Flower Riot and Paying Deep, Deep Attention

[image error]Sandra Neily here:  It was a wonderful day except for the tick. Grateful for Maine’s Tick Lab.)

This week my second novel, Deadly Turn, was finally published. It’s taken years, with a long break for cancer treatment and then more time to revisit and recraft what I wrote years ago. (Leave a comment on this post. I’ll scramble your names on pieces of paper, close my eyes, and send 2 of you a free copy. Leave emails, please.)

The novel and its drama take place deep in the Maine woods where wild flowers are often shy (Lady Slippers, Purple Trillium). This week, however, I was seeking sun and the riot of flowers that cover ski slopes near my home. Early July is best, just when Lupine is fading and right before Goldenrod (which I’ve never liked … go figure). [image error]

I wanted to see how many flowers I could visit on one hike up the grassy slopes. Their names are below so you can test yourself. To identify some I didn’t know, I used this amazing plant ID ap on my phone when I got home with pictures.[image error]

[image error]I spent a lot of the ‘hike’ sitting in flowers or on my knees, watching flowers. Maybe after creating characters who pay deep attention to the natural world, I needed a field trip away from the keyboard so I could practice deep attention. It was a wonderful day. [image error](Except for the dog tick. Very grateful for Maine’s Tick Lab.)[image error][image error][image error][image error][image error]

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More Deep Attention: In this excerpt from Deadly Turn, teenager Chan shows us how it’s done.

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As we worked our way downhill, climbing over downed trees and skirting raspberry thickets, I could see Chan’s generosity everywhere. Piles of cedar brush were mounded next to tall balsam firs where sheltering deer could nibble cedar until the spring thaw eased their hunger.[image error]

In a marsh, old tree snags sticking out of a small pond supported square boxes with large round holes: wood duck nests built and nailed up by the boy. Wood ducks usually nest in trees, but these birds had luxury condos high above predators hungry for spring eggs.

Chan sat on a log, pulled off his rubber boots, and waded toward a tiny island, bending to pick handfuls of grass as he sloshed ashore. Birds flapped around his head as he shook the stems and they rained down white kernels. He turned and pointed. “No dog,” he said.

I pulled Pock into a sit. Two ducks swam so close that we could see each feather as if we had a magnifying glass. Pock shivered slightly but sat still. Long ago my dog had learned that his lips would never touch a fast duck. Their webbed feet treading water, the birds swayed back and forth, staring at us. The male wood duck looked like an extravagant art installation staged far from a museum.[image error]

He had bright red irises that matched the red of his bill. His wing feathers were iridescent blue slashes, and his vivid green head sported white racing stripes that folded into feathers pointed backwards like an aerodynamic bike helmet. Someone with minimalist tendencies had finished him off. His body was geometric blocks of brown shades, some with a copper sheen, other hues compressed between tiny white lines that looked like contour lines on a map. The basically brown female blended into her surroundings, but blue wing feathers marked her as a wood duck.

“Oh, Pock. Have you ever?” I asked. He was still trembling, oblivious to ducks as living, breathing art.

Scattering the birds and wading back to us, Chan grinned. “Wild rice. If I was hunting them, it might be illegal—feeding them during hunting season. ‘Specially since I planted it. But I’m not hunting ducks, and I make sure no one else is either.”

By a massive beaver dam, Chan had chain-sawed a pile of birch for the beavers. Beavers don’t usually need help from anyone, but drag marks under the water showed the residents were storing up the limbs they’d eat after ice closed the pond. “Wait, here,” Chan said as he carefully shouldered his shotgun and navigated logs mudded into the top of the dam. Pock didn’t even look back as he raced after him.

I didn’t see the deer carcass on the far side of the dam until a bald eagle landed on it. Each jab of his curved beak brought up something red and stringy. He may have been eating, but his intense yellow eyes tracked every move I made.[image error]

He wasn’t bald. White feathers overlapped his head and cascaded around his shoulders in a fashionable shag haircut. His feet looked like bright yellow rain boots with knives at each toe. I had a flash of a James Bond movie where lethal objects snap out of everyday items and kill people. A bit of white brow sagged over each eagle eye, gathering darkness into his stare.

So many flowers on one hike! From top to bottom: Meadow Hawkweed and Orange Hawkweed, Bird Vetch, Hedge Bedstraw (Also called False Baby’s Breath), Milkweed, Common St. Johns Wort, Bladder Campion (Maiden’s Tears), White Meadowsweet (butterflies love it), Daisy, Buttercup, Purple Meadow Rue, Yarrow, Lupine, Wild Strawberry

Sandy’s second Mystery in Maine, Deadly Turn, was published in early July. Her debut novel,“Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine,” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Find her novels at all Shermans Books and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baby’s Breath), Milkweed, Common St. Johns Wort, Bladder Campion  (Maiden’s Tears), White Meadowsweet (butterflies love it), Daisy, Buttercup, Purple Meadow Rue, Yarrow, Lupine, Wild Strawberry

Sandy’s second Mystery in Maine, Deadly Turn, was published in early July. Her debut novel,“Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine,” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Find her novels at all Shermans Books and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.