Who is eating the house now?

After a wet and humid summer, it is time to clean the house. Three kinds of ants invaded the house and had to be pushed out. Now it is somewhat drier and algae and mildew have to be scrubbed off the painted siding with oxygen bleach and a soft brush. It's a slow process.

The Mermaid, part 2

It's official, as my sister in law Terry would say... the murderous Mermaid rosebush is gone. It took two days and two of us to cut it down from the trellis during Thanksgiving week. I am thankful for the Mermaid, because it grew and thrived in a barren place in the back yard and helped to create a new garden room, in sand and shade, but eventually it turned into a Super Dominator. It tore holes and left fragments of thorn in Daisy's ears.

The Mermaid

Invasive vines took a back seat to another project this morning--the vanquishing of the Mermaid climbing rose which lives on a trellis in the back yard. Daisy the cat cannot learn not to jump into it in pursuit of songbirds, and so the Mermaid has come down. It was vigorous and the flowers were beautiful, but it had become like a wall of thorns in a fairytale.

"Root and boot"

You must destroy it "root and boot," Poirot was saying in an episode we watched recently. Captain Hastings gently reminded him that the phrase is "root and branch." Either way you say it, if you get the root you have it defeated.

I have been pulling vines out of my garden beds for weeks now. For years I pulled them off and cut them to free the tops of the camellias, and I pushed them aside from the daylilies, and that had to be enough. It was all I could manage with obligations to work and family. But now I am determined. Every weekend is devoted to pulling up the roots. Five piles and containers go on the curb every Sunday night and are carried away Monday morning. It is more than the compost pile can handle. Until yesterday I did not know why or how I had finally found the time and the strength to see it through. I certainly had time before, but I chose to use it or fritter it way on other things. Yesterday it struck me. I am pulling up rhabdomyosarcoma by the roots. It is a revenge on a different but related astral plane. My back hurts, my shoulders hurt. I can't wait to get out there again.

Sunday devotions

I performed my devotions in the garden today. I don't know how God views my choice of pulling up native vines by the roots as part of my devotions. Restoring order to the garden is important to me. There is a place for jungle, and a place for garden. Vines growing up through camellias is not okay. Vines growing in the woods with berries for the birds is terrific.

Ginger and friends, part 2, plus the fishing report, part 4

The gingers are settling into their new beds at school. The weather has cooled but we are still getting rain, so they are just working on getting their roots established. They would not be putting out leaves right now anyway.

Where the gingers were, I planted -- from my own yard, some Rosie Meyer daylilies I had potted from proliferations, two Malaysian Monarch daylilies that were in too much shade, some Big Blue liriope to make a border -- and from the local nursery I frequent, native butterfly weed, yellow coneflowers, and blue salvia.

So now there is a small border with no invasive vines. Where I missed pulling a few roots, I can see leaves coming out, and as today is a good day to pull weeds, according to the almanac, I will pull those and move on to clearing another section.

My neighbor who is a master gardener is clearing invasives out of her yard, and just as I saw invasives growing under the fence from the yard before she moved in, now she sees invasives growing back under the fence on her side. I told her I will clear a little border along the fence during the winter, but right now I have to work on the front yard first.

Meanwhile, we have been kayaking several times recently and sailing for the first time since the big storm during the summer. Everything went smoothly with the sail. It was a beautiful fall day with a little breeze last weekend, and we took our sister-in-law with us. She was a great crew member and she steered several times, overcoming her fear of water after just a few minutes of getting used to the movement of our little boat. The West Wight Potter is known for its stability in all kinds of conditions, so it was a good experience for her. I caught just a couple of undersize fish, a trout and a red drum. It is much easier to fish out of the kayak, due to positioning the boat and avoiding the shrouds and sails.

The two weeks before our sail, I had great success out of the kayak. We have a new spot we like at the turn of the tide, where fish are hunting in the shallows around a big cut that goes around one of the barrier islands. In fact, I did so well that the guys are no longer helping me with releasing my fish.

Ginger and friends

The curcuma gingers are about to be liberated from the sun. I spent the weekend clearing the vines from around them. Tomorrow and Thursday I will trim them back and dig the rhizomes and store them in a light wrapper in a dark place for transport to their new shadier homes. Some of them are going to my school for Beautification Day this weekend and some are going to my colleague who is a master gardener.

The process of clearing the vines has been different this time. Last summer and the summer before, I was clearing the other side of the yard, where the vines were wild grapevine, Virginia creeper, and Carolina jessamine. On the side where the gingers have been growing in the shade of the lost linden oak are the Singapore skunk vine, Virginia creeper, wild clematis, and a pea-like vine. First I mowed around the gingers with the lawn mower on its lowest setting. Then I used the Lawn Shark tool to cut a section around each clump of ginger. With a three pronged cultivator, I pulled off the surface growth of vines left by the lawn mower, and then the root pulling began in earnest. As each root junction came up, I felt I really could take back my little piece of garden from the jungle.

Mid September

Mid September is neither summer nor fall. A couple of mornings about a week ago, we felt a drop in the temperature, but the trend did not continue.

The summer has been so wet that all the plants are thriving. The sandy bed out front has two saw palmettos that are now looking well established. Early in the spring I seeded the bed with coontie seeds, layered live oak leaves on top, and marked the coontie nurseries with small bamboo stakes. A neighbor passed by and looked at me quizzically just as I was sticking the bamboo stakes in the bed. I explained that I was planting natives, and in about ten years this would look like something. Then the oak tree fell right across that bed and all the way to the rose of Sharon and Rosie Meyer daylilies on the other side. The tree was taken down while I was out of town, so when I returned I looked at the wreckage and discovered a wonderful thing-- the coonties were beginning to sprout. Now there are a couple of dozen coontie seedlings scattered around the bed.

The surge of monarch activity has subsided and the milkweed has put out new leaves. I just saw a newly hatched monarch fluttering around the front flower bed milkweed.

On the side of the yard where the passion flower vines grow up through the sasanqua camellias, this morning there were probably thirty or forty zebra longwing butterflies hovering around the vines.

Citrus trees and camellias have doubled in size. The branches of the citrus trees are loaded with tangerines and beginning to sag under the weight. And finally, after two weeks of rain, today there is a dry day to mow and clean up a little around the garden. The driveway, for example, has that covering of pine needles that drop at this time of year. It looks like a path through the forest instead of a driveway. With a little raking, I'll have some mulch to add here and there.

Today's meditation is from Hamlet, "how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world." While it is true that some human affairs get me down, I never feel that the world is weary and stale when I look around the garden, listening to the hummingbirds chatter as they fly up and seeing the new leaves on the holly tree. Hamlet might have felt better if he had taken time to pull the weeds he saw in his garden, not just use them as metaphors all the time. Maybe he could have gone kayaking instead of moping around the castle. However, if he hadn't been talking to Horatio instead of going for a walk in the woods, he would never have realized that "there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow," and I take comfort in that thought every day.

The holly girl

The East Palatka Holly settled into her new ground quickly. She has put out new leaves continually and, beginning a week ago, new flowers. She already had berries. I did not fertilize her, just added a large quantity of composted live oak droppings to the planting hole. I think the acidity of her new ground may be appealing to her more than the nursery soil mix, however excellent, that was in her liner.

Meanwhile, the shade-loving plants that had lived in the shadow of the linden oak are either rejoicing or suffering and shrinking in the hours of sunlight they are receiving now. A row of curcuma gingers are going to be dug up and given away to shadier homes. That will make room for butterfly plants on that side of the garden.

Tree One

Today we planted an East Palatka Holly near the place where the linden oak grew. We could only find one in all the nurseries around town that had a central leader and no pruning to make it bushy. It will be a better tree down through the years than the bushy ones we saw at all the other nurseries. In the short run, the bushy ones look better and ours looks thin and scrawny. But in the long run, those other trees will have forgotten how to grow up and ours will be a straight arrow to the moon. The single purpose of the growing pattern of our tree may look strange now, but later it will make perfect sense.

East Palatka Holly

We have studied the situation and decided to plant East Palatka Holly trees to replace the linden oak that fell July 3. These native hollies will take an attractive conical shape. They will be shelter and food for birds all year round. Positioned in the front of the yard, they will provide a wind break between the street and the rest of the yard where other plantings already give food for birds and butterflies. This wind break will be important because the wind usually comes from the north, up the hill from the T intersection, and there is not as much wind break there as there used to be before our neighbors to the north severely pruned back their impenetrable hedge and destroyed the opportunistic vines that were weighing it down.

I have always wanted to plant East Palatka Hollies but didn't have a place for them until now. These hollies will be planted in honor of my brother, who got a lot of pleasure out of watching birds from his window in Knoxville these past few months. His favorites were the woodpeckers-- redbellied and hairy-- and the goldfinches and hummingbirds when they came. The loss of the linden oak has left a big swath of open space with no canopy. I was happy with the linden oak there, except when it dropped huge branches, and I did not want it gone. I grieved for it after it was taken down. It has taken weeks for me to be used to the idea that something else can grow there in the future. While the hollies are growing, there will be time to plant butterfly and hummingbird plants near them for a few years until they fill in. It feels good to think about the future as well as the past.

Monarchs

The monarchs are back. I have had more caterpillars on my milkweed already this year than I have had in the past five years put together. I feel so encouraged. This morning I planted four more milkweed plants that I bought yesterday for them, because the dozen who were still munching away looked like they would need a few more leaves to reach full size for making cocoons. The milkweed plants that were reduced to sticks two weeks ago are starting to put out new leaves, so by the time they devour the new plants, the established plants will have more to give again. Even though I needed to start driving this morning, with a long road trip ahead of me, I felt that the half hour it would take to plant the milkweed would not make that much difference. When I bought the milkweed I thought I would be leaving Sunday, but it turned out I needed to leave sooner, and planting the milkweed was an affirmation I needed to act on.

The hole

Somewhere in here is a metaphor that could be useful to me right now, if I could just figure it out. The felling of the linden oak has brought change to the front yard. Increased sunlight, a huge pile of stump shavings, the squashed Rose of Sharon, and several holes, the largest of them full of water.

Sage observations from my husband and a neighbor turned in the direction of, "It's been raining a lot lately." The holes are indentations made by the tree's points of impact as it took a controlled fall to the ground, guided by the arborist and his crew. At first I feared a water pipe had been damaged, but a helpful worker at the utilities department told me what to look for on the water meter. If the triangle is moving and no water is being drawn in the house, you have a leak. The triangle was not moving. Another possibility is that the septic tank drain field is wacky, which we suspected already.

This morning I drained the hole and filled it with sand. I will keep an eye on the hole, and I will be on the lookout for that metaphor.

The Rose of Sharon

Where the linden oak fell across the front yard lay the only part of the front flower bed that I had succeeded in keeping clear from vines. I cleared it during the first two weeks of summer last June, pulling grapevine, virginia creeper, and carolina jessamine. It was the part of the bed closest to the street. I liberated Rosie Meyer daylilies that I had planted and two bushes that were there when we moved in ten years ago--a yellow tropical whose name I can't remember at the moment, and a white Rose of Sharon hibiscus. 

My mother called them altheas and they were one of her favorite plants in the garden. They sprouted readily and were easy to transplant. She created a hedge from them on the east side of the house on Coventry Drive in Nashville. Hers were lavender with a magenta center.

My Rose of Sharon is pure white. After being freed from the vines and getting a good load of mulch last summer, it really took off. This summer it was full and tall and covered with blooms. Around its drip line, little althea seedlings had sprouted. I offered them to one of my colleagues who admired the bush, but before she gathered them the oak tree branch fell.

The topmost branches of the fallen part of the tree were on top of the althea and Rosie Meyers. On July 4, I was able to cut what was on top of the daylilies and put the brush out at the street for the yard waste collection the following Monday. The Rosie Meyers were less squashed than the hibiscus. It was completely mashed down. I had to wait for the arborist and his crew to uncover it while I was out of town. When I came back, I saw that they had to cut it all the way back to the ground. Only two small branches growing along the ground remained. Already it has put out new leaves, and the little seedlings are still intact. It will be years before it is seven feet tall again, but I am hopeful that it may recover.

The linden tree

For the first time since the linden tree was taken down, I mowed the grass. I reflected that when a big tree comes down, so much is lost--the shade from the tree canopy, the branches that held birds' nests, the leaves that fell in the spring, the companionship of the tree trunk as I worked in the garden, the money to pay the arborist and his crew, and the little sprout of native yaupon that is now buried under a pile of stump grindings. What is gained is sunlight and room to plant more trees. Now the fringe tree can grow upright instead of reaching out from under the shade of the linden oak.

The linden tree stood at the front of the yard. The first time we engaged our arborist, he surprised us by saying that the laurel cherry by the living room was fine. It was the sweet gum by the front door that needed to come down. It had a rotten fork, as sweet gums are prone to have. He gave the live oak by the driveway a clean bill of health, but the linden oak, he said, was at its prime. That was ten years ago. During those years, it dropped large branches three or four times, until all that was left two weeks ago was the main trunk and a large area of rot where the other branches had come off. We had concerns about safety.

There remain some clean up chores to do. The pile of stump grindings is composting now, and later I will rake it up and use it as mulch. Several holes in the grass show where pieces of the tree fell as they dismantled it. I'll fill them with sand from the endless supply that builds up in the culvert so the grass can grow back. And most importantly, I will study the new light patterns and think of what to plant in the new area that has been created, like a room added onto the house.

My brother's bird feeding station

A few months ago, my brother put up a bird feeding station in front of his house. He asked me for help identifying birds and sent pictures of woodpeckers. He really did quite well setting up his pole system and choosing which food to put out for the birds. I had a chance to see it for myself last week. As he's nine hours north of where I live, he has birds that I don't get even during the winter, like towhees. But it's not just his location. He has birds coming to his feeders that don't come to mine, even though I see them in the yard. Nuthatches come to his seed feeder and mockingbirds come to his suet. His special joy is the hairy woodpeckers and redbellied woodpeckers. From alert observation, he has become adept at telling apart the adults and fledgelings. He rests on the couch near the big picture window that looks out on the feeders, working away at a design for a new Dungeons and Dragons world and its inhabitants and conflicts, now and then looking up to grin when a hairy woodpecker juvenile comes for a bite of suet.

Sticks

When I left town a week ago, the flower beds were full of tropical milkweed. I didn't see any eggs or caterpillars. There must have been quite a hatching while I was gone because only sticks are left now. Yesterday I found one large monarch caterpillar on a tomato leaf and one small one on a milkweed stalk. I had an appointment and errands to run near the nursery, so I picked up four more milkweed plants.

I had already decided it was time to remove the tomatoes from the flower bed. They were splitting because of the abundant rain and it's the hot time of summer when they struggled anyway. This morning I found more caterpillars on the tomato plants. I moved five caterpillars onto the milkweed and they began snacking immediately. I wondered to discover that tomato was their choice of food in a pinch, because tomatoes are part of the nightshade family and milkweed is poisonous to animals also. Pretty smart caterpillars.

Now that the monarchs are coming back to my garden, I have been more aggressive with the swamp milkweed beetles. They moved in a few years ago when the monarch population dropped precipitously. I have seen only a couple at a time this year. The beetles were eating the leaves that I wanted to save for the monarchs.

At the same time, the fritillary and longwing zebras and munching away on the passionflower vines. I can see where the swallowtails have been on the parsley, and saw one on the fennel three weeks ago, and now it is getting to be the late summer when they will be more plentiful.

Ten years ago when I was recovering from surgery, the garden was like a perpetual motion machine of butterflies. I spent a lot of time looking out the window. It was better than a movie. Now, with hummingbirds also zipping around the justicias, shrimp plant, salvia, pentas, abelia, and cleome, the garden is busy again.

The jungle

Pull every pretty vine that tries to take root in your flower beds. Don't admire the leaves and wonder what the flowers will look like. Next thing you know, you'll look around and say to yourself, oh, there's a lyonia under there.

It's going to be a slow road back, but I will reclaim my garden and I will get back in shape. Next month, July 2014, will be the tenth anniversary of my surgery, and I will turn 55 in September.

Summer with Frida

Summer felt like it started in earnest on Tuesday, when Bob went back to work. The vacation was wonderful, and now summer begins. I like to have something to show for my summer days, so yesterday I cleaned the accumulated leaves off the roof. While I have been active in the garden and around the house, and running all the usual errands to pick up groceries and cat food, my new pleasure is reading with Frida in the living room.

Frida stopped coming upstairs to sleep with us about two years ago. We think it was a combination of Nicky being territorial and arthritis pain in Frida's joints. Her heart is not strong, either, so climbing the chairs is a chore. She sleeps in the living room during the day and the TV room at night, snuggling in Bob's lap until he goes to bed. Frida found us in 1995. She is 19 years old. She has outlived three younger cats-- Jeoffrey, Lily, and Rose.

It was last summer that I got up in the night to give Frida the drops that saved her eye from a monster corneal ulcer. She was so happy to have company at night that the third hour when the alarm went off, instead of letting me putter around in the kitchen doing things waiting for 5 minutes between drops, she purred loudly and let me know she wanted to spend those 5 minutes sitting in my lap. That's how we passed the rest of the night doses, just sitting together watching the timer tick off the seconds.

This summer I am really in the mood to read the books I have had lined up on the shelf, books I got from Parnassus Books in Nashville. I started the summer with a gift from a student, The Fault in Our Stars. I was enjoying it but didn't feel like reading it at the hotel last week, so instead I started Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore. I loved it from the first sentence, finished it yesterday, happily enjoying all the homage to Borges, and am now a big fan of Robin Sloan. So today I turned back to The Fault in Our Stars and am once again enjoying it. Both books have a fresh funny style that is perfect for summer, although the book about young love is not as lighthearted as the book about friendship.

The best part, though, is reading in the living room, in a comfortable chair with summer light coming in the windows all around, the green of the garden cooling the view, with Frida happily curled up on her heating pad, or her Purr Pad, or standing or sitting in my lap.

The fishing report, part 3

One of the most unusual things we saw on Tuesday was a sea turtle that appeared to have two heads. It was rolling around on the surface, waving flippers in the air. After watching for a few minutes, I realized it was not in distress and was in fact two turtles frolicking together.

Back at home, a few days later, I was walking to the mailbox when something fell from the sky into the grass near the front flowerbed. Two monarchs, firmly attached.

Must be the time of year.

The fishing report, part 2

It is so much harder to describe an ordinary day. The first two days of our long awaited week of overnights in Cedar Keys were postcard picture perfect. We motored out to our favorite spots. We fished. We caught fish or not. The mooring we chose was just the right distance or not. We looked around uncovered at the morning and then covered up for the afternoon sun. We paused and gazed.

To write about an extraordinary day is so much easier. On Wednesday, we had read the oracles and understood the risks. "Scattered thunderstorms." We've been there. It's not so bad. But when we got out there, the current would not let us go, we could not tack, and so we made choices. We went behind Atsena Otie toward Snake Key and found ourselves under a black anvil cloud. It delayed and delayed and delayed and then it was right there. We waited ten minutes too long to take down the sails. Then we waited twenty minutes too long to abort our run to safe harbor at Snake. Then we were fighting the wind rain was driving horizontally from right to left the boat was heeling over then turning into the wind then heeling I was tying the mainsail I was holding the jib I was waiting for the captain to tell me to drop anchor and bring the bow into the wind. Mostly I later realize I was grinding my right lower ribcage into the top of the cabin and holding on for dear life. When the worst was past I said to the captain, should we drop anchor? He agreed, and even though the anchor did not hold fast in the wind, and we saw that our position shifted, I knew we were safer and going to make it when we pointed into the wind.

The captain kept a calm head throughout the storm. He was determined to make it back to shore under our own power. The jib halyard had got loose during the storm and when he started up the motor he found it wrapped around the prop. He realized the jib halyard had come loose and he was not going to budge without reattaching it to the mast. That meant the mast had to come down.

We demasted. The captain relined the jib halyard. We raised the mast. My part was very small. I don't have the strength to be much in the way of a crew after nine months of teaching English. But fortunately I have an understanding captain who is forgiving of my shortcomings.

Meanwhile I have been watching the Cornell redtail hawk nest and keeping an eye on the NYU hawk nest remotely. The fledgelings faced storms, captures, and releases. I don't wish to minimize the severity of our near gale experience. I can see it in my mind's eye. It is green sky and green sea and green island appearing and disappearing and reappearing. The wind is pushing the rain and the waves horizontally. An hour later when we were motoring toward Grassy Key, it was hard to believe it was the same place.

The fishing report, part 1

Monday and Tuesday were the best fishing days of the week, by the almanac and by the actual fishing too. Each day we motored out to our favorite spots, fished around the turns of the high tide, and then sailed back to the dock. Bob caught two legal trout Monday and I caught three catfish. Tuesday I caught a small red drum and two legal red drum. Bob was broken off by a black drum just as it got up to the boat.

Because of the full moon coming up on Friday, the neap tides were super low. We planned around the low tide, launching after the tide had come in for an hour or two, and returning an hour or two before low tide, so our time on the water was less than usual. It was a challenge returning to the dock for everyone. We were grateful for the Potter 15's shallow draft and even paddled under the bridge to the inshore ramp on Monday. The low tide was in the morning, too early for us to get out before it, so we were on the water during the hottest part of the day. Still, it was in between spring mild and summer heat, and clouds came by the help now and then.

The weather was beautiful and the wind was fine for sailing. Wednesday was another story.

Mama Wood Duck

This afternoon of the three day weekend beginning, there was an eerie lack of the usual heavy traffic. I ran several errands to pick up things we might need by the next time I leave the perimeter, and suddenly, on my next to last stop, I saw a movement on the sidewalk by the side of the road. A female wood duck, unmistakeable, was heading out onto the main road, and three chicks were following her. I stopped the car at the same moment that she decided not to go into the road. I put on my flashers and hopped out of the car. She turned back toward the woods. I ran into the road. Her ducklings wavered and then followed their mother, just a half second before they decided to flee from my entreaties to go back into the woods with their mother. As they disappeared into the brush, I heard honking... a black Mercedes sedan in a hurry to get home, with nine other cars behind her going back to their houses.

Yachtageddon

The clean up continues. The seat cushions that go on the benches in the cockpit filled up with water during the rainstorm. They are still sopping wet inside, draining but not drying out. Extreme measures are called for to prevent mold. I'm going to take out the foam and rinse it and let it dry, then turn the covers inside out and rinse and dry them too.

The boat is the cleanest it has ever been, and the cushions deserve to be rescued too.

Shipocalypse

We went sailing on Saturday with friends on board. They were a good crew. Winds at launch were 18 gusting to 20 knots and we had an exciting ride to North Key with the main sail reefed. Because the wind was kicking up, the fish were down and so were the turtles. After lunch we sailed around to Gomez Key and the wind died down and the fishing began. At Gomez Key there were a couple of dozen oystercatchers flying around the island calling, apparently disturbed by boaters landing on the other side of the island. Usually oystercatchers are standing and not talking much, but these had a lot to say.

We sailed back to the other side of North Key and the fishing turned into catching. We were hove to and the current carried us perfectly and slowly past the oyster bars and grass where the fish were. Bob caught two trout on his new reel, one of them a fine large fellow with rose and gold tints on his sides. We could see a raccoon making his circuit of the shoreline of North Key, looking for snacks. A dolphin came to play at the bow of the boat and finally a really large green turtle surfaced near us. Then we began sailing again, and looking at the time we realized it had passed quite pleasantly and quickly and it was time to head back to the dock. Thanks to Bob's skillful maneuvering, we anchored next to the beach by the bridge and took down the sails and mast.

Our friends helped us trailer the boat and headed home, while we cleaned ourselves up reasonably well at the public shower, donned on our Hawaiian threads, and headed to dinner at the Island Hotel restaurant. It was our anniversary dinner, with the celebration to be continued the next day with an anniversary brunch on Mother's Day. All was proceeding well. We had engaged our pet sitter to feed the cats dinner at a decent time, and we arrived home at 10pm pretty much on the dot of when we expected to be there.

The next morning we gave the boat a thorough cleaning, hoisting the sails and removing all the cushions from the cabin for cleaning. They were wet and sandy, more than is usual, partly because of our sandy friends and partly because of the choppy waters kicked up by the wind. We backed the sailboat to the sunny part of the driveway that is out from under the oak trees, and that is when Shipocalypse began. We were cleaning up for brunch when we heard thunder in the distance. It was raining already when we left for lunch, thinking it was just popcorn rain that would blow by.

When we returned home, the skies were dark and the rain was coming down in sheets. It was windy, but the sails were just blowing back and forth a little. The sun never really came out and so we pulled everything down and brought it inside to dry, hanging the mainsail on a ladder and the jib on the stair railing. It was a slippery affair taking down the sails and mast on a wet boat, but we managed with only minor injuries. We were both stiff and sore and still tired from the athletic business of sailing in 18-20 knots the day before.

Seeing the popcorn rain turn into a major downpour, I catastrophized about Shipocalypse to lighten the mood. The mast is a lightning rod, Bob told me. What's the worst that can happen while are at brunch, I asked, lightning will strike the mast and the boat will explode and burn in the driveway? The wind will knock the boat over and break the neighbor's fence? Hmm... Shipocalypse!

Things are dry now and the best part is our enthusiasm for sailing is undampened. Plus, the cats had fun chasing each other around the ladder under the sail. We are already planning for a vacation together in a few weeks, and we are thinking the sailboat may figure prominently.

bird song and a lost tongue

The four note bird is a Carolina chickadee. I was pretty sure it was. The pitch and tone are the same as the call I am familiar with. What had me wondering was that it was that the notes were in a different order and the song was always coming from high in a tree. When I hear the call I already knew, they are always in the bushes and low tree branches around the house. I finally got out the old Dover 33rpm birdsong recording and found it right away.

Last night I had an elaborate dream that may have resulted from reading the T magazine on minimalism in interior design from a couple of weeks ago. I was in a cozy corner of the lobby of a nice hotel with a couple of other women who clearly knew things about style. I was wearing a short-sleeved blue velvet dress. I was feeling pretty good and we were chatting pleasantly. All of a sudden something started coming up from inside me and spilling over into my lap, about the thickness of custard and the bright green color of matcha tea. My lap filled up and then the flow stopped and out came a small pink object, a ball of flesh, about the size and shape of a fist. It was not my heart. As I thought about the dream today I came to the conclusion that it was my tongue. I can't remember talking after that happened, but I remember trying to clean myself up and having little success.

Later in the dream I was walking around town with a stack of boxy white porcelain serving dishes with little dents and knobs all over them, and that was really awkward. I had to shift them around and put them down any time I needed to do something with my hands. But everywhere I went, people said, "Oh, (name of the designer), nice." That episode of the dream trailed off into something else, as is often the case, before I reached wherever I was going with the dishes. Perhaps the object was just to carry them around, like a designer handbag, but it felt more like I was trying to accomplish something else and had to take them with me. This dream deserves more thought, perhaps when I get around to thinking more about the lighthouse dream.

and then there was one

Today when I looked up at the pileated woodpecker nest, there was only one head sticking out. One of the nestlings was much larger and I think she may have fledged. Even if the eggs hatched just a few days apart, the older hatchling gets bigger very fast.

One of the parents was feeding the remaining nestling. The other is probably watching over the one who fledged. I would take pictures but it would just be a pine tree with a distant hole in it. I don't have the fancy zoom lens needed for that shot.

Red, white, and black

It was a quiet Sunday morning, except for Frida's singing-- watching the Cornell red-tailed hawk cam and reading the New York Times. After lunch I went out to pull some poison ivy in three places where we walk. Back by the compost bin there is a dead pine tree. I heard the most amazing noises coming from it. I looked up and saw pileated woodpecker nestlings sticking their heads out of a hole in the tree. One of the parents was feeding them. I had not noticed the hole at all before, and I spend a lot of time looking up at that tree to see how its crumbling down is coming along. What a sight they were. I'll be watching for them now. They look big enough to fledge soon.

Blue and Red

Yesterday Bob came home early. The time of day is such that we had light at the end of the day as we sat on the porch facing west with salad. I looked up and there on one of the feeder trays was the Indigo Bunting with his ivory beak, eating our millet. A few minutes later on the other feeding station was the Rose Breasted Grosbeak male having a bedtime snack.

Seeing an Indigo Bunting carries me forward for several years.

A Quiet Easter

Except for birdsong, it's a quiet Easter here. Yesterday we had some migrating visitors at the birdfeeders. Two female rose-breasted grosbeaks faced down the cardinals for a seed snack. We have also had the catbird and brown thrasher coming more often than usual. A few goldfinches are still here.

I still have not identified the bird with the four note song. When I leave for work, I keep my window rolled down as I drive to the main road, listening to the birds start the day.

I lied when I spoke philosophically about not being able to see Bobby and Rosie on their nest with their two hatchlings, Orla and Silver. I miss the intimate view of their tender parenting, I miss the view of Washington Square Park beyond the nest, and I miss the little community of nest watchers. It was not the most sophisticated nest cam, but it was my first and only nest cam experience for three years. On a day like today I could see people walking around the fountain. On a stormy day I could see the trees moving with the wind. At night I could see car headlights moving past the arch on the other side of the park. I imagined what it was like for the eyasses, watching their parents fly off the ledge, knowing someday they would make the jump to the distant and unknown trees.

Now I am getting to know Ezra and Big Red at Cornell. I'm grateful there is another place to watch a red-tailed hawk nest.

Easter is a time of renewal. I was baptized on Easter many years ago. It was snowing in Nashville that day, just a small flurry in the morning. New Year's Eve is the time when most people make their resolutions to live a better life, but for me it is at Easter that I am filled with hope that I can improve myself.

Hatchlings

Tonight after Friday night chores I tuned in to find that Bobby and Rosie have a hatch. I feel the same way about seeing that hatch that I feel about visiting a wildlife refuge in Alaska. It can proceed without me.

Meanwhile I tune in at night to watch Big Red sitting on her eggs at Cornell. She just got up to roll and fluff them. Then she settled back down on them and the night goes on quietly.

Rose, Rosie, and Big Red

Get ready for the threes. Three days from now will be April 13, two months since we lost Rosie our cat who was with us since 1998, the year we lost our mother.

It is gusting to 30 knots in Ithaca, NY tonight, and Big Red is on the nest. If Big Red had a fist to shake at the wind, she was shaking it a few minutes ago. She ruffled up and glared at the elements and turned her three eggs and settled back down on them.

For three years I have watched Bobby's nest on the ledge of the Bobst Library at New York University. The New York Times began the nest cam and President Sexton continued the cam for the next two years. This year, however, we are without a nest cam and dependent on hawk watchers from Washington Square Park for news and images of the nest. They tell us that Rosie's eggs will pip in the next couple of weeks. I feel the same way I used to feel when relying on letters from England to the United States for news back in the 60's and 70's, when we had no easy telephone communication. So far away and so long to hear.

Meanwhile, of necessity, I have become a Cornell hawk cam watcher. In the quiet of the night, I see Big Red's back feathers rise and fall as she breathes and broods. I am grateful for the meditation practice, to be able to watch a hawk sleeping on her eggs.

Fresh as a Daisy

Daisy is not fresh. She rolls in the litter box every day. This afternoon I smelled poop and looked high and low, thinking Frida had had another accident. An hour later I noticed that Daisy had somehow soiled her pantaloons and had to get some help with her grooming from a wet washcloth. When they told me at the clinic that she had been found on a dirt road with her sister and six nieces and nephews, I thought it was just a colorful back story and a credit to her survival skills, but it goes deeper as it turns out. It's a revelation of her character in more ways than one.

When you adopt your first kitten, there is an unspoken rule that no one talks about hairballs. I started the day cleaning Frida's thrown up breakfast, after work progressed to Daisy's pantaloons, and now that I've been on a walk Nicky is hacking all over the house trying to get something up. It's just going to be one of those clean up days from start to finish, and the trade off is that we have great cats most of the time.

Tooth and thorn

Last night around 10pm Frida's remaining upper canine fell out. She had just had a bedtime snack and her heart pill and started licking the roof of her mouth vigorously. Bob looked closer and saw blood. After a visit to the doctor, she has pain meds and antibiotics to help with any infection of what's left of the root, which isn't much.

Just a few minutes ago, as we were transitioning from finishing lunch to finishing the income tax return, Daisy came in from the garden with an enormous rose thorn impaled in her ear. She has had odd bumps on her ears from time to time, and I witnessed her last year jumping up into the rose trellis to chase birds. No further empirical evidence is needed at this point.

Written by Bob after watching the races in Daytona on Saturday

Last Saturday was the 73rd running of the Daytona 200 since the race began on the beach in 1937 and was won on (you guessed it) an Indian.  Saturday's race was one of firsts and lasts.  It was likely the last 200 for the SuperSport class.  After the 2004 race Formula Xtreme replaced the SuperBike class.  At that time motorcycle technology had outpaced tire technology.  The big liter bikes were going too fast for the tires and the track, resulting in too many crashes.  The new class was a confusing mix of 600cc in-line fours from the Japanese manufacturers and an assorment of twins and triples of various displacements.  This enabled marques such as Ducati, BMW, Buell, and Triumph to compete---sort of.

 

In 2009 the Formula Xtreme class was replaced by the SuperSport class, the class that raced the 200 Saturday.  The race was won by Danny Eslick on his 675cc Triumph triple.  The street version of the bike is named the Daytona.  You may recall the original Triumph Daytona from the sixties.  It was the first win for Triumph since Gary Nixon won the 200 on his factory machine in 1967.  In 2015 the SuperBike class will return to the Daytona 200.  The word is that tire technology has caught up with liter-bike speed.  Unless Triumph comes up with a bike that can compete with the big Japanese in-line fours it will be the last win for Triumph at Daytona.

 

Eslick will have the honor of being the last SuperSport rider to win the 200.  Despite winning the class championship twice and winning the pole-sitter's Rolex for the second time this week, Saturday's race was his first 200 win.  Eslick is, as the saying goes, colorful.  In a happy combination of events those watching the race world-wide got to see a close-up of Eslick flipping off another rider.  I'm pretty sure that's a first.  The rider fully deserved the gesture.  As Eslick was lapping the slower rider the rider decided it would be cool to race Eslick.  Very unsportsmanlike.  As he made the the pass Eslick reached back and gave the rider the famed salute.

 

Such footage would probably never make it onto national television.  We got to see it because the race was live-streamed on the internet at FansChoice.tv, another first.  I was suprised that I could find none of the Bike Week races on TV.  Now I know why.  Apparently from now on that is the way the races will be broadcast.  The footage was great so it's fine with me if we've seen the last of live motorcycle racing broadcast on television.

 

Meanwhile the Factory Wars tradition begun by Indian and Harley-Davidson back in the day continues in the SuperBike class.  Today's Factory Wars are between Suzuki and Yamaha.  For years I've been tired of watching the Almighty Suzuki GXR (affectionately known as The Gixxer) win race after race.  I was happy to see a Yamaha win Saturday's SuperBike race. 

 

My current ride is a Yamaha.  I've always been found of the brand.  Amongst other things they have a penchant for making nice knock-offs of classic Brit bikes.  Take their 650 vertical twin of the seventies.  It was like a Triumph that ran.  It was also the bike that Robert Persig rode when he wrote "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".  This year Yamaha's big thumper, the SR 400, returns to the states.  It clearly pays homage to the famed BSA Gold Star.  No electric leg for the SR.  It's strictly kick-start.  Can't wait!

First day of spring

I wore a special outfit for the first day of spring and the last day for the seniors before spring break. Teal tights by Hue, brown Cole Haan fisherman sandals, a Boden skirt of charcoal grey with tawny polka dots, an LL Bean beige and cream striped sailor shirt, and topping it off (of course) an Adrienne Vittadini scarf of brown, black, burgundy, and teal with a pattern that looks a detail from a painting by Gustav Klimt. Oh yes, and concentric round-cornered square hammered brass earrings by Ann Dick. Now if that isn't a fashion mish mash I don't know what else to add. A spritz of Shalimar?

I felt especially decked out and festive. (To paraphrase Lady Jones in Beloved: She looked like a chippy, but it was no mistaking she was a teacher.) This marks the third day that I have worn Real Shoes to work this year (instead of Birkies). It was fun.

Passing the torch

All along Rose was teaching, and I thought she was just establishing her dominance over the new cats. My husband says she was instructing them in How to Keep the Humans from Being Bored. Now Nick scatters bits of food around his plate, whereas before he was a tidy eater. Now Daisy is the one who sits at the top of the stairs to see me off when I leave for work in the morning.

Frida hasn't changed. She has always gone her own way independent of the other cats. There was never any need for more cats after she came to live with us, she has told us time and again.

Time and gears

It turns out that time's winged chariot is a shaft drive. Last weekend I heard it at my back, and Bob asked me, does it sound like my FJR? Well, it does.

Symmetry

Rose passed on yesterday morning. We found her when we came down for breakfast, lying conscious but in seizure. With Bob's help, I wrapped her in a towel, skipped breakfast, threw my gear into the car, and was knocking on the door of our vet's clinic ten minutes before they opened at 7am. They let me in and sprang to help her. She was diagnosed and comforted. As Bob said today, she was theirs before she was ours.

We adopted her from the clinic when she was eight weeks old and rescued from the county animal shelter. At about the same time Rosie was born, my mother had passed away. I was not looking to adopt another cat.

It was love at first sight. She got me in an eyelock in the waiting room of the clinic. It was late afternoon and the sun's rays came slanting in through the window and caught her orange eyes. (They turned green soon after we brought her home.)

I do not understand why I needed to care for a kitten to fill the hole in my heart. My husband was the noblest man in the world when he agreed to add a fourth cat to our family.