The soft garump of a sleepy green frog out in the garden pond. Since the pond is covered with platter sized lily pads (and lots of blossoms this summer) we rarely see the little fish However, the frogs are always there to add a bit of action to the watery still life canvas. I love it when their calls, either emphatic when the sun has warmed them up or just a gentle gurgle on this early, foggy day, remind me that they think my homemade pond is close enough to the real thing to suit their herpielittle selves.
I like:
Spending a couple of hours yesterday using a Barnes and Noble gift certificate given for my upcoming birthday by my delightful middle brother and wife. What joy, what joy....with a fledgling birder joining the happy pastime of counting and checking and observing the flying wild things, new field guides were in order. We have what we are mostly positive is a willow flycatcher living next to the driveway. When we looked it up in my old Birds of North America, which I have used all my life, Willow wasn't an option for a flycatcher. Time to catch up with the changes in taxonomy (dang those lumpers and splitters). So a new Birds of, a Sibley's, which I haven't used before, and a new Peterson's. Cool huh? Peck's Lake here we come, armed and dangerous with Latin names and new field marks and youthful enthusiasms galore. I like that. Now if my darling baby son will find my Kaufman's, which vanished a couple weeks ago when he was in charge...
I like:
Knowing that camp is coming. I feel guilty leaving LIz and Ralph with so much to do. There is enough work for all five of us never to catch up because it has rained until it is ridiculous. Flood watches every day. Flood warnings every night. Fat, leaking thunderstorms, lumbering up the valley, dropping inches every time they breath. I look forward to a too short lumpy bed, cheap novels, listening to loons languidly laughing. Board games. Catching six inch rock bass. Watching the sun rise over the water. I feel guilty, but that time of recharging and reordering is overdue and needed. I like knowing that it is so so close.
I like:
Talking with all of you. You add such color and texture to the fabric of all our lives. Even though you don't hear the boss talking too much here, even he loves us reading to him what is going on in your worlds. He comes out sometimes to see your pictures (especially all you farmers.....especially when it is machinery-thanks for the combines, Jeffro). We talk about your babies, both bovine and human. Your cats, dogs, snakes and fish. Birds and weather in states far away and jokes from England that brighten the day. Thanks!
Back on topic here....A good story from the Cattle Site about questions being posed to Obama's appointee for the Science and Technology Directorate, physician Tara O’Toole as the Homeland Security Department’s Under Secretary.
It is about time somebody at least noticed that the powers that be are planning on plopping an infectious cattle disease research lab down right in the middle of one of the nation's biggest cattle regions. Duh.
Good morning. Sorry about yesterday. It dawned clear and sharp and bright. The air was clean and fresh. It didn't rain. So everybody in the family worked like a dog with two tails to take advantage before it starts pouring again. (This afternoon by all accounts.) Between grabbing a good day when we could and Frontier being down most of the day, I barely even looked at the computer. We cleaned the barn and Becky swept the whole house. I weeded the small garden patch. The guys chopped haylage. We cleaned mangers. We moved heifers up on the hill into the big heifer pasture.
They are a bunch of big ones we really wanted to keep right by the house for the summer, as we are breeding them AI. We need to see when they come in season and be able to catch them to do that. There are self-locking stanchions there we can use for the latter job. However with all the rain the mud in the yard became ridiculous. They just couldn't stay in it any longer. Now they are in a huge field with no headlocks, where it will be hard to see them in heat let alone catch them. We had to think about their health and comfort though.
Unfortunately it is also the field where we are holding the dry cows and calving some of them. Liz goes out every day and walks that fence and checks for new calves or new problems. I will worry more now as some of the big heifers are aggressive and others are overly friendly. (When something weighs well over a thousand pounds, cuddly is bad.) She takes a cell phone and a big stick but still....it got pretty western yesterday moving some of them. One of them, a big, ugly beast named Armada, was downright dangerous when we were trying to get her up the lane. (I am too old to dodge charging heifers, I have to say.) I think she may have sealed her fate and be looking at an auction-bound trailer ride next time we handle them. I need money to pay bills and we don't need dangerous animals. This was the second time she has caused problems.
Today we get another good weather day before storms are expected for tonight. Liz and I need to set up a couple of calf hutches as we have more calves than we have places to put them. We need to get strawberries before the season ends. Rain and frost have made that a big problem. Becky needs to get taken to Walmart for going to Potsdam supplies.
We lost one of our best heifers to bloat Saturday night into Sunday (one of those in the barn until ten thirty nights). I for one still haven't gotten past it. If you have them you will lose them, s**t happens and all, but she was a Silky Cousteau out of an Ocean View Extra Special, a really, really special animal. It was just a freak thing. We treated her and had her coming around good, but she was still pretty weak. Sunday morning Liz and Ralph milk. She was okay then. They came in from the barn for breakfast and while they were eating she rolled herself over on her head and probably suffocated. Only heifer her mother ever had and she is gone too so.....
Our little wrens fledged yesterday. (Can you believe there were at least seven in that tiny little bird house? Alan said it was like a clown car in there when he peeked in to see them the night before they left us.)
Anyhow when we got up there was a great uproar from the sitting porch. A baby wren would stick its head out of the box and clatter frantically.
Ready to launch
An adult would show up, insect in beak, but rather than insert its booty in the door, it would call from a flower pot across the way until the baby popped out and fluttered into the air. They were remarkably accomplished at flying right from the get go....
Mama calling the kids to come out for a picnic
This continued until we had seen seven. (There could have been more before and I thought there was still chirping coming from the box as we were leaving.) On one hand I will miss them. They are endlessly entertaining with their constant coming and going. And the way they take on the world with no fear at all. On the other hand it is going to be nice to sit on the porch without feeling guilty about disturbing them. It astonishes me that in a couple of weeks the parents managed to raise this mighty brood from eggs the size of kidney beans. On bugs! No wonder they had a fit whenever I went out on the porch. They didn't have time to pause in their insect delivery.
Baby staging location (before they left for parts unknown. There was one in another pot by the door....Alan didn't see it and when he went out to see where it went it nearly flew in his ear.)
And lest I feel bereft of wrenliness, the male is singing from the other porch now...they have nested there for several years, so I suspect there is another brood in the planning stages.
And just in case you are sick of wrens...Here's Lucy!
***Most pics were taken through the screen door....sorry....
****Update, they spent the night on the other front porch and are out there now making quite a racket. The big wrens should get parent of the year awards or something.
Or what I saw from the sitting porch yesterday as we waited out another rainy day...
On another note, Google is after me to upgrade how much storage I use here at Northview and on Garden Records and the View at Northview. Rather than send them twenty bucks I really can't afford to spend on playthings, I am going to go back and remove some of my less than stellar photos and not so interesting posts. Thus if you have any old favorites....now is the time, so to speak. Or let me know and I will leave 'em. Thanks for reading..
Update*** We need to get all over this one. Bank of America Partners with HSUS There is a form letter you can use to let them know what you think about them joining such an enemy of animal agriculture.
More than usual, even though there have really been a lot of them this summer. I went out yesterday to check on a yellow warbler that hit the big windows. (He was fine.)
And found that the mulberry trees are loaded with fruit. Cat birds, mockingbirds, cedar waxwings, robins and just about everybody in the neighborhood are in full holiday mode. I hope they stay away from my laundry.
As longtime readers may know, we received a while back the unlikely gift of a turkey hen that is imprinted on people.Her name is Lucy. She is tame, sweet, and staggeringly stupid. She is a lovely sort of slate blue and turkey brown. She walks around the yard, beak pointed upward, chirping in a soft, melodious voice that sounds like a mother tenderly cooing to her babe. You can walk right up to her...except when you need to put her in the hen house. (Did I mention that she is about as smart as a lump of butter.?)
Who knew that when we decided to let the hens, absurdly multitudinous roosters, and good old Lucy range free during the day, getting her back inside would be so darned hard?
The first night Becky went out to close the door on the hens, as farm bird care is nominally her job. She returned much scratched and not too happy, ranting and raving about how hard it is to catch and carry a turkey. Yeah right. She is such a drama queen.
Then last night she wanted to watch some special TV show and the sun sets kinda late these days (for which I am everlastingly grateful). So I said I would put the birds away when it got dark.
A quarter to ten. The sky to the East and North is still glowing peachy gold, with puffy dark grey clouds, like fat smoky cats littering the horizon. I take my trusty flashlight and revel in the fact that it is still lightish at ten at night. I love the long days. Just love them.
A swirl of the light through the hen house reveals sleeping hens and roosters, like feathered fruit, on every high place.
No Lucy.
I find her sitting alone in the middle of the driveway looking very sorry for herself. When she sees me she starts to walk quickly away so I grab her tail. Everyone who has ever captured poultry knows you never grab the tail. The grab-ee turns into an instant self-propelled windmill, whirling on frantic wings until the tail feathers all pull out. The bird runs away, less fluffy in the rear perhaps, but free from your clutches anyhow. Well, if you think grabbing a chicken that way is exciting, try a turkey. Her huge, heavy, wings drummed on my arms and smashed my face. Her tail didn't pull out but I let go....just couldn't hang on.
So I herded her through nettle and burr, up almost to the door of the hen house. She obviously wasn't going in so I grabbed her again, this time by the base of her wings. What a powerhouse! When she flapped, I flapped. She doesn't look very big but I felt like the little dog that finally caught the car. I staggered over to the coop, threw her inside, and slammed the door.
Turkeys are strong. All that thick breast meat? Pure muscle. Schwarztenbirdie personified so to speak I am not sure I want to do that every night so I am thinking of closing dear Lucy in the caged part of the hen house and letting only the hens run free. I am not so sure that I will win the next time.
We finally opened the big front doors yesterday. Normally this is a job for late April. I hate having plastic up over the beautiful windows so I pull it down as soon as I can bear to. We have no choice but to put up plastic as the old doors are drafty as a bat cave and the wind beats against the front of the house all winter like the devil's angry fist.
However, last fall the guys managed to put plastic over the outside instead of inside where I have to staple it up...so we could see the windows all winter.
Then there has been this cold, wet, unforgiving spring. I didn't WANT to take the plastic down. It has been that cold.
Yesterday dawned sticky and breathless. No air. No breeze. Drawing breath was a conscious job and the valley smelled like a wet mop. I tried to pry the plastic off, but I am short and turning into a worse wienie every year. Liz had to do it. As soon as it was down and the doors were opened, the house took a deep breath and finally, finally, shuddered off winter. Soon a breeze popped up and the laundry began to snap on the clothesline......and within an hour the wren was on that porch. Despite nesting in the box on the other porch. Despite spending weeks swinging from the camel bells there and chittering all day long, he moved the minute the doors were open.
Somehow the birds seem to know that if they sing in front of the door on that porch, the two-story, ten-foot ceilings front hallway will serve as a birdie Carnegie Hall for them, amplifying and strengthening their voices until they sound like the biggest birds on the river.I wonder how long it will take the mockingbird to show up....and the great crested fly catcher...phoebe....cardinal....I wonder if they have been doing this since the house was built so very long ago..
Our upbringing was unconventional to say the least. We were raised in an antique and book store. Reading the merchandise. Learning to refinish fine furniture. Playing with relics of days gone by, like horse drawn sleighs, dummy training rifles and clay marbles. We read books from long before our lives. Talk about a different perspective than just reading current literature. ( Mary Lasswell? Tarzan. Tom Swift. Roy Chapman Andrews.)
Dad's carving of King Tutankhamen, with some others in the background
As kids we dug for Indian relics. Fossils. Amazing mineral specimens. Watched birds. Camped. Fished. Read and read and read..... hundreds of books. Thousands of books. We all still read. A lot.
Rose quartz I found while mineral collecting with dad
Dad was president of the local Audubon Society. Mineral Club. Carving Club. There is a rare mineral he found in a place it had never been seen before sitting in a display in the state museum in Albany. He won many, many awards for his carvings over the years and even taught some classes. He was a mover and shaker in Clan Montgomery and still is. He and mom have been married for 57 years after meeting on a blind date. They are still dating.....
Painting of Liz by Mom, who was much encouraged in her art by Dad over the years.
Happy Father's Day, Dad. Thanks for the adventurous mind and the interests to go with it. We all love you!
Eventually, Michael the archangel found him resting on the seventh day.
He inquired, "Where have you been?"
God smiled deeply and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds, "Look, Michael. Look what I've made "
Archangel Michael looked puzzled, and said, "What is it?"
"It's a planet," replied God, "and I've put life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a place to test Balance."
"Balance?" inquired Michael, "I'm still confused."
God explained, pointing to different parts of earth. "For example, northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth, while southern Europe is going to be poor. Over here I've placed a continent of white people, and over there is a continent of black people, and over there yellow people, and another one of red people. Balance in all things."
God continued pointing to different countries. "This one will be extremely hot, while this one will be very cold and covered in ice."
The Archangel impressed by God's work, then pointed to a land area and said, "What's that one?"
"That's Washington State , t he most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, and plains. The people from Washington State are going to be handsome, talented, modest, intelligent, humorous, and prosperous and they are going to travel the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, carriers of peace, and producers of software."
Michael gasped in wonder and admiration, but then asked, "But what about balance, God? You said there would be balance."
God smiled, "There's another Washington. Wait till you see the idiots I put there.
From my lovely Aunt Peg, who always finds the good ones.
It is raining again at Northview. The guys can barely chop enough hay to feed the cows each day. We had two nice days...when the chopper was broken down and now rain, rain, rain.
If I haven't yet whined about the slugs let me do so now. I have a lush little patch of merveille de quatre saisons lettuce in a fifteen gallon half barrel right outside the back door. It is fantastic stuff with leaves as crisp and meaty as spinach yet so very delicate in flavor. I grew it from seed I saved last summer, which makes me quite smug. The slugs, which seem to undulate over the ground like sticky erasers devouring (and pooping on) all that they encounter, climb up the wet plastic of the tub and gnosh holes in every leaf. I have surrounded the tub with a solid ring of feed grade salt, which I thought was slowing them down.
Not. I just went out to take a picture of its leafy green and red perfection and it is covered with a blanket of them. Chewed to ribbons....and blackened with slug poo. I am disgusted. I have tried the old beer in a pie tin trick to no avail. Any of you good gardeners out there got any ideas?
I am afraid this is going to be a rough year for gardening. First a late frost on the thirtieth of May. Next striped cucumber beetles wiped out the squash. I just replanted yesterday. Now the slugs. (UGH)
Two weeks of dry weather would look good to me just now. Real good.
Here is a picture of a whole batch of Montgomerys...including my parents, some favorite aunts and uncles and all sorts of other related folks. They gather in Harpursville every year to celebrate being family. This year they had a speaker on the participation of the regiments of a number of ancestors in the Civil War. (Help me out here Mom, I never remember them).
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