I got a new car. I bought it on Tuesday and it was delivered to my house Thursday night. I still have my old car so I put an sign in the window of my old car indicating it was for sale. I drove my old car to work on Friday so people could see the sign. So today was the first chance to use the new car. Did I want my first ride to be a trip to the gas station to buy gas for the lawn mower or a trip to the health club? No. No, I did not. I wanted the first trip in my brand new car to be epic and to bring good karma for all the future road trips I will take. So we drove to Lake Maria State Park to hike, look for morels, and enjoy the spring weather and spring wild flowers.
We spent 5 minutes in the driveway figuring things out. We synched up another phone to the car. I called that phone with my phone and ended up talking to myself from my phone to my car. Whew! Mind blown. Also so much laughter I could hardly breathe so I sounded like a heavy breather which led to more laughter. Eventually we made our way to Lake Maria State Park. We took a 5.5 mile hike and found some fiddlehead ferns.
And other unidentified wild flowers. And although we searched under standing dead trees, we did not find any morel mushrooms.
The woods were full of colorful wildflowers. We found a bunch of small ponds with chorus frogs singing. We saw woodpeckers, pied billed grebe, trumpeter swans, blue jays, belted kingfisher, turkey vultures, a great blue heron, common mergansers, bald eagle, and a mallard taking a nap in the sun.
This dead tree stump is so fantastically splintered that it almost looks like a palm tree. This would not be a good spot to land with a parachute.
We suspected these two geese had babies but couldn't really see them until they swam away on the water. The adults kept the babies out of sight of us as best they could.
This tick shaped lump was on a tree so it must be a wood tick?
I believe this is a grouping of marsh marigolds near the trail head at the end of our walk.
We looked but not see any turtles aside from the one in the photo above. After our walk we were starving so we ate at Chatterer's in Monticello and drove home. Epic road trip; the first of many in this car I hope.
Finally the sun shone today and I could take my usual walk down to Laddie Lake at lunch time. I went with another person and we talked about the things she likes to talk about which is mostly food. As we got off the streets and onto the trail we approached the lake. Red winged blackbirds were singing. A robin was taking a bath. All of a sudden I heard a whinny sound. My mind, thoroughly trained on whinnys from all my practice on listening to marsh birds knew right away this was not a horse. "Sora!" I yelled, "That is a sora calling." I have heard it call many times on my computer but never in the wild. Again I find myself in the situation where I am super excited about something and the person I am with looks at me impassively. Her lack of interest did not in the least diminish my excitement. Hearing the sora whinny and the smell of fresh cut grass made this walk very satisfying.
I own a thermos now. My thermos holds 4 cups. It's the same kind of thermos my father took to work back in the 1960's. It is stainless steel and has a handle. I've had it about a year and now I wonder how I managed to live without one all these years. I use it at least 7 times a week and sometimes more. During the day I bring coffee to work. The coffee I brew at home in my cheapo 2 cup coffee pot tastes so much better than the Folgers, run- through-a-Bunn-machine coffee that is served at work. The coffee at work is so bitter. You could use it to seal a driveway. Mine tastes much smoother and milder. At night I rinse the thermos out and use it to make yogurt. The thermos keeps the milk and Yogurt starter mixture warm enough for the bacteria to grow and multiply and morph the milk into yogurt. By morning my yogurt is done. I pour it out, scrub the thermos with a bottle brush and put coffee in it to take to work. The thermos is working day and night. How did I manage without one before? I guess before I was buying yogurt at the store and not drinking coffee.
Last night I went to the Eastman Nature Center in Dayton for a woodcock experience. I know Offspring #1 would giggle uncontrollably at that sentence just because of the name of the bird. In case you didn't know a woodcock is a bird. Unfortunate name, I know. Other names for this bird are timber doodle, bog sucker or hokumpoke. In the spring the woodcock do an incredible mating dance and I was there to witness it last night, first hand, right in front of me. These woodcocks put on quite a show. Woodcocks are strange little birds. Their necks and legs seem unfortunately short. They have eyes where most bird's ears would be and ears where most bird's eyes would be. Their long beak has a prehensile tip. The woodcock can move the end of it's beak separately. The woodcocks walks along in what I think is a sexy way but it could also be compared to someone walking on a lake with new ice in early winter testing it to make sure it will hold your weight. Personally the walk reminds me of the way I clean the house on weekends with the music up full blast. Decide for yourself:
The woodcocks bends it's head down toward the ground. With it's ears at the top of it's beak it can listen for the sound of it's favorite food, worms. One theory is the woodcock walks the way it does to cause tremors in the earth and send worms to the surface. If a worm is heard the woodcock and insert it's beak into the earth, sense a worm, and move the tip of it's beak to snatch that worm up and gobble it down.A naturalist led a group of 10 of us walked down a bike path for about 15 minutes and waited for the sun to set. As we walked the chorus frogs were singing. As we passed their pond the frogs suddenly became silent. That was weird. Did they understand that we knew they were talking dirty? We kept walking. Sun set was about 8:15. Woodcocks only display when there are two foot candles of light per square foot such as what we get at dusk and dawn. When it's too light out, they won't dance. When it's too dark out, they won't dance. On a clearer night like we had last night the dance lasted about an hour. While we waited we could hear geese honking, turkeys gobbling, white throated sparrows calling and field sparrows chirping. We also heard a very unusual sound that none of us knew at first. We later concluded it must have been a red squirrel screaming bloody murder over and over and over again. A coyote howled. At 8:25 a small brown bird came flying by and almost hit one of us in the head. Our naturalist instructor, Elaine, nodded with a big smile indicating it was a woodcock. Within 10 seconds we heard the first "Peent." We were told to expect between 4 and 100 repetitions of "Peent" before the first flight. Each "Peent" sounded different because the bird was turning 90 degrees after each call - much like I can hear the tornado siren get louder and softer as it turns on the pole. Between each "Peent" was one or two hiccups. I know those hiccups! Where have I heard those hiccups before? Eventually I figure out I heard the hiccups on one of the frog and toad quiz sound clips. After the fourth call the woodcock flew in large circles up into the sky up to 300 feet. Elaine told us this process took about 30 seconds in which the bird was looking only upward. These 30 seconds were the time for us to change positions if we wanted to get closer to the bird. Otherwise we supposed to sit still and be quiet. Some people moved often but I moved only once. For me to get up off the cold ground and move and sit down in 30 seconds is a physical accomplishment. The woodcock feathers made a noise on the way up. Once at 300 feet the bird stopped circling up and zig zagged downward while making noises with it's mouth. We still had enough light to see the bird cut through the center of the observers and land in the grass right by us. Right away it started "Peent!" This time when it landed it chose a spot on the bike path right in front of me. I was six feet away from the woodcock and saw it "Peent" and turn around in circles before flying up into the air again. The bird flew up many times in the hour and we could hear other woodcocks doing the same thing over the next hill. As I sat there in the wet grass on the side of the bike path, jeans getting wet, shivering with cold, and imagining the wood ticks and deer ticks crawling lickety-split toward me, a voice in my head asked, "Is this fun?" I could be home watching an episode of "Mad Men" and getting ready for bed. The coyote howled again. I decided that watching and listening to these woodcocks sky dancing is the ideal activity for me on this night in April. I loved it. I think I'll come back next year.
I loved, loved, loved Some Luck by Jane Smiley. This is the first of a trilogy of an Iowan farm family spanning 100 years from 1920. I read the middle book first. Then I read the beginning. As soon as I finished the last page, I requested the third book which I can hardly wait to begin. In this story the family patriarch, Walter Langdon gets married and buys a farm and proceeds to make a family. Over the years his horses are replace by a tractor. Initially resistant to the dangers involved, he eventually starts using ammonia fertilizer instead of just manure. He manages to keep his family going through the depression by deciding how much of his land to plant in oats, corn and soybeans. Farmers have to be able to adapt and Walter is good at adapting although he would prefer to do things the same way year after year. I really enjoyed getting to know Frank and Joey, Lillian and Clare and Henry as children. Joey becomes a farmer too. In this age before genetically modified seed that can't be saved as seed for the next year, Joey breeds his own brand of corn by planting 4 rows of one kind and two rows of another kind and cutting the tassels off of some rows. Walter scoffs at Joey's efforts until he realizes that Joey is getting better yields than he is. Jane Smiley is a good writer. I like the way she weaves between and among the characters. She illustrates her points about their character by adding descriptions or snippets of their behavior. I look forward to the last third.
I have been thinking more about that turkey I saw yesterday admiring himself in his reflection. Is that turkey really any different from any of us? Who hasn't gotten ready in the morning and looked in the mirror and said, "Awesome sauce! Great hair today." Well, okay, maybe not those exact words but we all have days when we admire ourselves approvingly. A little narcissism is a part of the human condition going way back to the Greek gods. In an interview, Prince said he was looking at himself in the mirror when he wrote this song:
This turkey looks iridescent and glossy in the sun. We saw male turkeys displaying themselves in front of the glass windows at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge nearly all day. Visitors could sit on a bench mere inches away from the turkey who I think was admiring himself in the glass.
We took a hint at the location of blooming Dutchman's breeches and were able to find them.
Today we went to some training on the secretive Minnesota marsh birds at the Minnesota National Wildlife Refuge which is very close to the MSP airport. We arrived early for the 9 o'clock start of the training but the day went fast. We spent the morning inside the building testing our equipment to make sure our playback calls were between 70 and 80 decibels. We learned about the protocol for the marsh bird survey which is more complicated than the frog survey and the owl survey. The information was complicated and challenging yet interesting. After lunch we traveled to a place called Bass Ponds where we got to try conducting a real survey. One this survey we had one speaker playing our playback calls and another speaker imitating real birds calling randomly in the wild. So we tried our best to hear the recordings while 747's were flying right over our heads. The six hours I spent studying the calls of marsh birds paid off because I felt pretty confident about most of the calls I heard. I had never met any of the other people doing this survey before but they were all friendly and interesting. By the time 5 p.m. rolled around I had had my sensory fill of listening. On the ride back to the refuge I was trying to identify the squeaking brakes of the Volvo I was riding in. And on the way back the light rail train sounded very much like an American Bittern. I may study marsh birds further but not today. My brain can not take any more listening for birds today.
The entire story of A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood takes place in a single day. Granted, the day was a long one because the single man doesn't go to bed until early the next morning but much happens during his day. In the novel, we get to hear what George says and does as well as the dialogue that goes on inside his head. The year is 1962 and George is a troubled man living in California and commuting to his job at a community college. George has an image to project. He wants to appear competent, confident and successful. Inside he is wounded and lonely and a little bit lost. I understand this story has been made into a movie starring Colin Firth. I think it would be interesting to see how the film writer interpreted this novel. I really liked George and I liked this story as well.
Today I moved Chickenson Caruso to her summer quarters. I also told her that in mid-July she would be joined with a brood of foster chicks. Being a scientific minded person, I don't read too much into animal behavior. There is really no point in attributing human emotions to poultry. I believe she was happy with the fresh earth to explore and the possibility of expanding her family, taking new chicks under her wing, being a good role model for them, teaching them how to take care of themselves, and making the world a better place for chickens everywhere.
Picture of Northern Lights Azalea for no reason other than beauty.
A male in full breeding plumage strolled by Chicken Caruso soon after she moved into this part of the yard. I might have heard a wolf whistle.
Last night at our Master Naturalist chapter meeting we learned about bird language. We saw a short documentary by Jon Young on how to interpret the language and behavior of birds. He asserts that we have forgotten how to pay attention to nature because all of our basic human needs are taken care of. Cultures who live closer to nature are very aware of bird language. By paying attention to the birds you can learn of predators coming your way before the predators are aware of you. He says birds basically have two states of being - baseline or alarmed. If the bird is in baseline it can sing, bathe, preen, eat, defend it's territory, feed young and talk about love. If the bird is alarmed it might call our a warning or possibly be silent or move to a look out spot. If one bird flies up to the look out spot, the other birds behind it can relax knowing that bird has their back. If all the birds in your yard abandon the bird feeder and go silent, there is probably a Cooper's Hawk of sharp shinned hawk nearby. For smaller predators such as a cat or a raccoon, the birds will fly up and away forming an umbrella shaped margin of safety around the animal. To increase your bird language skills you have to spend time outside observing in nature. Find a spot to sit in your yard where you can see the bird action. Sit there an hour or more each day and pay attention to the spoken and unspoken language of birds. Or you could read Jon's book, What a Robin Knows, to learn more about it.
Prince died today. I am very sad about his death. He helps me clean the house almost every Saturday. Why did he have to die so young? Do talented people burn more brightly and die young? If given the choice would I choose talent and an early death or what I got going now?
Besides studying the sounds of owls and frogs and toads, I am now studying for a new survey of secretive marsh birds. I study to learn the sound of one marsh bird from another. Marsh birds are so secretive it's difficult for researchers to know how they are doing. So Audobon asked for birders to participate in a marsh bird survey. I listen to the sounds of the six more important birds to survey including the American bittern, least bittern, pied billed grebe, yellow rail, Virginia rail, sora and olive sided flycatcher. These birds make sounds that include the sound of a pump, a manual typewriter, metallic tics, "kuh," "keow - keow - keewop," "per-wheep," "gid-ick gid-ick," and, one of my favorites, "Whip three beer." We also study other species that hang out in marshes like red necked grebe, eared grebe, western grebe, black crowned night heron, common Gallinule, American coot, Sandhill crane, Wilson Snipe, Wilsons Phalarope, Black Tern, Forester's tern, Marsh Wren, Yellow billed cuckoo, swamp sparrow, and the yellow headed blackbird. I've been practicing these marsh bird quizzes for hours now. I listen very carefully. The examples they give us sometimes have other sounds in them. I can' t help myself. If I hear a frog, I identify the frog. I'm not supposed to pay attention to the frogs now! If I hear an "oooh" and I think it's an owl. I'm not supposed to know owls on this. Forget frogs and owls! Concentrate on marsh birds. There are so many sounds in the swamps at night. I understand now why some people don't like camping - it's just too darn noisy! With every quiz my score is improving. I can get this.
That moment when you get an email from a family member with a subject line that reads "std." I swear I had already run through the various possibilities and was in the process of sorting them into "treatable" and "untreatable." My mind works fast in a panic.
Turns out std can also stand for short term disability. Who knew?
Today on our walk around Laddie Lake we noticed that the blue jays were especially alarmist. I don't know what the jays were upset about but upset they were. The blue jays were loud but the chorus frogs were totally silent today.Further up the path we met the man and woman who walk their sheltie dog. We see them several times a week and have become friendly enough to point out nature wonders to each other such as a deer napping in the woods. Today the couple pointed out a tree in the distance with two turkeys perched in the top of the 30 foot oak. I've seen turkeys walking on the ground or gliding to the ground from my deck, but never perched in a tree top. As I was getting a good view of the turkeys a blue jay came up and harassed them. One turkey took off flying out of the tree. The turkey flew in a 40 foot circle flapping it's big wings, stretching it's body to make it look slimmer, and maintaining it's height. Turkeys can really fly and they are amazing birds to see in flight. They're so massive and spectacular. I don't know if they can fly very long but what I saw today was very special. The dog owning couple and I were very excited. I guess turkeys roost in trees at night so they have to be in shape to fly or else sleep on the ground and that could be dangerous. I'm glad I knew it was a turkey before I saw it fly or I think I would be stumped on what kind of bird that was.
A bird woke me up this morning. Not a cheerful robin singing, "cheerio," or the minor key lament of a morning dove but a Canadian goose honking. The cool thing about it though was, with the windows open, I could hear the wind moving beneath it's wings so it must have been flying right above my house. I went back to sleep and dreamed about owls. I saw a long eared owl and a short eared owl and that was cool. What was not cool was my coworkers were grabbing the owls and holding them. I told them they should not handle wild owls before I woke up. After breakfast I went out to the garage to see if the motorcycle would start. The bike popped right on. I thought I would wait until my street was swept but I didn't. I thought I would just ride around my neighborhood but I didn't. I thought I would just drive to Anoka but I didn't. I heard there was a great blue heron colony where Dayton Road meets Highway 37 in Otsego. As I got to that intersection I looked for the colony but it was hard to see the river through all the trees. Before the thought "I can't see any heron colony," could finish in my head I was startled by the site of a great blue heron flying right over my head with a stick in it's mouth no less. I made a mental note to plan a kayak trip from Elk River to Anoka this summer so I can see the colony. It was a great way to see my first of the year great blue heron though. I biked home in time to grab a quick lunch before heading to the gym and meeting Offspring #2 for a bike ride. I said I wanted to ride on a trail so we drove to the Wells Fargo near Target Field and biked the Cedar Line Trail to Hopkins. Biking by Cedar Lake was especially nice because the lake cooled the air and made the air smell lovely. The trail was very nice and passed a couple community gardens. One of the gardens had a purple martin house and I saw my first of the year purple martins. We were hot and tired after the ride so we went to Psycho Suzi's for dinner. We watched the Mississippi River roll by as we sat on the patio and ate our dinner. What a nice day to not work. Here is a view up the river from the dock at Psycho Suzie's. The bridge is Lowry Avenue.
Last night three of us went out on the first frog and toad survey and what a beautiful night we had for herping. The sky was partly cloudy with a half moon bright enough to cast moon shadows. The temperature hovered around 60 degrees! The wind was mild and I think I saw a total of two mosquitoes. We heard tons of frogs. The frogs were screaming last night. We heard spring peepers (which we always hear on our first route), and chorus frogs (which we always hear on our first route) and wood frogs like I've never heard wood frogs before. We've heard wood frogs before but never at every stop like last night. Since wood frogs croak only 2 weeks out of the year, we picked an excellent night to hear them. I even asked them, "Is this an election year for you wood frogs?" Sometimes the wood frogs were so loud they almost drowned out the chorus frogs. I really had to concentrate to hear the chorus frogs. Sometimes I would try to imagine where the individual frogs were located that we were listening to. Was there 25 out there or was it 50? 150? How far away were they? How close were the closest ones? I would guess the closest ones were 4 feet away. Are they spaced randomly or clustered in groups? If only little light bulbs would appear above their heads would I know exactly where they were. We also heard snipe and woodcock and Canadian geese and red winged blackbirds. At stop #3 where we park over the culvert leading from one wetland to another something splashed in the water and set up a bunch of ripples. Maybe it was a turtle or a muskrat or I don't know what else it could be. I would think that wetland is too shallow for fish. White Lily Lake looked as inviting as always. At stop #8 a county sheriff pulled up behind us and asked if we hit a deer. We said no. Ahead was a big pickup pulling a boat that must have been the one to hit the deer. We probably saw at least 6 deer on our trip plus one rabbit that could jump like a kangaroo. Great night for frogging!
Today we went for a walk near Laddie Lake at lunch. The sky was blue and the breeze was warm. Grass was growing. Magnolia trees and forsythia were blooming. I saw my first dragonfly. Chickadees, blue jays, red winged blackbirds, wood ducks, mallards and nuthatches were singing. The trees have not leafed out yet but they're about to. We're on the cusp of spring. The change is palpable. So much energy is waiting to burst forth. It's like, uh, it's like a big pimple ripening? Gross. A boil coming to a head? No, spring is not an infection. Lets not go down the sexual road. A dam breaking? No, spring is not destructive. How about Old Faithful? A Volcano? I don't know a really great analogy but it's gonna happen any minute now and I love seeing the potential of life.
I have watched several camera websites. I've watched the bald eagle cam, bear hibernating cam (a tad boring), owl cams, hawk cams, falcon cams, college cams (never once saw Offspring #2 go by), and some city cams (like New Orleans during Mardi Gras). This kelp cam, set in the water of Southern California, is more relaxing than those other cams. As I watch my shoulders drop and my brain waves slow down into the alpha waves. My breathing gets slower and deeper. The waves push in and the waves push out. I am sure snorkeling would be more relaxing than watching kelp cam but I can't go snorkeling as often as I want. I can almost feel the waves lifting me and pushing me around on kelp cam. The water isn't very clear and so far I haven't seen any fish, crabs or lobsters, but I like the effect the kelp cam has on my entire body. See (and listen) for yourself at
Okay, yes. I read a book about the making of a dictionary. And that might sound boring to you but it totally wasn't boring. Simon Winchester's book, The Professor and the Madman (A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary), had conflict and tension, misunderstandings and history. I really can't imagine a life without dictionaries. This dictionary was written in the last half of the 1800's. The Professor was an English professor. The madman was an American civil war veteran. Now it could be he was destined to be a person who suffered from schizophrenia or it could be his experience as an officer/Army doctor ruined his mental health. What he was ordered to do, as a doctor in the Civil War, goes beyond anything I ever though would be asked of an United States citizen. Ever. He was ordered to brand the face of a deserter of the Army with a big letter "D." I cannot imagine what that was like. The deserter was a young Irish lad. A giant D burned into his face ruined his life. Was it unreasonable that the madman thought the Irish were against him? So, yeah, a book about a dictionary was totes interesting. And we had a great discussion about it in book club. And I'm not telling you the most incredible thing the mad man did, cuz, wow, it's too weird to make up. I loved this book. Great story!
Today is Beverly Cleary's birthday. Cleary is the author of some of my favorite books about some of my favorite people including Beezus and Ramona Quimby. Henry Huggins, and Ralph the mouse. I loved Cleary's books when I was a child and I love them still. Cleary had a way of connecting with children and looking at events from a child's point of view. She sure knew what it was like between young girls who happened to be sisters. Happy 100th Beverly!
Today at work I offered to show a couple of women the way to meet someone. I knew both women and as they followed me down the hall, one of them said, "Hold on. You have something on your back." My first thought was my tag was inside out. I felt her fingers on the skin of my lower neck to the right of where the tag would be. I wondered if I had a wood tick. I hoped this wasn't going to be awkward. She hands me a tiny piece of paper. "It's a letter," she says. I say, "Oh. It's an N." The letter is so tiny it must be in size 6 font. "Stands for normal?" I ask. "You might have it sideways," she retorts, "It could be Z for zany."
As a treat for myself, I made ratatouille today. I made it for a holiday dinner but this batch is strictly for moi. It is delicious but a bit putsy. The putsy part is collating the vegetables (red pepper, yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant, repeat). The sauce is easy to make. You don't even cook the vegetables in the sauce but put them in the blender raw.
Sauce Ingredients: 1 red pepper-seeded, 1/2 yellow onion, 3 cloves garlic (I used 5), 1 15 ounce can tomatoes, 3 TB olive oil, 1 TB lemon juice, 1 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. black pepper, 1 TB dried oregano, 1 (heaping?) TB red pepper flakes. Put all sauce ingredients in a blender until smooth. Pour 3/4 of the sauce into a cast iron skillet and spread evenly. Save the last 1/4 of the sauce for later.
Dish Ingredients: 1 eggplant, 1 red bell pepper, 2 zucchini, 2 yellow squash. Wash those vegetables and slice them very thin. Collate the vegetables and arrange the slices in a spiral around the skillet. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Drizzle the remaining sauce over the top of the vegetables. Lay a piece of parchment paper over the top of the skillet. Bake for one hour. Bon Appetit!
A good friend asked, "Want to go to a pow wow with me?" I agreed. We met and had a great time together. We went to an estate sale, shopped for eye glasses and stopped into a shop where a person can paint a canvas or make a fused glass pendant or a fused glass bowl. We made pendants. Mine is pink and white and opal.
Hers is turquoise and blue and purple and mauve. We left them to be fused and will pick them up in a couple weeks. The best part of the day was hanging out with a lovely person, remembering the old times, celebrating successes and family, reminiscing about the young women we used to be, and looking forward to more good times together in the future. The pow wow? We never got there. We spent too much time in therapy I guess.
A yellow rail, one of THE MOST ELUSIVE birds around, sound like a manual typewriter. And if you're too young to know what a manual typewriter sounds like, WHATEVER! It sounds like a yellow rail. Yellow rails are more secretive than Prince. If I hear a yellow rail, I am going to celebrate big time.
When I got home from the gym this afternoon I checked on my chicken. I gave her fresh water, collected an egg, and checked on her food. She was running low so I took her feed container out of the coop to refill. I crouched down to replace the food container inside the coop. I was in a bit of a hurry to get the door closed before she decided she wanted to come outside. As I was closing the door to the coop I got up from a crouch. I got up from a crouch without pulling myself up or pushing myself up or using my hands in any way. I did it! This was a goal I had since having my hip replaced - to get up from a crouch hands free! Wow! Mission accomplished. This will make gardening, photography, chicken rearing, tying shoes for other people, traveling and countless other activities so much easier.
Today I had a busy day. One meeting was especially difficult. Problems. Everybody has them. One guy had bugs in his computer. No, not a virus. Actual bugs. Ants to be specific. His laptop was wrapped tightly in plastic. Can ants be suffocated? Wouldn't it be better to lure the ants out of the machine with a jelly sandwich maybe? I don't know the answer to than. I'm no computer expert. My field is employment. We try not to use jargon but sometimes it slips out. So today when I heard my coworker say, "He hasn't been listening to directions. I had to punch him out twice in the past week." I knew right away that didn't sound good. Especially since the guy saying it obviously lifts weights regularly. His forearms bulge like Popeye the Sailor Man. "On the time clock!" I pipe in, "He punches him out on the time clock." Wow, that was a close one. People could have taken that wrong for sure. Jargon. Jargon can be dangerous.
As I stood in line at the self checkout to borrow Early Warning by Jane Smiley, the librarian called me over to shorten my wait and give me personal service. "This is the second of a series," she told me. "What?!" I said with grace and poise, "I'm checking it out anyway." So this is the second of a triple feature about a farm family in Iowa. This book covers 1960 to 2000. The first book is about the family from 1920 to 1960. The third in the series covers 2000 to 2020. All in all the family history is covered for 100 years. And I started in the middle! I liked it though and I've already started on the first of the series. As the family spreads out from Iowa to Manhattan to San Francisco, Jane Smiley informs us about the culture of the time. Jimmy Carter and the grain embargo. Rev. Jones in Guyana, the trickle down economics of the Reagen era, farm prices and the ag bills and James Watt; the story is fascinating because I lived through most of it. I learned a lot from this book. One of the main characters is named Frank. Frank doesn't stay on the family farm but settles on the east coast instead. Frank is fairly estranged from his wife and family but still married. He has issues. When Frank can't sleep, he counts backwards from 1000 by fives. I tried that last night and it didn't work. I mean, I didn't get to sleep. I did, however, get pretty good at counting backward by 5's. I love Jane Smiley's writing and can't wait to read about Frank's parents,
On top of volunteering to run an owl route once a year and a frog and toad route three times a year, we signed up for a marsh bird survey. So now I am listening to the strange sounds of the birds of the marsh. And there are some ridiculously strange sounds. There is one bird, the American bittern, that wins first prize for the most ridiculous sound. The other name for American bittern is swamp pumper because it hangs out in the swamp and sounds like a pump. Listen for yourself and see what you think.
Seriously? Is that bird making a mating call or is it about to be sick? Bulimic bittern? This bird call is so incredible. I really hope I get the opportunity to hear one.
Beautiful day today so I decided to get a few things done in the yard for those that fly. Hopefully a bird will make use of this yellow gourd house.
I hung all three yellow gourd houses in the hackberry trees that line my driveway.
As I put up the third gourd house I see Mr. and Mrs. Black Capped Chickadee checking out my bluebird house. One potential parent goes in and looks around while the other waits on a blackberry cane. Next they switch places so both can get a feel for the place. Will they move in?
When the gourd houses were up I moved my bat house from the tree where it has hung for the past 7 years unused to the side of the house. Last year I took a bat class and learned that the bats who nest on trees don't use houses. The bats who nest in houses will not nest on trees. So it made no sense to hang that bat house on a tree. It needs to be on a house. I put this one on the south side of the house, close to the deck, but not close enough to get guano on the deck.
When the bat house was up I put up my pollinator house. This was a gift from a fair trade market and made in the Phillipines. I hope bees take it up for a residence.
I think bees will like it. If the bees come by to smell the crab apple blossoms, they will find a clean, new home right there next to the blossoms. What's not to like?
Four of us went out on the owl survey in Morrison County last night. We started more than 30 minutes after sunset after a delicious and warming dinner in Pierz. The sky was mostly cloudy and the wind was gusty and the temperature was cold. We stood on the cold gravel road listening for owls. At the third stop the wind picked up a little bit. With my back to the wind, mother nature parted the hair on the back of my head where there usually is no part and made me cold right down to the scalp. At the fifth stop we parked the car at a T in the road. As we got out we thought we saw a UFO coming from the west; a well-lit UFO. Turns out it was not a UFO but a tractor pulling a manure spreader. As we stood there in the cold trying to listen for owls, the tractor pulled the manure spreader and proceeded to spread in the field the rich, ripe manure. Talk about poor timing! What are the chances the farmer chooses the one night we're in this neighborhood and the exact time of night of our arrival on the owl route? Not only was the noise of the tractor spreading this juicy manure too loud for us to hear the owls, the smell of methane and ammonia was too much to take. I'm surprised we held out for almost the entire 5 minutes. I imagine the farmer eating dinner earlier tonight and planning to spread manure in the dark on cold Friday night. Why? We didn't hear any owls at the two stops in the town of Pierz. In fact the only birds we heard were geese and a lone mallard. It was a quiet night for birds. As time went on the wind got stronger. So we were skunked on the owls this year on our owl route. Maybe it was too cold or too windy. Or maybe the owls ran out of things to say. Lack of owls calling is just as important as evidence of owls calling or at least that is what we were told. Earlier in the evening someone said they went to Jackson. Well, that is all it took for me to get a new ear wig. I know Johnny Cash sang it but didn't Sonny and Cher also sing that song? We had some dispute about the lyrics. Was it hotter than a Brussels sprout? That doesn't make sense. Hotter than a Texas drought? That does make sense but was it right? Turns out is hotter than a pepper sprout. Seriously? I was told not to quit my day job. #sniffle #rockstardreamsdashed
