4 August 2012 - I love spray paint

Guess it is time for odd confessions--I love spray paint. I could be the Rust-Oleum poster girl. There is much fun to be had with a bit of color in a can. Want to see some?

I have a great big rural mailbox that I wanted to mount beside the veggie garden for storing small hand tools. Sometimes it is just too hard to make trips back and forth from the garage. David helped us make the base for this, and  some Key Lime Green and orange made the project sing! The bright orange flag perfectly matches our orange weed hauling pail. 

Spray paint is a great way to redeem old rusty chairs. 

This chair belonged to my grandparents. I have a photo of my grandfather sitting in it with me standing beside him. I was probably 3 or 4 years old.  

David pulled this out of the log cabin (now his blacksmith's shop) and gave it to me. A few coats of paint later, and a new cushion and it is pretty darned gorgeous. 

In the background you can see a green motel chair.  It is also painted with my favorite Rust-Oleum color, Key Lime Green. 

Poking around in the onion house at David's while looking for dead tools (stay tuned! that is a really cool upcoming project) I found the newel post that came from the old farm house my grandparents lived in until they built a new house on that property. 

Jack and I had been grousing about the need for a shelf by the back door, so you could set something down while you opened or shut the door. The newel post had been sitting in the barn for at least 56 years and was filthy, and the wood was warping just a little. I had the "aha" moment and thought all it would take would be a little paint and we could use it for a shelf--or in this case a podium. 

If you were to go back to my June 2011 post called Painting the Roses Red, you will see I have been painting flowers for a while. I have some gorgeous yucca plants and this year one of the clumps had 16 bloom stocks. They were breathtaking. These flowers last several weeks then the individual blooms fall off, the stocks become straw colored. Most people would cut them off.  I thought I could bring some more color to the yard for a bit longer. How fun is this?

 Then there was my project with valve handles. In  addition to my love affair with spray paint, I like collections of things. 

In this case, it is valve handles. I had a large box full of rusty handles. 

Something was just waiting to happen. Spray paint happened, then they became trunk decorations. 

Have I mentioned how much I like color? Especially bright color?

Spray paint can transform things. I had a lovely arbor but it was a glaring bright white. Grabbed that can of Key Lime and went to town. 

What a difference. It is still bright, but the green lets it blend with the surroundings. 

24 July 2012 - Days of '47 -- Days of Bees

Today is Pioneer Day. Here in Utah, July 24 is a bigger holiday than the 4th of July.  Parades. Rodeos. Pow-wows.  Marathons. Fireworks. All to commemorate the moment when Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers looked out across the valley and Young said, "This is the place."

During the Days of '47 there are three parades-- the massive parade on the 24th, a children's parade a week earlier, and my personal favorite--the horse parade which has  400 or more horses including drill teams, the Arabian club with the riders in great costumes, shetland ponies pulling tiny stage coaches. You will see horses of every breed, color and size from miniature horses only 20 inches tall to the giant Belgians and Clydesdales.

It is so much fun. Here is the Sheriff's Posse. Gotta love those palominos.




But for me, it is late July. And late July means we've hit mid-summer. Mid-summer has properties and charms all its own. The crickets have begun to sing at night. It is lovely to sit outside in the warm night and just listen to the songs. 

If you can actually isolate the sound of one cricket you can calculate what the temperature is because there is a relationship between how fast a cricket chirps and the ambient temperature.  All you need to do is count the number of cricket chirps in 15 seconds then add 37, that should give you a pretty good idea of what the temperature is.  

This cricket-temperature formula was discovered in 1898 by a scientist. It is now called Dolbear's Law after his work studying cricket chirps. He has three different formulas for the regular cricket, the snowy cricket and katydids.

The solitary bees get really busy in August. The leaf cutters are really fun to watch. There are at least two kinds here in the yard. The first one looks like a wasp. It cuts blades of grass and stuff them into holes. They prefer deep holes like the ends of hoses, or sprinklers. They will crawl back five or more inches into a hose and build long nests that are so solidly packed in, that you really have to work hard to get them out. In the middle of all this grass the wasp places food such as a paralyzed spider, or moth or lacewing. 

They lay a single egg, pack it in with more grass then never return to that spot. Here is a leafcutter carrying a lacewing. It is slightly out of focus. Before you sneer, I double dog dare you to get a picture of a wasp while it is flying.  Hard! The little white thing that looks like a grain of rice is the lacewing. The wasp is looking for the end of the hose. 

The other kind of leaf cutter takes little bites out of the edges of leaves. The leaves end up looking like someone went at them with pinking shears. These bees make long tubes out of the little disks of leaves, and lay an egg inside. 

One of the amazing thing about these bees is that it only takes them 20 to 30 seconds to cut a little disk out of the leaf edge. The bee makes a food pack of pollen that is stuffed into the leafy tubes they lay the egg in, so the newly hatched baby has food when it emerges. 

You can make nests for these bees by drilling holes in a piece of wood or by bundling up cut up pieces of last year's bamboo canes. You can even buy them, ready made. These bees are great pollenators so I plan to get some houses ready. 

I also have red butt bees! They are one of the smallest in the bumblebee family and boy, are they cute.  According to the research I did on these they really are referred to as red butt bees.

The problem is there are quite a few different scientific names, bombus xxx and I'm not sure which one this is. More to learn.


 

16 July 2012 - Utah oddities

Okay, anyone who has been reading these posts knows how much I love being here again. How much I love my mountains, the lake, the deserts... but I have to admit, Utah has some really odd stuff going on. 

For example, who could have predicted a business where a huge truck comes to your house and washes your garbage cans. Really. 

The company name is CANtastic. Only $7.99 a month to clean one can every month.   

This is one of my favorites. A yard service with a decorated trailer.

Hunting is really big here. Lots of camo clothing, but camo trucks?

4 July 2012 - Independence

Today I declared independence. Independence from working on the house, from working in the yard, from working on anything. I had a totally lazy do-nothing day, and boy did it feel great. 

It was hot, in the high 90s, no breeze. What could be better than to find a comfy chair in the shade, a tall glass of iced tea and a book? Well, a hammock could possibly trump that, but ours is still packed away and we need to set a post before it can get hung. 

I stirred from the shade every now then to move water around the yard. Speaking of water, David came over and got the fountain working! It needed reinforced hoses and an additional water intake. 

 Once again, every time you try to do something, it takes a couple of trips to the hardware store and some standing around scratching your head while you consider your options. 

 Then there were clogged drains and tubing to deal with. Jack and David prevailed and soon the fountain was happily burbling away. There is nothing like the sound of falling water on a hot day.                                               

David also put in a blue spotlight, so the water sparkles when we run the fountain at dusk or into the night. And of course there is my garden angel guarding the pool.

All this to say I certainly enjoyed my lazy day. 

Every now and then I would need to give my eyes a rest, so I got up and wandered around my yard taking pictures of red, white and blue stuff. Thought I ought to do something along the patriotic line. 

We also decided that since it was the Fourth of July we should have an All-American dinner, so Jack grilled some thick steaks, threw some corn on the cob on the grill. Corn grilled in their husks is probably the most delicious corn I have ever tasted. This was followed by the traditional Winburn summer drink, a root beer float--the first one of the season and it was the perfect end to a perfect day.

26 June 2012--Fires, red eyes and chainsaws

We had another unexpected wild ride this weekend. It began on Thursday with a fire. Thirty miles south of us a fire was started in the foothills by plinkers shooting at explosive targets. How dumb is that? The entire state has been red flagged for fire danger. After last year's abundant rain, lots of grass grew on our bare hills. This year, with no snow, and the driest May on record, not to mention a week in the 90s with strong winds out of the south, all of Utah is a tinderbox. Around noon I smelled smoke and went outside for a look see. The sky over Mount Olympus was a greasy yellow color. Then smoke started to obscure the mountain. The smell was horrible. By evening the smoke had permeated everything, our eyes were red and burning, and our throats were soar. 

This fire blew up so fast that two neighborhoods were evacuated. While the firemen were fighting this fire, two more started in the hills even closer to us. Sleeping was pretty miserable. Friday was equally smoky. Saturday was hot and windy with more smoke. Finally, Saturday afternoon the wind changed direction and the air cleaned up some.  

Like Mary Poppins, David showed up on Saturday when the wind changed. I needed him to bring his chainsaw on a stick and take off two branches that were rubbing on the roof. With the wind, these branches were banging on the house something severe. It is hard to sleep when you can hear the trees scraping against the roof. 

David with a chainsaw is just like me with a hose in my hand--you don't know when to quit. In a very short time we had a huge mess on the back lawn. 

We took out four trees, a huge thicket of pfitzers, and did a lot of assorted trimming. 

 About now we are realizing that we need to rent a green waste trailer to dispose of all the limbs. This will be our third bin this year. 

Yes, we are definitely taming the jungle. Jack swears it is our last bin of the year. We shall see.

 We quit for dinner then collapsed. I spent Sunday cutting the huge piles of limbs into 6 foot long piles so we could get them into the trailer easily, plus you can load more in that way.

 Then on Sunday, Jack got out his chainsaw and we went to town in the front yard. Where Jack is standing in this picture we took out three pine trees that were stunted from growing under a maple and a blue atlas cedar. 

In addition, we took out a dead aspen, a large grove of elms that had been taking over in the driveway surround and trimmed out more dead branches on existing trees and removed a 10 foot high thicket of wild rose and brambles. 

The trailer arrived on Tuesday and we had it packed and ready to go on Thursday. The temps were in the high 90s and low 100s during all this work. We were pretty exhausted. 

We filled this trailer--it is 8 feet wide, 16 feet long and 6 feet high. We were on the verge of taking a couple more trees down but common sense prevailed. 

20 June 2012 - Solstice Surprises

Happy Solstice! First day of summer and ours came in cool and sweet. After two weeks in the 80s and 90s,  this year's summer solstice crept in barely reaching 74. Hot in the sun, otherwise cool. A good day for working outside. In this case, working outside meant staining the fence. 

After dithering for several months about what color stain to use (sampled three different grays; a light, soft yellow; and a sage-y green). I finally made a decision and chose clear. I liked how the cedar pickets looked when they were wet from watering,  picking up a deep golden glow. Now the fence looks all gold and bright. I am liking it. With the clear oil you can still see all the grain and the color variations of the wood. We slopped the penetrating oil on five and a half panels this evening. And we still have another five and a half to go. 

I am sure you are wondering what my solstice surprises are! They were fabulous--custom made for someone like me. 

Surprise number one. When we were painting the fence, I heard little tiny cheeps. Looked around and saw our first quail babies. Awww.  Twelve little ping-pong balls with legs. So darned cute. Mom and dad were keeping their flock together and teaching them how to scratch in the dirt. At one point they were taking the babies down a flight of stairs in the back yard.  

The babies got tired about halfway down and were crawling under dad. It was hilarious. The babies would get under his belly then work their way up under his wings and disappear. You could see his feathers ruffling as they poked their heads through his wing feathers. 

Another group of babies were trying the same thing with mom, but she wouldn't hunker down for them, she just let them rest under her body. It was very sweet to see and funny since you could see all the babies' legs under her belly, but no bodies.  How many legs can you count in this picture?  The answer is four chicks' worth of legs. 

Solstice surprise number two was absolutely amazing. Jack was in the kitchen cooking ribs (yum!) and I was cleaning up the brushes from painting. I just happened to look up and saw a perfect V of huge white birds come over the top of Mt. Olympus. I yelled for Jack and grabbed my camera. They were flying very high and it was difficult to get them in focus. When the sun hit their bellies they sparkled like jewels in the sky. When they banked away from the sun, the entire flock disappeared. It was eerie and beautiful. As they soared north, the vee disintegrated and they flew in circles for a while, before heading east over the ridge toward Millcreek Canyon.

Wow! Thanks to the Sibley Guide to Birds, I now know these were American White Pelicans. B-b-b-ut what?  Lost? Stolen? Strayed?
Where were they coming from?  Where were they going? All I know for sure is that it was an incredible thrill to see this. 

15 June 2012 - Bees, Babies and Busy Birds

Wish you could be here enjoying the back yard with us. It is so busy and so noisy you hardly know where to look first. Most people think of June and brides as a unit, but in my experience it is June and babies, and boy, do we ever have babies! It is hard to know where to sit to see the best show--something is happening in every tree on all sides of the house.

Want the list? First we have baby red squirrels. I have caught two of the babies (or the same one twice) so far, but they are still small enough they can flatten their little bodies and slide right out of the cage. 

Had one in the cage on the balcony this morning. Here you can see the boys drooling over it. I was going to carry it through the house to the garage. My hand was on the door knob and I felt the weight in the cage shift. I looked down saw an empty cage and the little brat high-tailing it down the balcony. When it got to the end it turned around and chewed me out. I didn't even have to speak squirrel to know what it was saying. Can't tell you how grateful I am that this did not happen in the house (here kitty kitty) or worse yet in the car. News at Eleven: Woman drives off road while being attacked by a crazed red squirrel.

As my mind wraps itself around those possibilities and their outcomes...whew! Glad it didn't happen inside, although the cats would have had a great time. Not even ten minutes later the little beggar was eating seeds like nothing had ever happened.

Continuing with the rodents: baby bunnies. Last night momma bunny was in the middle of the lawn while at least two babies ran in and out of the myrtle in some sort of chase game.  One would run around the yard, circle mom then dive back into the myrtle.

At that point a second bunny would come hurtling out of the myrtle, circle around mom and again dive back into the myrtle. Bunny games. Funny stuff. It would be more fun it we weren't trying to keep them out of the vegetable patch. I am definitely feeling like Farmer MacGregor these days. But even so, they are so cute, and tiny enough you could hold one in the palm of your hand.

Baby birds. We seem to have a monopoly in the baby bird department. Between keeping seeds out all year and making sure we have a couple sources of water, the yard is full of birds and they are bringing the kids. The babes are as big as the parents, so it takes a minute to realize which one is being fed. 

The magpies are the clowns of the bird world: big, bold and so very noisy. Their children are even noisier, if that is possible, except there calls tend toward the very pathethic "feed me, feed me now." The parents are trying to teach these kids how to find their own food, and all the kids want is to be fed. Very amusing! 

What is interesting about the magpies is how they have learned to navigate the suet feeders. They started out by hanging out underneath the feeders eating the droppings from other clinging birds. Over the winter they learned to jump up and do a fluttering helicopter hover while grabbing a mouthful. Now with the added pressure of hungry babies, they have learned how to land on the feeder and grab a huge mouthful before falling off.  Such smart birds!

From the biggest to the smallest: the hummingbirds. I have no idea how many hummingbird babies we have other than lots! With three feeders in constant use, it is hard to keep up. While the males patrol the feeders and chase off interlopers, they do let the babies feed. Last year we had a hummingbird nest on a rope hanging under the balcony. Their nests are little works of art made out of spiderwebs and lichens. Didn't find any nests this year. Our flock is consuming 10 cups of nectar every four to five days so I can only guess there are many. 

Grosbeaks. We were thrilled to have a pair show up at our feeder this spring, and even more so now they have showed the babies this food source. The grosbeak song is gorgeous, and hearing that melodious string of notes coming from high perches around the yard is a joy. The babies calls are more of a complaint than a song.

Downy woodpecker. We had a cute couple busy on the feeder all winter, and now they are here showing their three kids the wonders of suet. This baby was on a nearby branch being fed by dad who was making many trips back and forth. Baby finally landed (yes, handing upside down counts as landing) on the suet and figured it out.  

 The babies are not great fliers and they land awkwardly, almost looking like little bats with their wings spread for balance.  They are not fearful of people and spent quite some time working over the suet feeder and making short flights around us while we watched. 

The baby below isn't even phased by my guard crow, and is checking out his toes.

I recently learned something interesting about Downies.  Males have sharper stronger beaks and they tap holes in the tree bark. The females have shorter beaks, so they pry the bark up rather than make holes. Makes it easier to recognize  who you are looking at when you understand the behavior. 

Bluejays. Their kids are now eating on their own, but are still following the parents, hoping for a meal they don't have to work to get. Blue jay babies aren't as insistent about food as most babies, their call is more like a soft whine. 

The Robins still have their babies in the nests, but they are so busy hauling huge beak-loads of worms out of our lawn that I expect to see those babies any day now, and I'm sure they will be too fat to fly. It is always entertaining to watch the parents listen for worms then struggle to pull them out of the ground.

Chickadee babies are fully fledged and are eating on their own, no longer following their parents. 

House finch babies are numerous, as always. I'm surprised they haven't taken over the world. Occasionally you find an enterprising baby. The parents have taught all the kids to eat from the sunflower feeder, but this venturesome child has discovered it is easier to sit under the feeder and gobble up the droppings from above than join the horde in pulling seeds out of the screen. Smart.  

The starlings are now into the juvenile stage, no longer needing  their parents for food and they are starting to flock up with other starlings of their age. Starling kids are bullies. They follow the parents and peck them on the back--hurry up, feed me! Feed me now! No plaintive little cries but loud demands and hard pecks.

What's missing here?  The peregrines. Finally figured out where their nest is, across the street on the mountain, but haven't seen any babies yet. They should have fledged by now, but I haven't seen them, so who knows.  

Can't have birds without bees.  What is tickling me about the bees is the black pollen from the oriental poppies. Normally when you watch honey bees, their legs are covered with bright yellow or orange balls of pollen. The bees that are working the poppies have big black pollen packs. Not something you normally see.

3 June 2012 - Pop's birthday

Today is my Pop's birthday. It's bittersweet since he is no longer with us, but also because he is still with me everyday in more ways than you can imagine. One of my favorite songs by Michael Smith is I Brought My Father With Me.  The last verse gets me every time:

There are some ways I'm just like him
Some ways he was just like me
And sometimes when the mirror's dim
His face is clear to see
Tonight the winds of heaven
Blow the stars across the sky
I brought my father with me
I couldn't say goodby.

In my case the mirror doesn't have to be dim. I have often seen his face in my mirror, we are aging the same way. 

What I wish he could know is how happy I am to be here. I am so happy to be here that my heart hurts. There are days that I look up at the patented Utah blue sky with the peaks jutting up in front and I just want to hug the world, hard, but I can't get my arms around it. It is odd to be trying to describe happiness in terms of pain, but truly there are times I just ache with happiness. It feels like I could burst, like my innards are turning inside out. This all sounds horrible. But in spite of the weirdness, I am so damn happy!

I have always considered myself a happy person--the bloom where you are planted type. And I have been told--more than once-- that I am a manic depressive who is permanently stuck in the manic phase. But this? It defies everything. Every morning I walk into the kitchen look out the window and can hardly contain myself for happiness. I cling to my coffee cup, turn to Jack and say, "Have I told you how happy I am to be here?"  "First time today," he answers. 

Friday evening Jack and I went back to Red Butte Garden to check out the rose garden. On our last trip there, ten days ago, the roses were still covered in tight buds. In just over a week the garden had changed drastically in the colors of what was blooming. I thought we could just run down to the rose garden and then leave, but no, I had to see everything. Red Butte Garden is situated behind the U of U up Red Butte Canyon, so there are places where you can see across the valley.

The foreground trees are hiding the city, but looking west you can see the lake with some of the islands. The day was much clearer than this picture suggests. 

Looking south Mt. Olympus is the tallest peak. My neighborhood is tucked in at its base and is hidden behind the smaller hill in front. 

Here are the peaks just to the east of Mt. Olympus, still bits of snow in some of the crevasses.  These are views I see every day, and it makes me feel like the Grinch when his heart grew three sizes. 

It doesn't matter if it is the middle of winter when the hillsides are brown and gray, or if it snows on newly opened leaves in the spring. The mountains change on an hourly basis-- how the light strikes them, how flat or how 3-D they appear. Sometimes they are shrouded in clouds or the air is so clear you can see minute details. All these things thrill me.

Even seeing one of my hiking trails ahead of me fills me with joy. Utah's current motto is Life Elevated. I can only concur. 



It isn't only the mountains that bring me such satisfaction, but having some family close by again is a wondrous thing. (See post of  May 13.) 

Living in the house where I grew up is like putting on a favorite pair of slippers, the ones that are really comfortable, yet well worn. 

I have been here six months now, and the happiness factor is increasing. If it continues I may just spontaneously combust. I can see it now--News at Eleven! Woman Self Immolates in a Conflagration of Joy!