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Treetops

Mar18

I’ve been reading the amazing new book from Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, and I’m grateful for his historical and philosophical synthesis of the times we find ourselves in. It’s grueling, but he articulates so thoroughly what I have believed in my bones to be true since I was a child. But enough about humanity’s ineluctable drive toward mechanization at the cost of Nature, we see it in every facet of our lives, including this blog that I’m writing and you are reading on machines that embody so much more than the simple convenience of a keyboard, a digital camera, and the internet. We needn’t dwell on it in this moment.

I’m grateful for the gift of calamondin jam that surprised me in the mail the other day, out of the blue, from an old school friend and reader of Morning Rounds. It represents the good in this world: homegrown fruit cooked and canned, and one person thinking of another with generosity. She read about my quest to bake birthday cakes, and thought I might like to include something a little different in one. Of course I had to taste it, and it was Florida sunshine on toast. Next cake, here it comes! And the next cake is coming soon.

In contrast to The Machine that grinds up nature and humanity in its conquest of the world through concentration of power and worship of wealth, treetops have captured my attention this week. Pinyon jays have been spinning the Bird Buddy feeder around on its pole with their enthusiastic feeding, and I caught a group of them in a treetop the other day on our walk. One seems to have fluff in its bill, hopefully an indication of nest building.

Between working, walking, and baking cakes, I tried out this recipe for big fat chewy chocolate chip cookies, and they are fantastic.

Joanna Macy said “Hope is a verb,” and so I continue to hope to do all that I can to contribute to the remaking of the world as Western Civilization collapses. Some of those things include vigilant introspection to see myself clearly and live in alignment with my values, which by the way are not the values of The Machine; sharing in various ways the mindfulness skills that I rely on to ground me in a meaningful life and bolster resilience; and supporting the wild world through the ways I protect and tend the land in my care. I’m so grateful to have brought the birds back to my yarden after a decade, now that I’ve minimized the domestic cat threat. Evening grosbeaks are back at the feeder, and filling the aspen tree.

In cheese sandwich news, there continue to be many delicious options. Last week I pickled red onions and am putting them on everything including this simple cheddar, lettuce, and mayo sandwich.
Despite a few freezing cold days and nights, the weather was warm enough last week to enjoy time at the pond, including polishing off the last of the ice cream.

But the weather is too nice. This morning I discovered that the apricot blossoms are already opening. I spent a few hours in the yarden, installing a couple of bluebird nest boxes to give them options, and watering. I gave the apricot her first water of the season, and took some time to sit beneath her boughs and appreciate her. Those buds are really swelling, I thought and then I looked more closely. First I saw a few white tips on some buds, and then saw a few just breaking open. Earliest ever, I think.

Today’s cheese sandwich included tuna salad with parsley and celery, pickled red onions, and havarti. So simple, so delicious.

After lunch and a few hours desk work, I took the little animals on a leisurely ramble through the woods, remembering to look up. We rambled northwest from the house, a spontaneous and unusual direction, and then back toward the forest center. We saw treetops reaching for the clouds, and a surprising number of treetops toppled over.

Coming up a slope from an unfamiliar direction I spied an oddly glowing trunk, and when we got close I was mystified to see this young pinyon pine stripped bare, all its bark in chips at the base, its top recently deceased. Curious. And then we found ourselves near the Triangle Tree, where I paused to lean back into its curved embrace and look out toward the mountains for awhile, resting, calmly abiding, breathing.

From there we rambled back to a familiar bench, where we rested again, and noticed these tiny wildflowers in bloom, I’m thinking weeks or even months early… But then, I found flowers even in midwinter in some parts of the woods.

Back home it was happy hour time, so I took a mocktail and a bowl of poison fish down to sit in the golden light and read some more about the cyclical history of the Machine. What a juxtaposition. This week in telesangha we’re exploring paradoxes; in particular, a paradox that has come up synchronistically a couple of times in recent days: navigating the wisdom of accepting conditions exactly as they are, allowing oneself to be just as one is, and at the same time aspiring to refine or grow oneself and improve conditions in the world. Chewing on this book at the same time will add an interesting influence in this exploration.

As the sun goldly lowered I glanced up to see a pair of bluebirds atop the aspen tree. More synchronicity. I hope they find a nest site they like for this summer, in one of the boxes I put up this morning, or back in the hole in the side of my house.

I’m grateful that Topaz has learned in recent years not to hunt birds.
Wren jumped right into her job of finding Biko as soon as I started putting him out in his round pen. Tonight just before sunset she raced right to his gate and loudly announced his location. Life’s simple pleasures.

This Weekend in Birds

Dec9
Slate-colored junco

I’m grateful to Ruthie and Jeff for inspiring me to get a Bird Buddy feeder. I hadn’t fed birds for a decade, and I missed them. They’ve brought such joy to our days, and once the snow covered the land feeding them feels especially meaningful: Giving back.

Two house finches and a mountain chickadee

My heart melts for the northern flickers who are new to the feeder, though they’ve been regulars in the yarden all summer. Another newcomer is the black-billed magpie, caught on camera for the first time on Friday.

There were other gifts interspersed with birds, including young Bucky nibbling fallen desert willow leaves; and a large four-point buck, several does, and their adolescent fawns, all making the rounds each day to sweep up under the feeder, nap under a juniper, graze under the snow.

Saturday I needed an extra morning hot drink after coffee, and finally broke out the Swiss ovomaltine a friend gave me a couple of months ago. She’d been given it by a young friend who brought it from Switzerland, but passed it on to me because malt disagrees with her. With the help of a translation app and a conversion app I got it mixed with the right amount of hot milk, and gave myself a morning break with the last shortbread, a gift from another friend. (How lucky am I!)

An uncommon black-capped chickadee sharing the feeder with a female house finch
Two of the three Woodhouse scrub jays who dominate the feeder. I believe these are the babies I watched fledge last spring.

Another gift enhancing life is this salad dressing bottle, with recipes for five dressings and measurements right on the glass. I had misplaced it for a long time, and was embarrassed to tell my sister who gave it to me. But now she’ll know that I’ve found it and am grateful all over again for it. I’m also grateful for the gift of enough Tupelo honey to splurge on the honey mustard dressing.

Another mountain chickadee, or maybe the same one, with another house finch, or maybe the same one…

I’m grateful for the Great British Baking Show for so many reasons, but in this case for the challenge where they were judged on the scoring of their loaves. It inspired me to try an oak leaf, and I would not have gotten good a good score on my scoring. But I think Paul and Prue would have approved of the bake, and the tuna melt.

Just look at those eyelashes!

Another baking experiment turned out well, these chocolate snowflakes from Penzeys. More about them later. I couldn’t resist dropping one on the mint chocolate chip ice cream. But just one.

A male house finch thinks he’s got the feeder to himself…
… then has to share with a burly evening grosbeak, who takes over the moment.
(from Rob Brezsny’s Astrology Newsletter)

This message spoke to me this week, as I continually navigate the threshold between who I think I should be and who I actually am. I’m grateful for a wonderful discussion tonight with our monthly grateful gathering around the concept of thresholds. One person entering the job market, one considering retirement, several concerned for grown children at their own thresholds, and all of us feeling the gravity of the threshold our country is poised on. All of us, also, facing awareness of the final threshold that awaits every living being. I want to relax along the path and enjoy the journey to that cliff, before the inevitable jump off.

Hawks and Doves

Nov21

This post’s title might have been Small Mercies. The hawk in this picture flew away apparently uninjured. But the story is amazing. It happened over at the Bad Dog Ranch a couple of days ago. As told to me by the Head Bitch, who provided photos: There was that loud sickening THUNK that signifies a bird has crashed into a window, and it was a REALLY big thunk. She hurried outside to investigate and found this sharp-shinned hawk spread on the patio, alive, and a collared dove, dead, in the gravel. Because she knows what to do in a situation like this, she left the scene to give the hawk a chance to recover. After awhile it picked itself up and flew away, without its prey. Had it not, she would have gathered it gently into a box and delivered it to the closest raptor rescue or veterinarian qualified for raptor repair.

The most amazing part of the story is that the hawk left a perfect imprint on the window where it crashed. (That’s one benefit to a dusty window; another is that fewer birds tend to crash into it.) You can see the faint line of the leading edges of its spread wings to either side of the center splash, which probably represents the dove’s impact. Zoomed in a little, you can even see the outline of the hawk’s face. Look closely and you can discern its beak and even one of its eyes.

Just below the beak, there seems to be the impression of a talon, which supports my theory of what happened. The hawk’s attack feet would have been stretched out almost directly in front of its face as it caught its prey. I believe the hawk caught the dove as they smashed into the window simultaneously, the soft dove body cushioning the impact on the hawk thereby saving its life.

The last leaf has dropped from the apricot tree. I practice inner peace. It’s a choice, and it’s within reach. A hawk preying on a dove follows natural law. A rogue regime murdering civilians of other countries and preying on its own citizens is unnatural and illegal. Even as the mad dictator darkens his threats against democracy with even more reckless unconstitutional overreach, and escalates his assault on free speech with calls to muzzle media critics and execute elected representatives, it is possible to practice equanimity and compassion in one’s personal life.

Our neighbor who died recently loved to serve chocolate chip+M&M cookies, I was told, so I volunteered to bake some for her celebration of life tomorrow. There were a lot of recipe options but I chose this one from I Heart Naptime – which I also do.

Recipe for Inner Peace: Slow down. Do something kind for someone else. Allocate your attention budget wisely. Take time to nurture your heart and soul. Know what’s happening in the world but don’t drown in speculation. Choose your news sources carefully and limit daily consumption. Take action to alleviate anxiety, and remember that you don’t have to do it all, just do your small part to support the resistance. Savor joy and awe in the many ways they offer themselves. Find gratefulness in the details, and in the simple gift of waking up alive every day. Show appreciation to others every chance you get. Get enough sleep. Make time to meditate.

Jun25

Fledging is imminent. It could be tomorrow, or it could be another week. Research says they fledge between 18-21 days after hatching. I don’t know exactly what day they hatched, but do know the parents were flying in and out sixteen days ago. The past few days the food deliveries have been increasing, and the chicks’ cries when the parents leave are now loud and clear.

I couldn’t be more grateful to see them fly in carrying one grasshopper after another to the nest. Sometimes they fly straight in from the top of a nearby juniper, or from the tip of the patio umbrella; more often, they land on their antler perch and look around before hopping up to the nest cavity.

In the past two days their deliveries have become so frequent they occasionally overlap, meeting in the doorway as one flies in with food and the other flies out with a fecal sac. Cornell Lab of Ornithology defines this as “a clean, tough mucous membrane containing the excrement of nestling birds.” You can see mama with it below.

They move so fast I can’t see their weightless ease without the camera. Above, he floats from the nest to the perch; then gathers himself for a few breaths, and takes off. Their wing-to-body length is almost falcon like, and the long wings give them the ability to hover and dive when hunting. I can’t get enough of watching them, and will be spending every possible minute on birdwatch until the babies emerge.

I think how my mother would have loved this unexpected delight. As a bird-lover and also a painter whose favorite color was blue, she was entranced with mountain bluebirds. When she visited and saw them dancing along the fenceposts, she wanted to name my driveway Bluebird Lane. Back then, I rarely saw one in the yarden. So in an interconnected accepting sort of way, I guess I’m kind of grateful for the grasshopper plagues that have brought the bluebirds to my front door.

Morning Joy

Jun3

Perfect timing this morning making coffee. There I stood at the counter, idly looking out the window at the lilacs and noticing it’s time to cut them back, when a rustling underneath caught my attention. Then a clumsy flutter from the left and a baby scrub jay landed on the stick.

In flew mama with a grasshopper! Screaming ensued. Two more babies emerged from under the lilacs. Within ten minutes they had all flown away… but what a fun ten minutes for me.

Feed the Birds

May31
The flat light of dusk shows off the brilliant blues of the mountain bluebird.

Do you remember that song Feed the Birds, from Mary Poppins? The old woman on the cathedral steps feeding the pigeons touched me profoundly at the time, and the song is probably the first to embed itself in my young brain. Its message was formative for me.

I was surprised to see a northern flicker using the birdbath, but both male and female have become regular visitors.

Last year I put out this copper birdbath (I think it was last year, maybe the year before). Every morning first thing I turn on the hose to rinse it thoroughly and refill it. But I haven’t fed seedeaters for a decade, ever since the kittens came, because it wasn’t fair to bait the birds in knowing the cats would hunt them.

Be careful what you ask for. I’ve always wanted evening grosbeaks but even a decade ago when I last fed the birds they never came. This year, they dominate the feeder, and perch in the peach tree.

A few years ago, with censure from the phoebes and some serious discouragement from me, Topaz learned not to hunt birds. Now she’s getting old and slow enough she rarely hunts even mice. So after I saw Ruth’s Bird Buddy, and had been longing for birdsong in my days, I started feeding again.

House finches bring the earliest and most lovely song to the yard. The juvenile male above is starting to come into his adult plumage, and will soon resemble the gorgeous red adult, below.

Why did I start feeding birds again when there’s a bird flu crisis? Well, it’s not really affecting songbirds, but because of the scare I think some people have taken down backyard feeders; and beyond that, humans have destroyed and poisoned enough bird habitat, erected enough glass skyscrapers, and loosed enough domestic cats to kill more than three billion birds since 1970. Across all species of North American birds, the average breeding population has declined by nearly one third. The least I can do is feed the birds.

Finches are among the families especially hard hit by this devastating species decline.

The past couple of years I’ve seen an oriole show up at a hummingbird feeder once or twice, but not stick around. So last winter, anticipating, I purchased an oriole feeder. I put it out a few weeks ago when I learned they were in the area, with some nectar and an orange, but no visitors until yesterday: I only discovered that when I checked the orange this morning and saw that it had been picked clean. After having to rescue too many bees from the nectar I had emptied that, but I put out a fresh orange half, and some organic grape jelly, and waited… and waited…

…and waited, all day. I had to go inside for awhile late afternoon, and when I came back outside before sunset I saw half the orange had been scooped out. I sat down again with husband camera. Within a few minutes, here came the Bullock’s oriole to feast! The gratification of watching this gorgeous creature enjoy the fruit was well worth the wait. I’ll try for better light tomorrow.

The elusive western tanager also made a fleeting appearance last week, slipping into the juniper and slipping out while I was on a zoom meeting I had taken outside because it was too fine a day to stay in. As I sat with camera to eye and continued to participate in the meeting, Ana asked if I had seen the Netflix show ‘The Residence.’ I knew immediately why she asked, and I’ve been laughing for days delighted that I reminded her of the detective obsessed with birdwatching. If you haven’t seen that mini-series yet, I highly recommend it.

Fierce Feminism

May16

“Our glorious, gasping, wounded world is reeling from many budding catastrophes. Among the most crucial and least acknowledged: our collective amnesia. We have forgotten who we really are: sacred vessels of a sentient cosmos—not just us humans, but also the stones, rivers, foxes, oak trees, wetlands, microbes, everything.”

This opening paragraph from Rob Brezsny’s weekly astrology newsletter introduces a beautiful analysis of the tragic results for our planet of millenia under the thumb of the patriarchy. “It’s the operating system of empires and corporations, the not-so-covert programming behind clear-cut forests and strip-mined mountains—and the code that ensures women’s bodies are controlled and exploited.”

I’m feeling more and more fierce these days about toxic masculinity and the abusive relationship we’re experiencing on a national level. So I enjoyed reading a fierce feminist fiction this week called Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling. It’s perversely refreshing to read about women doing a little retaliatory violence to the patriarchy instead of the disturbingly pervasive male violence against women that saturates so-called entertainment these days.

Meanwhile, I’m finding moments of happiness barefoot in the kitchen baking muffins, and nurturing the planet in my tiny sphere in my own feminine ways.

House finches and evening grosbeaks are among the regular visitors at the new smart feeder. Their songs and conversations brighten the days even more than their colors.

Another Brand New Day

Apr10

I’m grateful on this brand new day for an abundance of sunshine and little yellow tulips, for the grape hyacinths, for sandhill cranes flying over head in their eons old migration, for evening grosbeaks, house finches, and piñon jays.

I’m grateful for the energy to cut back the curly rushes in the pond with the Sunjoe plant trimmer (though these photos are before the job), and Wren is grateful that we get to play down at the pond again.

She takes her Frog Patrol quite seriously, and I had to trim rushes in a pattern that didn’t disturb the frogs and also kept Wren at bay from both the cutting blades and the frogs so that everyone had safe space.

Our patience and persistence was rewarded with a rare sighting of a pair of courting Northern Leopard frogs. Once I spotted them we left the pond for the day.

No-Buy New Year is going pretty well a quarter of the way in. I’ve spent more than I’d like to on vet care, more than I needed to on groceries, nothing on clothing, and only indulged in a couple of justifiable gadgets. I dropped my mini-digital-voice recorder I’ve used for many years and it broke, taking with it irretrievable pearls of wisdom from the previous few months. Oh well. So I went without for a couple more months, but the phone voice memo app is awkward in many situations when I need to record a thought, detail, bird sighting, or perfect turn of phrase, so I just ordered a new recorder for $80 before the price goes up. (Or maybe it already has; but it will pay for itself before long anyway, and will likely only get costlier if I wait.) I didn’t order from Amazon, have quit buying anything from there, and am looking to support more ethical alternatives.

Yellow-crested Half Wit

Thanks to Neighbor Mary for the giggle with this image of the Yellow-crested Half Wit. With Easter on its way, I also appreciated this from Penzeys egg-seasoning email this morning: “Trump ran on lowering food prices from day one. With eggs this isn’t rocket science. A few practical low-cost regulations to lower the spread of bird flu. Getting the poultry industry all the workers they need. And if we do have to import eggs to stop demand from outpacing supply, don’t jack up import costs through the roof with economy-crippling tariffs.”

And a palate cleanser for our eyes, a reminder of sweetness and light.

Strange Little Creature

Mar27

That’s what Neighbor Fred called little Wren yesterday while he was pruning our apricot tree. It was a gorgeous day, almost hit 70℉ with abundant sunshine. He wasn’t wrong: as pruned twigs clustered with fat buds hit the ground, Wren trailed along behind him eating the buds from the twigs. Have you ever?

Fred had said he’d be happy to help me prune the tree, but in truth I was even less help than Wren. I sat on a bench and kept him entertained with mindful conversation when I wasn’t wrapt in the phoebes calling around the house. I heard at least two, maybe three, and one of them perched atop the roof and called and called for a mate. Fingers crossed!

Once Fred had provided her with all those snackies, Wren decided he could be her friend, and finally let him pet her. Ooo, he did it just right!

After our arduous work supervising pruning, we sat on the patio for lunch, and enjoyed a second exciting bird. Pinyon Jays are moving through, and some of the flock stopped to drink at the birdbath. All I need is a third bird, and I’ll be calm.

Screenshot

This Week in Turkey

Dec5

I gave thanks this week for the wonderful dinner my neighbors shared with me, and for the leftovers I enjoyed creatively all week long. I baked a pie to share with them, Vaughn Vreeland’s coffee-maple chess pie, which looked a lot better than it tasted. Oh well. The laminated crust was great but it shrank so much in the parbake I had to use a smaller pie tin. I’ll try the crust again with a regular chess pie the old fashioned way.

The first leftover day I made a sandwich with avocado, mayo, blueberry jam, cheddar cheese, lettuce and turkey, which tasted a lot better than it looked. Then, knowing I could never finish all of everything and would have to freeze some of it, I threw some of everything (turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, chestnut stuffing, green beans, turkey, and a splash of cranberry sauce) into a pot with a pint of chicken stock, and simmered and stirred until I had a creamy, delicious, chowder-like soup. Which both looked and tasted delicious!

Then I made turkey salad, also including some stuffing and green beans, along with mayo, mustard, and Penzeys spicy salt, enjoying that one day on toast, and another day with the last of the warmed up potatoes and stuffing. I’m grateful for the generosity of my neighbor and for having fun with food.

I had been wanting to bake homemade English muffins for awhile and had the little metal rings in the pantry waiting, when the need to bake them finally arose. I tried them two ways: one instruction had me place the greased rings on a griddle and fill them with dough; the other had me put the rings on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven. In both cases, I filled the rings too full, but the breads turned out light and puffy anyway, and perfectly adequate. I’ll try the griddle method again with a different recipe.

Today’s lunch was ‘eggamuffin,’ a treat from my days in the swamp when my neighbors and I breakfasted together frequently at their trailer. Oh those days in the swamp! I lived in a retired military quonset hut split into a duplex, along with a ragtag assortment of other mostly single residents in other huts, trailers, and a cabin or two, surrounded by live oaks, at the edge of a sinkhole that had filled in with water and was a magnet for herons, frogs, and the occasional alligator. Such a different habitat from the sere mesa I wound up on, both so dear to me in their own ways.

Maybe the best turkey of all this week was the flock of wild turkeys who wandered through the yard this morning! In the thirty years I’ve lived here I’ve only heard them in the woods a few times, and seen a couple outside the fence one time. It was a startling thrill that pulled me away from washing dishes when I caught my first glimpse of one strutting past the south windows. By the time I got to the east window they just kept coming, ultimately more than a dozen of them, strutting and pecking as they went, moving steadily.

I watched, delighted, until they had all moved through the yard and jumped the fence. It crossed my mind to send Wren out there to catch one for us to eat, but she hurt her paw in the snow the other day and wanted to lie on the heating pad and lick it instead. Just as well.