Sandra Gail Lambert

My Biannual Rant About Native Plants - Just in time for the Native Plant Sale.

Stop it, just stop it, with the drug and water-addicted yards. Don't make me go on about water supplies, pesticide run-off, and the rest of it.  Plant native plants.  Or just don't mow for a bit and see what comes up. 
All the plant photos on this post - butterfly weed, giant ironweed, green dragon - they're native plants that grow in my yard pretty much all on their own.  Many of them are host or nectar plants for butterflies.  And most of them can be found at Saturday's (March 31st) Spring Native Plant Sale at Morningside Park here in Gainesville.  

If you're a member of our Paynes Prairie Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society or Friends of Nature Parks, you can come to the private Friday night sale.  If you aren't, come anyway and join on the spot.      

Everglades Artist in Residence Program

During my most recent Everglades stay, since I'm an American, I found a little time to shop.  In-between the t-shirts and field guides, below the postcards, I discovered a book of poetry by Roger Mitchell.  In 2002 he had been one of the artists invited to spend a month in the Park.  A requirement of the residency is that you leave something behind.  His gift was this collection of poems accompanied by the sketches of Frank Duval, another artist in residence.  Here's the beginning of his poem about kayaking on Florida Bay.

"At low tide.  There might be an inch between me/and the peninsula's marly run-off./I couldn't be any closer to the earth/if I tried, here where it is land one hour/and sea the next.  Birds blow by in clouds, . . " 

Then on our way out of the park we stopped at the Anhinga Trail where Eileen Powell, the current Artist in Residence, was encouraging visitors to collaborate in the construction of a ceramic tile wall.  Way cool.    

Here, here's a fine example of our government money at work.  And it's another reason for me to keep writing. Forget the fame, the fortune, the  groupies - someday, perhaps, I'll have built a resume good enough to get chosen as an Everglades Artist in Residence.        

 

Cinema Verde Environmental Film and Arts Festival

The Third Annual Cinema Verde is happening.  Check out this chock-full schedule of events.  Once again, it's a good thing to live in Gainesville.

The History of My Van

In 1997, I bought a 1992, already w/c lift-equipped, van.  The man who owned it had died.  His mother sobbed when she handed the keys over.  His sister whispered that the first day he drove it, he came by her house and said "Get in, drunken road trip to the Keys."  And she did.  And off they went. 

And off I've gone.  Many years it's to the Everglades.   Natural disasters have interfered - Hurricane Wilma, my mother's illness, times when my equipment (manual wheelchair to scooter to power chair) hadn't yet caught up to what I needed.  But this year I took along a friend and I managed.  

We kayaked among orchids and crocodiles.  We took long walks past bushes covered in a snow of butterflies.  We (not really me, actually) pulled my chair through the sea wrack thrown up from the Florida Bay.  Rafts of shorebirds flew past us at eye level.  And I wrote.  I wrote with a thrilled satisfaction I've not had in a while. 

The van has 145,000 miles on it now which by my calculations is just a little older than me in my human mileage.  More road trips are in our future.  I can still smell rotting seaweed in the wheelchair's axles.  So, despite my lack of drinking, the best I can, I figure I've been doing right by the spirit of the van.      

   

Wake Up Without Losing the Dream

In this video, Henry Miller annoyingly talks over, corrects, and patronizes Anais Nin and she, annoyingly, lets him. Still, brilliant misogynist writers can inspire me. Miller instructs us on how to "wake up without losing the dream" in the most practical of terms (don't open your eyes all the way, stumble to your typewriter, etc.) but, for me, the phrase had different resonance.

I think that's because I'm heading off to the Everglades this week. Kayaking past mangroves trees that bear live young or over mats of periphyton where bacteria can photosynthisize or reaching up towards epiphytic cactus that wrap themselves around the branches of watery poison wood trees - it is a dream, a delicate one. Those same mangrove trees are diminished by rising waters and the sensitive periphyton is our first and best indicator of nutrient damage. "To wake up without losing the dream" seems to me a way we can travel through the natural world balancing joy and despair.

 

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve - as good as any of those writers retreats

I went camping and came home with a decent draft of a new short story and the mushy beginnings of an essay.  Not bad.  The morning seranades by meadowlarks and the wild turkeys that wandered through my campsite helped.  And let's not forget the loggerhead shrikes, the crested caracaras, the woodstorks, the bob whites, the insatiable butterflies, the snipes (yes, they are real), and the mama alligators that kept living their lives all around me.

And many thanks to the staff (paid and volunteer) of Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park who are devoted to the restoration of this ancient landscape. 

Oh, and check out my new wheelchair . 

Writing in the "Real Florida"

A good part of my writing has been done at one or the other of the state parks of Florida, but it's been awhile. So I'm thrilled that this year I've tuned up, cleaned out, and packed my 1992 Ford Econoline Club Wagon that has the back seats ripped out to fit in a platform bed with six inches of foam mattress topped by an egg-crate and that topped with a quilt and five pillows - my writing bower.

The old gal of a van and I are off to Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. Here's a landscape that epitomizes the "Visit the Real Florida" motto of our State Park System.

My Biannual Rant About Native Plants

 
See these bluecurls.  I bought one plant for $2 at a Native Plant Sale years ago.  Each winter, I shake the seeds into my skirt and wander around flipping them over the ground.  And right now, there are hundreds of bluecurls blooming in my yard.  

So, and some of you can probably mouth this rant along with me, stop it, just stop it, with the drug and water-addicted yards. Gainesvillians - use the Native Plant Sale on Saturday, October 8th at Morningside Nature Center (8:30am-12:30pm) as an opportunity to buy and learn.

P.S - If you join (and you can do this on site) the Native Plant Society or Friends of Nature Parks you can show up on Friday night.  Some vendors sell out before Saturday.     

Use Native Plants!

 
Yes, it's my biannual exhortation to stop it, just stop it, with the drug and water-addicted yards.  Gainesvillians - use the Native Plant Sale on Saturday, April 9th at Morningside Nature Center (8:30am-12:30pm) as an opportunity to buy and learn.

 

The really cool kids (card-carrying members of the Native Plant Society or Friends of Nature Parks) can go to the Friday night pre-public sale.  See you there. 

 
All these photos are of native plants in my yard.  They just grow.  Every year. Pretty much on their own.   

 

Finding the new novel

 
So, it's raining on the Prairie.  My binoculars are pointed down into the alligator nesting place, and I twirl the focus knob to search for last year's babies - a frog-sized head, the curve of tail, the movement of yellow stripes.  I listen for the gulping grunts they make, but all I hear is the vinyl hood of the poncho rubbing against my head.  My friend taps my shoulder and points the twenty feet across the trail to where brush moves in huge waves.  I don't see anything.  My eyes are still looking for small, hidden things.  A rank smell floats through the rain.  The brush heaves again, and this time, within it, I see the two thousand pound bison.    

Each day I scribble scenes on page after page of a yellow pad - the moment after a car wreck, awkward sex with an ex, the explosion of a family secret, two lines of dialogue.  Who knows if any of these have anything to do with what will become the novel, but the writing of them is my way of searching.  That bison and I might have passed each other without me noticing.  Each day I flip to a blank page and, once again, look for my novel.        

"We write about what we don't know about what we know." - Grace Paley

Retreat Report - I didn't write as much as I had imagined, but wrote more than I have in a long time.  The memoir did not pull itself into a seamless whole.  It did deepen and have moments of organization.  The next nature essay is not submission ready, but it does have form and direction.  So, except for my put-upon-myself expectations, the week was a success.

Lovely Downtown Deland was a good retreat site.  My suite at The Artisens Inn was beautiful, De la Vega Restaurante y Galeria, where I ate three times, has scrumptious food, and I desserted at three different homemade treat places and visited a bookstore and two museums - all without ever getting in my car.  A friend met me for the trip home and we strolled around the Lake Woodruff NWR (photos included here) and then ate make-your-own (apple slices with cinnamon and blueberry for me) pancakes at the Old Spanish Sugar Mill in DeLeon Springs. 

 

 

Wasn't She Amazing

A beloved member of my community died today.  Kathy Cantwell engaged in her death as fully as she did life.  Here is a link to a blog that honors her - a place where her companions wrote beautifully of the transcendence and practicalities of these past weeks.  

And here is a celebratory flash mob another woman in another country organized in memory of another friend gone too soon. 

Post Cabin by the Lake Writing Retreat

It lasted a lovely almost 48 hours before I rushed back to a fragile mother.  And I wrote.  A lot.  And ate scrumptious Greek chicken and turkey chili sent along with me by friends.  And wrote more.  And slept for hours and hours in a row for two nights in a row.  Time expanded.  Gold Head Branch State Park, thank you. 

And I wandered the roadways taking photos of wildflowers.  The pineland restoration areas - burned, charred trunks, black sand earth - are a garden of blooms.  Green eyes and rose rush!  (Berlandiera subacaulis and Lygodesmia aphylla!)

Edith Widder and Bioluminescence

You know those guys that pay a kabillion dollars to go into space?  I'm not saying that I (who have been reading SF since second grade) would ever turn down a deep space trip, but I think I'd rather spend my kabillion dollars on a custom mini-sub to explore the deep ocean.  Here's why.  (So what that I'm a bit claustrophobic.) 

I'm trying to hold this video, my dreams of exploration, and the oil spill and it's accompanying "dispersal agents" in my mind and heart all at the same time.  It is possible to grieve for a place you've never been. 

Native Plants!

 
Yes, it's my biannual exhortation to stop it with the drug and water-addicted yards.  Gainesvillians - use this next weekend's Native Plant Sale at Morningside Nature Center as an opportunity to buy and learn.  Here's their video.

Gainesville's Own John Moran

Speaking for Florida's Springs from John Moran on Vimeo.

Gainesville Environmental Film and Art Festival - The First Annual!

 
The First Annual Gainesville Environmental Film and Art Festival is from March 19th through the 28th, and there are so many ways to participate.  You can attend any number of the eighteen screenings of twelve different films, bring your loved ones to the day-long street fair of music, booths, and movies, hang out at one of the gallery openings, go on a guided nature outing, volunteer, or donate scads of money. 

A really good option is the All Inclusive Festival Pass - $50 gets you a VIP opening night reception, a ticket to four (update - it's now 12!) different films, reserved front row seating, and the satisfaction of supporting another one of those Gainesville events that makes us glad that we live here.   

Florida's Eden - A Weekend of Painters, Poets, Music, and Culinary Delights

This weekend Florida's Eden is having an OLO! (Orange Lake Overlook) benefit at the Windmill Gallery just south of McIntosh on 441.  Florida's Eden is a fabulous organization whose purpose is to "unite 30 counties of North Florida for the purpose of protecting our natural resources and using our environmental and creative assets to build a sustainable, prosperous economy." And they do an amazing job.

There will be plein air painting, poetry, good food, and it will be the first warm weekend in forever.  Come out and support an organization that makes good things happen. 

Painting credit: "Anne Gilroy Painting" by Melanie Peter    

This has never happened to me - yet.

 

But I'm thinking it would help with that whole facing-the-blank-page-what-to-write problem.

Writing in the Floridiana Spirit - A Travel and Memoir Writing Workshop

  
During the camping trip to the Everglades, in the middle of one night, while smashing mosquitoes against the ceiling of my van, I thought about my writing life and figured out a couple of things.  I decided to continue with the memoir, that there was something to work with there. And also that I would balance all the "delving into" of the memoir by doing more with my essays about the natural world of Florida. 

I'd almost forgotten these during the dark of night illuminations when the postcard pictured above arrived in my mailbox - a travel and memoir writing workshop put on by the Anhinga Writers' Studio not three miles from my house.  I signed up immediately.  Does anyone want to join me?