Hanging out

This is the Russell Orchards cat. I had kept my eye out for him, looked up as we were leaving, and there he was.

For some reason I am seeing blissed out animals lately even as I bite my nails over the economic downtown.

What would be nice is to simply trust that when push comes to shove we'll all still land on our (two or four) feet.

You can't tell me

this little guy isn't enjoying that peanut. David says I'm anthropomorphizing but it seems obvious his or her eyes are closed in bliss as she nibbles away.

A few days ago I grabbed the camera as well as the binoculars and headed to Halibut Point State Park. There's a vernal pond that normally would be dry as a bone by now but due to all the precipitation still makes a comfortable pollen-strewn home for this little green frog and his friends.


I crept into the cove and was as quiet as could be for minutes on end trying to get an angle with enough light to take the picture. I was obviously blending flawlessly because I suddenly heard something coming up on me. I turned with a cry and startled (right at my feet) a RACCOON. She looked as surprised as I did and immediately scurried up the slender white branch of a birch tree nearby. She got about half way up, looked down at me, realized I was still too close for comfort, ran down the tree and bounded across the path to another part of the park. I hurried after her: "Wait! I wanna take your picture! Come back!" Too late.

A stately branch

When I planted this purloined branch into the flower pot I knew it would make a good roost. These guys who are actually not sparrows but finches love thistle seed. When times are easy they get new seed socks fairly often. When times are tough they get the old one refilled until certain other visitors bite too many holes in them.

Pictures from our treehouse

When this crow landed he (or she) interrupted whatever miscellaneous and probably unhelpful thoughts I was having. I was looking out the kitchen window, a few feet away. She made quite the dramatic appearance. Rich black feathers and so much larger than our usual visitors, the starlings and the house sparrows.

Fortunately I had the Yashica ready, my old slr, almost entirely manual.

The week was fun for unexpected guests.

We almost never see our sweet state bird. The chicadee teases us by showing up just once or twice a year. When our black and white cat, Peanut, was still alive we once had a black and white morning as she ran to look out the door at the chicadee who had landed on the railing.

It was the chicadee who made me a bird watcher years ago. We were living on Centennial Avenue and our Icelandic landlord put a bird feeder in the rather lonesome looking backyard.

It had attracted mostly house sparrows and then one March morning I looked out the back door and there at the feeder was a tiny black and white bird. What in the world is that? I had no idea.

A few weeks later I was in Central Park and lo and behold discovered the dark-eyed junco. In fact it turned out there were always lots of interesting birds in the park but I had never noticed them despite living in the city most of my life (and spending many an hour in the park). This proves again if you don't look you won't see. Or just that the senses are tricky things. I guess you'd go crazy if you didn't filter but I'm very glad I'm alert these many years later to every squeak, squawk, and flutter.

And of course here's Harry looking the worse for wear after her perhaps battle for the nest with the other squirrel (who won). She visits every weekend. All I have to do to distinguish her is call through the window, "Harry, is that you?" and if she jumps off the railing and runs to the back door I know it's Harry.

Before I had noticed here it is.

This is the Spirea plant in the small garden at the front of the house. When did she grow small white flowering bells? Perhaps when I was training briefly for a brief job.

When we first looked at this apartment it was only renovated on the inside. Outside the brown shingles were, in places, flapping off the house. I didn't notice it. We had been living in a place horrible inside and out. It was a temporary sojourn after losing our home of 11 years. (The house was sold and they didn't want tenants.) I heard about this apartment from Lucille who'd run into Kasha who was moving.

I went over at 5:30 the morning after her phone call and despite its being late winter I saw the front garden in full bloom. My imagination captured the spirit of the garden though it was months before it would actually flower (and it did, there were strawberries, too.) When I finally saw the inside I was blown away. So beautiful. That's now 7 years ago.

This beautiful little tree flowered before our crocuses because she sits in the sunlight. I have to look at the garden every day now for the joyful reminder that lo the winter is past.

In a crazy way right after we moved in I began to feel bad that we'd gotten this wonderful place to live. I thought what if it's like the story "The Monkey's Paw" and something terrible will happen now. But I had the great luck to run into Michael O'Leary, singer and poet, in the local co-op and he said offhandedly, "Oh, I've often had good karma with apartments." And so I felt better about it.

Still-bare choirs

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I have to imagine there are buds on the trees here somewhere. I know that there are three valiant purple crocuses on Rogers Street. Still, the mornings are getting noisier. A half hour before dawn the crows call, then the seagulls, and then the lay-a-beds, the house sparrows, who chirp quietly at first then more raucously as the sun comes up. They've been romantically inclined as well, shaking their feathers at each other when they land on the railing.

In New York last week, though, I saw honest to goodness daffodils (not just cut ones like here at Shaw's) and there were lots of spring singers in Central Park, the red winged blackbird (who is here, too, though I haven't seen him yet), lots of house finches, but more it was the sense that spring was really about to happen. Here it was warm for a few days then very cold and windy. And of course the sidewalks here are much more bare. There were lots of humans in NYC, Central Park included. The city is full of dog nuts, and I saw many canines dressed in designer wear, many of them in spring pastels.

News from the little world

Although this is last spring's picture this is not a memorial. Yesterday as I was carrying the laundry upstairs I chanced to look behind me and there, following, was Harry. The real Harry not the marauder who has taken over Harry's tree. I said, "Harry?" and she came right up to me. "Hold on!" I went into the house, grabbed a walnut, went back out and called again,"Harry!" Up she came. So I rolled the walnut along the deck (though there was all of two feet maybe between us), she picked it up, turned it over and over, and sat there for a moment with the walnut in her mouth. I said, "Take it downstairs," and off she went. I watched from the deck and indeed she has moved to another yard two or three houses over. It had been a coup. Or perhaps as David suggested she found a better apartment. This morning she was here before sunrise and had a welcome home breakfast of two walnuts and two almonds which just about cleaned me out. That and the early visit of a Mourning Dove made for nice cold Sunday morning.

Is it sprung?

Well, you can't tell by looking out the window here. The tree where Harry has her nest is of course still bare branched and now due to March winds there is a bit of debris hanging off one of them, i.e., a white plastic bag from Shaws. I wish I could shimmy and then I'd shimmy up that tree and grab it. If Harry had a dog's willingness to please as well as her squirrel agility we might manage it. David says a good storm will take of it.

Sad to say I've discovered this is not Harry the Squirrel I knew last year. She would run up to me for her walnut and then take it downstairs from our deck to bury it in the neighbor's yard. This imposter loves walnuts and is living in Harry's old nest but she's somebody else entirely. If I call "Harry!" she runs behind the flower pot. I roll the walnut and as soon as she hears me go back in the house she runs out and grabs it. Sigh. Was it a hawk, perhaps the hawk that landed on the deck railing a few weeks ago? Was it this squirrel? I find that hard to believe. More likely it was either Harry herself deciding to move on or one of our nut case drivers doing 40 in front of the house. I guess even a car doing the speed limit would be deadly.

But today is a day to be joyful! We have our health (sort of); we have Baby Cat whose birthday this is (she's 6) and we have the VERNAL EQUINOX. The sun is up and shining on the bare branches of the faux Harry's tree. And there's a black lab running back and forth in Burnham field. Early yesterday morning in the gray wet light I saw the seagulls walking across the field all at the same time, all in the same direction. Perhaps they were heading for the sub shop or perhaps St. Ann's Church whose spire shines silver at all times of year.

Great Reads

There has been one good thing to come out of this endless winter. After several months of being unable to concentrate (for a variety of reasons) I've suddenly been able to read again (as in, read a book all the way through). This not only is thrilling for me but for our interlibrary loan librarian who I imagine got really tired of processing all my requests. I'd order up several books, try them out, not be able to read them, and then return them almost as quickly as I'd borrowed them, all unread, piles of them.

Then I came upon "The White Tiger" and everything changed. The novel won this year's Booker prize so of course I was so grateful I decided to see if other Booker Prizers would be as riveting. First, though, I read the first Rex Stout Nero Wolfe mystery,"Fer De Lance;" "The Killing Time," an Ellen Hart mystery; the wonderful young adult novel (also a prize winner), "Little Brother," by Cory Doctorow; and then and then the riveting 1985 Booker Prize Winner, "The Bone People," by Keri Hulme. This book makes my all-time top five list. I've now decided to visit New Zealand. Which is unsettling perhaps to one of the other big readers in the house. Not David who wouldn't come to New Zealand anyway because he worries about the earthquakes, but Pierre who feels more allegiance to another country in that part of the world.

Here he is rereading his favorite book, "The Little Red Hen." He also owns "The Pokey Little Puppy" which was a big favorite of mine lo those many years ago.

March 11, 2009

It's raining in Gloucester after having had the nerve to snow on Monday. This was a moment for David and me to look out the back door, watch the swirling white, and say, "Can you believe this?" Sunday it had been 60 degrees. I discovered this blog spot because I swept over here to read Susan Shie's new blog. She is one of my top favorite artists and her website, (www.turtlemoon.com) has cheered me considerably over the years especially in the dead of winter. Winter has not died here yet, but the birds are singing. Harry the squirrel started building her nest again in the tree in the back whose "head " was lopped off years ago by a local tree hating nut. The tree has had her revenge in a way since she once again leafs out beautifully. And she offers a penthouse home to Harry who I watch run back and forth with leaves in her mouth. She leaps onto the trunk of the tree and then into the chasm at the top. A few days ago she stopped by the deck, grabbed the empty white seed sock that had once held food for our House Sparrows, took it off its nail, stuffed it in her mouth and ran off with it. Maybe she'll stuff it with fluff for a pillow for the nest.