I was so grateful this morning to see feeding activity at the phoebe nest! At least one chick has hatched so far. I look forward to more and more busyness as more eggs crack open to free their tiny birds.
Hatching!
Archives
Goldfinches
It’s a bird week. Today I’m grateful for the so-called Lesser Goldfinch pair I heard tweeting in the trees a couple of days ago, and caught on camera today eating seeds from the catmint. Honey Badger has had them in her catmint next door for a few years, but this is the first I’ve been privileged to see them here. Above, I capture her through the window cracking a seed; below, he looks alertly at me trying to sneak up on him outside. What’s lesser about them, I’d like to know.
It was dusk, and I couldn’t get close; he took off a second after spotting me. So they’re fuzzy images, but serve to document the delight, and signify the promise of more happy finches to come.
Nesting Phoebes
I’m so grateful today for the happily nesting phoebes. She’s been sitting for three days. I haven’t wanted to aim the big camera at her because of its noise, and the phone camera won’t capture her in the shadows under the deck. So I sat outside reading for a few hours today to acclimate them to my presence, and every now and then fired off a few shots with the husband-camera aimed elsewhere, before sneaking a few of her. By the time their chicks hatch in a couple of weeks (or less!) mom and pop won’t even blink at this paparazzo, and the chicks will grow up preening for the lens.
Out and About
I visited a few friends across the mesa today, a big step for me seeing more than one live person in a day much less in a week. I’m grateful for getting out and about. The fields everywhere are knee-high and green; it will be a banner year for the ranchers, and it’s an extraordinary sight. Other fine sights today were the sandhill cranes and their chicks in Garden Buddy’s field, though as soon as I slowed the car to take some pictures the parents shooed the chicks down into the grass. I’ll try again in a few days.
I enjoyed birds and beverages all day at various places, a lovely sparkling water on the west end of the mesa connecting with friends who are moving shortly and who also have nesting phoebes; then iced tea and cookies next door, where these magpies are nesting right next to the house. Back home, after sitting outside for a meditative evening desensitizing my phoebes to my presence on their patio, I came inside to enjoy a raspberrytini. I rolled the glass rim in the last of the homemade raspberry syrup then in Demerara sugar, and mixed the gin with sweet vermouth, garnished of course with fresh raspberries. I’m grateful as always for savoring the simple pleasures; for cultivating contentment rather than discontentment.
Birdsong
I’m grateful for a cloudless, bluebird sky day, without snow! There hasn’t been a day this lovely since last fall. It started with a phone call from a neighbor that broke through my DND wall at 8:45 am. He saw smoke from his place west of here that looked like it was coming from my house. He just wanted to make sure everything was okay. Living among junipers most of us have a panic button when we see smoke. I was so grateful not only that he called, but that he called back when he didn’t get through the first time, so Do-Not-Disturb deactivated for him. It’s a great feature on these smart phones, for which I’m also grateful.
There’s a tower in my house, so I ran up there with binoculars and was able to identify the location of the smoke as coming from a neighbor’s place a little farther east, and to confidently surmise that he was burning a slash pile. He’s a responsible forester, the ground is wet, and the smoke was small, so I wasn’t concerned. But I was grateful for the feeling of being interconnected in this neighborhood where we look out for one another. And I’m always happy to climb the tower ladder and scope smokes.
The day warmed up just enough to spend a little time outside between work and teaching, and while I was out there I sat down to listen to the first continuous birdsong I’ve heard this year. The Woodhouse’s Scrub Jays were yakking at each other flashing through the trees, and magpies were scolding something, but there were finches singing, and a flock of crows flew overhead. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crow here; we have mostly ravens. But crows are expanding westward ho, and about forty of them flew overhead cawing together. I was dumbstruck. I savored the present moment with the mix of birds… and listened hopefully for the call of a Say’s Phoebe. Not yet, but hope floats.
The Raptors’ Return
It’s February! Time for the raptors’ return! Last week I spotted three redtail hawks on power poles on the drive home from town. A couple days later I walked the campground loop at the state park, and we saw a rough-legged hawk, above. In a cottonwood by a ranch house on the road home a bald eagle perched. As I pulled into the driveway a redtail circled over the house. The first true harbinger of spring, the retails’ return. Also, even though it snowed today, yesterday’s high temperature was 57℉. I’ve pulled the first seed packets that need to be planted indoors 8-12 weeks before the last frost. Spring is coming!
I’m also grateful for those brain docs who offered a free brain-health cooking series. Yesterday I learned to make a tofu scramble that tastes almost like scrambled eggs, along with sweet potato hash (steaming is the secret to cooking them through!), and simple sautéed greens which I seasoned only with a squeeze of rangpur lime. Thanks, Kathy!
Simple Moments
Things I’m grateful for today: waking up alive; a beneficial acupuncture treatment; seeing a Basque shepherd on the highway with dogs, and a flock of sheep coming onto the road from a field, with more shepherds and dogs; the redtails’ return signaled by several on power poles along the highway; a cozy fire and a hot shower; a delicious sandwich for lunch; a peaceful meditation this afternoon; zoom tea with Kathleen; a single Manhattan with the drag queens raising love on ‘We’re Here’ in Temecula, CA; an early night to bed; and many other simple moments of breath and awareness. I’m also grateful for the friends and teachers who have helped me come to this place in this tenuous life where anything can happen at any time, and for the conditions of relative comfort and ease that characterize my days despite chronic pain and global grief, and for joy in the sight of a mountain bluebird’s flight across the road, and the flicker who lives in the eaves.
Resting
I’m grateful for the mental exercise of this gorgeous puzzle that occupied my free time for the past ten days, a record long time from start to finish. It was so challenging in so many ways, and I’m finding it challenging even to write about it. I’ve taken a lot of pictures of the process, and noted my thoughts along the way, and I just haven’t found the hours it will take to do it justice in a post. But I intend to! I’ll have to start right after lunch to avoid getting to normal blog time and finding myself too spent to do it. Maybe tomorrow! I’m grateful tonight, after a full day, for resting.
Meanwhile, I’m grateful today for orchid blooms coming on again as they do each winter. Here’s one of the first, a little one I pulled from a pot it outgrew. I’d been saving this hollow log for months until the right orchid happened along. This looked pretty tragic when I put it in there, but it immediately revived and after only a few weeks in the log it started a flower spike, and has now graced me with its first blossom.
And, I’m grateful to have my desk back! I normally leave a puzzle up for a couple of days after I finish it, but it’s been ten days without my desk, and using the computer on the sideboard or my actual lap was getting uncomfortable. So after photographing each bird card in the puzzle this afternoon I broke it down. It’s very gratifying to spend time with all the pieces again disassembling the puzzle, remembering how puzzling some of them were along the way, recalling the satisfaction of finding matches, or simply delighting again in the whimsy pieces and the genus of the cut designer.
Birds of Paradises
I feel a little like the lower red bird in this picture: “WTF?” This is definitely the hardest Liberty puzzle I’ve done in my decade of doing them. And in a way, the most fun, because it is so hard. It’s several dozen (feels like a hundred) tiny puzzles in one. I’m grateful to know a little bit about birds of paradises, the many tropical habitats and the myriad birds that inhabit them. I know what a rhea and a cassowary look like, that hornbill species have various styles of keratinous casques on top of their bills, that many wild pheasants resemble their domestic counterparts with more flamboyant colors, that there are several varieties of actual ‘birds of paradise,’ and so on. So matching birds to their names was not as challenging as it might have been. Naturally, I’m using Seymour’s Rule, in which I look well at the box top once, and never again. My strategy for this puzzle has been this:
First, to piece together the main title, ‘Birds of the Tropics.’ After putting together the title three nights ago, my next step was to pull out all pieces with bits of bird names on them, and piecing those together. This puzzle is a compilation of trading cards published c. 1889 for Allen and Ginter cigarettes, by a tobacco company in Richmond, Virginia. This came as a surprise to me when I looked it up. I’m glad I did–it gave me a clue to the Tropic Bird, which has til just now been only a title, widely separated on the table from its swooping white image.
Noticing a lot of reds, I decided to group all pieces with even a speck of red in them, and begin to build birds onto their names red first.
Some of the reds don’t belong to bird cards, but to a few vignettes scattered throughout. It’s taken two days of balancing between concerted focus and intermittent play to get most of the bird cards started, and only a few of them completed. I’ve stalled on the red strategy but not given up on it; meanwhile, I’ve branched out to yellows and dark blues, and am also constantly scanning for particular shapes that stand out. Many of the birds are represented not only by their colorful images, but also by a whimsy piece the shape of the bird.
I’m familiar with the bright fiery hues of tanagers native to the US, so I was searching all the red bits for something to attach to the Paradise Tanager above. I finally decided to ask Siri for help, and he pulled up a pile of images all resembling this adorable bird below. As I added a couple more pieces to the card title, I became perplexed: I don’t see how those brown tail feathers are going to turn into a Paradise Tanager… unless they got it wrong in 1889? But maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Pleasant surprises are consistently part of the Liberty puzzle experience. I’m grateful for this warm long-lasting pleasure to turn to throughout this cold holiday week.
Resurrection
It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter, did I mention that before? I had a lot of recovering to do from the drawn-out demise of Stellar, which was physically and emotionally grueling; and actually quite a bit of settling into a new normal without some of my closest friends who also died over the past two summers, from Ojo to Auntie to Michael and more. This spring does feel a bit like a resurrection for me, and what better day to acknowledge that than Easter Sunday?
I pulled out the new husband-camera which has also lain dormant all winter, and realized I had no idea how to use it, so I also pulled out the manual and spent some hours today figuring out all the knobs and buttons — most of the bells and whistles will have to wait for another day. I haven’t even attached the ‘good’ lens yet but still got some pretty pictures. The two nights of deep freeze last week did not destroy all chance of apricots this year, at least up on this mesa. The tree was loaded with buds, and while most of them had just opened before the freeze and are now toast, it seems that many unopened buds survived and are blooming in this next round of balmy weather. I hope that the valley orchards fared as well.
“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”
Albert Schweitzer
The Mindful Life Community daily guidance this morning brought suddenly and vividly to mind the journalism teacher in high school, Dottie Olin, who became a lifelong friend. She inspired me then, and I became editor of the paper. For three decades we stayed in touch, visited when I was in town, and her joie de vivre and boundless joy in life grounded me in unstable times. I was grateful to visit her often during the months I lived in Virginia while my mother was dying, and we became even closer. She continued to inspire and support me well into her 80s. Shortly after my mom died and I moved back home to Colorado, I got a note that she was dying of lung cancer. She said, “It’s nobody’s fault but my own,” as she had smoked all her life. She was at peace because she had lived fully and with so much love. I was devastated to lose her as well as my mom in the same year, 2004. I hadn’t thought about her recently, and love that she came to mind so vibrantly as someone who lighted a fire in me and rekindled it through the years. Just the thought of her this morning lifted my energy and got me outside and moving around in the garden, motivated to make the most of this beautiful spring day, this precious day that will never come again.