The Road Goes Ever On and On-

Leaves were raining down on us today as we walked at Percy Warner. And there will be more coming down with the storms and wind predicted for tonight-






























Back to the place where it began-

An Autumn Walk and a Surprise Wildflower Find

The dogs and I walked out today at Percy Warner Park, and I took these photos on or near the Mossy Ridge Trail.




























And last of all, a wildflower new to me, and the only wild orchid I have ever seen in the Warner Parks. It is Tipularia- the crane-fly orchid. It blooms in early autumn and puts up leathery basal, single leaves over the winter. The underside of each leaf is purple.

How I wish I had seen it in bloom!

Everything Old-

Sometimes, in order to find something worth watching on the screen of your choice, you might consider going back in time.

Bored with the thin gruel of this season's television shows, and down-hearted that "Grimm" has resorted to zombies, I signed onto one of the streaming services last evening and watched the 1990 pilot of David Lynch's "Twin Peaks".

Nothing about this weird and watchable 23 year old program had frayed or tattered. Nothing had dated it. It was as fresh as it was two decades ago.

On "Twin Peaks", when a mother does not know where her daughter is, we walk into a real mystery. The mother calls people who might know where Laura Palmer is, but she calls them on an old time land line. Laura is not wired. No phone in her pocket. No cell tower exists to track her. We know "She's dead! Wrapped in plastic!". But no one at her high school and no one on Facebook knows. There was no Facebook.

Later in the story the murdered Laura's best friend asks a friend "If you see James, tell him I am looking for him".
Would such a line even be written now that we are all universally available 24/7?

When Kyle McClachlan's character, an FBI agent, drives to Twin Peaks to investigate whether this killing is part of a pattern, he has no idea where he is going to stay. He wants "Someplace clean. Reasonably priced". He asks the town's sheriff, Harry S Truman, if he, the sheriff,knows a hotel that fits the bill.

Today, we ask Google. Back then, when humans were the only characters, we had to ask other people. And when this agent has a memorable piece of cherry pie at the Lamplighter Inn, he records his pleasure on a tape he will send to his secretary at the bureau. He does not post a review on Yelp!.

What mystery is there when every one knows everything about everybody?. When surveillance cameras see all. When GPS trackers replace bloodhounds.

Oh, bliss! Many episodes to go, and another whole season of "Twin Peaks" to watch, and the only spoiler will be my memory.

What's left of it-

Dogs Know Shoes-

* To Readers-ignore the dates on all these photos. They were taken today. I have since re-educated the wayward camera responsible!



The pensive dogs pictured here are dogs without expectations. They have no immediate hopes because their owner is, at present, shoeless.

Anyone who has seen the film "Legally Blonde" remembers the scene in which Elle Woods exposes a prosecution witness who is lying about having had an affair with Ms Wood's client. The witness outed himself by making a bitchy comment about our heroine's shoes. Elle knows there was no affair, for her client is female, and the witness is gay.

"Gay men know shoes!", she tells her law partners.


Dogs know shoes as well, for shoes are the pedometers of their happiness.

My gray running shoes are a signifier of all sorts of pleasant things- damp walks in the woods, the smell of deer downwind, a chipmunk darting into a stone wall, a chicken wing dropped by a picnicker.

Unless- those same shoes go on late at night after I put on a blue scrub uniform. Then they mean 9 hours of bedroom detention (to prevent them from howling at the possums who are eating cat food on the porch).

Blue suede Oxfords might mean a trip to the store.Unless it is July, when no dog gets to wait in the car. If it is November, pleading and whining may get them into the front seat, though what is interesting about the Publix parking lot is lost on me, though I do not doubt this is my loss, since I do not live life with the optimism and exuberance of a dog.

I also have a pair of gold flats. Fast to get into and fast to get out of, which makes them, in any season, good for a fast trip outside to do the necessaries.

My beagle understands this, and he knows how much I appreciate speed. He knows I will be peevish if he tries to turn a bathroom break into an impromptu outing all over the parking lot.

The Shih Tzu, being stubborn and sometimes manipulative, sees those gold shoes and knows that here is opportunity. By refusing to do what he is supposed to do, he can get a trip down to a faraway grassy knoll or a fire hydrant, even at four in the morning. He does not care if his owner is freezing and wheezing and hissing all sorts of insults at him.

Dogs know shoes-

The Tennessee Weekly Howler- First Edition October 23, 2013

The Tennessean, Nashville's daily newspaper has put up a pay wall, so for news I now go to the TV station web sites. I think some of our state and local news is so compelling that it begs to be shared, and here are some recent highlights.


DANGEROUS ANIMALS INVADE STATE!



Apropos of my recent post on disgruntled Colorado coyotes, coyotes are making the news in these parts as well. A Clarksville, Tennessee citizen saw one in her front yard near her mailbox "drooling' and acting peculiar. She called the local police, and the officer who showed up dispatched the coyote with his handgun. Unfortunately he also sent bullets into the bedroom of a nearby house and into someone's parked car. Lucky for all but the coyote that the Swat Team did not show up-

And in Johnson City, up in the East Tennessee mountains a squirrel ran amok in a Dollar General store. The Dollar Generalites called the law, and when he showed up, he pepper sprayed the squirrel, then peppered both squirrel and store with gunfire.

Some accounts report that the squirrel died. Some are unclear as to its fate, but everyone agrees that the officer was fired.

Perhaps he should apply for a job in Williamson County ASAP, for even as I write this, there are several escaped elk running around in the median strip of a four lane highway down there. One onlooker described one of elk as "as big as a Suburban" SUV. These are" pet elk" according to reports, which also says these animals have escaped before.

This sounds like terrorism to me, a deliberate attempt to terrify the people of Williamson county. This calls for helicopters and a lock down of the Cool Springs Mall. People at the Whole Foods need to shelter in place-

Now when I was a young woman living in New Hampshire, I often saw photos of animals who were in the wrong part of town. Moose were famous for wandering about. I saw photos of a bull moose walking into a mall, coming down the Congregational Church steps, and trying to get into one of those liquor stores planted on the Massachusetts- New Hampshire border. Interrupting the minister is unforgivable, but crashing the package store is understandable, given the dismal New Hampshire winter-

Now I suppose that some government entity would do a background check on these rampant moose to make sure there was no Chechen connection. Should investigators find one, they might order a drone strike, though this might be a problem in Tennessee where there are no moose but plenty of other non targets that no one would want to aim a missile at.

Imagine what would happen if a drone fired on the Tennessee-Alabama Fireworks store by mistake? Half of Chattanooga would disappear and the other half would have Goo-Goo clusters and pieces of black velvet Elvis paintings raining down on it-



AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON WHITE BRIDGE ROAD!


When I go out to work at the clinic on Saturday night, I travel through and to two exclusive Nashville neighborhoods. The former is Hillwood on Post Road, where the price of inclusion is money. The latter is the Little Big House out on Centennial Boulevard, where the price of inclusion is a felony conviction. Twixt the two this reporter sees many interesting things-

On one recent Saturday evening my Toyota and I were about to head down Nine Mile Hill into the Nashville basin when I saw two bright blue beacon lights crossing and cris-crossing the sky. They were leaving earth somewhere north of Nob Hill and the WSMV tower.

I confess to being stumped. What did they signify? Whose attention were they trying to get?

Was a local hospital trying to lure helicopters bearing patients with excellent insurance to its ER doors? Had Mr Whiskers Discount Liquors received a truck load of two dollar Rose?

Indeed not. As I pulled out onto White Bridge Road and headed west I saw the beams shooting skyward from what used to be the old Verizon store. Verizon no more, it had swathed itself in black and purple paint and was lit from within with subdued lighting befitting my idea of an opium den. And in the parking lot I saw a sign trying to be a fountain, or a fountain trying to be a sign. It looked like a big screen TV trapped inside a waterfall of purple highlights. On either side of the sign were two faux Tiki Torches.

The "Pleasures Romance Boutique" had arrived in Nashville. On White Bridge Road. Across the street and west a bit from the St Mary Parish Villa, a Bundt cake Shop, Pier One, and the Lion's Head Shopping Center. East of the Kiwanis Circle seasonal Pumpkin patch, a dialysis clinic, and The Two Danes furniture store.

At my computer the next morning, I searched for "Pleasures Romance Boutique", and found stories on both WKRN and WSMV websites. After all, if you cannot trust TV anchors Ann Holt and Demetria Kalodimos, who are watched over by the benign shades of the late Bill Hall and Dan Miller, who can you trust in this city?

Was I surprised that neighbors had complained to the local city councilman? He reassured them that the minute the store went over the 30% limit on explicit merchandise, the city would make the boutique move downtown where only the tourists would see it-.

After all, said this councilman, who seemed to have honed his speaking skills at the Anthony Weiner Institute of Public Relations," In Nashville we have a sexually-oriented business board, and they have inspectors".

I bet they do, but the store's manager was not taking chances. She told WKRN that her business "will be very classy, because we don't cater to the vulgar side". A sex therapist consultant for the store agreed, saying the store's wares had "an educational component", and he hinted that board games such as "Dirty Minds" might help save many a dull and lifeless Nashville marriage, for after all, "This is a high-class, quality store".

Again, the Councilman, reporting complaints-:"People think it interrupts their family life".

Well, I suppose it might if you were a fatally curious soccer mom who stopped in one afternoon, leaving three 10 year old boys waiting in her mini-van outside-

Words such as upscale and classy flew all over this story like Sandhill cranes, but local commentators were having none of it. One pointed out that this part of White Bridge Road was not Beverly Hills. "Go a quarter of a mile down and it's ghetto as all get out', he said.

Others thought the TV stations were overly sensational in calling the area close to Belle Meade, which I must agree with, since that rarefied suburb is not only on the other side of Harding Road, it is on the other side of real railroad tracks.

The right side, of course.

What Would E.B. White Say?

Here is a headline of an AOL story this afternoon. I saw it as I was about to sign in to my e-mail.

"Colorado Man Attacked by Three Coyotes Walking To Work".


All I can say about this is that the coyotes were undoubtedly in a bad mood since they were on their way in to a job they hated, and on foot, since no human would sell them a car. Perhaps if the man had encountered them at the neighborhood bar after work they would have been more affable and invited him to join them. God knows, those coyotes love beer!

Thus does the English language make fools of us all.

In Two Nashville Gardens- October 15, 2013

Every month or so I post photos from two Nashville gardens to show the progression of the seasons. Here are some October photos-









How I hope our first frost holds off for a little while!