Yes, spring is still my favorite season of the year, hands down.
I’ve been trying to rework some things in my life so as to be less busy, and while I can tell that I definitely am making gradual progress, this spring the combination of a fairly full schedule and some physical discomforts has limited my ability to enjoy being outside as much as I’d like. That said, spring has still sprung, and here are some events that I’m still excited about.
Some six or eight weeks ago, I began hearing a reprise of the wonderfully melodic bird songs we’ve heard during the past two springs, the source of which I have identified as purple finches. I truly LOVE to hear these guys sing! Well, they’ve been singing away several times a day for weeks now, and I’m pretty sure they and their relatives have built two nests, one above the back office window (which Mr. SS examined and found wanting) and one on top of the left stone porch post.
Meanwhile, for about the same stretch of time, a barred owl has been regularly reminding me that I’m on my own as far as meal prep is concerned. I’ve never been able to see him, but I always smile when I hear him as he asks his “Who cooks for YOU? Who cooks for you all?” questions. I think he hangs out in the trees by the ditch, and for a couple weeks he called pretty consistently around 7:15 PM. Then he expanded to also calling off and on in the morning and afternoon. = ) It’s just such a cheerful sound!
In visual news, on the morning of May 1, the Missouri primroses up at the 65/160 interchange suddenly burst into bloom in all their brilliant yellow glory, and now, three weeks later, they’re still hard at it every morning. I get to experience their striking beauty on my way to and from the gym every morning, and they make me very happy.
The very next morning, one of our white – actually very, very pale pink – peonies opened. It was the one on the right end, closest to the smokehouse. I am a big fan of Lazy Genius Principle #1, “Decide once.” It means figuring out the best way to do a repetitive task and then always doing the thing that way… until it doesn’t work. Deciding once eliminates all the unnecessary brain cycles some of us go through each time we do certain things.
I think God was in a decide once frame of mind when he created perennials. Without any deep analysis or specific effort on their part, perennial flowers simply do the same thing (BLOOM!) over and over and over, year after year after year. When we bought our house nearly 28 years ago, there was a long flower bed of peonies by a little stone wall in what we call the near back (yard). We have never watered or weeded or fertilized or trimmed or in any way tended those peonies, and although the bed is now quite overgrown and even has a couple of young trees sprouted in it, and although a number of the original probably eight bushes have died, the four or so remaining peonies still erupt from the ground every spring as purple sprouts and proceed to crank out huge blossoms for a couple weeks.
Each year I think, “I really should get out there and clean up that bed and maybe even plant a few more peonies in those empty spaces,” but every year I am too (fill in the blank: tired, busy, sore, pre-occupied, LAZY?!?) to go out there and do the work. But even in spite of my complete lack of involvement, those peony blossoms still pop out to please me.
Then there’s April 25th, which also comes around every year. As evidenced above, I do like birds, both seeing them and hearing them. Here in southwest Missouri, the proper time to set out hummingbird feeders is April 25th, and I am very consistent in doing so, given a day one way or the other. This year, I found myself dealing with a number of other issues in life, and while doing some stuff in the playroom on May 6th, I realized I had missed my self-imposed hang-the-hummingbird-feeders deadline. Horrors! And I may have really messed up this time, because it always takes the hummers a few days to find the feeders. If they had already come looking in the past week or so and found nothing, they may have given up on our porch for the rest of this season. Sigh. But I dutifully prepared the nectar, filled the feeders, and hung them up, hoping against hope.
FIVE MINUTES LATER, I walked past the front door and something out on the porch caught my eye. There was a hummer at the front feeder(!!!), and a second one was slurping from the side feeder.
We almost never have a dull day in downtown Walnut Shade, so the fact that today has not been boring surprises no one.
Scott was away today, and I decided that this was the day to plant tomatoes. The weather has been quite warm, and they should have been planted two or three weeks ago, but I was late in realizing that my 18 little seedlings that had sprouted up quickly but only grew to a height of 1″ in six weeks were in serious trouble. The problem turned out to be the seed starting mix they’d been sown in. Either it was deficient in nitrogen and/or phosphorus or it was contaminated, or both.
I had to very delicately transplant them into new soil in new peat pots, shaking off as much of the bad soil as possible. In so doing I saw one really weird thing; they had almost no roots! Anyway, over the past two weeks they have taken off and done GREAT. They’ve had a short hardening off period, and with a few expected dry sunny days before the next round of storms, I decided to take the plunge. This involved a number of steps.
1. Propping the pots better to sit level. This revealed some serious slug, pill bug, and earwig problems; I’ve ordered some product to kill those guys.
2. Grating 8 bars of Irish Spring soap. This hour investment is made more pleasant by listening to a great audiobook.
3. Carrying everything – the plants, the jug of powdered egg shells, the trowel, the soap stockings – outside (with one hand while using a cane).
4. Working eggshells into the soil of all 12 pots.
5. Determining which variety should go into each pot. Nine of the cute baby plants are Bush Early Girls which don’t climb, and three are Oaxacan Jewels which do vine and climb; they need to be closer to the porch rail for support.
6. Planting the plants. In so doing, I found that during just those two weeks in good soil they had grown massive, full sets of roots where they’d each had only a single one-inch root before. Velly intellesting (Matthew 13:3-8).
7. Dragging mulch from the smokehouse to the front yard.
8. Mulching the plants.
9. Watering the plants. They were gasping!
10. Dragging the excess mulch back to the smokehouse. In retrospect, this was not a smart move. I will need LOTS more mulch out front whenever I tackle the flower beds, so I could’ve just left it on the porch.
11. Extricating nine small tomato cages from the smokehouse. No matter how neatly they’ve been stacked, it is simply not possible to extricate the correct number of the appropriate size.
12. Caging the Bush Early Girls.
13. Extricating three large tomato cages from the smokehouse; comment on #11 still being true.
14. Caging the Oaxacan Jewels.
15. Hanging the soap stockings.
Although the whole process was somewhat challenging, took a fair amount of time, and generated a moderate amount of sweat, it was HIGHLY satisfying! The problem developed between Steps #13 and #14. As you can tell, I was up and down and in and out of the smokehouse numerous times. NOTE: Family members can testify to the fact that whenever one exits the smokehouse, it is impossible not to see the back of the house with its associated large blue Raintree Disposal trash can. Both are right in front of one’s face.
Having (with effort) completed the Step #11 extrication, I simply tossed the cages down into the yard, walked down the steps while facing the house and its aforementioned trash can, picked up the cages, carried them out front, and proceeded with Step #12, Caging the Bush Early Girls. That took maybe seven minutes, at which point I returned to the smokehouse for the Step #13 extrication, which took maybe two minutes. So, for the sake of margin, let’s say ten minutes elapsed between when I stood in the smokehouse doorway to descend the steps the first time and when I again stood in the doorway of the smokehouse to descend the steps the second time.
The first time there was nothing of significance to be seen.
The second time – a mere ten minutes later – I saw this.
Now, although my friend Janell may well dispute this, the sight of a black rat snake outside does not normally freak me out. I keep my distance from snakes, but I am not terrified of them. I find them interesting, the important exception being copperheads in the yard and/or cottonmouths in the water. I also know that black rat snakes do us a service, especially since we live in the country and don’t have a cat.
We don’t see them often, but over the past 27 years, we have seen them occasionally – in the yard, along the back of the house, on the porch (where the kids sometimes found shed snakeskins), and once high up in a plum tree. I know they do like to climb. While floating the Buffalo once in my single days, one fell out of a treeinto the canoe I was sitting in! Not fun AT ALL! But basically, we leave black rat snakes alone, and they eventually mosey along and probably enjoy a meal somewhere along the way.
Oh! How could I forget? There was one truly terrifying instance when a maybe 10-year-old kid came back up out of the cellar without the requested gallon of milk because there’d been a black rat snake less than two feet away at eye level on the foundation ledge down there. But that is that person’s story to tell, not mine. I can only imagine how scared I’d have been if I had been the one to meet such a snake at such close range. Again, snakes are okay on the property, but NOT inside any part of the house.
So I stood there at the bottom of the smokehouse steps and watched for a couple minutes. The pace at which the guy climbed was truly impressive, but the higher he went, the more concerned I got. When he was even with the first floor ceiling, I decided I had to do something, but what?!?
Where the heck was he going, and why? Reminds me of the end of Go, Dog! Go! (“To the tree, to the tree! Up the tree, up the tree! What is up there at the top of that tree?”) It took him less than ten minutes to slither and haul himself up to the very top, and then he went horizontally to the left, above the window in front of Scott’s desk, all the way to the corner of the house. Then he turned around and went back the other way, pausing numerous times and going up against the eaves, as if trying to find a way onto the roof!
By that time I was too shook up to take good pictures, so this next one was taken a few hours later, when I went back outside to try to get some shots of the different parts of the house the snake toured. They also are not great pictures, but in this one you can see Scott’s window and the corner of the house where he (the snake) turned around.
I know you can’t tell from that picture, but earlier in the day and with better lighting you could’ve see the seam where the top of the siding meets the underside of the eave, and he was closely investigating that seam, going mainly across the top of the window from left to right, but taking numerous detours up and in between those three beams that stick out to hold up the roof.
Our house is 112 years old, and neither “tight” nor “level” are words that accurately describe any part of it. I feared that there might be a crack in that seam, and if anything could pull itself through a tiny space, it would be a snake. Ugh.
In the above picture, we’re looking at the office window above Scott’s desk. My desk is ten feet away across the room from his. We have a third floor above the office, but because of the pitch of the roof, the walls of the third floor rooms aren’t out flush with the exterior wall of the house. There’s maybe six feet of unfinished attic between the third floor room wall(s) and the outside of the house.
If Mr. SS (Speedy Snake) found a crack at the top of the eave through which to slip into the house, he’d be in that unfinished attic space where no one ever wants to go and where he’d be nigh impossible to find and relocate… or, as hunters say, dispatch. And then I’d have to try to sleep wondering if there was a long black rat snake somewhere above me. Or even closer to me? Unthinkable!
And that’s where I started to lose it.
What to do?!? Well, what does anyone do in a difficult situation that needs a practical solution?
Call J.R.! He can fix anything. So I did, but he told me that he doesn’t do snakes. Hmm… Did he know anyone else at church who might? Yes. I could try Janell. I called Janell and in a shaky voice explained my situation. She does do reptiles and was not freaked out. She was confident she could get him, but she was at work, and it would be well over an hour till she could get there. She talked me through my panic, which was a blessing. I told her I’d just sit there on the smokehouse step and keep an eye on him. I thought if I left and came back and he was gone, I’d really lose it.
Then I called Michael. Michael is a lovely lady who lives in the neighborhood and is not easily intimidated. She was in Hollister at the time, and I asked about her husband, who is also exceedingly handy and never met a challenge he’d ignore. He was in Highlandville, but she’d try to hurry him along and have him come by as soon as he could. I was grateful.
Mr. SS had now gone back toward the right. Here is another after-the-fact picture which he is not in, but try to picture him stretched out horizontally, with his tail at the far left end of in the space between the two windows and his head moving toward the top right corner of the vertical office window on the right. There’s a birds’ nest (my beloved purple finches) there. Later, folks discussed the likelihood that the snake was curious about whether the birds’ nest contained any eggs.
I’d been sitting out there for close to 30 minutes at this point, and I was trying to think who else might be nearby and willing to climb a ladder and knock down a snake. I called Jared and asked him how he felt about snakes. He said they didn’t bother him, so I explained my situation, and he said he was at a nearby car dealership and could swing by on his way home soon.
Meanwhile Zach (graduating high school senior neighbor) had arrived to mow our yard, along with his grandpa, Reggie, who had come in his golf cart to pick up sticks for Zach. Reggie said if I had a long stick, he’d knock it down for me. We “just happened” to have an extension ladder lying on the ground against the back of the house, because we’d recently dealt with a broken second floor window on a different part of the house. But Reggie said he’d broken his foot a while back and no longer did ladders. He and Zach discussed but discarded various options: shooting the snake with a pellet gun (too close to the window), Reggie standing on his golf cart and knocking it down with a long stick (no 20-foot sticks in evidence), or throwing a smaller stick up at it to scare it so it would “jump” (again, too close to the window). They went back to yard work and I went back to sitting and watching Mr. SS and praying.
Steve drove by on his way home. Steve has a big shop/barn kind of building, and maybe he’d have some kind of tool or something that would be long enough. So I called him. He turned around and came back. He set up the ladder and asked if I had a rake. I thought so and walked slowly back to the lawn building to find one. As I came back down the driveway with the rake, Wade, Michael’s husband who’d been in Highlandville, met me and asked where the snake was. I pointed to Steve, who’d found something long and was climbing the ladder, which Reggie was holding.
Steve did not hesitate. He climbed straight up and poked the snake, which writhed impressively and fell 20 feet to the ground. We (Reggie, Zach?, Wade, and I) were all standing there, and Mr. SS looked like he wanted to head toward the driveway, but we were all in his way. He was not pleased. I stepped out of his way.
Wade said, “What are you going to do with him now?” and I had no idea! I stammered something and Wade promptly stepped on the snake about 18″ back from his head, reached down, and with his bare hand grabbed Mr. SS right at what I’d call the base of his neck. Mr. SS jerked back and I think gave Wade a mild bite, but he did not let go. He just held him with Mr. SS’s belly facing out (I’d never seen a black rat snake’s underside before), and I got this proof of the capture.
Wade and the snake, both very much alive!
Either right before or right after I took that picture, Jared arrived. We had quite the little backyard gathering, all these fine men stopping whatever they were doing to help a damsel in distress.
Then, while Steve was bringing down the ladder,
Wade asked me where I wanted the snake. “Far enough away that he doesn’t come back to my house!” I figured he’d throw just him in the woods by the ditch, but no, he put him in his truck and said he’d take him to the creek and release him there. I was grateful!
Here’s the text I sent to all of them once they all left and I was back inside:
“I am SO thankful for all of you who played a part in successfully ending my snake incident today.
J.R.
Janell
Michael & Wade
Reggie & Zach
Steve
Jared
Scott and I are blessed with great friends who do whatever they can to help us, and especially me when he’s not available. We thank God for each of you! 😊”
Thus ends the story of Speedy Snake, but while I was writing this post it occurred to me that my decision to plant our tomatoes on Friday must’ve been a God idea. If I had waited to plant them on Saturday as I’d originally planned, I would have had no reason to go into the smokehouse on Friday afternoon. I wouldn’t have stood in the smokehouse doorway, so I wouldn’t have seen the snake, and there’s no telling where he might be by now! Clearly, God was looking out for me, and Wow! I am so very thankful. = )
It was a warm day, an especially nice rarity in Missouri in November, so we’d taken our lunch salads out to the picnic table. Scott had suggested we play either Sequence, Qwixx, or Splendor while we ate, and I chose Sequence — hard for family members to believe, I know; my reasons being that we play Qwixx a lot, and judging from the wild swinging of the gourd birdhouse on the smokehouse and the branches and leaves on the backyard trees, it appeared to be quite windy out, in which case it would be challenging to keep all the Splendor cards, which are laid out in a 4 x 3 grid, from blowing away. With Sequence we’d only have to weight the draw pile and possibly a discard pile or two.
I mentioned the wind issue to Scott, but he looked out the window, walked out back, came back in, and said, “It’s not very windy.”
We played. We ate. And we battled a very persistent yellow jacket. Thankfully, there were no ants and there were no flies at our picnic, but this guy was nothing if not absolutely determined. Technically, he may have been of some other species of “social wasp,” but I just call all those small, rather skinny, black-and-yellow-striped, winged insects “yellow jackets.” Throughout our meal, we had to keep shooing him away from both my apple slices — I offered him the core, but he clearly preferred my slices — and our two salads. It finally got to the point that I had to keep waving my hand over my salad after each bite. Rude yellow jacket!
[Note: It was warm outside, but so windy that I had to pull up the hood of my hoodie to keep my ears warm. Having learned a few wifely things over the years, I said nothing, but when Scott topped the discard pile with his cell phone and re-arranged our discards under the edge of the board, he said, with a grin, “It sure is windy out here!”]
Our game was closely fought. Scott eventually constructed one sequence, and that forced me to play defensively. Against my husband as well as my stripey enemy. In a chivalrous attempt to distract the latter, Scott plated my apple core and set it off to the side. This did attract YJ’s nephew, but his uncle remained firmly committed to sharing my salad. I felt angry, and I was soon to feel much more.
First, Scott made a second sequence. Rackum-frackum! We won’t dwell on the fact that at that point I was only playing with five cards instead of the full complement of seven. That, although he had sing-sung our classic “Help the team…” reminder one time earlier, after which I had been very careful to draw a card every time. Who knows what happened?
Second, I took a bite of my salad, and I’m not exactly sure what happened, but suddenly something hurt. A lot. In my mouth! Actually between my teeth! Specifically, between my upper left molar and the tooth next to it. (At the dentist’s office, my teeth are labeled numerically but in some system that make no sense to me, probably because back in the day I had four permanent teeth pulled in order to have braces, and I later had my wisdom teeth extracted. To me, the first tooth in the back would be #1, but in my case it’s some other number.)
Anyway, there was a deep and searing pain back there. It really hurt, and while I had no idea how to relieve it, I did have a pretty good idea of who was responsible for it: pesky Uncle YJ! I rubbed my cheek and moaned and said things like “Wow!” and “Sweet Georgia peaches!” and “Good night alive, that does hurt!” but none of those declarations had the least effect on the deep, throbbing ache in my gum.
All I can figure is that somehow I’d unknowingly grabbed YJ in a forkful of salad, and he’d reacted in typical yellow jacket fashion. At this point, my questions were,
“How on earth long is this pain going to last?”
“Did he leave his stinger in my flesh?” and if so,
“Where the heck is the rest of him now?!?”
The thought that I may have swallowed a yellow jacket – or some part thereof – was unsettling, but having parented four former toddlers who swallowed various items of interest, let’s just say that I was confident that everything would come out all right in the end.
I did take some Tylenol, and due either to that med’s analgesic effect and/or the simple passage of time, the pain did subside, and I was no worse for the wear. I was even able to floss the crime scene painlessly at bedtime.
However, all things considered, the next time Scott wants to play cards in a hurricane, I think I will decline.
While I was looking out the kitchen window at the bird feeder around 8:00 PM on Tuesday, July 19th, some movement on the ground caught my eye.
It was a baby raccoon! I watched him for a couple minutes and took pictures out the dining room window (the one I stand by to get a better cell signal) as he meandered around. At one point he scratched vigorously at the root he’s studying above.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baby raccoon at all, much less here in our own yard! How fun. = )
Six mornings a week, I go to the Branson Recplex, climb the stairs to the CoxHealth Fitness Center there (a.k.a. “the gym”), and “run” and sweat for 25 minutes on a seated elliptical. After this I do 49 reps on each of seven different weight machines. The elliptical gives me a good cardio workout, and the machines provide strength training—and hopefully some fat elimination in three problem areas that I won’t list here. = ) My whole lineup takes about 50 minutes, and I normally arrive at the gym around 6:15 AM Monday – Friday and at 8:00 AM on Saturday.
Unfortunately, the gym doesn’t open till noon on Sunday, and since I’m not about to work out in the afternoon, so on Sunday mornings, I forego my drive to Branson. At about 6:30 AM I walk down the hall to the “rec” room (soon to be our grandkids’ room!!!), sit in my black occasional chair, and spend the next 25 minutes pumping my legs like crazy while rhythmically stretching my arms against resistance bands in an attempt to VERY inadequately approximate my usual cardio routine.
My chair faces the window overlooking our backyard, so while I’m pumping and praying, I get to gaze at a lot of green loveliness, and I have a front row seat to whatever’s going on at our birdfeeder.
This past Sunday, I was excited to see a red-headed woodpecker at our feeder! Although these guys are technically common in Missouri, I haven’t seen one in a long time, and we haven’t had one in our yard for years. What a treat!
I don’t take pictures while I’m working out, but I pulled this one from ebird.org. Isn’t he beautiful?!?
Red-headed woodpecker (ebird.org)
I found that bird fascinating and beautiful, and while I kept staring at him, a red-bellied woodpecker joined him at the feeder. Red-bellied woodpeckers are very common here and show up daily. I think they’re are also very poorly named, as their bellies have no red at all. Go figure on that one, but here’s what they look like.
Red-bellied woodpecker (wikipedia.org)
Watching two different species of woodpeckers visiting the feeder at the same time was a special treat! But the 10-minute air show was just getting started. While the red-head was at the feeder, ANOTHER red-headed woodpecker lighted on the picnic table! WOW!!! I don’t think I’d ever seen two at a time! I was so happy.
Then suddenly an old friend showed up to join the party. For many years, a pileated woodpecker (and/or his kin?) has drummed on our cedar tree and created an ascending pattern of deep, playing card-sized cavities. He’s usually around for several weeks in January/February and not very common at other times of the year.
Now Mr. P was sometimes strutting, sometimes flying around the stump of the cedar tree that was taken out by our weak tornado in April. Clearly confused, he didn’t understand why one of his favorite bug buffets had disappeared. Compared to your common backyard birds, Mr. P is truly an amazon, averaging some 16 to 19 inches tall as he stands (or pecks on a tree) and boasting a 28-inch wingspan. A noble bird, to be sure.
Pileated woodpecker (swnewsmedia.com)
So now I was watching a total of FOUR woodpeckers: two red-headed, one red-bellied, and one pileated. I’d surely hit the woodpecker jackpot! I couldn’t stop staring and saying things like, “Wow, God! That’s amazing!” and “They are so incredibly beautiful,” and “What a wonderful treat!” My eyes were glued to the window because I didn’t want to miss a moment with all four of them, and as I kept staring I wondered how long they’d hang around.
Then, just when I thought my private air show couldn’t get any better, a SECOND pileated woodpecker showed up!!! Now I was absolutely beside myself. I had never seen two pileateds together, and I had never seen five woodpeckers of any species all in our own backyard all at the same time. But there they were in all their glory, doing a ten-minute private air show for an audience of one: me!
Small cards – I like to send birthday and anniversary cards, and I especially like sending thank you’s (TU’s) and encouraging notes to people. I’ve realized recently that I prefer to send physically small cards, ones that are 4″x6″ or less. I haven’t figured out exactly why I like ’em small. Maybe it has some connection to my feeling secure and cozy — like when I’m wrapped up closely in heavy blankets in bed — or my being more comfortable in smaller rooms with closed doors… who knows? I just know I enjoy small cards.
“My” purple finch – For the past week or so, I’ve been hearing a bird singing beautifully, and it’s most pronounced when I’m in the kitchen or in our office, the latter being directly above the former. When I’m at my desk it sounds like the bird is right outside our office window, but when I looked out the window and searched very carefully — left, right, up, down — there’s no nest to be seen. And yet the bird sings. And it’s such a cheerful song. Now, I’m not a bird song expert. I can only recognize a few of the really obvious ones: cardinal, blue jay, red-winged blackbird, mockingbird, but this isn’t any of those.
One day I was out on the porch and heard that sweet singing, and as I watched, a bird singing that song flew to the tree in the front yard. Aha! I could actually SEE the singer. S/he looked like a normal boring brownish sparrow-type bird that had been dipped in seriously watered down red paint. Excellent! Now with an image in mind, I could hopefully solve the mystery, and you’ll be pleased to know that my tried-and-true, water-warped field guide, Birds of NorthAmerica, did not disappoint. After flipping around a bit, I became convinced that my songster was a Purple Finch. I hadn’t been fast enough or close enough to snap a picture of the actual musician in our yard, but here’s a photo I found online at the ebird website.
Male Purple Finch (Females have no red coloring)
My next task was to figure out where the heck the guy’s (or his wife’s) nest was. I assumed they had to be nesting somewhere awfully close to the house, probably out back, because the singing was so loud and lovely. In fact, I think I can let you hear a sample of it. I have a nifty app on my phone called North American Bird Sounds. It has a grid of photos of hundreds of birds listed in alphabetical order by common name, and when you click on a photo, you hear that bird’s sound! The Purple Finch song on that app is very, very close to what “my” Purple Finch sings. I haven’t been able to figure out how to put a link to that specific song in this post, but the song at this link sounds fairly similar.
I then went out back and looked for a nest somewhere near our office window. Here’s the back of our house showing our office window.
And here’s a closer shot of the window. (Feel free to ignore all the dirt and deceased insect adornments.) And you can even see my Free Indeed church bag on the old wheeled shelf in front of the office window.
So… do you see “it”?!? Can you tell why I couldn’t find a nest when I looked out that window? Look! HERE’S their nest!
And while I stood there craning my neck, I actually saw Mr. Tenor fly out of the nest! This bird is giving me such joy. I believe I’ll call him Atticus.
I haven’t yet heard the telltale “cheeping” of baby finches, so I’m hoping their family will hang around for a while and keep making me smile.
I got into the Honda this afternoon to go to the post office and take some food to a friend in Forsyth.
This was—or these were—on the rearview mirror.
I was, to put it mildly, shocked and slightly embarrassed. I had honestly never given even so much as a moment’s thought to the procreative habits of the common walkingstick (Diapheromera femorata), but this was, well, curious and rather fascinating. Such a PDA! Since it seemed a bit cruel to just brush them off, I left well enough alone and started driving, assuming they’d simply drop off or be blown away by the time I crossed the bridge.
But no. The happy(?) couple managed, with great effort, to stay attached to both the smooth mirror and each other while I zipped along at about 45 mph! I do check my mirrors frequently while driving, and each time I looked, I was duly impressed and frankly amazed by their tenacity. When I got to the post office (five miles from home) they were still on the mirror, albeit now dangling from its edge and appearing somewhat harried and rather breathless.
I went in, mailed my package, and returned to the Honda to find that our hero and heroine had somehow summoned the strength to climb back up onto the mirror proper. Simply astounding.
I then drove another four-and-a half miles to my friend’s house and parked, and yes, the dynamic duo were still there, but looking QUITE windblown indeed. I then visited with my friend who talked for a long time, and when I returned to the Honda nearly an hour later, no walkingsticks were to be found.
The animal kingdom is truly amazing and intriguing. In the immortal words of Alice (of Wonderland fame), “Curiouser and curiouser!”
I hereby resolve to become more diligent to take before and after pictures. Especially before pictures. Somebody please hold me accountable.
Last fall, my friend Tracy was preparing to sell nearly a hundred adorable tiny Wandering Jew plants. She had rooted scads of cuttings from her several very prolific hanging plants, and on the day I went over to buy some eggs the little baby plants were sunning themselves all lined up on trays out on her porch, each cute little guy sporting one or two small leaves and potted in a single serving yogurt tub. She was selling them to buy feed to support her habit—Tracy has a thing about raising birds: currently chickens (55), ducks (4), guineas, (2), and geese (2)—and when she said about the Wandering Jews, “You can’t kill them!” I was hooked and bought one for a dollar.
I tended my little Jew-Boy in his yogurt tub for a week and then transplanted him into a regular pot and set him out on the table on our porch. He did grow (two leaves, four leaves, eight leaves, etc.), and when the temps headed down into the 40s at night, I brought him in to spend the winter on our plant stand by the living room window.
I believe I’ve mentioned our long, cool spring. It was quite long and quite cool. Sometime early in May things finally started warming up, and about the same time I moved the tomatoes out, I transplanted my thriving little Wandering Jew guy into one of those nifty bottom-watering pots, and Scott was kind enough to hang him for me from the side beam of the porch ceiling, near the flag. Now every Tuesday and most Fridays I give him a good drink. He’s a real guzzler. Since we’re actually having hot (90s) weather now, he takes about a half-quart of water each time. Sometimes I just mindlessly pour the water in the fill hole, and other times I reach up and actually stick my fingers in the dirt first to make sure he has really dried and needs to be watered. Too much water can cause fungal gnats, yuck.
Last Friday when I reached up to check his soil moisture, I felt something weird, something kind of soft and kind of scratchy that didn’t feel like dirt. Hmm…? Being of short stature (think Zacchaeus), I brought out my ACME collapsible stool and climbed up for a look. WOWZA! There was a nest in my Jew-Boy’s pot! And when I gently tipped the pot to look more closely, there was an EGG in the nest!!! Oh, how very exciting! It was light brown and speckled, and I really wish I had thought to take a “before” picture of it. Sadly I did not. And because there was no bird on the nest, I even didn’t know if the mom had just made a quick run to town for Qdoba carry-out or if the egg had been abandoned weeks ago and was dead.
Well, yesterday (today is Saturday, July 4th!) I went out to water my Jew-Boy, and as I tipped the watering can’s spout into the fill hole, a bird flew up out of the planter/nest! It happened so fast that I didn’t actually see her, but she perched in the birch tree right there at the corner of the porch and set up a truly horrific chirping and squawking. She was clearly very mad or very scared or both. I felt bad about upsetting her prenatal routine, but I really did want a picture of that egg in that nest, so…
Holding my phone as high as I could reach, I managed to snap this one.
Unfortunately you can only barely tell there’s even a nest down there in that planter, and you can’t see the egg at all. = { My bad.
I was truly happy to know that Mama Bird was actively tending her nest, but I still wanted a picture of her egg. So, this afternoon I asked Scott if I could take advantage of his great height and have him take a picture for me of the egg in the nest. He acquiesced because he’s super kind that way. Cell phone in hand, he got within two feet of the hanging pot before the mama bird again flew out, complaining loudly about the disruption to her planned sitting schedule. (I can relate; I don’t care much for schedule changes either.)
Here’s the location of the hanging planter in question, right by the post on the flag side of the porch.
And now just LOOK at the picture Scott took today!
I’m so excited! There are FOUR speckled eggs in that nest!!! Mama Bird has been pretty darn busy over the past week. = ) No wonder she’s so displeased to have her rest interrupted. I still don’t know what kind of bird she is, but I think we’re going to have babies pretty soon. Hee-hee-hee! Right here, on our very own porch, between the post and the flag.
We’re used to birds nesting on our porch, but most years they build their nests up on top of the post(s) in late April or May. I don’t recall anybody setting up housekeeping on our porch in July, but then we’ve never had a hanging planter on our porch either. My hat is off to this mama bird; she clearly found a safe, snug, and nicely decorated place to start her family. We’ll leave her alone for now and let her be a stay-at-home mom.
I visited my parents in North Little Rock last week, and as is my custom, I went out Tuesday morning to walk around the block a couple times. Our pastor had texted me and asked me to call her, so I dialed her number as I walked down the driveway, noting a couple of dogs nosing around in the leaves piled at the curb a few houses up.
My pastor answered and we began our conversation as I crossed the street to the sidewalk on the far side and headed down the street. I don’t know why I always walk around the block in that downhill direction, but I always do. I had literally taken about ten steps – I wasn’t even to Rodman’s driveway – when the two aforementioned dogs came running at me, both barking fiercely. I turned and realized these dogs were serious, especially the big one. The bigger one came right at me as I screamed, “GIT!” as loudly as I could. He was snarling, and although I kept screaming, “No!” and “Go away” (with Pastor Barb still on the phone in my right hand), he bit my left forearm.
It’s strange the intuitive but decidedly unhelpful things one does when a dog locks his teeth onto one’s arm. Reflexively, I pulled and twisted to try to get away, but that only made the snarling dog clamp down harder. Pastor Barb asked, “Are you OK,” and all I could think to reply was, “Pray!” And she did. I kept hollering at the dog and trying not to cry, and a few seconds (that seemed a lot longer than that) later, he let go. Not sure what to do, I turned back toward the street, facing my parents’ house, and he came at me again. I lunged toward him and screamed, “GIT!” again, and barking, he and his companion trotted back up the middle of the street.
As I crossed the street back to my parents’ driveway, their next-door neighbor was backing down her driveway and had her window down. I called out to her,”Hey, are those your dogs?”
“No,” she replied. “They live up there [she pointed up the street and described the house a few doors up], and they do that all the time. You ought to call.”
“OK,” I thanked her, not sure what she meant.
I was shaking, but OK, and although the next day I found a deep purple bruise on my arm, the dog had not broken the skin. I was really blessed; I had on a new jacket over a long-sleeved shirt and neither of those was even torn. (Eleven days later, I still have an impressive but painless bruise, shaped like a small, oblong donut.) I retreated to my parents fenced backyard, where I finished my phone conversation and walked back and forth in the yard for a while.
Back inside and physically calmed down, I got angry. If my elderly parents had been attacked by that dog, I suspect the outcome could have been much worse. To not even be safe walking on the sidewalk in your own established residential neighborhood – where you’ve owned a home for 48 years – is just wrong! When I told them what had happened, Dad said they’d been seeing those dogs running loose for the past couple weeks. Well that did it. I was steamed and needed to take some kind of action, so I called the police and reported that I’d been attacked and bitten by a dog running loose. They referred me to animal control, so I called that number. I gave the receptionist there my story, my phone number, and my parents’ address, along with the fact that I could still see the dogs running loose. She assured me that an officer would come out and get in touch with me.
I waited all day and heard nothing. No one called back, no one came to the house, and as far as I could tell, no one did anything. And isn’t that just like government? It puts its nose where it doesn’t belong, and it doesn’t do the the things it should be doing. Grrrr. The next morning, I called back to animal control to let the receptionist know that I’d be leaving town in a few hours, and if anyone from their office wanted to meet with me, they would need to do it soon. She said she’d connect me to Officer ______ (I regret that I didn’t get his name), and after a short hold, a very respectful man came on the line and said he was the officer who had handled my report. He said that he had come out the previous day, “and we picked up the big dog, the one that attacked you. He was one really mean dog and very hard to catch. We eventually got him pinned on the front porch and then were able to use the [I can’t remember what kind of pole he said], and then he was OK and we loaded him just fine. But then we chased that little one – the one he was running with – for over an hour, but never could catch it. We issued the owner a citation for letting her dogs run loose. She said she had had to leave for work and didn’t have time to bring them in. Well…Â Anyway, we brought the dog in, and with that citation you shouldn’t have any further problems. I should have gotten back with you yesterday about it, but while we were in that neighborhood we had to go to another call on Monticello [a couple blocks from my parents’s house], and I just never got back with you. I’m glad you are OK, but if you have any other issues, call us and we’ll take care of it.”
So I felt vindicated and had to repent for my thoughts about government in general and North Little Rock government in particular. My parents’ tax dollars really are at work, and I was very satisfied with the prompt and professional way the whole situation was handled. Next time I visit, I’ll be sure to bring my heavy-duty walking stick.
A few days ago Scott and I had been talking about our mutual desire to do things together when he’s home. He really wants us to talk a lot, and that seems to be easier for me when we’re working or playing side-by-side than when we’re just looking at each other face-to-face. So we had tossed around some ideas of things we could “do” together, probably on most days right after lunch.
We had guests coming for lunch today, and while we sat on the porch waiting for them to arrive, I brought up to Scott the idea that maybe we could — in small, perhaps 30-60 minute spurts — work on the camper together. Why? Well the truth is that ever since our grand Yellowstone expedition in July 2018, the camper has been sitting in the toyport, full of junk and dirt on the inside and numerous broken components on the outside, and I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been touched in over a year.
Fast-forward to about 5:10 PM that day. I looked out front and saw that the Durango was gone (Scott must’ve driven it somewhere) and Scott’s wallet was on the dining room table (Scott surely didn’t go driving without his wallet). Looking around a bit more, I saw that the Durango was up near the shop, so I walked back there to see if Scott wanted help with anything. In fact, he did. He wanted me to direct him in backing up the Durango so he could hook up the camper.
“OK, but why?”
“So I can take it to get it fixed.”
Hmm. Now, one absolute truth about My Hero is that if he has an idea or receives some information before lunch, then before supper he will definitely take action on that idea or information. We hadn’t eaten yet…
But there was a small additional challenge in pulling out the camper: the canoe was hanging lower than the top of the camper, and it had to be raised before the camper could be moved, and there was no point trying to back up the Durango until that happened. This canoe-elevating operation involved Scott on a step-ladder, lifting one end of the canoe and while holding it up with one hand, moving the “S” hook higher up to shorten the chain. And doing this four times. My grand contribution to the effort was to stand there, hold the ladder, and tell him how strong he was and what a great job he was doing. (He is quite strong and he did a great job.)
I stood thusly in the toyport for an estimated eight minutes, during which I said at one point, “There’s a mosquito on your leg, but I don’t want to smack it lest I startle you and you fall!”
“Please don’t smack it,” he said, deep in lifting, holding, and re-positioning, and grunting slightly.
Once the canoe was raised and fairly level, he climbed down, surveyed his handiwork, commented that “there sure are a lot of mosquitoes out here,” decided we’d done enough for the time being, said he’d take the camper tomorrow, and moved the Durango back down to its usual spot on the driveway.
I’d been doing the smack and slap dance out there, and back inside, I found my arms, hands, fingers, and even knuckles covered with mosquito bites. In those eight minutes, I’d been bitten at least 17 times. Scott twice. Go figure.
Today I happened to see a piece on the news about seven people in – I think? – the eastern U.S. dying of some mysterious mosquito-borne virus, and the doctor who was being interviewed advised people to eliminate all standing water (remember Dr. William Gorgas in the Panama Canal zone?), use a DEET insect repellent, and wear long pants and long sleeves if they had to be outdoors in an area with a known mosquito population, especially around dawn or dusk.
Well! Maybe it’s common knowledge that mosquitoes are hungriest for supper about the same time as humans, but I must be uncommon. In any case, I am now officially avoiding the toyport and environs in early evening. I’d much rather fix our supper than be someone else’s supper!
Walnuts on My Windshield 