all about the birds and rain on Earth Day

I ended up not doing much of anything besides reading on Sunday. Ms cardinal however was very busy. Here’s Sunday’s progress on the her nest. I went out Monday morning when I got up to see if I could get a picture before she started work. 

She did all that in one day while her mate hung around visiting the bird feeder off and on. Sunday it was all little twigs, Monday she brought dried out leaves. But while I was gazing out the window this morning, a new bird came to the bird feeder, one I had never seen before. Google image search says it’s an indigo bunting. Not a great picture, shooting through the glass of the back door on high magnification which focused on the foliage behind but good enough I hope.

We wanted rain, we really needed rain, we begged for rain and finally we are getting more than a five minute shower. It started raining Saturday evening and rained gently for a long time during the night. I actually don’t remember if it rained Sunday, maybe a light shower or two but yesterday it started sprinkling late afternoon and it’s still raining. Last night was long and sleepless for me (neurotic panting shivering dog who cannot be still or consoled) because of a thunderstorm and lightning lighting up the room and I guess bouts of heavy rain. That finally passed before dawn so I got a few hours sleep before and after. Currently a steady gently rain, the kind that soaks in instead of running off. Just in time as the corn field across the road was on the verge of suffering. 

Before it started up again this morning (and rained lightly off and on all day) I took another picture of the cardinal nest, two days progress. Now that the rain has stopped, she’s back at work.

The mockingbird nest has another egg, so three now. It’s so different from the cardinal nest which is composed of tiny twigs and leaves. This one is much bigger and composed of small sticks with a little grassy lining. there’s even a scattering of them on the ground underneath.

Tuesday was grocery shop for the week day and all I wanted to do was go back to bed. Tai chi class last night. Only one more class and then Jo is gone for the summer. Costco run today but no yoga, I’ve already done my routine for the day. One more picture of the cardinal nest after Tuesday’s work, no eggs yet as far as I can tell. But the wren nest on the shelves in the garage is still active. She flew past me out of the nest when I peered too closely this morning. She sits so deeply in the nest and blends in so perfectly that it’s hard to tell if she’s in there but I did get a chance to see she has eggs.

Happy Earth Day! Do something to nurture our poor suffering planet. Pick up some trash, plant something, put out a dish of water for birds, bees, and other creatures, any small or large gesture to show our Mother she is loved.

busy day yesterday, today not so much

I got the bookmarks packaged in cellophane envelopes 17 in all and took them over to the Hesed House market on Friday. So now I have note cards with prints of my colored pencil drawings, hand painted note cards, framed prints of colored pencil drawings, framed watercolors, crystal mobiles, and now hand painted bookmarks. I might work in my art journal a bit next or do the drawing I should have done already before I start on my next little project or two. Or maybe same project but the execution seems to vary as I think about it and get inspired by the work of other artists.

In the meantime I spent Saturday morning to early afternoon moving the sprinkler around every 20 minutes starting with the squash, tomatoes, green beans, and carrots and then moving on to the long day lily (and other bulbs and rhizomes) bed in the big backyard. It’s overcast today, so a good day to water which I did despite the prediction of a storm and rain moving through later today and tonight. I’ll believe it when it starts raining. I had bought three little pots of wave petunias and got them planted in front of the porterweed I planted earlier in the week, 

also a penta in the pot on the deck since the one I had froze this winter. When I came in from that I sorted out my winter and summer clothes, once again putting my winter clothes in the other dresser for the year. And once again foolishly. I knew this front coming in yesterday early evening was going to cool things down but I didn’t realize it would be in the low 50s and windy when I got up this morning. Then I put my sewing machine and art and craft stuff back on the shelves instead of on the floor and table and then swept my office/studio, the room through which all traffic in and out of the house goes. So, busy day.

We did get some rain during the evening and night but since the tube to my rain gauge broke this winter I don’t know how much. I doubt we got enough to make all the watering I did unnecessary. I had planned to work out in the yard more today but not with this cold wind blowing. Maybe I’ll make more progress in the 877 page book I’m reading. I think I’m almost 3/4 of the way through. Maybe I’ll get out my colored pencils and work on that drawing I intend or maybe I’ll vacuum the rest of the house. All things are possible!

Seems to be a rough year for wrens and cardinals. The abandoned eggs and now a night predator got the baby cardinals. Nature can seem cruel but everything has to eat and in this closed system what we eat is each other. Some animals eat plants and while some people may think plants are blind and dumb and feel no pain, they do have an awareness and do feel distress; some animals eat other animals and us humans eat everything. So while I’m sad about the baby birds, some other creature did not go hungry. But a new nest has been found, this one a dove, that has two eggs. Correction: Robin thought it was a dove but I did an image search of the eggs and it says mockingbird. 

And a cardinal is making a nest in the fringe flower tree outside my window right now. She keeps coming back to the same spot with twigs, been busy at it all morning. I tried to take a picture on zoom through the dirty window and screen but she's made enough progress now that when she flies in with a twig she's obscured by the nest and foliage.

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I am so far behind on my book reviews I’m going to include two at the bottom of every post until I get through them. Also far behind on the 100 objects.

Death Of A Perfect Wife by M. C. Beaton - a Hamish Macbeth mystery. A couple from London by an old victorian in the village with plans to open a bed and breakfast. Trixie goes about the village begging for any unused furniture or household goods to furnish the place since they are ‘on the dole’ and can’t afford to buy anything new. She also sets about to improve the villagers lives one at a time causing friction between husband and wives and villagers. When Trixie is found dead, Hamish must figure out who killed her.

Ward D by Frieda McFadden - Amy and Jade have been best friends since elementary school but they had a falling out in high school and Jade landed in the psych ward of a hospital. Fast forward 8 years and Amy is a med student doing her 2nd year rotations and she is assigned to Ward D, the psychiatric ward where she will be locked in for 12 hours from 6 PM to 6 AM. Amy would rather be anywhere but there. the story shifts back and forth from the present to the 8 years previous, the last days of her friendship with Jade. Amy is pretty flakey and Jade is exhibiting antisocial behaviors. Upon arrival at Ward D, she and the other intern are informed that there is a dangerous inmate locked in Seclusion Room 1 in restraints but told not to worry as he is in restraints and they should get to know some of the patients and learn what brought them to the psych ward. One of the first things Amy discovers is that her old friend Jade is one of them. When weird things start happening and the ward doctor and nurse keep trying to calm her fears my, not knowing who to trust, begins to wonder if she will make it through the night alive. 

 

spring is transitioning to summer, NDE, little beasts

I’ve been getting an ad for a t-shirt with this graphic on it on FB. I’d buy it except for the crew neck which is uncomfortable for me. I’d constantly be pulling it away from my neck.

Long ago I read a book by Raymond Moody, Life After Life, published in 1975, the subject of which is a study of near death experiences in which the consciousness continues. This book had a profound effect on me especially coupled with the expanding consciousness I was experiencing in my LSD and psilocybin days. It describes the overwhelming feeling of peace and love, a review of the person’s life without judgement focused on love and learning, hovering outside the body watching events before being drawn to the bright loving light though I don’t agree with the bit at the end that suicide is negatively received and perhaps that was added to prevent a wave of suicides by people who had read the book. I don’t believe that loving light, the all that is, is anything but loving acceptance. Decades later my sister was in a head on collision with a drunk driver entering the freeway through the exit ramp she and her husband were exiting. She had never read the book and yet she described to me her own NDE. She saw and felt the pull of that loving light and turned towards it but she kept hearing her husband’s voice calling to her, telling her not to leave and so she turned back and re-entered her broken body.

Robin was out of town for the weekend visiting her friends in the city so I go over there twice a day to feed and spend some time with her cats (indoor as opposed to the three outdoor cats I feed) and the last three times I walked under the rose arbor 

past the nest I noticed that the mama cardinal was gone. The fourth time as I was leaving Sunday evening, wondering if something had happened to the babies, I held my camera above the nest and snapped a picture. 

So of course, mom is not on the nest, she’s out foraging for food to feed the little beasts.

Speaking of feeding little beasts, I’ve been meaning to report for weeks now that Ghost, the black feral male cat that I’ve been feeding for a couple of years and who took up residence at Pam’s house with the other outside boys has gone missing. He didn’t show for three or four days, showed up for another two or three and we haven’t seen him since. This was at least five weeks ago now. 

I’m making a new effort to do some kind of exercise every morning, yoga or tai chi, even if I’m going to class that evening. So far, two days in a row! Not to be all ‘look at me’, so far today nada. I got up late and then took a wander around the yard taking pictures and then went through my email and then read blogs. But the day is still young. There is still hope.

I finally got a garden task accomplished Monday. I had a coral porter weed in a pot, a volunteer from a few years ago that has gotten pretty big and is pot bound, in the ground. I meant to get it planted last spring but never got around to it because where I wanted to put in, in the little backyard outside my bedroom window, the dirt needed to be dug up and turned and compost et al added because it is/was hard as a rock. Our mornings have been fairly cool so I finally got out there and added an entire bag of landscaper’s mix and got it planted. Now I want to get some annuals to plant around it.

I have another garden task for the little backyard that I meant to do last year as well which is to plant some aspidistra around the turret of the septic tank that the nude lady stands on. Maybe I’ll get that done this year too. Today a woman came by to get some shrimp plant. She had posted on a local chat group asking if anyone had any to sell so I told her I’d give her some for free. She left with that and a morning glory bush, confederate rose, and pink angel trumpet as well. Less for me to take care of until I donate these various rooted cuttings to the garden club plant sale.

Another new bookmark inspired by the work of Jane Chipp who makes wonderful little things called nature boxes. This after one with a white feather that she had painted with silhouettes of birds in flight.

Maybe the nest on the shelving unit in the garage is not abandoned since the little wren flew out when I walked through a little bit ago.

more thoughts on death, evidence of life, loss of public lands

Thursday’s sunrise.

I’m not dwelling on my eventual death, I’m not worried or upset about it, I’m not obsessing on when it might occur but the fact remains that I have far less time ahead of me than behind and occasionally I acknowledge that my time is finite in a way that it isn’t when we’re young. When we're young life seems endless. We know intellectually everything dies but it's so remote. I've reached the age when infinite starts shifting to finite. Do I have four more years or 24? Twentyfour, tops, if I live to be 100. So I think about it now and then. We all die, everything dies so that new life can bloom. What comes before birth and what comes after death is one of the great mysteries of the time in between. I tend to think of death as another birth, shifting from one state of consciousness to another. Regardless of what, if anything (I figure it's either mind blowing in a good way or nothing, either way I won't care about what I left behind), comes before or after this life, I am here now, we are here now, and this state of being 'in between' is all we know for sure. I’m not afraid of death. I have my preferences about my eventual dying; I’d rather it wasn’t painful, I’d rather pass away peacefully in my sleep when it’s time, I want to be like the old woman who woke up one day and decided she was bone tired of life and died peacefully in her sleep that night, I want to be able to wipe my own butt until that day comes. Of course, we don’t get a choice but if I had to choose between sudden and immediate death I’d take that over bed ridden decrepitude. In the meantime, well, I try to be fully present. Be here now. It’s good advice.

You know what I think is stupid? People writing 'unalived' instead of dead, 'unalive' instead of kill. Ok, I looked it up, a substitute to avoid algorithm taboos of the words kill, murder, and suicide on social media sites. Still stupid.  

We finally are getting some rain. No great downpours, just gentle rains that last more than five minutes. Friday morning before the rain, walking around the yard, the ground hard, the grasses dry and dull, shriveled, obviously suffering. Yesterday morning after that steady gentle rain Friday and night, everything looked so much happier, green and plump. We got another good strong shower later in the day.

Nesting report…I walked out the back door a while back to see the maidenhair fern on the plant stand with the wren nest had been knocked over, four little eggs spilled out. I picked it up, put the little eggs back but two weeks later, they are still there and no sign of the little wren. 

So, abandoned. The other day I noticed that the shelving unit in the garage on the same wall as the door into the house had long leg spiders' webs all over it (a constant battle in the garage) and so got the broom for that purpose and cleared them when I noticed this.

I walk by this shelving unit multiple times a day going in and out and never once noticed a nest being built there. I assume that was the nest I saw the wrens flying away from out of the corner of my eye and not the one on the motor housing. It too is apparently abandoned. A perfect little nest, no eggs, no sign of the wrens. But there is a successful nest across the street in Pam’s rose arbor. A pretty little mama cardinal, her head just visible. She did not like me taking her picture and flew over to the fence.

Robin has been keeping her eye on it and sent me this picture today. Three naked little babies.

They'll grow fast. I found a cardinal nest one year, checked on it daily, and as I recall it was nine days between hatching and fledging.

The first of the day lilies are opening. The first are always the yellow miniature ones in the front flower beds. 

There’s several clumps of early orange ones already sending up bloom scapes, still getting some of those pompom poppies. The maroon Japanese iris are past peak. I need to get my zinnia seeds in the dirt. The tomato plant that survived the freeze intact is giving me baby tomatoes

and the mystery plant sprouts in the compost bin I transplanted, the one in the top right in the above photo is acorn squash, and the other two I think are butternut but the baby fruit needs to get bigger.

I had this paragraph at the top originally but just couldn't lead off with that. What Trump’s doing outside the borders of this country is criminal but he’s not limiting his criminal destruction to the outside world. Now he’s dismantling the Forest Service with the intent to sell off our public lands for mining, oil drilling, and logging. All so that the already obscenely wealthy can accumulate more wealth that they stingily hoard. We all hope that when this all ends the great undoing will begin but our old growth forests, our pristine preserves in the arctic and canyonlands, our national parks cannot be easily replaced or returned. 

 

the end of things

I’ve been thinking about two things lately, both about the end of things.

One is my own mortality. My father died of a massive stroke when he was 73, my sister died of a massive stroke when she was 76. My mother died of the cumulative damage of years of TIAs when she was 79. I’m going to be 76 on my next birthday at the end of this month. No one in my natal family has survived the 70s so far. I feel healthy, am active, no complaints but then my sister probably felt the same way, and maybe my father, before their brains started leaking in the middle of the night. On the other hand, my father’s sister lived to be 92 and his maternal aunt lived well into her late 90s so I’m hanging my star on them. 

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is that maybe it’s time to get rid of all my frit and wax and other miscellaneous model making and glass casting stuff. I haven’t made anything since September 2022 and while I’ve gone several years before without making anything I never lost interest. Until now. Now I have no interest in working in glass, I don’t even look at any of the glass groups on FB anymore, no longer interested in being a part of the glass art scene. The new technique of working with glass ‘clay’ making sculptural objects without a mold is exciting and were I 20 years younger I’d probably be all in but not now. So what to do with my fairly extensive inventory of transparent and opaque frits and powders (many of the jars are two and three deep on the shelves).

I can probably sell them, and I would at a discounted price, and since I live within a few hours of three big cities it wouldn’t be out of the question for interested glass artists to come here which I would prefer since I’m not really interested in packing and shipping. I just need to post on the glass related groups on FB so that may be happening soon. 

Speaking of the end of things, empires last on average 250 - 300 years. Judging by this last year I’d say the US has lost a great deal of its global power that commands respect and may never get it back. The word of our leaders is no longer trusted when any deals made can and are cast aside willy nilly by the next administration and the other nations are making new alliances that exclude the US. MAGA's America First is turning into America Alone. 

It was reported this week that in January senior officials in the Pentagon summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s ambassador to the US at the time, to a meeting at the Pentagon where they berated him over the Pope’s criticism of Trump’s brutish foreign policies, telling him that the US has the military power to do whatever it wants and that the Church better get on its side. In a veiled threat they even invoked the Avignon Papacy, a period in the 14th century during which the French King used his military to force the pope to live in Avignon, France, exerting direct state control over the papacy. It has so alarmed the Vatican that the Pope’s planned visit to the US later in the year has been canceled. Now that the meeting has been brought to light the Pentagon is, of course, blowing smoke and denies any of that happened. However, a source close to the Pope described the meeting as most unpleasant and confrontational. Because of course. Unpleasant and confrontational is how Trump and his administration of cosplay wannabes does things.

Meanwhile Resurrection Day weekend Trump was threatening to annihilate Iran, easily the oldest continuous civilization on the planet, blasting them all to hell, claiming the Iranian people were begging him to do so while complaining to the children at the annual White House egg hunt about how incompetent Biden was with his autopen. Two days later a 2 week ceasefire was announced, Trump having agreed to a 10 point deal brokered by Pakistan that gave Iran everything and gained the US nothing. Trump has been claiming that Iran has been begging him for a peace deal when in fact it is Trump who has been begging Iran and Iran telling him to fuck off. When Iran would not even agree to meet with the US, Trump secretly went to Pakistan hoping that a proposal from a muslim country would be more acceptable. Iran sneered at the US 15 point proposal and countered it with their own 10 point plan wherein all military action against Iran and Lebanon stops, Iran keeps it’s nuclear material, keeps control of the Strait of Hormuz charging $2 million per ship for transit to pay for the reconstruction of the damage caused by the US and Israel, and the withdrawal of all American troops from the region among other things. Trump is crowing about how he brought Iran to its knees, dollar signs in his eyes as he fantasizes Iran splitting that two mil per ship with him. As if. 

Only one problem, Israel said fuck that shit, nobody asked us, and we’re not stopping the bombing of Lebanon because while Israel would love to take Iran out, Israel’s real goal is to increase their territory, something it has been doing since day one of the partition. So the cease fire lasted less than two days, Iran closed the Strait again after letting some ships through, the news media, politicians, and even some of Trump’s supporters were trashing the deal as the disaster for the US it is so now Trump is back to saber rattling and threats.

How much more certifiably insane does Trump and his merry band of sycophantic yes men have to be before the republicans finally admit this disaster of a president and administration for what it is and do the sane thing. I’m not holding my breath. Apparently hanging onto power is the foremost priority of the republican party no matter how much destruction is wrought here and around the world. It reminds me of a single panel cartoon I saw decades ago. A lone heavily armed soldier is standing in the middle of a wasteland, everything and everyone turned to rubble and he says…

“I think I won!”

another three days of the usual activities

Friday…There’s a mating pair of cardinals on the bird feeder this morning and the male is feeding his sweetheart. Now there’s a young male cardinal who doesn’t seem to have a mate. I think this is probably his first spring as an adult. Later I saw a male house finch and a little warbler. And I think wrens are using the nest on top of the motor housing for the garage door we never lift up. Wrens have flown out from that direction several times as I’ve walked through. That nest has been there for 15 years. Some years it’s occupied, some years not. Now that I know it’s occupied I’ll have to keep my eyes out for the little fledglings, make sure they get out of the garage safely.

I saw a squirrel foraging under the bird feeder the other day now that all the pecans have been picked up or eaten so I put out a handful of peanuts. Once the pecans started falling last year I stopped because they were being ignored. The next day they were gone so I put out another handful. Looking out the window later I saw a squirrel scurry over and grab one but instead of eating it, the little bugger buried it. Came over, got another one, buried it in a different spot and a third until the squirrel had buried every single one. If it doesn’t remember where its little stash is I’m going to have a peanut farm in the little backyard.

Saturday…I finally was motivated to get out in the yard today and do some maintenance which I haven’t much felt called to do these past few weeks despite this being the best time of year to do that. Mostly what I did was dig up the native peruvian lilies (alstroemeria, parrot flower) that I planted several years ago in a bare spot in the long daylily bed. They only show once or twice a year putting up foliage which is really rather pretty and they are supposed to bloom, and I do like the flower (image via the internet), 

but these hardly ever bloom and then only sparsely. That wouldn’t be so bad except they are invasive and the close clumps of little tubers don’t allow anything else to grow and they have overwhelmed my nile lilies and some of the amaryllis. I couldn’t get the little tubers out from the nile lilies without digging them up too but I did pluck all the foliage. After the nile lilies bloom, if they bloom, I’ll dig them up, free them of the peruvian lily tubers, and replant them. Then I dug/pulled out the dewberry vines in that bed.

Sunday…The big storm with lots of rain promised for late Saturday and evening came and while north of us got lots of rain we, as usual, didn’t as it skirted north of us. As usual. It did rain lightly for several hours but not the good solid rain we need. It cooled things off, temps are in the 50s and 60s, overcast and the weather app says it’s raining in Wharton right now (it’s not) but this is not the kind of overcast that gives rain. It’s too uniformly light/medium gray.  Anyway today I took advantage of the somewhat softer dirt and pulled pasture grass that had sent up it bloom/seed stalks out of the bluebonnets in front and pulled up all the goldenrod in the front flower bed. I like goldenrod and let it stay there for two years after it just showed up but it’s taking over and I have fewer purple coneflowers in there now. The coneflowers are just putting up their buds so should be blooming by the end of the week.

I finished the bookmark inspired by the evening primrose blooming 

but it was so pale (paler than the picture as the camera intensifies color) and I forgot the fence I thought to add so I did another one, more color but I don't like it any better. For one thing the evening primrose are not that intense and maybe because it’s just a typical wildflower landscape. I keep thinking I'll work on it some more and then, nope, leave it be.

The acrylic spray I need to seal these (and one more coat and the backs on the others) should be here Tuesday. I ended up just ordering it from Walmart delivered. It was about $7 more because my order was under $35 but I figure I’d have burned that much in gas driving to Rosenberg and back and never mind the nearly two hours of time it would have taken.

More blooming things...amaryllis, queen anne's lace (with corn in the background), rocket larkspur.