Best running season

Bryan Park 09.27.14

For recreational runners, now is the best time of the year to get outside to run.  The crunchy sound of the dry, freshly fallen leaves beneath your shoes and the slight nip in the air seem to lend you impetus to pick up the pace a little.

Spring Delayed

March 26, 2014

We have been shrouded by a lingering chill that just won't lift since the arrival of spring was officially declared by the calendar on March 20th.  Now that spring break is over, I am beginning to feel as if we were cheated of some promised relief from the cold, as the temperature is still hovering in the 30s to low 40s.  I looked up some of my old posts to get a sense of what it was like at this time of the year in Bloomington in the past few years and they seem to confirm that spring, or the manifestation of it, has been notably delayed for this year.  There is not a stitch of color in sight to relieve the monotonous gray.  My gig with CMA ended a couple of weeks ago and I am now back on my own resources and to my old routines.  There is some prospect for more work in the summer when some of the new projects of the firm kick into gear.  

Summertime

And the livin' is easy

Unlike the previous two summers, this one has been especially mild, some hot days in the high 80s/low 90s, interposed with days, in the low 70s, of sustained rain and thunder storms.  All kinds of vegetation in our yard, never before seen, are growing rambunctiously, after having stayed dormant in the ground for the previous two years due to the severe drought we had.

The pleasant weather prompted Kirk to hang up his old hammock in the sunroom, the one he used to sleep in for an entire year when he lived at the dorm at UCSB many, many moons ago.  He bought it in Merida in the Yucatan on a trip, hitch-hiking part of the way, through Mexico, one summer when he was an undergraduate.  (This kind of road trip somehow does not seem very feasible in the present time, at least in the eyes of the older and wiser folks like us.)  

He thought to get another one like it for me so that we could sleep in plein air, as it were. After some searching on the net, he managed to find an outfit in Yucatan that sells almost exactly the same Mayan style of hammocks at an incredibly good price!  He ordered it and got it in no time.  We hung it up side by side with the old one, whose colors are slightly paler than its freshly-minted neighbor.  We've so far spent two and a half nights out there, the half being the one that I called off, rather unnecessarily according to Kirk, due to the severity of the thunder storm we had that night.  

Sleeping outdoors is a little like camping, except that the bathroom facility is close at hand.  One's sense of hearing is especially acute in the dark--kids giggling from somewhere in the neighborhood, probably also camping out, the screeching of cats fighting, the sound of driving rain and outrageous thunder, and the notes of the first bird awakening and the answering trill from another in the early dawn, barely broken. 


07.08.13 Update:

Hostas in bloom

The hostas in the bed by our front walk, which we thought to have been completely decimated by the deer in the neighborhood when we moved here three summers ago, have miraculously revived and re-populated the entire bed, despite my having planted hyacinths there in the fall after we moved in.  And in recent weeks, saturated with rain, they have even pushed out their slender, delicate, lavender-colored flowers to our great surprise and delight.  We have been jealously guarding them from any deer approaching our yard -- that is, as best as we can, for the truth is that there is no stopping the deer munching, en famille, from yard to yard in Bloomington. 

Winterreise

Winter Panorama

As the snow and cold persisted, we felt sort of obliged to go out and capture some more of the fleeting wonderment of nature to save it, as it were, for enjoyment at a later day.  We first took a walk to Bryan Park, a designation where we normally go to get in a 3-mile run.  The park was quite deserted and the trails not yet all ploughed, as you can see from the picture above.  The frozen swimming pool and colorful water slides looked a bit surreal behind the wired fence.  Now that we've done a snowman, we thought we should also attempt a snow angel.  We picked out a pristine, snow-covered slope in the park and Kirk accordingly plopped down and waved his arms in the snow a couple of times.  I won't tell you what he proceeded to do next; you shall find out in the slide show later.  A big, friendly dog came trotting up to us shortly afterwards and unceremoniously wiped out the angelic impression in the snow, while his owner apologetically remarked on the ephemeral nature of things...

Next we drove up to the campus and walked around there.  The winding paths and footbridges over the little stream, not yet frozen, near Bryan House gave the IU campus a rustic charm in the wintry landscape.  Afterwards, we thought we should go a bit farther and see what the countryside looked like at this time.  The scenery on both sides of the hilly road to Nashville was indeed picturesque.  We drove past a couple of the quintessential Indiana red barns brilliantly silhouetted in the snow but couldn't stop to take pictures.  I suggested that we turn up one of the side roads to the T.C. Steele State Historic Park.  The last time we visited the House of the Singing Winds was in the spring last year.  The Steele's home site stood solitarily on a wind-chilled and snow-bound hilltop, a stark contrast to the verdant splendor when we saw it last.  We were surprised to see that the park was still minded by a woman all alone in one of the small buildings on the site. On the way back, Kirk admitted to being a little jaded after seeing so much snow.  

Here is a slide show of the pictures we took of our outing yesterday, accompanied by one of the songs of Schubert's Winterreise.  

  

Greetings from Snowmiz

Snowmiz

Inspired by Judy's comments, our jolly snowman in the process of filling out has morphed into a snowmiz and now she is all decked out for a stroll in the park.  She bids you all a Good Day!









12.28.2012 Update:
After a night out in the cold, my snow lady did not fare any worse for wear; I hope she'll last a few more days longer.

    

12.29.2012 Update:
My poor snow lady was almost unrecognizable after another night out.

1.11.2013 Update:
Alas, such is the remains of my snowmiz!

Let it snow!

Merry Day-After-Christmas from Bloomington!

Kirk and I went out for a walk soon after breakfast to take in the snow condition around our neighborhood from the blizzard of Christmas 2012.  We spotted a couple of deer crossing the street into somebody's yard; we hoped they managed to find some shelter somewhere. The snow is forecasted to continue falling until 8 p.m. tonight, which makes for ideal conditions for building a snowman, my first, tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

Fall Colors

Within the past couple of days something in the air seems to have accelerated the arrival of the fall season and triggered the abrupt change of colors of the leaves on all the deciduous trees around us.  Bright yellow, orange, and russet infuse the atmosphere with an eerie golden tint, like the sky at dusk or upon a pending storm.  A sustained wind of about 15+ mph has been blowing over our area since yesterday evening causing the leaves to rain down on the ground like confetti.  I went outside on three separate times this morning to take some pictures of the amazing fall colors.  Here is a slide show I made of the pictures -

Woodstock Place

Crimson Azaleas

Crimson Azaleas

Welcome you to the house

& adorn the table

While white and pale pink flowering dogwoods have graced most of the yards in our neighborhood, ours is distinguished from the rest by some striking crimson azalea shrubs planted strategically in the front yard--leading one from the entry paths to the front door steps.  We were surprised last spring to see the many different plants which bloomed in our yard after the harsh winter but we don't recall having seen these showy crimson azaleas.  At first we weren't sure what these flowers were; they don't look much like the large azaleas in various colors which we were accustomed to see in Florida and only after looking at them at close range did we see the resemblance.  There are still quite a few shrubs and trees that have not filled out yet and we expect to see many more late bloomers in the coming days and weeks.  What a                                                delightful season this spring promises to be!

Chicago Bound

Valentine's Day 2012

Winking Windows

The first real snow this winter arrived in time for Valentine's Day; we awoke to a landscape covered in a thin layer of soft white snow which had fallen overnight.  The pictures above give a "false" impression of its being very cold.  We've become so adapted to cold weather that the low 30's (Fahrenheit) no longer seems to faze us.  Alas, by mid afternoon most of the snow had disappeared and I missed my opportunity to build a snow man, again!


We are driving up to Chicago this evening for Kirk's Central Division APA Conference.  This will be my first trip to the Windy City and I'm feeling some trepidation about it, which is very unlike my usual "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" attitude prior to any travel adventures.  There is so much to see, building-wise, in Chicago that I'm afraid I'll only be able to cover a tiny portion this time.  Here is my itinerary.   

General Confusion

Daffodils resurfaced

The plants are as confused as we are (and the deer too, I'm sure) about the season we are in by the relatively warm and unpredictable weather which we've had this winter.  Looking back on my posts from last year, I see "the Iceman Cometh" on the 1st of February, in contrast, it is a balmy 52 degrees this 1st day of February, 2012!  I noticed a week ago that our hyacinth bulbs have already poked through the ground; today I was shocked to see that the daffodils have already bloomed! Kirk is not as sanguine about the weather staying this warm and hopes that we won't have another freeze in the coming days to wipe out those tentative buds.

The Annual Elephant Parade

Either because I've become acclimatized or the warm weather is lingering longer this year, I've as yet not had any occasion to wear a long coat.  In fact, it's quite common to see people in short-sleeves in the middle of the day.  But despite the temperate weather, the general scenery around us is undoubtedly a wintry one.  Most of the deciduous trees are already denuded of leaves, their grey and bare branches dangling and swaying in the wind like leftover Halloween skeletons.


We were informed by the City a couple of weeks ago that there would only be one curbside leaf pick-up for each residence this year, sometime between November 14 and December 30.  Before long mounds of leaves began to pile up by the sides of the street in our neighborhood, to the extent that it became difficult to maneuver in and out of it in a car. Last weekend I reminded our yard service to schedule us for our annual leaf, roof, and gutter cleaning before the November 14 deadline.  A team of men came yesterday equipped with blowers, rakes, tarps, and ladders and gave our yard a complete makeover; in a few hours all the leaves that had accumulated on the lawn, driveway, deck, planter boxes, roofs, etc. were miraculously lifted and deposited by the curb in front of the house.    And to our pleasant surprise, on our way to the gym this morning we saw the leaf-vacuuming trucks already hard at work at the front of our neighborhood, several days ahead of schedule.  I couldn't help wondering if somebody in our neighborhood has some special connection to the City Hall, for we seem always to get the most coveted city services before others.  (For example, our street, for no apparent reason, got resurfaced this spring.)  


Here is a video of the ponderous elephants on parade (or the leaf-vacuuming trucks in action) at the front of the house this morning.  

Glorious Time of the Year

10.22.2011

08.17.2011

We went back to McCormick's Creek State Park last Saturday while there was still time to capture the leaves' slow transition from intense green to various shades of light green and yellow.  The trees in the park were already much denuded at this time, which, to our surprise, unveiled a vista that was hidden from view before.  

White River

While rambling along one of the trails we came upon the bank of a sizable body of water, which turns out to be the western branch of the White River which runs through central and southern Indiana. Though land bound, Indiana is not entirely cut off from water after all.  In addition to hiking and camping, they also offer guided horseback riding in the park.  I can't wait to give it a try next spring.

Hikers

We invited a visiting speaker, Margaret Gilbert, from UC Irvine to join us for the outing.  A couple of hours of vigorous walking passed pleasantly amidst a gentle flow of conversation and reminiscences.  The evening before I attended her talk, "Dark Duties: on the practical import of commands to do evil".  It was a lot of fun seeing philosophers in action during the discussion period after the talk.   

Fall is here

unmistakable sign of fall

The cold spell in recent days seems to have heralded the arrival of fall, and the scattered leaves on the lawn confirm my uneasy suspicion that fall is indeed here.  If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not believe it possible that all the green leaves that I am seeing outside my window will soon transform to shades of red and yellow and then be tossed clean off their branches like last year's clothes.  





10.6.2011 update:
Faded, dry, brittle leaves, falling like snow flakes, have steadily accumulated on all horizontal surfaces outdoors; roads, driveways, lawns, and roofs look like confetti-strewn floors at the close of political conventions.

Just around the corner

Perhaps the most misleading phrase one hears close to the end of a race is "Just around the corner!" from the well-wishers on either side of the course.  Depending on how depleted one is at the time, it can either be exhilarating or dispiriting - either "Thank goodness, it's almost over!" or "OMG, I'll never get there!"  We are now four weeks into our 10-week half marathon training for the Indianapolis Marathon on October 15.  It seems that one can't claim to know a place unless one ploughs through it on foot.  I wouldn't have traversed all five boroughs in New York City if I hadn't run the NYC marathon there.  I'm afraid the marathon days are over for us now, but being able to tough through some more "halfs" is still something for us to aspire to.  

Dappled Light

the Fall

Whether you are ready for it or not, "things" in general seem about to turn a corner--a new semester officially starts tomorrow at IU, the annual football fever is about to heat up, and though the temperature is still hovering around low 80's, one is beginning to sense a reprieve from the oppressive heat and detect a hint of a change of color at the top of the trees.  Kirk was seized with an inspiration yesterday to explore some nature areas around Bloomington.  We hit the road and drove to McCormick's Creek State Park, about a 30-minute ride northwest of town.  We drove past corn fields, barns, silos, and the quintessential deserted old main streets of small towns USA, in this instance, in Ellettsville and Spencer.  Driving or walking on a part of the earth surface which we've not been before never fails to amaze me; to think that so many lives have, unbeknownst to us, existed and toiled in these parts for so long is something to wonder at.  McCormick's Creek State Park, we learned, was dedicated in 1916 as Indiana's First State Park.  We had a very pleasant walk on one of the trails under the dappled sunlight on the forest floor and we made a date to come back in late October to witness the leaves change colors.  


I imagine that by this time my friends in Gainesville are chomping at the bit for the football season to start, no?

Rhododendron in bloom

As if by appointment, all the rhododendron bushes in our front yard bloomed simultaneously, lending to the mostly green landscape a lively splash of color. I'm embarrassed to admit that for the life of me I could not remember what it was called and had to stop my neighbor, Kay, on her driveway to find out.  Not knowing the names of trees and plants puts one in a very disadvantageous position; it's a little bit like traveling in a foreign country and not knowing the language, either written or spoken, or worse, like an illiterate person missing out on all the printed treasures of knowledge.  I can't wait for an app to come out which, by my snapping a picture of a plant, will instantly identify it for me, like one of those nifty music-recognizing apps, such as Shazam.  

Blood Iris

Under one of the rhododendron bushes I discovered some purple (though they look blue in the pictures) iris flowers with "exotic" looking veins, called Blood iris or Iris sanguinea.  It's mind-boggling to learn that there are so many different species of iris.

An update about our wisteria vine: It was pronounced dead by our "resident", International Society of Arborculture-certified arborist, Mr. Gregory Peters of the Souring Eagles Horticultural Service.  He speculated that its having been confined all these years in a tiny corner of the mostly paved pergola and the severe drought last year probably contributed to its demise. The bottom of the trunk had been withering and dying; large chunks of the trunk had fallen off and not enough of nutrient was able to reach to the branches above the pergola.  Not to belie the name of our house, we are considering planting another wisteria vine on the other side of the existing wisteria behind the trellis where there is more ground to grow.  But I don't know if we will still be living in the same house when the new vine grows big enough to bloom.  

Spring Awakening Take 2

I took a picture every day for the past five weeks from my office window of the scene across the street from our house to document the awakening of spring.  Here is a movie I made with 10 of those still images in chronological order from 4/5/2011 to 5/11/2011. How quickly one forgets what one's environment looked like just three months ago - it's like contrasting a black & white world to one that is multi-colored. 

The black & white world
on 1/11/2011

Happy Birthday, Kirk!

Spring Showers

Continuous spring showers in the last couple of days have infused the landscape with a fresh coat of minty green juiciness. The atmosphere is heavy with moisture, not the kind of sticky humidity that sends you fleeing into air-conditioned space, but the kind that makes you feel as though you were floating in a clear, dewy, breathable bubble. Here is a video documenting the sight and sound of this Easter Sunday.  Do you hear the birds chirping in the background?

Here is a picture of some deer who were lounging nonchalantly in our backyard; they were not a bit intimidated by me as I approached them with my phone camera pointing at them.

Spring Fever

Kirk and I have both caught the spring fever brought on by the delicious warmth of the sun and intermittent days of thundering showers.  We have been marveling at and documenting the daily transformation of our surroundings which spring has wrought.  Trees and shrubs are coming alive with new green buds and some are bursting with flowers, pink, yellow, and white.  Like everyone else, we have been patronizing the local hardware store almost every weekend; gardening projects seem to be on everyone's mind. 

Fern Fronds

Fern unfurled

For our first spring season in Bloomington, I plan to turn the raised-bed area in our backyard into an herb and butterfly garden.  I have been pouring over gardening catalogs and websites and have since placed my order for new planting.  Last Sunday, Kirk helped me turn up the soil in those boxes and mix in some new topsoil. They will be ready to receive new plants as soon as they arrive.  While turning over the soil in the boxes, I unwittingly and ruthlessly uprooted some yet-to-be unfurled fern fronds which had been growing in the lower boxes, planted there by previous owner of the house, Ed Cohen.  I had no idea what they were; they looked kind of ugly and I thought they were weeds coming back to infest my garden boxes.  Not until I chanced upon a picture of fiddleheads in the Slow Love Life blog by Dominique Browning did I realize what I had done.  Luckily some of them survived.

Mulan Magnolia

Also in our backyard are some flowering trees, one with large pinkish flowers, the other with white blossoms.  I think the former is Magnolia liliifora, also called Mulan Magnolia or Tulip Magnolia.  The latter, I believe, is Japanese Cherry tree, Prunus serrulata.  The white blossoms look similar to the plum flowers I remember from Taiwan but I guess plums and cherries are not exactly the same.

Cherry Blossoms

By the way, I was told by Ed that the Wisteria vine at our Pergola in the backyard, for which our house is named, is not guaranteed to bloom every year.  It will be such a shame if it doesn't this year!  Alas, it is not showing any sign of blooming so far.

Hyacinth toppled over
of its own weight

The bulbs I planted in the fall are coming up nicely.  Here is a picture of my hyacinths weighed down by their own blossoms.  
They looked like drunken sailors in a row; I had to prop them up with sticks.

Crocuses in riot

About a month ago we first heard of crocus, the name of a flowing perennial plant which was said to be one of the early bloomers in spring.  Without any inkling of their (pre)existence in our yard, we discovered to our delight that the crocus flowers have in fact started blooming all along the garden borders in our front yard.  And every day we seem to be making fresh discoveries all over our yard of flowers which we didn't know we have.  Beside the crocuses, the white and yellow daffodils and the irises that I planted last fall have also begun to make their presence known.  I'm especially anxious to see whether the perennial bed that I put in last September by the Sun Room survives the winter.  At present the white markers which strew about the bed look like grave stones marking ancient burial sites.


For the skeptics, here is a close-up of my crocus -

3.30.11 Crocus update:  People who claimed to know about crocuses have caused me to doubt that what I saw rioting in our yard were actually crocuses, even though it was my piano teacher who first told me that they were when she came over to tea.  But we actually have something in our back yard which fits the expert description of crocuses, esp. the long thin blade-like leaves; unfortunately, it was the only one I found.  For comparison, the image on the left of a single purple flower was from our yard, which looks convincingly like the crocuses image I found on the web on the right. 

Spring Awakening

They may not look like much, these tender shoots of the daffodil bulbs I planted last fall, but they represent for me the tell-tale signs of the gentle re-awakening of life with spring, after a three-month hiatus.  Before we know it, we will have been in Bloomington a whole year and have witnessed how nature, in a more intense fashion, endures and manifests itself a complete cycle of life, death, and rebirth. 


The temperature has crept up to low 60's in the past couple of days but Kirk does not believe that we have seen the last of snow.  After hearing about the several slip-and-fall accidents among the people from the Philosophy department alone after the last major snow storm earlier this month, I finally got wind of this "Ice Melt" thing, which is rock salt that one can sprinkle on walking surfaces to dissolve ice.  I remember driving around town in a blizzard with Kirk trying to find a store that still had ice melt in stock.  When Kirk phoned Lowe's to find out whether they had any, he got a chuckle in response.  As we were having company that evening and our front walk was especially slippery, Kirk first tried to melt the ice with Morton Iodized Salts but soon found out that that wasn't very effective.  He proceeded to melt the ice with buckets of hot water which proved more efficacious but incredibly wasteful.  After who knows how many trips to the tub to fill up the bucket with hot water, we managed to secure our guests safe arrival and departure.  I went back to the local hardware store when they were expecting to get their next shipment of salts and bought a 20-lb bag, a modest amount which probably wouldn't last very long should we encounter another snow storm, but then again it might be sitting on the garage floor until next winter.  An update about the damage we sustained during the last storm - the branch was cut up and removed, and the lamp post straightened on the following day. I'm sorry to say that Kirk did not get the chance to buy a chain saw; I called in Eddie of the Helping Hands who speedily cleaned up the mess.