Happy Birthday

 

To my favorite son......Happy Birthday, Alan!

Just Plain Nice

On the way home from a particularly stressful morning...if you know, you know...we stopped to get the mail in town.

Included was a small, utterly unexpected, out-of-the-clear-blue-sky envelope. It contained a package of Lion's Ear seeds and a lovely note, from someone who reads Northview, remembered my struggles last summer to get the gangly plant I purchased going, and wanted me to have a better go this summer.

I was beyond delighted. It has been a challenging couple of months, and not getting easier anytime soon, and to have this wonderful surprise gift from a stranger meant a lot. She had to take quite a lot of effort to track down the address and get the seeds to me and I am much grateful.

So, thanks Susan, I will be planting them inside as soon as I can. 

I did get last summer's version going eventually and it was a real conversation piece. It reached the top of my little arbor and peeked merrily in the kitchen window at me whenever I was at the sink. (Is there anything better than a window over the kitchen sink? I don't think so.}

The hummingbirds were wild for it late in the summer and early in fall when so many other plants were past their best.

I look forward to having this unusual and fun plant again this year!

Cranes

 

Thick muscular wings. Tall, gawky bodies, awkward, gangly, long, stilty legs, with fluffy brown and silver bodies like unshorn lambs. Look like loaves of bread sunning on the levee in the late afternoon.

Delicate and graceful as leaves whirling in an eddy, they dance, skip, and float on the air, leaping over one another in an unworldly ballet, wonder on the water, out there in the pool.

My dear friend Kris took me on an outing to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge and Cayuga Lake State Park yesterday. We were both up long before o'dark thirty and left my house just before five. We were at the visitor's pool just before seven-thirty.

Northern Pintail drake

The Sandhill Cranes were there as had been reported recently on various Facebook pages and eBird. They danced and sang for us, their songs as uncanny and prehistoric as any Hollywood movie track, only as real and the pools they played in. We stayed as long as they did, then headed out to tour the refuge for the entire day, other than a short side trip to Cayuga Lake in search of the near mythical Red-headed Woodpeckers we had been reading about.

The latter were common during my college days way back in the first years of the 1970s. When I used to sneak out of class to ride the dirt roads south of Fonda, or rode a then-young Magnum on those same dirt roads, I saw them everywhere.

I love the size contrast between these Trumpeter Swans
and the ducks around them. Big birds!

Until yesterday I hadn't seen one since then. However we spoke to a nice gentleman at May's Point Pool, who instructed us right to the exact tree where to find them. As soon as we reached the appointed spot we saw one flitting away and joined an ever changing-group of birders watching a single male plying the trees for luncheon.

 I was astonished how hard it was to see him, what with his bright, flashy, colors and all. I can spot a tiny Downy at considerable distance, but I had to look hard to find this delightful bird.

The whole day was spectacular. Nice weather, decent light, with short periods of the throat catching kind that turns an ordinary landscape into a scene from a Hopper painting, and lots and lots of wonderful birds I only see at the refuge. 

Huge thanks to Kris for being kind enough to include me in her visits to this magical spot and for sharing my enthusiasm for birds, both rare and ordinary. Sure had a great time!

Here is a link to a recording I made of the cranes at the visitor's pool.

Practicing for Jet Lag

 

Because you know it's going to get us all after the time distortion that will come on Sunday. I set the bedroom clock an hour ahead earlier this week, to start getting ready for the misery that is the official Time Change.

So...I got up at ten after four to walk Jill who was way off color yesterday. Happy to report she seems significantly improved this morning.

Since I was up I went owling.

In the backyard.

In my bathrobe and crocs (hey, don't be all judgey now).

A thick frost fell last night, not enough to freeze the water trickling off the hill after all the rain the last couple of days, but the mud was hard enough that I could walk part way to the old cow barn.

There were no owls today....just one lonesome White-throated Sparrow, giving off one sleepy cheep from somewhere under the mulberry trees.

However, as I stared up at the early stars, sparkling even in the light-polluted sky here so near to town, I saw a thin shroud of icy fog slowly folding them into its dim embrace. It felt as i I was watching something private and secret, even with the din of trains and the Thruway just to the north.

I came back in to warmth and coffee, welcome after half an hour in the frigid air. 

No owls in here either.

Gothic Horror Story

 

The sky was threatening. Gloomy, hung over with bulging yellow and grey clouds, pregnant with the promise of fear. She was alone with a grandkid and the dogs in the big gothic spooky house. A storm was incoming. 

She ventured out to the back porch to look east and south.

A thick cable of blackness dangled from the sky like a snaking tentacle, looming close, and coming closer.

She raced inside, screaming for the grandchild to get to the cellar. Grab a blanket. Be quick.

Down the crumbling wooden stair they went, to sit at the bottom clutching the dull red sleeping bag the child had chosen.

But, no! The dogs. They were in the kitchen in their crates.

Stay, small one, stay while I go.

Leash on the white one, where is the grey?

Back down to the kiddo to find the white one tied to a cluster of Easter ribbons and the grey one replaced by a small stuffed toy dog. Weird.

Go back for the grey.

Too late.

The cellar windows were man-high, laid-up stone tunnels reaching out from the cellar to shallow, root and vine-grown trenches in the ground. Through the frame of dangling vines and roots they could see blackness coming and the horrible mouth of the thing open and sucking.

She tried to call 911 but the phone only showed video games in violent reds and purples. No key pad. No contacts list. Though she had memorized the sheriff's phone number a long time ago there was no way to call them.

She tried the small one's phone but it was the same.

The mouth of the maelstrom hovered outside one of the window tunnels, howling in rage.

Then, just like that, it was gone and the house still stood.

Next strangers came, strolling through the cellar, lying down on platforms of boards, looking into nooks and corners. She tried everything to make them leave, even hitting them and dumping water on them. They would not go and more and more of them stumbled down to join the peering throng.

Then I woke up.

 And thought, "Holy crap! That was the most vivid and realistic dream I have ever had!!" Weirdest too and I've had some doozies. 

A lot of stuff going on around here and I guess I am realizing that there are things I can't control, no matter how much of an excessively controlling person I am.

But, man, oh, man, I wish I could bottle my imagination...it's got to be worth something. LOL