a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

Dear Henry, Do you know who the first person who flew around the world was? Did you think it was Charles Lindbergh? Yeah, me too. Charles Lindbergh was such a larger than life character that it is easy to attribute all acts of early aviation to him.  But this honor isn't his. The first aviator to circle the world was actually Wiley Post, he completed the journey in 7 days 18 hours and 49 minutes, landing in New York on July 22, 1933. Wiley Post, like Charles Lindbergh, was himself a larger than life character.  He was born in 1898 to cotton farming parents and he initially tried to enter the aviation program during WWI but the war ending before his training was complete.  He then, briefly, drifted through the professions of roughnecking and bank robbery (for which he served a year in the Oklahoma State Prison systems). When an oil rigging accident caused the loss of his left eye, he used the settlement money to buy an airplane. Ultimately, Wiley Post caugh...

Dear Henry, Last Spring, in a sale bin, I found three tubers in a baggie with "Dahlias - 3.00" written on it in magic marker. I figured why not? They were all different, one of the tubers grew to a purple one with stripes, one was a fluffy yellow, and one was a black. All three were beautiful but I particularly loved the black, however last Fall, after pulling the tubers for the Winter, I noticed one of them had mildewed. I thought it was the black dahlia and I was very sad. After what has been a particularly wet Spring and early Summer, the dahlias are finally blooming and to my surprise, there was my black.  It was my fluffy yellow one that mildewed. (*Side note - I feel like I am maligning the yellow dahlia or implying that it wasn't a worthy flower.  Not at all, it was lovely and I wish I could have gotten a picture that did it justice.  I seem to struggle with photographing that color of yellow.) Once, years ago, there was a woman in the neighborh...

Dear Henry, Fish is really good at I SPY and his latest find was really cool. While weeding the flowerbed next to the mailbox, he had moved one of the boundary stones and discovered a nest of Five-Lined Skink eggs. We have a few of these little lizards living around our house.  They are great bug catchers and are rather cute. Like the wren experience,  finding the skink nest changed many of the preconceptions I had about lizards. For example. skinks tend to their eggs. I had always thought that all reptiles laid eggs and then abandoned them.  They don't - or at least skinks don't - mom was sitting with her eggs when Fish moved the edging stone. It is considered to be one of the most common lizards in the US, although you probably won't find it in the West because it loves humidity.  In Arkansas, they are everywhere, although I am reading reports that they are threatened in Connecticut. They aren't very big, about 5 inches with the tail and can liv...

Dear Henry, I think I have mentioned that I want to do a " Great American Road-Trip " before, and still, despite the logistical challenges, I plan to take one. While thinking about (pre-planning?) my road trip, I wondered where the idea of a cross-American road trip came from. As it turns out, one of the first American road trips was made in 1919 by the U.S. Army. It began as a post-WWI project for the military - imagine, if you will, a bunch of soldiers, fresh from Europe and with nothing to do. So the army decided that conquering the roads of America was the perfect project.  The First Transcontinental Motor Convoy consisted of about 100 vehicles (including a tank!) that left the White House on July 7, 1919 and headed toward the Presidio in San Fransico, California. The convoy made it to the outskirts of D.C. before suffering the first of its many mechanical issues. On a lark, a young Lieutenant Colonel named Dwight D. Eisenhower  decided to join the convoy ...

Dear Henry, I have a family of wrens living in one of my strawberry planters. Several months ago, the wrens had moved into an old barbecue grill that we had on the deck. We bought a new one last fall but we hadn't considered moving the old one until this spring,  we discovered we had waited too long. Fish found the nest during the spring cleaning and pressure washing of the deck, and although we decided to leave the grill where it was until the babies had left the nest, the event proved to be too much for the birds and Fish and I received our first ever wren lesson. Wrens can move their babies. I discovered this a couple of days later when I noticed a bird's nest in my empty strawberry planters and I recognized the birds from the barbecue grill. I don't know how they managed it (or maybe they didn't and we really have two sets of birds, I'm not sure). Their new nest is in the strawberry planter directly in front of my "morning coffee and paper o...