Summer

Summer is my favorite season. I'm trying to soak it up with all my senses so that I can remember what paradise felt like during the dark days of February. I stare at the puffy white clouds in the blue sky. I try to memorize the feel of the sun and a cool breeze on my bare skin. I listen to the birds chirp through the open windows. I smell the scent of the pineapple weed as I drive my motorcycle up the patch of green in the middle of the driveway. Today I stopped at the light on Foley Boulevard and 99th. I watched a starling feed a baby bird in a nest located inside the stop and go light pole. I saw an albino squirrel run across 99th, into the grass, and up a tree. By the way, for you numerologist fans, tomorrow's date is 7/8/09!

Disturbing the Swallows

I started monitoring the quality of the Rum River this spring for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. On Monday evenings, I park my car on the Pleasant Avenue bridge. First I rate the river quality on aesthetics (would I swim in it, etc). Then I throw an empty bucket tied to a rope over the railing and haul up a bucket of river water. I pour the water into a secchi tube that holds 60 centimeters of water. I see if I can distinguish the black and white pattern at the bottom of the tube. If I can't see it, I slowly let water out until I can see it and measure how deep the water is in the tube. Then I look for the screw in the bottom of the tube. If I can't see that, I slowly let water out until the screw becomes visible. I measure the temperature of the water in the bucket. And finally I take a large tape measure with a plumb bob taped to the bottom of it and measure how far down the river is from a specific spot on the bridge. While I'm doing all these things, I have drawn some attention. Several people have asked me if I needed help. I suppose they thought my car broke down and that is why I'm parked on the bridge. Several teen aged boys have asked me what I'm doing. I tell them the boring story and they bike away without asking too many questions. Once an angler in a boat said he was going to pull on that bucket to surprise me. I didn't see him because he was anchored out of my sight under the bridge. I guess I surprised him first. There is one group that becomes positively irate and agitated when I monitor the river quality. The cliff swallows fly into a rage every week, squawking and moving at me aggressively. The rope and the bucket must be threatening to them. Tonight the water was clearer than last week. Maybe the rain in the past week cleared it up.

Prissy Orange Princesses

This morning I weeded the vegetable garden. I started with the potatoes. I like to weed potatoes because they're easy. I don't have to bend over. I just pull the dirt toward the plant forming a hill. In just a couple minutes I'm done cleaning up the potato part of the garden. Tomatoes and peppers are easy to hoe as well but not quite a fun as potatoes. Green beans, bok choy, lettuce, sunflowers, and pumpkins are pretty easy too. What I don't like is weeding the carrots. Carrots are like the princesses of the garden. Carrots force me to kneel before them. You just can't use the hoe around them like the other ordinary garden vegetables. Their lacy, lime-green dainty leaves hide in the weeds so you have to pull each weed by hand. Carrots stay petite for a long time and can easily be pulled out by accident. Their bodies are as slender as a thread and cannot tolerate being disturbed. Such prissy orange princesses! I spent more time on two rows of carrots than the rest of the garden put together.

Peaceful Morning

This morning I spent a lot of time on the deck. Every time I opened the deck door, I thought of my sibling who was nice enough to put that door back on track yesterday. I read the newspaper on the deck. I hung my clothes on the wooden dryer rack on the deck. I laid on the deck swing and read my book club book for an hour or so. While relaxing on the deck I was visited by two chickadees, two goldfinch, three hummingbirds, and one affectionate Hackberry Emperor butterfly. This butterfly landed on my foot. The butterfly stayed on my foot for almost an hour, probing my skin with it's ticklish proboscis. I sat up and the butterfly stayed on my foot. I stood up with the butterfly upside down clinging to my sole. The butterfly didn't want to leave. I limped to the door on my heel so I wouldn't crush it. I finally had to coax it off with my finger. The butterfly liked me!

Chickens Moving Up In The World

Lately the chickens have been trying to sit on higher and higher perches. They sit on the air conditioner, the lawn chairs, the canoe, and the coop. Last night at 9:15 5 of the 6 chickens were sitting on top of their coop. I think they wanted to stay there all night balanced on the roof there. Offspring #2 and I went out there to convince them to go to bed inside the house. We pushed them with sticks but they clung to their lofty perch. We had to pick up a couple and put them to bed manually. Once Dwight and Angela got in the coop the rest of the chickens followed. But before we got that far, one chicken, Kelly, decided to roost on Offspring #2's shoulder. There she sat like a pirate's parrot, very content. Man, were we laughing!

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

I started reading this book at the time Offspring #2 was reading "Watership Down." The author of "The Girl Who Stopped Swimming" referred to "Watership Down" quite often. She frequently talked about the rabbit named Cowslip from "Watership Down." Cowslip was the rabbit who lived in denial. Cowslip knew he and his fellow rabbits had better food than the other rabbit dens because they were going to be eaten by the farmer but he also didn't know. The truth was too horrible so he pushed it aside and pretended it wasn't true. Joshilyn Jackson turned his name into a verb. She'd write, "Mother is cowslipping again." meaning the mother was actively denying reality because life wasn't pretty at the moment. Denial can be a useful survival tool. I've used it myself. In this story, denial becomes dangerous to the welfare of children. "The Girl Who Stopped Swimming" is a tale about two sisters. One of the sisters uses reality as a weapon and the other one tends to cowslip like their mother. This is a good story - you might like it.

Question for a Master Naturalist

I went to visit a friend of mine in Elk River. He asked me a question noting that I was a master naturalist and might know about this. When you are a master naturalist, people tend to ask you questions. I don't claim to know much but I am interested and will share what little I do know. A naturalist isn't someone who knows everything but someone who knows more every day. His problem was with his hummingbird feeder. At night the feeder is full of nectar and in the morning it's empty. Something is sucking it dry at night but not breaking the feeder. I asked about raccoons. He said he had called the DNR and they said it probably wasn't a raccoon because a raccoon would most likely damage the feeder. He asked about bats. The six species of bats in Minnesota are all insectivorous. They eat mosquitoes, moths and beetles by catching them in their cupped tails and transferring the food to their mouths while in flight-no easy task I would say. If it's not raccoons and not bats, there can be only a couple other options. 1. His teen aged kids are jerking his chain or 2. A rare giant nocturnal hummingbird.