31 May 2012 - Cats, Critters and Crawlies

For many years I wrote letters to Pop detailing our trials and tribulations with the backyard rodent population. Now I have moved 2000 miles across the country and I still have rodent problems.

The critters, in this case ground squirrels and red squirrels do have one ameliorating function: they keep the cats entertained. They come up on the balcony and eat the sunflower seeds that have fallen from the feeder. It took a couple months before the red squirrels figured out how to go directly to the source by leaping onto the feeder. 

We generally know something is going on when the boys go on high alert. 

This behavior usually has Jack or me or both of us sneaking up behind them to see what is going on. 

The red squirrels drive them crazy because they move so fast. 

The cats are entertained for hours, they pat the windows, natter and pine for the chase. The squirrels ignore them.
 

In the early morning we have quail in the front yard, and better yet, a sunny window. What could make a cat happier than that? Other than not having to share the window, that is. 

In the course of cleaning up the yard, we have discovered many ground squirrel tunnels--not in good places. They have burrows underneath stairs, in the rock walls, under the cement pad for storage behind the garage... you name it, we find tunnels. 

It was more than past time to consider relocation. I borrowed David's live trap and in three days caught three squirrels. I released them all in the same place up Millcreek Canyon.  The cats are not happy about it at all. 

We also have some odd insect activity going on in the lawns. Something is digging holes leaving little piles of dirt surrounding a hole.  I have shined light down the holes and seen a bit of movement, but that's all. It could be bees, worms, beetles... who knows? 

We have amazing mud daubers. They build their rock hard nests in the strangest places. In a back dark corner of the garage the daubers have made nests on a wire and a hinge. 

There are different kinds of nests for different species of wasps that use mud. Some wasps paralyze little caterpillars, then stuff the cells with the caterpillars, lay an egg in each cell then seal it up. When the egg hatches there is a ready food supply.  I found one of these amazing structures as it was being built. 


 
The tranquilized caterpillars are extremely sluggish, and she had a pile of them under her nest, ready to poke into the cells. I just love this stuff! 



Here is a bug I have not yet identified, but isn't he a beaut? I was on the verge of a better photo when he flew. I think I need a camera that can focus and click faster.

The spider babies are hatching now too, and the yard is full of tiny spiders sailing through the air on their gossamer strands. My little microcosm is an wonderful place to be. So much to see on a daily basis. And it all changes so quickly.

25 May 2012 - Birding on the Great Salt Lake

Life took an odd little detour today. I decided it was time to check out the lake. Closest I've come to the lake in years has been going to the airport. Close but no cigar. This morning the clouds were hanging thick and low over Mt. Olympus with hints of raindrops every now and then. Across the valley, I could see the sun was on the Oquirrhs. So why not? There is a wonderful access road that runs beside I-80. If you are driving on I-80, you can't even see this road, it is like a secret route. In my four hours along the lake, I saw three other cars. Very nice to be the only person in the world while enjoying some beauty.

As you approach the lake there are boggy areas filled with birds and blooming things.

This pond was home to a few Canada geese and their babies. The pink shrub in front is tamarisk, also known as salt cedar.  It is an invasive species that destroys wetlands due to its own insatiable thirst. 

 
I am completely unfamiliar with this plant.  It is a large shrub with huge clusters of these purple flowers and an incredible amount of yellow pollen.

One more thing to look up! Pretty! I only found the one plant, which makes me think it may not be a native.

 The boggy pond areas were filled with yellow-headed blackbirds. I love that they live and nest in close communities, but are they ever noisy! Raspy kruck noises filled the air. They squabbled with each other, chased other birds, and complained about my presence. Great fun. When they fly you can see bright white markings on their wings. Just a hint of it in this photo.

I spent quite some time checking out the bogs on my way to the marina. Looking across the valley to the east, the mountains were still socked in. It's hard to tell in this little photo, but you can see the rain coming down in the mountains.

 

 Where I'm standing, with my back to the marina, it is warm and sunny.  

Those are islands in the lake, you are not seeing all the way across the lake to the  mountains on the far side.  The lake is so shallow, that any little bit of wind will make the surface choppy. It was a bit churned up today. 

You have to keep your eyes open, or you will drive right by some of the access points, such as this small path through a fence. This is typical Utah landscape and I adore it. Sand with sage brush,  alfalfa, rabbit brush and grasses. 

Since I was there I had to stop at the new Saltair. It is really awful--tacky, tasteless, tawdry. The best thing about it? Cliff swallow nests just under the top of the turrets, tucked in under the ledges. 

Better yet was this baby screeching for food. When you look at all the little mouthfuls of mud making up each gourd-shaped nest, you have to admire how much work it took each bird to find and haul the mud.  What you can't tell from this picture is that these holes are pointing down to the ground, the close-up shot skews the perspective.

The original Great Saltair Pavilion was completed in 1893. It must have been wonderful in its prime. 

Over a hundred years later, some of the original pilings are still visible on the beach.

 But I digress.

Continuing on down the road to the next brackish pond I found some American avocets and quite a few black-necked stilts. The avocets spent most of their time trying to chase the stilts out of the water. 

Lots of hawks! I counted 15 in the air at one time. Not sure why they were all flocked up.  I stopped to take a picture of dead trees, and then saw the hawk sitting in the biggest one. See it? Check out the closest tree in the branch just over the ridge line.

 Not only was the there a hawk in the tree, but a small blackbird was waiting for him to move. The blackbird was keeping up a running diatribe and was occasionally answered by other birds in the lower bushes. When the hawk moved, the little bird and his friends attacked the hawk. 

 The hawk was looking pretty ragged. I was reminded of the scene in Harry Potter when Hermione says, "Professor Lupin is having a really bad day."  His feathers are all ruffled and poking out. When he finally flew from the tree, I saw he was missing wing feathers.

According to my bird books, red tail hawks eat small rodents, they hardly ever hunt birds. I guess the little birds just see them as a predator and don't want them near their nesting areas.

You never know what will happen. I went to see the lake, and ended up birdwatching. Then found I was being watched as well. It was a bit unsettling.

And just a pretty irrigation ditch whose water will end up in the lake. 

 How many ways are there to say what an awesome morning?


birds today
killdeer
black-necked stilt and babies!
american avocet
american coot and babies!
yellow-headed blackbird
red-winged blackbird
western kingbird
cliff swallows
red-tailed hawks
snowy egret
willet
california gulls
canada geese and babies
forster's tern

16 May 2012 - Odd reversals

I was hit by an odd epiphany today.  I had gone to the library to return books, and as is my wont, I took a different way home, this time driving through a neighborhood in Holladay. The gardens in this area were stunning, full of flowers. Blooming right now are iris, peonies, clematis, roses, wisteria, globe mallow and so much more.  It dawned on me that in Michigan, you rarely see neighborhoods where every yard is full of flowers, yet Michigan is surrounded by lakes, has a lot of rain, and no real shortage of water.

Here in Utah, it is a desert. Water is a precious commodity. Snow pack determines if we have a good water year or not, but still, everyone has incredible gardens that all need water. I have half a notion to dig up all the lawn and replace it with native plants that are drought tolerant. That is a bit more of an ambitious plan than I can handle this year, but who knows.

 In addition to the front yard gardens, people have done beautiful things in the parking strips as well, such as this 40 foot strip of iris. 

Or this one full of native plants, sage brush and grasses.  

Here's an example of a yard landscaped in a water-wise plan with native plants.  Mulch and hard-scaping help conserve the water. 

Here is another naturalized yard, but in a shady location, so the plants used look quite lush.  What you can't see in a picture this small is that most of these clumps are blooming. Charming!

Many homes in my neighborhood have yard services. This particular service always cracks me up. Their trailer is covered with stuffed animals and dolls. Very peculiar. 

Oh! And speaking of parking strips, how about this one on a major street outside of a Mexican take-out? 

Roses and iris, always a winning combination.

Just down the street in front of another restaurant is another native, naturalized setting. Lovely.




While we are talking about reversals, how about this? Every day I go out front with my bucket and pick up pine cones.

 Because I can't help myself, I count them. Today I had 56. Yesterday was windy and 84 fell. The day before that, only 35. I haul my bucket out to the garbage bin and pitch them. 

I was rooting around in the garage looking for a box of nails and I came across several stashes of pine cones thanks to our red squirrel. 

He fills containers with pine cones.

 

When we were removing debris in the yard, I picked up a pile of limbs and found a huge hoard of cones buried beneath the branches. 

Guess we both are collecting and stashing pine cones, just for different purposes.

14 May 2012 - Exploring 13th West

What a glorious day! 84 degrees, sunny, perfect blue skies.


We spent the weekend, with major help from David (thank God for brothers), finishing the raised beds and installing a seven foot high deer fence around the beds. Jack is determined that we will get veggies, and that the deer will not. Stay tuned. 

So, after work today we went out to pick up a couple tomato plants and assorted seeds. The nursery was on the other side of the valley, which was conducive to exploring on our way home.

The first thing that caused me to hit the brakes, perform a u-turn and pull over, was a pasture with Highland cattle and babies! I had not realized how small Highlands are. A pony is taller than these cattle, although not even close to as heavy.  Their hairy faces give them such a sweet look--deceptively sweet-- I might add. One of the mothers charged the fence when she thought I was too close to her baby. 

The babies were about the size of Labrador retrievers. They were racing around the pasture, bumping heads and having a wonderful time. Truly, they made you want to hop the fence and hug them.

 The mothers were not having any of me. They were watching their little ones very closely. You can see the fence looks more than a bit on the rickety side, so I stayed further away than I wanted. 

Don't they look so very picturesque with the mountains in the background? 

Upon arriving home, I checked to make sure they really were Highlands (yep, they were) and also discovered that a group of Highland cattle is not called a herd, but a fold. So a Scottish Fold is a breed of cat, but a fold of cattle are Scottish cows. It is a weird and wonderful world we live in.

Back on the road, we had scarcely made it a mile down the road when we saw a big sign for a Conservation Garden Park. A what? Naturally we turned in to check it out. What a surprise! The modern building houses the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District offices, but they have an education center with classes, seminars, plant sales plus acres and acres of beautiful gardens that illustrate how to plant in a desert and use water wisely. What a delight! 

We took the self-guided tour which walks you through areas that emphasize design, irrigation, planting and maintenance. It was beautiful. Fabulous specimen trees and so many ideas that my head was spinning. We would have stayed a lot longer if the tomatoes were not getting heat stroke in the back of the car. We will be going back, you can bet on that. And I'll have a notebook and pencil. 

The gates were all different: huge slabs of quarter inch plate steel with cut-out designs of gardeners doing things. Fun!

 There were many paths through the gardens: concrete sidewalks, stepping stone paths, and mulched woodland paths.


Best part? All the plants were labeled. 

The paths led in and out of seating areas, including wood pergolas or through metal arched walkways or more formal poured concrete benches. 

 Here's an example of a hot, dry setting with a stone riverbed. Big flat boulders double as seating. 

The garden designers somehow made ordinary plants look exotic in these combination plantings.

Tall purple smoke trees, spiky clumps of blue-gray ornamental grasses, rounded flowering shrubs... all combine into a landscape that is so much more than a sum of its parts.

Here in a more wooded area, the garden is about to explode into color with peonies, iris, poppies and  penstemon.    Mental note: I want to go back and see that! It should be absolutely spectacular.  The purple flowers in this picture are globe alliums.

It was a lovely day out, and we were teased by so many possibilities.

13 May 2012 - Appreciating my brother

Have I mentioned how much I adore my brother? The best thing about being back in Utah is the close proximity to David. He amazes me daily. Not only is he funny, but so smart! He can do anything, fix anything and I would kill to have his brain function. He remembers every thing he reads. He would probably argue with that, but the amount of knowledge and odd little facts which turn out to be useful, tucked away in all the nooks and crannies of his head continually astonish me. I think some of his DNA comes from the sponge family. If you want an example ask him about the alkali bees and the bomber flies in Lovelock, Nevada. Funny. 

David works four ten hours days then has three off. Since we came back, at least one of those three days off has been spent helping us. He shows up and works. Instead of veni, vidi vici, I keep thinking I should find the latin for he came, he fixed, he left. It seems to fit. Since he has taken care of this house for many years he just knows what and when to do it.

He also comes with surprises. After we decided to move back,  D2 and I had a conversation about weather vanes. Pop had made a wonderful horse weather vane that topped the house for years. It had fallen apart some time back.  When we arrived in SLC in December after selling our house, the first thing I saw was a new weather vane gracing the roof line. Perfect!

Last Saturday, Jack and I were sitting on the porch, reading the paper, sipping coffee, soaking up the warm sun when David comes sneaking into the yard. I think he was shocked to find us up and mobile. 

He made a birdhouse out of a log and I think he planned to hang it in a tree, then wait to see how long it took us to notice. Foiled! But it is a great birdhouse. It may be a bit late for this season, but someone will find it. I'm hoping it will be a flicker or perhaps a woodpecker.

In addition, he had his bag of tools with him and started pulling stuff out. Now what? One of my pieces of yard art had been bothering him. It's a lovely bird made out of tools that looks like it is saying, "Get busy! Why are you just sitting there?" Over years of being out in the weather, the bolts that were the eyes had rusted out. He drilled out the bolts and installed new eyes made out of orange cat's eye marbles. Everyone is happier now. And they eyes? They look great--nice beady bird eyes. 

After making the decision to move back, Jack and I made three trips out to SLC--two of the trips involved driving 17 foot U-Hauls packed to bulging, and the the third trip--we got smarter as we went along--we flew out and met a POD here. Still can't believe how much stuff we brought with us, and even more, how much stuff we gave away. But the point is, that in July of 2010, when we decided to make the move and Jack moved here, David would show up and help do things. 

One day he and Jack were sitting on the porch and David said, "Lauri needs a water feature." Can't argue with that! Pop had built a small wading pool for us when we were all small. Then he added an upper pond with a fountain that flowed into the wading pool. 
 
At least 15 years ago David filled in the wading pool and the fountain hadn't worked for years before that. 

He dug all the dirt out of the pool, cleaned it up and spent days getting everything working. Plus there were the requisite several trips to the hardware store and having to order a new, bigger motor before getting the fountain to work. 

After getting both pools cleaned, there were cracks in the concrete that needed to be patched, then time to dry and cure, replacing the plumbing, discovering it needed a bigger motor... all the little things that add to getting something done.
 
And of course there were many adjustments to be made. It took a long time to get the right pressure so all three pipes shot the same amount of water. One would go three feet up and another would barely dribble out the top.

All cleaned up and working. Wow. There is nothing like the sound of water splashing on a really hot day. And for the really hot nights? David installed spotlights. What a treat!  Everyone needs a water feature.

In addition to this, there were other huge projects. He and Jack decided to replace three of the concrete squares on the porch which had started to sink. This involved renting a jackhammer to break up the squares that were five to six inches thick.

Next he hauled his cement mixer over, rigged up a pulley to get it out of his truck and back in when he was finished. 
In the life and work of the Winburn clan, nothing is easy. Every project requires other projects to be started, or completed before you can get to the part you started to do. Whether it was doing massive tree trimming before starting on the fountain, or having to clear off enough area to work, it is always something.


Of course, it is fairly easy to say what the project was, but there is all the prep and cleanup. How do you get rid of that much concrete?  Little by little in the garbage cans.  

After spending a week here in August, and knocking down paper wasp nests on a daily basis, I decided that Jack should paint the ceilings blue. He got started on it, and David showed up to help. 

After renting a paint sprayer, they decided to buy a better sprayer. Sounds easy. But all the work is in the prepping. Jack spent hours hanging plastic drop cloths and wrapping beams. Then because he is who he is, David scared the bejabbers out of Jack, what you can't see is that he is hanging over the end of the balcony. For those of us (see Jack and Lauri) who have a problem with heights...even looking at this picture makes my stomach clench. 

But the results are wonderful and the blue, in addition to messing with the wasps' plans adds a lot of light to the area. 

Then there are all the little ad hoc projects. David shows up and we say something along the lines of "while you are here could you tell us ... or show us...  or help us...." And there are times he'll show up to fix something we didn't even know needed to happen, such as adding a chimney cap and making sure it is all caulked. 

Our basement was flooded when the landscapers next door blocked the street gutter during a downpour. All the water flowed down the driveway, into the window wells or under the porch and into the basement. David showed up and patched the porch steps so water could no longer go under them. He created water diversion ditches, so God forbid, something like this happens again, the water will flow into the lawn. All of this is hard physical labor. The soil is solid with rocks. After living in Michgan with mostly sandy loam, this rocky excuse for dirt is hard to deal with. 

He and Jack replaced the old, rickety fence. They had to dig out concrete footings that were huge! Another massive job that took weeks to finish.  

Then there was the day he stopped by and found Jack and me trying to get the tiller started. He got it started after a couple hours of taking the carburetor apart, putting it together, taking it part and readjusting.... When it was finally running he helped us till up the garden area. When Jack finished building the raised beds, he came back and helped us put the deer fence up.

Meanwhile he has projects galore of his own. The big one right now is restoring the log cabin so he can turn it into a blacksmith shop. He has had to replace roof beams, completely replace the roof decking, and will have to reshingle the roof, but that sort of got sidetracked because he added a skylight. He had finished installing it and was considering the next step of tar papering. But no. Jack, Robin and I bought him another skylight that was twice as big, and opens. His progress was stopped while he framed it up and got it installed. We didn't care, we were more worried about good light and ventilation.  Okay, just a little bit of guilt on my part.

This inside shot shows some of the logs he needs to replace in the corner. That is a whole other story. He has already poured a concrete cradle behind the ladder to support the bottom log on the far side of the cabin. 

Here he has the first skylight installed. It added a lot of light to the dark interior, but the second skylight really helped.

Unfortunately, before he could install the new skylight, he decided to trim the overhanging pine boughs. The thought of a limb crashing through his new skylight did not thrill him.

 

 








The ladder he is standing on is wedged on the roof of his backhoe. In the next picture you can see he is using the chain saw on a stick, which has a 15 foot pole. Scary!  Jack and I cleaned up the limbs as he sawed them off. Turn about and all that. 

On his days off, when he can't work on the cabin due to the weather, he has other projects-- rebuilding the fire pit of his forge, making special brackets for the cabin beams. Reading up on blacksmithing. Always something. 

And since we were there, he rounded up a great collection of dead yard tools for my permanent deer fence--an upcoming project. 

What I have enumerated here are just tip of the iceberg accounts. I could go on ad nauseum. After living without family for 30 years, all I can say is it is so good to be back. And David? He's not only the frosting, but the cake as well.