Some Tildes are Brown

If you’re at your keyboard, look to the left of the 1. There is an accent mark. It is the accent grave. Above it, there is a squiggle. Not surprisingly, somebody has named it, too. It is called a tilde and is pronounced like, “He’s gonna do that tilde cows come home.”

You may have seen tildes doing what they do best. They nap atop letters like n in Spanish, changing a crisp “na” to a mushy “nya”. If you’ve seen Señor, you’ve seen your tilde.

I see them other places. Like our yard.

By the way, does green sneak up on you? As I’ve been driving around, I’ve noticed my Midwestern world on the cusp of Spring. The maple in our back yard is an early budder and has been prepping for this moment since February. Now the red buds are bursting and they are everywhere. Last week, our patio roof looked like a warning for measles. Today, maple buds are a spotty carpet on our lawn and driveway.

Chloroplasts all over the place are chock full of chlorophyll, channeling the energy of sunlight into chemical energy, converting it through the process of photosynthesis. Chlorophyll is a changer. It absorbs energy to change carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and oxygen. It turns solar energy to a form that can be utilized by plants, and by the animals that eat them. It is the foundation of the food chain.

We don’t see that. We see green. More and more green. We had to pull the green out of our closets for St. Patrick’s Day. Now we just open our doors or look out our windows. Something is definitely happening out there.

But this was about tildes.

Speaking of the food chain, we have a bird feeder under the eaves near the end of our garage. Birds are not fastidious. They make a mess. Enter the squirrels. They pick up uneaten sunflower seeds. They find nuts. They share space with doves, ducks, and geese beneath the feeder gleaning enough nutrition to keep them sassy and happy.

We often see the squirrels zipping up the tree or a telephone pole or fearlessly balancing on utility lines or narrow branches. But my favorite view of them is in motion on the ground. Their tails and bodies are a sinuous curve of motion. Furry brown tildes flitting, scampering, or running atop active chloroplast factories that are changing our world from drab to green.