Tag Archive | butterfly

…the day began in cinders

The day began in cinders; all that was left of the morning’s drama a few filthy tail feathers on the ground.

Yesterday’s smoke was so thick from neighbors clearing fields with fire that it kept me inside most of the day, even though it warmed up to 75. This morning it wasn’t so bad, just a singed aroma to the air. So warm last night, fortunately, that I didn’t light a fire in the woodstove for the first time all year. Fortunately, I say! This morning the cat leapt onto the wall by the stovepipe and the dogs jumped barking out of bed all at once. I didn’t understand why at first, then heard the desperate skritching inside the pipe: a bird had somehow fallen in.

I put the dogs out and left the door open. My woodstove has a peculiar double ceiling, which might have made it easier. I lifted the griddle out of the lid to see a pile of creosote ash on top of the false ceiling. I reached my hand up into the chimney and felt feathers, startling both me and the bird, who flapped and scratched in a panic, billowing clouds of ash out the hole. The second time, knowing better, I covered the hole with a dog towel, reached under and into the pipe swiftly, and grabbed a fistful of feathers and a leg, pulled the bird down and out into the towel, and took it outside, letting it flap under the towel to clean itself off a little. In a minute I let go, pulled away the towel, and watched a young starling flap frantically away, leaving a half dozen sooty feathers in my hand.

Watering tools. Time to sort through all the connectors for my flexogen irrigation system. I’ve got the time, home in April, long cool days. All these accouterments make moving water so much easier.

Taking stock of hoses, measuring, assessing. Three hoses out of play this season with both ends bad on each; I’ll snip off the ends of these, mail them to Gilmour, and get three free replacements. The best garden deal I know of.

It’s been so dry and windy, despite occasional spring snow showers, that it’s time to start watering all around the yard, trees and beds. Time to sort the hoses and lay them out around the garden, make sure all connections are secure and won’t waste water with leaks.

Still no bees in the red tulips, but a passel of blooms.

Almond blossoms opening against the warm stucco of the house.

The new bee tree is the apricot.

A bee fly if I’m not mistaken.

In quest of the elusive white butterfly, moving too fast for me to get close, flittering through the nepeta.

A tiny wild bee plastered in pollen in the mini yellow tulips.

I love the way the honeybees dive in face first, deep into the corolla.

Keeping up with my goal of photographing bees on each new variety of flower as it blooms. This girl made my day.

So I spent a pleasant morning, grateful for the one that got away, chasing bees and butterflies through the spring garden, then drove to Eckert to the frame shop to drop off a new print for a show next month in Salida, and to pick up a couple of framed giant bees for the Grand Opening tomorrow night of the Church of Art in downtown Hotchkiss. Slowly gearing up the first rise of summer’s roller coaster.

Tuesday, Two Caterpillars

Sep11

Katrina finished the caterpillar greenhouse for winter greens this morning, and planted mustard greens to round out the bed of spinach, cilantro, and arugula. The north side of the bed has sprouted carrots and beets already for spring harvest.

Greenhouse plastic slides up or down the hoops, held in place by clothesline anchored near the ground.

The other two caterpillars busied themselves on a weed in the trees down near the pond.

Who will this turn into? My butterfly field guide is trapped inside iTunes and I can’t open it!

The tail grips the stem…

… while the head eats what? The inflorescence?

Or the nectar? Or the aphids?

Monday, Up All Night

Jul13

Stellar resting after up all night

Ironic that my puppy prayer of the whole last year has betrayed me: I give thanks for having two happy healthy dogs. It’s true, they’re still happy, but they haven’t either one been healthy since the last snow, and maybe a lot longer than that. Their tough construction belies their delicate constitutions. Up til 5 a.m., with Stellar out every ten or twenty minutes, finally forcing out only clear brown liquid. I think we’ve all been there, with ourselves or our animals. Poor Stellar! Patience came as I watched him strain. I know how bad it feels. Peristalsis won’t stop, there’s nothing left, but you can’t help it. A dx of coccidia and a sulfa drug from Doc should solve it.

Biko’s nose

Butterfly’s tongue

I could not have asked for a lovelier day in which to take no obligations. A night of no sleep, a damp garden in cool, moist air, a cloudless sunlight, no I couldn’t ask for anything more. This is my Sunday; as morning rounds don’t always happen in the morning, Sunday sometimes falls in the middle of the week. It’s been a long full week, not a quiet one, its fullness replete with joy and grief.

The song in my head is quite different when I spend enough time outside. Puttering, looking, watching, listening. I’ve watered nothing for three days, nothing since Thursday save the potted plants on Saturday, gave them a good soaking just hours before the downpour. Rocky Mountain beeplants, stunted, few and far between, are opening their fringed purple heads. Blue mist spireas are opening their delicate purple spikes.

“Who is eating my peaches?” said the woman who lived in the woods. “Someone is climbing the tree and gnawing the fruit from the bone, leaving peach pits hanging on the limbs.”

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Jun24

Haze from a new fire in the San Juan Mountains to the south gave a somber glow to morning.

… while last night, the first sweep of smoke lent sunset a lovely, alarming tint. Irrigation wheel lines on Fruitland Mesa are dry now, after only five weeks of water. With six big fires in Colorado and more in surrounding states, everyone is getting a little on edge.

Nevertheless, there was a great turnout yesterday for the dedication of the Jacob Hoover Cowen Herbarium at the museum in Hotchkiss. A remarkable resource for our small town, making “the extraordinarily diverse world of Delta County wild plants available to the widest range of people possible.” Carolyn Sue Savage Hall spent years collecting and preserving specimens, including the rare Thelypodiopsis juniperorum from the forest under my stewardship. Instead of a ribbon cutting, she released a hatbox full of painted ladies to mark the opening. One landed in the white hair of an elderly lady, one stayed on the spray on our table.

NEW LENS! My lovely bees have persuaded me that it’s time for a serious macro lens for their individual portraits, and this has taken my garden photography to a deeper level. The key to anything is the right tool for the job. The bees are clearly foraging somewhere else, though; all yesterday morning I only saw them at the hive, but my hunt for them disclosed plenty of other insect treasures.