Last year, I heard a birdsong that astounded me with its melody. The Merlin app’s Sound ID told me it was a wood thrush, describing the call as haunting and flute-like. This spring, I was thrilled to hear the trill again: the wood thrush had made it back from his wintering grounds in Central America. I’ve never laid eyes on this bird since he stays in the most forested parts of the neighborhood, heightening the mystery of his wordless ballad.
My husband, Sergey, is from Moldova, though it has now been more than a decade since he lived there. Before he left, his few family members also emigrated—his brother to Russia and his mother to the United States. Until recently, I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet his brother. We had planned to visit Russia while I was in grad school, but then the pandemic began, and then the terrible war in Ukraine, and the prospect of setting foot in Russia dimmed. So, when Sergey heard that his brother, sister-in-law, and their children would be coming to Moldova, we took the rare opportunity to see them. Given the effort of getting to Eastern Europe, it only made sense to add stops so Sergey could visit Moldovan friends who had emigrated to Romania and Germany.
In the midst of time with Sergey’s family and friends, and on days when I wasn’t in bed contending with the foodborne bacteria and airborne virus that in quick succession welcomed me to Eastern Europe, I limned some word portraits of the three cities where we stayed: Bucharest, Chisinau, and Munich.
Continue readingAfter a June rainstorm, a magical flower blooms. It is exuberantly layered, an extravagant purple wedding cake on a vine by the side of the road. Petaled, fringed, striped, spotted—hypnotic. Bees feel as I do, transfixed, drawn to this short-lived blossom. This is maypop or purple passionflower, Passiflora incarnata, native to the Southeastern United States, though it looks like the kaleidoscopic creation of an otherworldly jungle.
For a while, the tadpoles made themselves invisible. But gradually, as winter turned to spring, they began showing themselves. Tiny legs grew, then lengthened.
By late spring, they’d metamorphosed into frogs. Now, breathing air and warming their cold-blooded bodies in the sun, the frogs perched atop stones, allowing me to count them: four tadpoles had survived to froghood.
Continue readingWater and stones alone do not make a healthy pond. It needs plants, which provide habitat for animals and filter nutrients out of the water, keeping it clearer and resistant to algal blooms. Plus, when you fill a pond with plants, you can call it a “water garden,” conjuring images of fragrant blossoms nodding at their reflections in limpid pools. Ideally, a pond will have both plants that live fully in the water—submerged plants rooted to the bottom as well as floating ones—and marginal (or “emergent”) plants that live on the banks in perpetually damp soil.
I’d announced to the backyard my intention to make a pond there, but no frogs had volunteered to serve as architects. So, it was up to Sergey and me to design and build it. A lot of online reading about wildlife ponds, frog ponds, toad ponds, amphibian ponds, etc. ensued.
After what felt like years’ worth of moonlighting as a pond researcher, I finally convinced Sergey that our creation wouldn’t become a cesspool populated by breeding mosquitos and venomous snakes. Or, more accurately, his naturally kind-hearted desire to support my hopes and dreams outweighed his many qualms. It was now time to start procurement.
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It might seem overzealous for me to worry about our own yard providing habitat given that dozens of species, or probably hundreds or thousands if we’re counting microbial life, already use it, and that at least a hundred native trees—oaks, sweetgums, tulip poplars, dogwoods, loblolly pines, etc.—call it home. But even this habitat could be better.
Continue readingWe have witnessed a slew of wildlife in the yard, a reminder that “our property” belongs to many beings besides humans.
Mammals: Gray squirrels and chipmunks make their homes in the yard. Nocturnal visitors include white-tailed deer, raccoons, and opossums—and most likely armadillos. I once saw a red fox run through the yard.
The does here give birth in September, so each fall, we have the pleasure of seeing big-eyed, gangly-legged fawns exploring the yard, which compensates for my annoyance at the deer for sampling nearly everything I plant!
In every place I live, I find my strongest sense of connection comes from observing the environment.
In Wisconsin, I had nearly all my growing-up years to do so, starting from childhood nature walks with my parents. When we moved into a house that bordered a small-but-vibrant restored prairie, I had plentiful opportunities to watch the birds and insects that benefited from the native wildflowers and grasses. I recall walking to a small pond next to that prairie to watch hundreds of dragonflies swooping predatorily over cattails.
Reading through the archives of this blog, which I started in 2013 to document my life in Haifa, Israel, I am struck by the changing of life phases. My commitments were few when I arrived in Haifa fresh out of college—no spouse, no career. The job I held there, a secretarial position that mostly entailed cataloguing things, left me creative energy to write and do the occasional art project.
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Layli Maria Miron 