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!