to the natural world around them). Also? I found a great message on my answering machine this week. It was from a neighbor, and it went something like this:

Hi, Loree! It’s Craig. I’m calling to tell you a funny story. I was at Ed’s house [note: Ed is another neighbor] over the weekend, and we were relaxing in his yard, and he said, ‘Craig, look at that apple tree. Would you believe that thing has not produced an apple in all the years I’ve lived here? Not one in a decade. And then, this year, BOOM! … apples. Isn’t it the strangest thing? I can’t explain it.’ To which I said, ‘I can: The Burnses keep honey bees now.’

I am proud of my bees. Theirs is not an easy lot, what with having hatched at the exact wrong time to be a honey bee on planet Earth, and, at the same time, being saddled with a fairly inept newbee keeper. Somehow, though, they’ve spent their tumultuous year at my place doing their thing: pollinating plants. I love them for that. I really do.

If you have the interest, I highly recommend you find a mentor beekeeper. Check out their hives. Learn the ropes. When you’re ready, start an apiary of your own. If those ideas feel overwhelming right now, listen to the TED Talk above by Marla Spivak, a honey bee researcher from Minnesota. She gives a great overview of the honey bee crisis, but ends her talk with some hopeful ideas and some really easy things that you can do to help the bees. And, in turn, beef up your neighborhood apple trees.

September 10, 2013April 25, 2015

Cover Reveal: Handle With Care

That right there is the cover of my newest book. It won’t be out until March 1, 2014, but the nice folks at Millbrook Press said I could share the cover early, and I couldn’t resist. If you’d like to read a bit more about the book, check out this blog post. (You’ll notice I did NOT win the title battle. C’est la vie.)

The photos in this book are by the one-and-only Ellen Harasimowicz, and they are divine!

September 4, 2013April 25, 2015

On Tracking Trash and Making Art

“Science tells us how the world really is. And how things really work. The one thing you don’t have time and space for in science, though, is to express how that feels to you.” ~ Carl Safina

And so Carl and a team of scientists, artists, and conservationists took a trip through parts of Alaska, to see for themselves what humankind’s plastic trash problem looks like. To consider how it makes them feel. They created this video, which will surely leave you thinking harder about plastic fly swatters in the shape of football helmets and bears that raise families on remote beaches and the surprising ways that art and science can work together. Totally worth twenty minutes of your day…

I appreciate and admire the conservation message in this film. (As the author of Tracking Trash, how could I not?) But I was equally enthralled by the way it celebrates that place where science and art meet and reach out to the world. I sincerely hope the creativity born of the journey will make its way to where I live sometime soon. For now, I’ll ponder its messages from afar.

Edited to add: I’m not sure why the YouTube link won’t embed properly, but here’s a link to the YouTube site where you can watch the video.

August 1, 2013April 25, 2015

Wednesday Wild: Great Black Wasp

Sometime during the 200-year history of this property, someone planted an herb garden. It’s a small, formal-looking space, with a geometric path centered around a stone bird bath. I love it, but have a tendency to let it go a bit wild. Instead of keeping the plants trimmed and bushy, I let them flower with abandon, go leggy, and take-over the little stone path. Why? Because the insects around here love those features. Honestly, at this time of summer, its more Insectarium than Herb Garden. And when I need a few minutes to center myself, I take my camera out there and watch the frenzy. That’s how I came to know the great black wasp. Brilliant blue iridescent wings (more butterfly, in color, than wasp) and the thin, wasp-y waist that gives me the chills. As if its looks weren’t interesting enough, great black wasps are apparently known for using tools and kleptoparasitism. What’s not to love?

I hope your Wednesday was sorta wild, too!

July 24, 2013April 25, 2015

Wednesday Wild: Mourning Dove

You may think the mourning dove is a sweet bird, gently-colored and cooing owl-like tragedies day and night. But this summer, I’ve learned the truth: mourning doves are berry marauders of incredible wiliness. This fellow managed to get into our blueberry patch even after we’d constructed a net monstrosity to keep him (and his very large extended family) out. We eventually had to stake the net all the way to the ground, securing it with ground staples every six inches or so. We can barely get in ourselves, for crying out loud! And yet this guy finds a way in most mornings. He calmly devours every nearly-ripe berry he can get his beak on, and then waits not-so-patiently for me to let him out. On Sunday, I made him wait until I got a good picture. Maybe that’ll teach him?

I hope there was a little wild in your Wednesday …

July 22, 2013April 25, 2015

Summer Projects

That there is a photo I recently took in my garden. The baskets are filled with turnips, under them sit the weeds I haven’t managed to clear yet and behind them the paste tomatoes desperately in need of staking. This garden is the number one reason I have not blogged much since May.

The number two reason? I’ve been working on finishing up this book.

The number three reason? I’ve been working on a new Scientists in the Field book.

I’d tell you more, but I’m working on a website update (it’ll coincide with the publication of these two books next year) and getting ready for our family vacation, too!

But sometime soon, when all these summer 2013 activities have been enjoyed to their fullest, I plan to share the details here. Until then, I hope you are having yourself a fabulously wild summer!

June 5, 2013April 25, 2015

Wednesday Wild: Hatching Season

It’s raining eggshells in central Massachusetts. These lovelies were collected over the past two days in various parts of our yard. There’s so much to see when you slow down and look …

May 30, 2013April 25, 2015

Wednesday Wild: Duskywing

This butterfly spent an hour fluttering around my garden last week. It’s certainly a duskywing, but to tell exactly which kind (Juvenal’s? Horace’s?) I’d need to get a closer look at parts of the wing I didn’t study when I had the chance. Drats.