5 October 2011 - Changing

October. It is a month of change. The leaves turn color and begin dropping. The final roses bloom, before the profusion of rose hips weigh down the canes. Once vibrant billows of Black-eyed Susans stand stiff with bristly seed heads. While the gardener in me wants to run out and chop the blackened heads off, I wait, for these heads are a goldfinch magnet.

The garden has not yet been touched by frost, but several nights in the 40 to 42 degree range have killed the most tender of the annuals. 

The temperature changes in October are as radical as March. Yesterday our high was 46. By Saturday we should be back up to 78. I look forward to that. We have had big wind storms coming out of the east and north resulting in downed limbs, power flickering on and off, as well as long outages.

In my backyard I notice that the little birds are beginning to flock up. This includes nuthatches (both the white and rosy-breasted varieties), titmice, chickadees and even downy woodpeckers. Since we feed birds all year, we have had these birds about the feeder all summer, but now they are showing up in great numbers.

The bigger birds are flocking up too. At work, the power lines are covered with starlings. Hundreds of them—shoulder to shoulder on the lines from pole to pole. All at once they take off together, swirl around then land again. Every year I go through the same ritual. I stand in the parking lot and stare up at them wondering what kind of bird they are before I remember about starlings. They are a confusing bird. First there is the seasonal color change. Not only do they have different winter and summer colorations, but as they molt in the fall the winter feathers come in tipped in white which gives them a speckled appearance. The white tips disappear going into winter leaving the glossy/iridescent black I associate with starlings. In addition to the color changes, the starlings’ bills also change color—from yellow in the summer to black in the winter. 

The juveniles are another story. They start out a dark grayed-brown, but then in October they also start to get the white tipped winter feathers, so you can see lots of brown headed birds with black speckled bodies. What the heck is that?  No wonder I’m confused.   

Another interesting thing about starlings in the fall, is that as they gather up they all talk softly. No great squawking, squabbling cackles like you hear in the spring and summer. Just soft little murmurs. It’s no surprise that one of the group names for this bird is a murmuring of starlings. Very fitting.

And speaking of birds molting and color change, today there was a cardinal outside my window. He was in a rather pathetic state of molt. His head had bald spots and he was missing feathers from his crest. He was staying on the inside of trees. Usually cardinals are on the top of the tree singing their little hearts out. 

October also brings a new source entertainment for both myself and the cats. The squirrels are in full mating dance. This involves long chases around, up and through trees. This goes on for days before a female picks a proper male. This morning I was watching a pair spiral down a huge cottonwood tree across the street. Pandacat was crouched at the bottom watching. When the squirrels were about three feet from the ground,  Pandacat couldn’t stand it any longer and dashed up the tree after them. For a moment all three were frozen in a three way face off. 

On my lunch hour I took a friend up to the Berry Lake Nature Preserve. We wolfed down our sandwiches so we could hit the trails. Elisa is a very copasetic friend. We both quilt (although she actually finishes projects), we both love to take picture. Having a beautiful place to walk? Fabulous. We sat in the car with our sandwiches watching a really fat squirrel eat acorns. Then a doe came wandering by. Good start! I am fond of Berry Lake because it has series of very large ponds, or maybe small lakes.


At any rate, it is home to swans, Canadas, lots of ducks and even more duckweed, and the occasional flotilla of seagulls. Fallen trees often look like alligators lurking in the duckweed. Duckweed is also a favorite of mine. In calm water the current curls it around in swirly patterns. When there is a breeze, it all piles up on one side of the lake.
 
Naturally duck weed calls for the obligatory ducks. Considering how the ducks nibble their way through the duck weed, it is surprising to see the quantity still available.


Many of the trees sport bat houses. If you watch carefully you can spot the occasional woodpecker and even small hawks.
 
The park also has a very picturesque covered bridge that is often used for engagement photo backgrounds, the occasional wedding party and other gatherings.


We saw eight huge wooly bears lumbering across the path during our walk. Fat wooly bears are supposed to signify a hard winter. In all my time here in Michigan, I have never before seen eight in one day. We usually spot them in the yard during fall clean up. But it might only be one or two. 

 Right now, with all the changing colors the park is particularly spectacular. I am most fond of the vine covered trees. The vines turn dark red and really light up the landscape. It is fall's version of wrapping tree trunks with Christmas lights.

Elisa is also an avid techie. She and her family are big into geocaching and waymarking. When we hit the park the first thing she did was pull out her handheld gps and look to see if there was a geocache anywhere in the park. Yes, there was one. And I found it! Elisa says I am no longer a geocaching virgin. 


Were I to get interested in this, I would get myself a geocache name, and log all the sites I’ve been to online. Complete with picture of the site. Good grief. In this case, the cache was a large plastic bottle hidden in a hollow base of a tree.


Inside of the bottle is a notebook to write down your cache name, the date and where you are from. Since this geocache was considered easy, it had toys for kids in it. Kids can take one, if they leave one. Elisa carries special one inch square tiles with her name Scrapcat on one side and a picture, in this case a flamingo, on the other. She left a tile in the cache. Weird. This is really becoming a big thing for families to do together. I'm all for anything that gets today’s kids outdoors.

Here is the cache, hidden, revealed, and with
me holding the cache.

        

           

21 September 2011 - Fallen

Our year of odd weather continues thus far into September. While the Autumnal Equinox is still a few days away, we fell hard into fall in early September. Several days of cold rain accompanied by a cold front took us down into the low 40s for almost a week. After that, I think all the trees shook their leaves and said “That’s it! We’re not making any more chlorophyll.”  Since then leaves have been turning color at an exponential rate. No gentle easing into a more colorful state. Overnight the air had a snap to it, that snap one associates with the first juicy cold bite into a just-picked apple. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fall. I love the crisp air, how the sun warms your back even though the air is cool. I love the multi-hued trees and the way the fields change into so many shades of yellow: from the palest straw to the deepest golds and I love how all that gold is occasionally punctuated by the purple of fall asters or the dark red of bare branches.

I love hearing the scratch and scurry of dried leaves being blown down the pavement like the scrabble of little mouse feet in the attic. I love walking in the gutters, scuffling my feet to make the dry leaves dance and rise into swirls before gently floating back down to the curb.

Even the clouds in the fall are different. In my secret little perfect world, I would have some place to lie and watch clouds form and skid across the sky. Something high enough where I could see from horizon to horizon. Several years ago, Jack and I met for lunch where we could sit outside overlooking a golf course.  The sky was totally blue, but as we ate we watched cumulus clouds form on the horizon: from small skiffs to towering billows that blew apart and disappeared. It was magic. I didn’t want to go back to work, I just wanted to watch clouds appear and disappear. 

Perhaps I should find a new career as a cloud reader. It would be something like reading tea leaves in the bottom of a tea cup, except my cup would be the bowl of the sky. Hmm, if I actually put some thought into this and came up with a system, I could be the next Linda Goodman. She had such a franchise going with all the Sun Sign books. Then there was Llewellyn’s Moon Signs followed by the combination book of Sun and Moon Signs by yet another person. But I digress. 

Meanwhile, the gardens are just about done. This spring a neighbor offered us ten tiny starts from her black raspberry bushes. “Sure!” I said.  We planted them down the middle of a raised bed. We watered, weeded and hovered. Are they taking? Think they will live?  In a few short months these tiny plants have become the monsters of the garden. What were we thinking? Some of the canes are 12 feet long. Who knew?  Where the canes touch the ground, (they do and they have) they send out roots, deep and stubborn roots that grow in the path and refuse to be pulled up. 

I haven’t mentioned the thorns on these. Unbelievable thorns. Nasty. Okay, the berries were mighty tasty, but I’m thinking I may take the leather gloves and clip these down right into the yard waste can. They are definitely lethal and it gives a whole new level of understanding to Br’er Rabbit and his briar patch. Writing this makes me laugh. As a child reading Uncle Remus stories, I always thought people were saying briar rabbit because he lived in a briar thicket.  I had no context for Br’er. 

31 August 2011 - Feral amusements

The ferals provide me with hours of entertainment. They dash about the yard, play all sorts of silly chase and attack or sneak and attack games, not to mention their forays up the maple tree where they end up on our roof. 

This morning after I fed the cats and fixed my own breakfast, I went out on the deck with a cup of coffee.  I noticed the pear tree was shaking. What? Squirrels after the pears again? 

Big Fluff and Hughie were all cozied up together at the base of the tree, totally unconcerned, so I figured it couldn’t be squirrels.

 I watched the bouncing limbs and up near the top appears Little Fluff. 

She is really busy up there and I finally realize she is using the pears as toys. She’s boxing with them!  If she knocks a pear off the branch, she moves to the next pear.What a little brat!  She slowly works her way to the very top of the tree. 

 She was working over the pear right in front of her face when she lost her footing. There was some frantic scrambling before she was able to get back on top of the branch instead of clinging to it from underneath.  

She regained her footing and composure and took some more whacks at the pears hanging below her branch before she sauntered back down the tree.

Odd little cat! But this is the kind of behavior that makes me late for work. In the scheme of things, it is definitely worth being late for. And even better? It makes me laugh.

26 August 2011 - Feral colonies

I have often written about our feral cats. Here is a short history. The colony was started over 25 years ago when Sandy, who lived across the street, started feeding a couple strays. Whether they were truly strays, or ferals, or neighbor’s cats who liked the idea of more food, we’ll never know, but cats started showing up and staying. Kittens happened. Skunks, possums and raccoons happened, too.

Ten years later Sandy moves to Belleville. She traps a few favorites and takes them with her. She sells the house to Ann Mary and Suzanne. They are faced with a yard full of hungry cats. They continue to feed the colony. The cats thrive. More kittens. Sometimes disease or death on the road decreases the population. Sometimes the mothers are so young they don’t know what to do with their litter, and the kittens die. But mostly, we just have more cats.

Over the last four years, cats have started to move into our yard. It dawns on me that this coincides with our dogless state. Hmm. At first one or two mothers had kittens in our yard. We had two hollow trees that were perfect for kitten nests. We were not feeding these cats, so when it was time, the mothers moved the kids back across the street to Ann Mary and Suzanne’s yard. No real problem, yet.

This is Casper with the incredible blue eyes.

However, one starts to get attached to certain cats. In our case, it was Casper, a very pretty Siamese mix-- blue eyes and gray points. She had three kids in the hollow box elder. As they got older she moved them into Lyka’s old dog house.  We made the fatal mistake of naming them: Hughie, Louie and Dewey. Worse yet, because they were fall babies, we started feeding them. They were just getting to the really cute pouncy kitten stage when the snows came. How could we not feed them? Results? They stayed.

Next in the saga, Steve Wilson moves his family to Northville. Due to the economy, he can’t sell his house, so he rents it. The new family starts trapping the cats and calling Animal Control to pick them up. Louie and Dewey disappeared this way, as did many of the cats that the girls were feeding. One evening when Hughie didn’t show up for dinner, I found her in the trap. I had the new people release her and explained she was mine. (What was I thinking?)

Hughie gets pregnant. Four kittens. One dies within the first month, one disappears about 6 months old (see bad neighbors) and the other two, Big and Little Fluff mostly live in our backyard. Fast forward six months. Little Fluff gets pregnant, gives birth in freezing downpour and loses all the kittens. Hughie gets pregnant. Gives birth to five deformed kittens. One dies, the others get to the stage where they are eating dry kibble. Meanwhile Fluff is pregnant again. Five kittens. Robin and I came to the decision that we had to take the deformed kittens to the Humane Society. We ended up taking Hughie’s four and Little Fluff’s five. This was a hard thing to do, but necessary. You can see how quickly a colony can grow.

While at the Humane Society we learned about a new program for ferals: a trap-neuter-release program. Jack and I signed up for the class. A side benefit of the class was that you could get your ferals spayed or neutered for ten bucks each. Great! The class was Sunday, we went home with seven traps. The following weekend we were all set up and trapped seven cats and one very pissed off possum.

Tom, the patriarch of the colony

To my great delight, one of the seven was Tom: the current patriarch and defender of the colony. Every spring he would show up looking absolutely bedraggled. He would be limping, covered with sores and strips of fur hanging from gouges, all because he had to maintain his position and fight off the younger males. It was so sad. He had also started chasing Big Fluff away from the colony as well. Guess Big Fluff was getting old enough to become competition. Big Fluff and Tom were released back into the yard this morning. Hughie, Little Fluff and Tabico will be released tomorrow morning.

Ann Mary will be attending the September training session then trapping their remaining cats. As part of the program, the cats get ear tipped, which is a universal symbol of a spayed/neutered feral. The animal control people tend to look the other way when a colony is managed. We have our colony registered online, facts about the cats, and as part of being a colony caretaker, they organization asks that you keep the information on the site updated. Life, death, sickness and health are documented.

I am thrilled about this on many levels. No more kittens! A better life for all the cats involved! And on my own selfish side, there won’t be 17 cats lounging around the backyard when I’m trying to sell the house. I didn’t mention this but we did remove eleven babies. Enough is enough.

Left to right: Big Fluff, Hughie, Little Fluff

Meanwhile Hughie and Big Fluff have become quite dear to me and I fantasize about how to get them to Salt Lake. I know—don’t go there! But the thought was been rolling around in the back of my head for some time.

Oakland County received a $300,000 grant from PetSmart to help with the Trap Neuter Release program for feral cats. This is amazing. I will be supporting Pet Smart with my pocketbook because of this. We learned in the class that Oakland County alone has more than 200,000 feral cats.

We are doing our part to help.


Two weeks later:  Very sad addendum.  Big and Little Fluff as well as Tabico have disappeared. I can only think that the rotten people across the street trapped them and dumped them at the local park. I just can't bear to think about this.

16 August 2011 Spiders

I am not arachnophobic. Really. Well, to qualify this, I should say I’m not usually bothered by bugs, spiders, worms, caterpillars and such that often freak many people out. But this year?  I have had it with the spiders. I don’t think I have ever seen as many spiders in and around my house as I have this year, and I’m getting darned tired of it. 

Last week I walked into the garage, I was watching where my feet were going as it is worth your life walking into that maze, and wham! Face first into a big orb web. Adding insult to injury was the inhabitant  hanging off my nose. Normally I would have shrieked, but the initial intake of air could have resulted in the spider being sucked into my mouth.

Yesterday I walked out onto the deck and sat down at the table only to get tangled up in a line web, complete with spider. After divesting myself of that, I looked up into the umbrella and started counting just how many spiders were hanging from the stretchers. 

If a path goes through a small space or you walk between bushes or ferns you'll be walking through webs.

Here we have a male and a female spider on the same web strand. He is tentatively making mating advances to her. She isn't having any of it. This touch and retreat game went on for some time. Not sure if he got the job done or not.

The later it gets in the year, the larger the spiders get, which is fairly unnerving. My house is full of spiders. I think that when we had the new carpet put in, there must have been spider egg cases in it, although I'm sure the carpet people would deny that assumption. I have varieties of spiders that I have never seen before, and I am an observant person, especially when it comes to bug life.

Spiders are sneaky. There are webs all over and they appear overnight. You go out to the garden to pick some lovely chard for dinner, and before you know it, you have reached for the chard leaves, sticking your hand right through a web. If that isn't bad enough, the occupant is larger than you would like to be that close to.

The webs are harder to see than would appear in these pictures. I have set the photo up at just the right time for the sun to light up the strands. The webs blend in enough that you feel them before you see them. 

So far, all the two pictures are orb weavers. They will grow exponentially by the end of September. They look big now?  Just wait.

We also have many many wolf spiders. They live to startle me. Just about the time I have my hand on the spigot to turn on the water, they run up the wall from behind the spigot. No, wolfies don't play nice at all. Currently they are about the size of a 50 cent piece, so yes, I get startled.

Speaking of sneaky, these orb spinners can put up a web in a very short time. This spider managed to spin a large web in the porch overhang. It is the perfect spot to catch any unsuspecting human making the night trip to the garbage can. We normally don't turn on the porch light for a quick trip like that, but if you don't, it's a good opportunity to get webbed.

Shortly after the new carpet was installed in the living and dining rooms, I was happily ensconced on the couch with a book. Something caught my eye and I realized the ceiling above me was pretty much covered in baby spiders: literally hundreds of babies. They were cute: bodies the same size as a head of a pin; light golden color, but as I said—hundreds. I must admit, I got out the vacuum cleaner and sucked them up. I could not figure out where they were coming from. The walls and ceiling had been freshly painted, the floors were thoroughly cleaned before the new carpet came in. There were no nests in the angle where the walls meet the ceiling or floors. Trust me, I checked. But, the ceiling was covered with babies. I would vacuum them all up, lie down with my book again, look up 10 minutes later and there would be a whole new horde. Nothing on the walls—no babies crawling up or down—they just mysteriously apparated on the ceiling. Weird.

The house itself is full of spiders. Most of them are what we call dust spiders, although I believe the more accurate name is harvestman. They vibrate when they are disturbed. I think every corner in the house has at least one of these spiders. Even in the closets you will see them down in the corners by the floor as well as up on the ceiling.  But lately there are new spiders in the house: big black hairy spiders that are not on my friendly list; spiders with the same shape as black widows; little jumping spiders- very cute, but enough is enough. 

Up until now I have had a laissez faire attitude with the spider kingdom. Spiders in sinks or tubs got washed down the drain. Spiders in corners were largely ignored. Spiders in the kitchen window were welcomed as they caught the annoying fruit flies that come in with produce.  But now?  I just feel crawly. 

I am planning a vacuuming campaign in all the corners tonight. With the house in such disarray, I am afraid they are breeding with no checks and balances. Both Jack and I have unexplained, extremely itchy bites in odd places. Are they getting in our clothes? Are we getting bitten when the fabric pulls tight? I don’t know, but I am going on a rampage. And not just inside, but it is time to take the broom to all the doorways and windows on the outside of the house. I’m turning into a monster!

But wait, some of them are really interesting! We get several varieties of metallic colored spiders in the garden. These guys are small and fast, making it very hard to get a decent picture.

Here is a metallic green striped spider. It is small enough that I would not have seen it, had I not been on my hands and knees watering and weeding, thus ending up eye level with it. But you have to admit, this is one pretty spider!

12 August 2011 - Say it ain't so

I had one of those moments today. The kind that stop you dead in your tracks. I took my first cup of coffee out on the deck this morning. The air was crisp and cool--wait, what? Crisp? Yes, crisp like the first hint of fall. I stood there in disbelief. Then as I was pulling out of the driveway on my way to work I saw a small sprig of leaves on the dogwood starting to turn red. My mind was screaming, "Too early! Please say it isn't so." It is only August.

In other news, we have the backyard rodent report. The biggest woodchuck I have ever seen is living in the culvert under Ann Mary's driveway. He often slithers under our fence and wanders through the new lot. I generally chase him off, firstly because I don't want him eating our veggies, and secondly, because it is really fun to watch him run. He humps like a ferret or weasel, but because he is so large it rather comical to watch. It's a   little hard to see in this picture, but his muzzle is gray and he has a lot of gray on his shoulders. He must be pretty old.

The other rodents that are showing up regularly are two black squirrels. They have discovered the sunflower feeder and spend quite a bit of time eating the seeds. The ferals are most interested and practice their stalking skills on the squirrels. 

They are smaller than the fox squirrels that have been in the yard since we moved here. I read some where that the black squirrels are aggressive and will chase the fox squirrels out of a neighborhood.

In addition to this, I have seen the occasional chipmunk on the front sidewalk. Where are they all coming from? Makes you wonder. On the upside, we have not had any gophers or moles this year. Could the ferals be keeping that population under control?  Don't know, but I know I appreciate not falling in tunnels when I walk across the lawn.

There are other entries to the backyard shenanigans: for example, this incredible gaping maw. I believe the parent is thinking "I don't want to go down that worm hole!"

This is the third sparrow brood in that bird house so far this summer. I'm pretty sure there is only one bird-chick in the nest. Wonder if the others fell out, were pushed out, or if a starling sneaked in and laid an egg for the unsuspecting sparrows to raise.

My garden angel is getting a nice patina after all these years of standing on guard. It doesn't matter what season of the year it is, whether he is surrounded by flowers or covered with snow, I am just happy to know he is out there watching over my little world.

I need to figure out how to get him back to SLC with me. 

Even though it is only August, I have fall plants blooming early.  The fall anemones are opening now.  The clethra is full bloom. It fills the backyard with a heavy sweet scent. I love it!  So do the big, black wasps and mud daubers. They swarm over the flower spikes and defend their territory from any comers. The purple berry bush is setting its berries now, too. It all seems too early.

August skies are very distinctive. Mornings will show off incredibly clear blue skies. By afternoon, the horizon will be covered with puffy, but flat bottomed clouds. Here's a typical August afternoon sky.

This is a daily sight on my way home from work. 

9 August 2011 - Pick it, pack it, or part with it

I'm tired!  After the last couple of weeks, the song running through my head is I'm Tired, as sung by Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles.  The pertinent lyrics are:


I'm tired,
Tired of playing the game
Ain't it a crying shame
I'm so tired
God dammit I'm exhausted.

Okay, so I'm not tired of love, I'm just bone tired. Robin came out for the last two weeks in July to help us pack up the house to prepare for moving. She arrived on a Sunday to chaos. Jack and I had spent the previous couple of weeks emptying out our bedroom and the library, then painting, stripping the carpets and padding for the arrival of new carpet on Monday. Our guest room, so to speak was packed full. There was a small path from the door to the bed, and not any room for her belongings.

Robin, our self-professed fog flower, arrived in the midst of a heat wave accompanied by the requisite high humidity. I can't believe how hard she worked in such debilitating conditions. It was hard for me and I'm used to it. She did get both Jack and me drinking lots of Gatorade. I don't like it, but it does stop the nausea and light-headedness brought on from working in the heat. We had almost two weeks of temps from 98 to 101. Brutal. 

Sunday, we dismantled the water bed in anticipation of the new carpet and discovered it had some leaks and decided to pitch it. On Monday, not only did we have the carpet people in, but the pod was delivered. We quickly loaded the two apothecary cabinets, which freed up some floor space for working and packing in Robin's room. Then Robin and I went out bed shopping. We found a perfect bed (soft enough for Jack and firm enough for me) which would be delivered the next day. At least that was the plan. Due to some unexplained circumstances, the bed wasn't delivered until Friday, but after sleeping on the floor for five nights, it felt great! Still does.

Because Jack and I have already taken two full 17 foot U-Haul trucks to Utah, the stuff that is left is hard--really hard to deal with. Not only is every item fraught with pitch, pack or give away decisions, much of it is just the detritus of living. Stuff you need and want, but don't know how to deal with. It is draining.

The mission for these two weeks was to fill up a POD and have it shipped to Salt Lake. We packed everything in sight and the POD is only half full. Amazing. Everything took much longer than I thought it would. We packed a couple of type cabinets. Sounds easy, right? Oh no. For example, Robin carefully cut cardboard to fit the many different types of cases. We snapped the cardboard over the type then wrapped the case in stretch wrap. One case could take up to 20 minutes, and it took two of us to handle the case and stretch wrap.

Robin made a gallant effort to live up to her nickname, Robin the Ruthless, but she was in clean out mode and I was in the I-still-have-to-live-here frame of mind. Hard on both of us. But even so, I can't believe how much progress we made in spite of ourselves. The biggest piece, I think is that the attic is completely empty. Amazing.  It just kills me that I didn't take a before picture.  It took Robin and me two days to empty the attic. Everything went out of the house.

The three P's. Pick, pack or part with it. Lots of stuff went straight into the garbage. It is astonishing to see how much stuff you keep just because you can. Even more stuff went into the metal pile for the scavengers. Halfway decent stuff went into the driveway for a freecycle free-for-all. The deck was covered with boxes to deal with. Jack's pile, my pile and a muzzleloading pile. Stuff that needed individual decisions.

The majority of the contents of the attic went into the free-for-all. I put it on the freecycle list with a long list of items and said opens at 10 am. We had people showing up at 9. When we threw our hands up in the air at 10 it was total mayhem. Everything was gone in 30 minutes. The three of us were running around crazy, answering questions and hauling stuff. Our heads were spinning!

We also pulled the aquariums out of the garage for the free-for-all. Unfortunately, no one wanted the big ones, (a couple of the 20 gallons walked out with people), so we put them out for the garbage, and to our amazement, our guys picked them up! Yay!

Cats. It was hard to get going in the morning as we were highly entertained by our feral colony: my three favs, Hughie, Big Fluff and Little Fluff, plus Hughie's four kittens which were in the starting to pounce phase, and the occasional visits from Tabico and her two kids. It was a zoo, and fun to watch. The second week that Robin was here, Little Fluff had a litter of five. We gathered up the five, plus Hughie's four (all of whom had some sort of deformity) and took them to the animal shelter. While we were there we discovered that Oakland County has a spay and release program. All you have to do is attend a class, sign up your colony, then spay and neuters are only $10. Wow.  Jack and I will take the class in August, and try to get Hughie, Big and Little Fluffs fixed. I'm afraid they are already back in heat.

Back at the ranch, Jack rented a power washer and cleaned the deck, the siding, the gutters, and also sprayed all the loose and peeling paint off the garage. We have paint for the garage and sealer for the deck, but haven't had the weather for it yet. And during all the packing, there was lawn to mow, gardens to water, japanese beetles to battle.

We had some great wildlife. Whilst picking the dreaded Japanese beetles off my loosestrife, I found a bee (hornet? wasp?) that was totally new to my yard. Bright orange, black wings, and huge back legs. Most bees are a golden color, wasps tend toward yellow. This orange was definitely a bright orange.

I did a preliminary google search to find out who it was, but came up empty. Need to spend more time at that. 

Yet another morning, having coffee on the deck the sun was slanting through the maple at just the right angle to see a perfect orb web.

The way the sun sparkled on the strands it almost looked like a CD suspended in the air. 

The architect is smack-dab in the middle dealing with her latest catch.


                                              




                                                                                                                                                         

11 July 2011 - Watering the Weather into Submission

It has been hot, humid and dry, followed by more hot , humid and dry. Rather a conundrum—dry and humid at the same time. You get used to it and don’t really think about the lack of rain until one day you see the lawn is yellowing and crispy, and the big clumps of perennials are limp. Uh-oh. 

This weekend hit us with that revelation. So even though we were emptying out the library in order to paint and re-carpet, we were also moving hoses around the yard for two days straight. The world was dry. When I had the fan sprayer on the hose, the water would hit the soil and dust would fluff up into the air. Not a good sign. The water would either pool on top of the dirt or would just run off.  I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees with one hand digging deep into the dirt and then flooding the hole. Yes, it would have been easier to use my four pronged, curved claw hand tool, but it was in the garage, and I was at the far corner of the yard.

As I said, our weekend was two solid days of watering with no relief in sight. Today? Out of nowhere we are having rain. Huge storms moving across the state from Chicago have already reached the east side of Michigan and we have rain. It isn’t a nice long soaker, but a fast moving dump with lots of wind.  I heard on the news that 600,000 people in Chicago are without power, people across Michigan are also without power and  we are under a tornado watch as well. Typical July weather, but what? I had to run water for two days in order to initiate this storm? At least our yard should be soggy enough to soak up every last drop of rain. That would be a good thing.

Currently it is 94 degrees, raining like crazy, so hot and wet that your glasses fog up when you step out the door. The big winds have gone south of us, but hopefully this rain will take the temps down.

The midnight lopper has been at it again. Our neighbors to the south have moved out. They had rented that house for at least 10 years. They did a nice job with the yard, planted trees, added a hedge punctuated with rose of sharons down one fence line, put in lilies, chrysanthemums and hostas. However, over in one corner of the yard under our big oak, there were many saplings: mostly cottonwoods and mulberries that had sprung up and were easily ten to twelve feet tall. Last night Jack went over with the loppers and chopped them down. As he chopped, I dragged them over the fence into our yard, where we quickly cut them into four-foot lengths to bundle for yard waste.

I know, not our house—not our problem, but there was no room for that many trees in such a small corner, nor was there any room in the canopy for anything to grow upwards. Renters don’t pay attention to such things, nor does the absentee owner. One small victory for lawn order.

4 July 2011 - Annoying the caterpillars and other delights

Happy Fourth of July!  

Who needs sparklers to celebrate, when you have a yard full of fireflies? They begin to rise right before dusk, and light up the yard with their flashes. Better than fireworks, any day! Right now, many of the neighbors are shooting off aerial bursts. I have to wonder if the fireflies are wondering how some of their kind got so high! 

There are so many fireworks going off that the air is smokey, like a foggy night, except it has that acrid tang you associate with black powder. We are surrounded by many tall trees, but all of them being lit from behind due to all the fireworks going off. I'm thinking the economy is getting better-- so many people with so many fireworks. T'aint cheap!

 

While Jack and I were weeding and watering the veggies on Saturday, I found the most beautiful caterpillar on my parsley plant. Hollered at Jack and we watched this mean green eating machine decimate some parsley. 

A quick search of the plant revealed two of these caterpillars. Odd. Only two? Somehow you would think where there were one or two there would be more. 

Naturally, I had to know what it was, so I googled black and green striped caterpillar. The first thing that came up was a picture of my guy calling it a parsley worm. Well, I guess!

Next I discovered that it turns into a black swallowtail butterfly. Go pupate babies! I looked up black swallowtail and found the male and the female have quite different color variations. Now I have been out every day combing through the plants to keep an eye on the caterpillars.

Another thing I learned was that parsley worms have a defensive structure, called an osmeterium, right behind the head. This structure is usually concealed. However, when disturbed this "Y" shaped organ protrudes and emits a strong odor that is apparently distasteful to predators.

After reading this, there was nothing for it—I had to go annoy the caterpillar. Yep! Very strong odor.  And how fun was this?  What did you do over the Fourth?  Oh, not much, annoyed some caterpillars. 

While I find many insects fascinating and I'm happy to just let them be, I do have a James Bond attitude about others. Japanese beetles, for instance are definitely on my Live and Let Die list.

Japanese beetles are really very pretty, they have an iridescent shimmer that turns them bronze in the sun. However, I am hard put to find another common garden bug that wrecks as much devastation in as short a time as these beetles. Over the last several years I have been out in the early morning and early evening knocking them off the plants into a plastic bag. This year I am trying something different. I use a coffee can (one of the new-fangled plastic types with the grip indents) with a couple inches of water in the bottom add a squirt of dish soap, then shake or knock them off the plant into the brew. There is a really big crop of Japanese beetles this year. I will need to be vigilant. As Madeye Moody would say, "Constant vigilance!" In my garden they are particularly fond of loosestrife, evening primrose, hibiscus and roses. That's a lot of territory to cover. 

We have been eating from the garden for weeks now. First lettuce, spinach and chard, then summer squash and now sugar snap peas. We even have a couple of tomatoes showing the first blush of color. The beans are starting to form too. We have both purple and yellow wax beans. Good thing Robin is coming to help us eat!  

The lettuce in now beginning to bolt so we need to get the next crop in.  

Jack is standing at the end of the snap pea row. They are taller than he is, and covered with pods. They make a great snack while weeding and watering.  The lower knee-high plants are the yellow wax beans. The purples are on the other side of the peas. 

I have mentioned before that where we live in Farmington Hills seems to be surrounded by some weird force field that keeps weather systems away. Time after time, major storms come across lower Michigan, accompanied by the requisite severe storm warnings and we get nothing. Two weeks ago, we had a huge storm that practically washed away downtown Farmington, a mere 3 miles away. We didn't even get a rain drop. 

Friday, July 1 was another example. Huge storm, high winds, hail, torrential rain. We heard rolling thunder for over an hour, saw a few lightning bolts but that was it. The next morning we discovered that 150,000 people south of us were without power and that the airport had two inches of rain. Whew. I'm glad we missed it, but it really is strange to watch the radar maps and see the storms split to the north and south of us.  

What was interesting about this storm was the sky kept changing color. First it went green. Really green. The kind of eerie green that Jack said if he saw that color sky in Oklahoma it would mean a tornado was coming. About 30 minutes later the sky turned orange. This was during the late afternoon, so don't even think about this color being a sunset orange. The photo I am posting is NOT retouched or color enhanced in any way. It truly was this color.

17 June 2011 - The Fragrant Garden

Over the years I have been trying to add scent to the yard. In late March, the yard is so filled with the scent of lilacs that when the bloom cycle is over and the smell is gone, the loss is palpable. I have been adding plants with potent fragrances to fill in throughout the rest of the season. I have sought out roses that actually smell. Right now when the breeze is out of the south I can smell the roses when I sit on the deck.

I also have a wonderful rose that absolutely surrounds you in a sweet light perfume when you approach it. Not only is it wonderfully fragrant, but it is a many color rose. The tight buds are orange, they open yellow, turn pink, then darker rose, and finally end up with white on the outside of the petals and dark rose with red speckles as it passes peak. It is hard to believe all those colors come on one plant.  

In addition to that, the honeysuckle is now in full bloom. It is a white and yellow variety like Mother Eee had growing next to her kitchen door. Its sweet essence wafts about the yard now. Love it! The scent of these potent sweet nectar flowers reminds me of warm summer nights watching the big night moths work over the flowers. As kids we used to pull the flowers off and suck the nectar out of the tubes. Such a happy smell!

The catalpa is in full bud and should burst this weekend. That will add a spicy bouquet to the mix. The flowers are astounding, looking like clusters of miniature orchids. They are exotic.


What next?  I filled one of the raised beds with petunias. Here is a vintner-ish description of petunias: This is a sweet light floral, blended with just a hint of green for a soft, pleasing scent. Great for Summer. Soothing, spirit recharging, uplifting.

Speaking of recharging, I saw the first lightning bug tonight! Such magic.

So I am luxuriating in the heavenly scents from my garden but there is a major omission. We have no bees. By this time of year, my yard should be awash in bees. Bees bumping into each other in their pursuit of nectar and pollen. Honey bees, bumblebees, solitary bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees-- many different kinds of bees that are usually in great abundance among the flowers. Nothing!  We have seen two bumble bees, many black mud daubers, but bees? They are among the missing.

I am mystified. Yes, I have read all the articles about the decline of the honey bee, but for all the many different kinds of bees to just disappear? Was it the overly long, cold winter? Did they bees starve? Did they come out and get frozen? What?

In other news, because it is June we are getting snow. Cottonwood snow, that is. Even the slightest hint of breeze brings squalls of cottonwood seeds that float like snowflakes and create drifts.  When I drive to work in the morning, the side of the road under the big cottonwoods is usually covered with white drifts. These piles of seed are accompanied by flocks of sparrows and other seed eaters. It must be either a delicious treat, or just easy pickings, as the birds barely get out of the road when I drive by.

12 June 2011 - Cauls, cromulent and crapulent

I have a flower that I have always called a Persian Frittilaria.  Today I discovered it isn't a Frit at all, it's an allium. Allium bulgaricum, to be exact. Sometimes called a Sicilian Honey Lily. It is a sweet smeller, all right.

Funny, I didn't notice it had all the proper characteristics of the allium. Seems like a no-brainer now. But, I bought Persian Fritillaria bulbs, apparently that wasn't what I was sent, and I didn't think to question it.

What I think is interesting about this plant, in addition to the good looking flower, is that the bud is wrapped in a sheath, much like a caul. As it gets closer to opening the caul turns translucent, and you can see the individual buds inside.



As it begins to open, the caul is slit from top to bottom and the buds are packed in like sardines. One by one each bud breaks free and  bounces out to its proper place. Finally all the buds are free and the caul hangs on by a thread for a couple more days, then falls off.


In other news, I was humbled at work this past week. Grr. I hate being wrong!  Someone had used the word unpossible. Being in a snarky mood I sent an email saying "Unpossible? Really?"  The reply I received was "What? It's a perfectly cromulent word."

Cromulent?  What the heck, I'd never run into that word before. Look it up-- it's a good one. On the way to cromulent I discovered another interesting word: crapulent. And it has nothing to do with what you think it does. Just about the time I think I'm darned good with grammar, word usage, punctuation et al, something usually smacks me upside the head, shaking the complacency right out of me.  But hey, had I not been snarky, I would have missed out on two great words.

Hughie had her kittens yesterday. With all the available hidey holes in the yard and garage, she chose to ignore them all and had them under the dog house. For day-old kittens they sure can squall loudly, and do so every time Hughie leaves the nest. It will be interesting to see what and how many she has.

I have mentioned earlier what a fabulous rose display is happening in my yard right now. This weekend, Blaze, a climbing rose by my bedroom window burst into bloom. It is making a lovely arch. Reminds me of Burnett's Secret Garden.

This was another hard working weekend. Taped all the window sashing in the living room. Jack started to paint those while I taped the windows and door in the dining room. We took a break to mow the lawn and do some weeding. Painted some more. Then took another break for a trip to the Little Yellow Stand. Came home with a flat of mixed color petunias, two flats of impatiens for the berm and a few fill-ins for the perennial bed.

I washed the mini-blinds for the dining room. Took them outside, laid them out on the line and took the hose with the nozzle to them. Sprayed them with Simple Green, hit them with a scrub brush, turned them over, repeated and hosed them off. Then I hung them from pot hangers in the maple tree to dry. Worked great! 

Today, Sunday, I got up and before I finished my first cup of coffee I was out planting all the petunias. You can't just plant. It turns into weeding, digging grass up, working the soil. Two hours later I had not only planted all the petunias, but weeded the perennial bed, watered everything in and even filled a yard waste bag with my weed piles.

I find I am channeling mother when I weed. Pull it up, pitch it behind me. Makes quite a mess. Jack wants to know why I can't pull them out and make a tidy, easy to pick up pile. Dunno. I always wondered about it when mother did it, but it never occurred to me to ask. And now I'm doing it. Mostly it just gets them out of the way.

After cleaning the yard, went back in hoping to finish the living and dining room today. Jack started in on a second coat on the window sashes. I pulled everything out of the windows around the front door, washed all the shelves, went outside washed that side as well. Taped up the ten window lights around the front door and painted all the woodwork and shelves.

Took the largest set of living room blinds outside to wash. Little Fluff was most interested and walked across them to see what it was all about. The blinds have a path of dents across them now. Great. Clean, but dented.

Jack screwed the mini-blind brackets back in the windows while I cleaned out the built in shelves to get them ready for painting. All that is left to do is the built-ins plus another coat around the front door. I pulled all the tape off the windows and other woodwork where we were through and I must admit, it looks nice. Not my colors, but it is clean and airy looking.

8 June 2011 - Painting the Roses Red

Only nine days into June and it has been eventful!  Four days with temperatures reaching the mid-90s. Yesterday we hit 96, and the forecast is the same for today. Four of those 90 plus degree days set record highs for June. Today will also be a record high if indeed we make 96 again. 

Jack thinks I obsess about the weather and doesn’t understand why.  Well, yes, I do! I’m that person who loves to check out weather records. How hot/cold is it going to get? How does that differ from last year? Five years ago? How much precipitation did we get last month versus last year? Why should scientists keep records except to excite people like me? I just like to know things. 

Meanwhile, this hot spell is drying out our raised beds in a hurry, but it is also making our veggies and other plants spring out of the ground. Peas are a foot high already.  Lettuce is ready to eat, tomatoes are forming on the plants, peppers have buds forming. Beans are turning into little bushes. Water them first thing in the morning, by the time I get home from work it seems they’ve all grown two inches. The raised beds all have a bumper crop of lamb’s quarter. I pull them up with a smile, thinking how Robin buys my weed at her local farmer’s market and eats them with delight. 

June is a funny time for me. So many plants bloom. Clematis, roses, daisies, peonies, columbine, plus the shrubs such as Black Lace Elderberry, honeysuckle, weiglia, and summer sweet are just a few in my yard ready to burst or already at peak bloom thanks to the elevated temperatures. Why is it a funny time? Intellectually, I know these all bloom in June, but in May, they are just leafing out, starting to grow. Then wham! Out of nowhere they are covered with blooms. It happens so fast, even though I walk the yard daily, weed around them, water them, watch the progress, I still get startled at the profusion of color.  

May 31^st is our last frost free day. It’s the weekend everyone is out planting tender annuals. So somehow June isn’t that far away from the mental images of frost, cold, winter.

Helen's Aloha rose

This year the roses are stars—such a profusion of flowers! All you have to do is walk by and you get bathed in their fragrance. It's pretty heady!  

Two years ago Amy had given me a couple starts of an Aloha rose that came from her mother’s garden, from the house in Dearborn where she was raised. It is a beautiful pink with a delicate fragrance. These poor roses have been moved at least three times. This year they are thriving and are covered with blooms and many buds. I looked it up and found it is classed as a Modern Large Flowered Climber.  Modern? Hybridized in 1949. That is 63 years old!  

This year, all the yuccas that I rescued from Betty’s foundation plantings are sending up bloom stalks. They had never bloomed for her—too much shade. It will be fun see the stalks in full flower.  David has a fabulous patch of yucca that are show stoppers when they bloom.  Mine will get there.  

Critter report. On Sunday, Jack and I decided it was time to finally clean all the grass out of the front chain link fence. It was a shady spot in our yard on a very hot day. We worked  across the fence from each other loosening the roots and pulling up the grass. At one point I pulled a really huge clump of roots out and disturbed a stag beetle. He was not happy about it. He stood up on his rear, balancing like a tripod with his butt and two back legs. He gnashed his mandibles and waved his other legs in a threatening manner. I ran…for my camera. He could have been a model for some SF alien. I am very proud of this photo. Check out the interesting antennae and the sensory organs at the tips. He shouldn’t have any problem locating female pheromones with those. 

Years ago I read Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster. It is a first contact novel told from the perspective of the insectoid race, the Thranx, and deals with their encounter with the monstrous, fleshy, alien mammals known as humans. One of the things I remember best about this is that the Thranx could not show emotions due to their rigid exoskeleton and their society had come up with an intricate way of showing expressions through body part positions. Antennae, mandibles, palps and appendages were arranged just so to suggest emotions such as fifth degree of apology or third degree of subservience. I think my stag beetle is in the first degree of aggression. 

More weird critters. We have had hundreds of ants traversing our deck. Over the last weekend it became clear that we had a new variety of carpenter ant: big-headed ants.

Really odd looking ants, as you can see from the pictures. For several days I watched them run up and down the boards and considered the whys and wherefores of their over-sized heads. What would be the advantages of a bigger head? How do they carry things around as well as hauling that great big head. And what on earth would be have caused this kind of evolution?

I finally got down on hands and knees for a closer look. Ho! A surprise! They weren't big-headed at all. Each big-headed ant was merely carrying the carcass of a smaller black ant. I tried following the ants to see where the bodies were coming from but I didn't have much luck, or maybe it was a lack of patience. I can only surmise that they were raiding a nest of a smaller species of ants and bringing the bodies back to their own nest. I tried to get pictures. Do you have any idea how hard it is to focus on an ant? They are fast and travel in erratic paths.

Babies. We have robin, grackle and blue jay nests in the yard.  Two weeks ago I found a dead, gawky baby jay under the silver maple. This morning I found a live baby robin. Pin feathers were just starting to come out. It is an awful feeling to know that it will be cat food before the day is out.  

Our hollow catalpa tree is home to two kittens belonging to the tabico. Seems fitting as the tabico was born in the hollow boxelder stump. Her kittens are white, with orange ears, tails and top of head markings. Cute, but dang it, more cats? The girls have seven kittens in their yard, and Hughie is still lumbering around in a state of huge pregnancy. We thought she’d give birth a week or more ago due to her rotund state. Any day now. 

Her babies from last July: Little Fluff and Big Fluff are still living in the backyard. Big Fluff has become quite the company cat. He likes to be petted, scratched and played with. He loves to chase the end of a rope around the yard. When Jack and I are working in the yard or hanging about on the deck, he is usually not far. When he isn’t up for a pet he likes to lie a fingertip out of reach. Close enough. Big Fluff is oddly colored--head and shoulders are black and the rest of him is more brown. 

Many years ago I bought five giant allium bulbs. They have been gradually increasing. I have a beautiful purple display in May when they bloom. When the color fades, the heads remain upright for some time. As the heads fade to a straw color I have discovered I can spray paint them in bright colors to add a little zing to the May garden. This year I used a florescent pink. Zowie!

It's eye-catching. I am reminded of Alice every time I do this. 

"Would you tell me, please," said Alice, a little timidly, "why you are painting those roses?"

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began, in a low voice, "Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose tree, and we put in a white one by mistake..."

Did we have another record high today? You betcha. Topped out at 96 degrees again. Now, at 8:45 pm it is still 91 out and 82 in.