the sleppys

We always camp on New Year’s Eve. Taylor asks,”Why don’t we ever camp on MY birthday? We always camp on the boys’.” What’s a father to do? His little girl wants to girl camp. We are Sleppys, and we ain’t normal. Let’s camp two weekends in a row, I suggest. We do and had one of the best trips yet. This was our ninth. What follows is a rough draft stream of consciousness:

Ranger Alice learned our names and who we are. She sang Happy Birthday to Taylor and taught me the name of the rough-leaved velvetberry.Ty and I found the Deer Stand, a myth, a ghost of Royal Palm. Thanks to Frank Swan of Chicago.

We met Thom and Laura. They recently found the Deer Stand, blue prints of the Royal Palm Lodge, made a map of the site, marked off the original site, made a trail, found a trail, gave me a map, and told me all of this. Thom has a Gladesman boat he made. Laura has an old iron and manual sewing machine used by the Indians. The girls made Indian dolls with beads.

A seat was reserved for Mel.

Taylor filmed us setting up the camp.

Taylor and Daddy went for a birthday hike through the pinelands that bordered a hammock. We nibbled on native plants along the trail. Happy Birthday Taylor!

We ate rice and beans in the glow from the flame of our homemade oil lamps and had a chocolate loafcake with a number 6 on it.

Taylor performed in front of an audience for the first time.

We learned of a great song. Thanks Ranger Barbara.

Cold morning means first ever morning fire. Build two fires in minutes.

Were out by eight.

Hiking to the entrance of the mythological Deer Stand

The Boys in Thom’s Gladesman boat… aboard are supplies to run moonshine

Laura and Dad talking Everglades’ history

Three Sisters: Traditional Miccosukee dolls, made with modern materials.

Ready for a rice and beans dinner – with the lantern between the homemade oil lamps

Our campsite just before sunset

My Lord, as long as I draw breath, my boys will be gentlemen and my daughters ladies. Your will be done.

Around the 20th of December, we were playing outside when we saw a monarch caterpillar hanging upside down in the telltale J-style form, ready to pupate. It was jiggling and squirming, bobbling in small circles, with its back end stuck to the underside of an areca palm frond with silk. We kept playing, waved to the mailman as he delivered mail to the houses on the other side of the street.

A few minutes later, Kendall and I came back to see the caterpillar. The lower half, where the head is and the “J” curves, was pupa green. It was swelling in some parts and squeezing in others, very dynamic motion. So a few minutes after that, I cam back to see the cater-pupa and found that it had completely morphed. It was green, textbook monarch chrysalis. It didn’t yet have the gold-looking line around the cap of the pupa, and it still had its former “skin” crumpled up at the top, where the silk holds the pupa, the “cremaster,” if you speak butterfly science.

When the mailman was making his rounds our side of the street, all of us were really excited about the newly morphed pupa, and the girls told the mailman all about it. All he can do is smile and nod because he didn’t understand a word that the three-year old’s were telling him. I wanted them to tell the story, so I only translated.

We could have all sat there and watched the whole thing in no more than ten minutes total, but I was under the impression that the morphing took about an hour. Now that I know it takes minutes, I’ll definitely stay to watch next time.

Just before going camping for Taylor’s birthday, the pupa started turning black, a sign that a)it’s dead, or b) it’s ready to exit. The black shows more in the end because the wings are mostly black. After a day and a half of its turning black, one can see the orange and white through the clear, thin pupal “skin.”

January 5 in the afternoon

January 6 in the morning

Clearly, we would be missing the butterfly’s emergence because we would be out camping.

He did leave us a present, as they all do when they emerge and go off to survive:

Pupal skin

I caught a picture of this one.

I can’t find his pupa if he did successfully morph. I’m sure we’ll see him again, though.

Santa Claus delivered an easel on Christmas. All five children got a kick out of it. The boys learned to play Hangman from Dad. The girls practiced drawing stick figures. Well, the twins, who are three years old, draw stick figures. Taylor teaches maths.

1 x 100
______

100

Went fishing this AM so Kyle could use the rod and reel Santa brought him. Ty and I wanted to try out the lures Santa had brought us. My Rooster Tail was working like magic until Ty hooked a large male tilapia. That damned fish broke the line and took my new lure!

Ty apologized, tears welling up in his eyes. It was a large fish putting up a big fight, so I told him that it was okay. It took a bit of time for him to process it all. I explained that it sucked that we lost a lure Santa gave us, but losing it while fighting a fish was part of the game. Better to lose it to a fish than to a snag on something, I told him.

I ride my bike to play the piano at the church service. It’s only about a mile away, so I don’t really need to drive the big van. I thought that it might need some more than my pretty self, so I looked around for streamers. I found only streamers that go on a little girl’s bike, which are too shiny and frivolously whimsical for me (although I like shiny, whimsical frivolity). After Googling three-word terms, I found this blog that gives instructions on how to crochet bike streamers. I switched the direction of the rows so that I can triple crochet to add buttons (for easy applying and removing).

I like the way they came out, the cool colors. They go with my long, flowing skirt, which goes with my long flowing hair. All I need is a basket to hold crusty baguettes to sell… and French customers to buy crusty baguettes.

I hooked this spotted bass with a Rat-L-Trap, and Ty landed it.

Ty’s birthday was on Monday, the 14th, so we went camping on Saturday, the 12th. We headed out in the morning to Everglades National Park, where else? We took hikes around the usual places and saw the usual wildlife. Many Black Vultures sat along the trails. They migrate here from the north during autumn. They are friendly, curious birds. Turkey Vultures are quite a sight to see soaring and gliding, but they are not curious but nervous and will fly away if people approach. At Royal Palm, the babies walked around, which was different because I would carry them when they were younger. Now that they are a bit older than the last time we were at Royal Palm, they were safe as long as they were holding someone’s hand.

We hiked to the Mound from Gate 15 and saw that it was covered in broom sedge. We had been seeing the sedge grow and become more established during the past seasons, but this time, it was tall. Not just the sedge but the trees were taller, too, of course. Though it is expected to see taller plants, it also is a bit disappointing to see a view blocked by them. We were standing 50 feet above the Everglades waters, but the view was covered by these plants. Eh. The wood storks and vultures were pleasant to witness as they flew low to the water, almost at our eye-level as we stood on the Mound. The boys took their usual trip around the Mound while the girls sat around and daydreamed.

We made it to Pine Glades Lake where we ate lunch and presented Ty with his birthday present: a fishing rod. The boys fished for a couple of hours, and the girls waited in the van. I was sleepy, so I napped. But that made it difficult to keep the girls entertained in the van. Eventually, they napped, too. I tried my arm at casting and fishing but caught nothing. Everyone caught nothing.

We set up camp at Long Pine Key. It was a busy weekend, the day before being Veteran’s Day. Our usual campsite was occupied as was our second-usual site. Not that we have rights to them, but it’s always reassuring to be in the same place. We found a site on the border of the forest and the Road Closed sign, and had only one neighbor. Eventually, the Road Closed signs were taken down to accommodate for the higher demand of campers.

Night fell, and the mosquitoes buzzed and bit. I put on my mosquito net because they absolutely are in love with my blood. Kendall, who has the same attractive blood, also wore hers. Still, they bit her hands and legs. Annoyed by them, she climbed into her car seat in the van and kept saying, “Skeetoos hit me. I outta here. I home.” Hot chocolate made her and everybody else feel better. The children brushed their teeth and went to bed in their tents.

Dad and I stayed up to watch the fire. There was also some commotion at the camp site about a hundred yards to the west. I’m not sure what was going on, but the Park Police showed up on foot and spoke to the campers. I was trying to pay attention to the voices, but the mosquitoes were incessant, no matter how close I sat to the fire. I crawled into my tent at about 10:30pm, which is awfully early: Dad and I usually stay up past midnight. The crowd was very different that weekend. I heard a man a few sites over shouting “HIALEAH!” which is a town northwest of Miami proper and almost directly north of the international airport, heavily populated with loud people… I think because they have to shout over the sounds of landing 747′s.

At 12:30am, I was woken up by the sounds of clanging bottles.

At 5:00am, I was woken up by a bat’s squeaks, and I stayed up, listening to nature, which included mosquito buzzing.

We had a pancake breakfast with coffee (or water, for the children) and headed back home.

The air has been so dry and clear lately that we just had to go outside for a World History lesson.

The children, the boys more so than the girls, are learning about Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Greece. Actually, the MAIN lessons this month are about Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire, but the boys needed a little bit of brushing up on their other Ancient Mediterranean/Middle Eastern histories.

We were all sitting in the shade of the Front Yard Hammock, enjoying the crisp breezes, the occasional wake of vultures hundreds of feet above us, and the flittering of zebra longwing butterflies, and listening to my narration and chatter about the ancient civilizations when a big, old, mean, nasty pickup truck with a trailer hitched to it pulled up a few houses down. Three or four men got out and downloaded their “landscaping” equipment and began making horrible, loud noises that I could hardly hear my talking about the first Olympic games. So we packed it up and continued our lesson in the homeschooling room. We still heard them and their lawnmower, leafblower, and edgetrimmer because we leave the windows open.

Dad has been working on something with the Macintosh computer. Something about hard drive, terabytes, operating system, and many other words that I’ve been told are English but I don’t remember exactly…. I do recall Panther Cheetah Bobcat or something big cats like that.

I taught Taylor a few more pieces on G Major on the piano. She’s not really playing any F-sharps yet because her pieces are only do through so (and F-sharp is ti).

There’s a Brazilian Pepper that lives on the western corner of our lot. It’s an exotic that starts out as a neat little shrub but grows insanely fast into a tree with a trunk the circumference of a beach ball and dozens and dozens of branches that divide into hundreds of drumstick-width branch-lets that have thousands of blossoms and eventually fruits, the peppercorns, that fall and germinate, starting off as neat little shrubs that grow insanely fast into trees with trunks the circumference of beach balls…. That’s why these plants are under the category known as Invasive Exotics.

The Suriname Cherry is exotic, but it’s not invasive. The Strangler Fig is invasive, but it’s not exotic. The Brazilian Pepper is a menace to wilderness society and must be terminated.

So last Saturday, we started cutting it down, determined to end the reproductive cycle of that brutal, bulky, Brazilian baobab. Dad cut the limbs with the pole saw. I dragged it to the designated work space. The three older children processed it into manageable pieces with the loppers and bypass pruners. We all stopped to take a breakfast break and drink some Gatorade. Then it was back to work.

The sun wasn’t out. The sky was overcast with stratus clouds. The air was damp but not uncomfortable. We were grateful that it wasn’t hot. We did get to see a wake of vultures, both Turkey and Black, gliding above us.

As we were killing this tree, or attempting to, the neighbor’s lawn crew came by, Haitians who spend several hours in the backyard, making all kinds of high-decibel noises with their power tools. Of course, we were also making whirring noises with our God-given talents.

It started raining a little bit, light drizzling but constant, enough to get everything wet. Dad had brought down the largest, ugliest limbs from the tree, so we called it a day. I was sent with the girls to run some errands.

In the evening, while we were at home having dinner, we heard chirping in the backyard. Both Dad and I heard it simultaneously because we perked up our heads and looked toward the backyard. As soon as he could, he grabbed a flashlight and headed toward the noise. The children followed him. The noise stopped.

We both thought it was the chicks from a nest that may have been dropped when its supporting branch was cut down by the neighbor’s lawn crew (because they cut freely). I took the children back inside the house to give Dad another chance to find the chicks.

“There are chicks in the backyard.”
“What?”
“There are three chicken chicks in the yard.”
“In OUR yard?”
“Yea! As if someone stepped close enough to drop them in our side of the fence.”
“Oh Wow.”

We placed them in a bucket and showed them to the children. They were astonished to see real live fowl chicks for the first time. Kendall was the first of the children to see them, and her eyes, looking down into the bucket, were big and brown in surprise.

We suspect the Haitians for dropping off the chicks. Excuse me for being judgmental. Their culture is weird, and maybe they saw through the hedges that they hacked to anemia that we already had rabbits. What’s a few more birds? That’s the first thought that entered my mind when Dad mentioned what the chirping was.

They were placed in the spare cage and settled next to the rabbits. Dad laid out some water in a jar lid, and I propped up some wind protection and a roof over the cage.

On Sunday, they were let outside to run free a little bit, to practice catching bugs and grubs from under rocks, which weren’t many because of the constant drizzling. They scratched and pecked at the compost pile and were finally put back in the cage.

Today, Ty was out there, wearing his rain poncho, in front of the cage, playing with and handling the yardbirds. I just hope they are not roosters, but even if they are, we will all learn a thing or two about chicken culling.