CPR Heartbeat

I am sitting in the warmth and comfort of my home, looking out of my newly-converted-garage to-library window onto the prairie draped in shades of brown. The switchgrass still pokes its spindly stems above the other grasses. The green stems and yellow asters of the camphor weed have gone black. The post oak and the pecan branches etch the gray sky. The little bluestem still adds a rusty hue to the landscape. On this cold, drizzly, icy afternoon the prairie has gone to sleep.

Judy Collins wrote the lyrics to  “Fallow Way” while she was out in the country, watching it snow. I love the lines:

“While deep beneath the glistening snow
The black earth dreams of violets”

In our fear-of-missing-out society we don’t have time to be fallow, to rest, to dream. Yet that is the way the natural world functions. The yawning seedlings of early spring yield to the bursting green growth of later spring, which yields to the bulging fruitfulness of early summer, which yields to the harvest and seed production of fall, which finally yields to the rest of winter. 

We could take some instruction from the winter prairie. We could learn to love the fallow way, when time or circumstances or even weather invites our stillness, our rest, our unproductivity, our dreams.

^*You can read all the lyrics at 

FALLOW WAY — Judy Collins 

or listen to her sing them on YouTube.

She originally released the song in 1997, but this version is from 2019, when she was 80. She recently released an album of original songs at the age of 82. It seems she has learned to love  the fallow way with its quietness and patient fruits..

I borrowed this title from a blog I read every Tuesday. The blog, “Tuesdays in the Tallgrass: Exploring exterior and interior landscapes through the tallgrass prairie,” is written by Cindy Crosby. Last Tuesday, in her blog, “Winter Hiking in the Tall Grass Prairie,” she suggests that in winter the prairie whispers rather than shouts and that there is enchantment in focusing on the singular. So, Robert and I decided to go on a hike looking for the enchantment in the singular. We were not disappointed. We hope you enjoy these images.

We had a great time at our Bexar Audubon Society Winter Bird Bioblitz, the second Saturday in January of 2023. Eight participants observed 36 species and probably 1000 birds, between 8 and 10 am. Some of the highlights for me were the Northern Harrier, who has become our regular winter visitor for the past five years; two Red-tailed Hawks, seated in the live oak tree across the field; and two Lesser Goldfinches, male and female, perched on the spent basil plants in our garden, gorging themselves on the seeds. But by far the stars of the show were the hundreds of sparrows filling the prairie grasses. We saw Savannah Sparrows, Vesper Sparrows, House Sparrows, White-crowned Sparrows, LeConte’s Sparrows, Grasshopper Sparrows, Field Sparrows, Song Sparrows, and Lincoln Sparrows.

Several of the volunteers from the Bexar Audubon Society carried cameras and scopes, and we got to see the sparrows up close and personal. 

Here are some photos that were made during the morning.

Sparrows, small and drably colored, are often lumped together as little brown birds (LBBs). However, to more trained and attentive eyes their shape, coloration, markings, sounds, and flight patterns are unique and quite stunning. 

We were gifted this 434-page book about sparrows from a birding friend of ours—Peterson Reference Guide to Sparrows of North America by Rick Wright. The back of the dustcover notes that “sparrows are as complicated as they are common.” It appears to me that the same thing could be said of us Homo sapiens—as complicated as we are common. 

Jesus made a similar observation, viewing us with the same kind of eyes that these experienced Audubon birders viewed the sparrows flitting around in our prairie last weekend, noting the streaks on their heads, the shapes of the feathers on their cheeks, the lengths of their tails, the blushes of color on their chests. In Luke 12: 6-7, Jesus assures us that even the common sparrows garner the attention of the Father, and that, likewise, he counts us worthy of his attention, attending to our complexities, down to the number of hairs on our head. 

It seems to me, that kind of attention is something to rest on and to practice.

The prairie is trying to help me out with my color coordination, but somebody (maybe me) missed the memo. I found these sunflowers blooming beside the purple “clover” room, and a bevy of morning glories beside the yellow “bee” room. Perhaps the prairie just has a sense of humor.

I have sometimes thought of spring like a conversion––Paul on the Damascus Road. A field I have driven past all winter is suddenly and without warning painted in colors of green, yellow, pink, and blue. Overnight, it seems. The new life of spring, green and fresh, supplants last year’s old life, depleted and dried.

It isn’t really like that, although it appears that way through my driver’s side window. Up close, it looks very different. Spring, it turns out, does not magically appear overnight, but sneaks up slowly before the surprise attack.

I walked for an hour in the prairie this morning and noticed the evidence of the coming insurrection. Scanning the fields, I could see only the brown, dried stalks of little bluestem, switchgrass, side oats, camphor weed, and scores of other grasses and forbs that once bloomed and flourished but now stood brittle and lifeless.

However, beneath the cover of those old stalks, something else is taking place. A green carpet is beginning to spread, preparing to burst into colors and reclaim the fields in a glorious revolution that happens every spring. 

Texas Ragwort is springing up, forming its blossoms, preparing to cover the prairie in bright yellow, and hosting bees and wasps and butterflies. 

Dakota Mock Vervain, one of the first blooms to show up each year, is already opening its tiny, pink and purple flowers and staking spring’s claim. 

Bluebonnets, which showed up with their little Mickey Mouse ear sprouts in December, are now spreading and expanding, eager to make Texans proud in a few weeks. 

Yellow Corydalis aurea, also known as Scrambled Eggs, has already appeared.

As has the Western Tansy Mustard.

I think renewal is often like this. I wait for the sudden conversion in my life or my world, which seldom comes. Instead, evidence of the new life shows up here and there, beautiful and small but indicative of the powerful force that is driving it to the surface, a sign of so much more to come. 

I don’t mean to sound maudlin, but it strikes me that as I watch my sixty-ninth spring dawn around me, I will get to witness a finite, small, and diminishing number of those in my life. Once, they seemed ordinary and plentiful. They are not. I hope to observe this revolution in detail, gratefully and affectionately. – RRC

Snow-on-the-Prairie is a species of Euphorbia that blooms in Texas in September. We’ve seen it in fields around the Hill Country. But last week we had snow on the prairie in a way we had not seen. Winter storm Uri scattered the white stuff all over our fields.

Things have not changed much in the square meter I’m monitoring in the prairie. But today, things were dewy and damp, leaving jewel-like droplets on the grasses. The sparkling bluebonnet leaves in the square meter were replicated throughout the prairie as I walked through this January morning.

One of the many expressions of beauty on the winter prairie is the occasional frosty morning in South Texas. Today offered one of those mornings. The remnants of last year’s growth reflected the rising sun like diamonds.

Progress on the “Bee & the Clover” has slowed, partially due to Covid-19. Our contractor was ill with the virus and so has been recovering. Since I last posted about two months ago, the outside of the building is nearly complete. We await the installation of the roll-up garage door and the upstairs porch’s construction, and the decking downstairs. The details of the interior, sheet-rock, cabinets, plumbing, electricity are all in the future.