Antics in the Attic

I'm sorry...I don't have an attic.  Always wished for one, but wishes and reality never collided...I didn't have that bit of magic to make my world the way I chose, except perhaps those few years I borrowed the neighbors attic.  It was actually a third floor, the regular stairs led to it, but it had the peak-of-roof walls and windows protruding through the eaves.  It was a storage area, so an attic it was.

I remember closets and trunks full of very old clothes...long dresses, hats, gloves...I played dress up with my friend who was a bit older than me.  For those few years when the age difference didn't matter, we were tight as sisters, and dressing in that late 1800's early 1900's finery was pure pleasure.  We could make-believe we were anyone anywhere we chose to be, but my friend grew up and left me behind for escapades with girls more her own age.

I palled around with my nine month younger brother for a few years when being with one's own sister wasn't an experience worse than death.  I commanded quite a bit of power over his conscience leading him on adventure after adventure of an unrealistic nature.  It's a wonder he made it to adulthood in one piece and still able to think.

One of our vacations to see dad's parents, out in the farming countryside of Fresno, we were given permission to hike to the little mom and pop corner grocery store perhaps half a mile down the road.  At that intersection we could see the tall buildings of the big city in front of us just off into the distance.  I wanted to go there.  I always had that kind of curiosity that in some stories definitely killed the cat.

We walked and walked and walked.  Come on, brother, it's just a little ways longer, see how close it looks.  We walked and walked and walked and walked and walked.  What!...dad was beside us in the car telling us to get in and taking us back to grandma and grandpa.  We walked quite a few miles, and I was told looks are deceiving...our enticing downtown buildings calling my name were tens and tens of miles away.  My first lesson in depth perception...too bad it didn't stick.

Brother hadn't learned his lesson yet, and we were hiking just outside town on our way up to the "H".  Back in those days we hiked all over the place by ourselves in that small town of Hawthorne.  The "H" was a hill off to the west, past the garbage dump, and part of the foothills at the base of Mount Grant.  Incoming high school freshmen were marched up there each year to refresh that coat of white paint on those huge rocks spelling out that initial for the town we grew up in.  It could be seen from the highway or air, and that was a pretty big deal to everyone who lived in that hole-in-the-road town that sprung up around a train depot in the 1800's in the middle of the desert.

My brother had asthma growing up, and he was wheezing fairly regularly at that point on the long assent up that winding dirt road.  I still feel a bit guilty about that obsession...I didn't want to give up, it seemed such a short trip when mom drove us to the dump site.  I didn't want the failure of not reaching the prize.  We did make our way to those painted rocks that didn't seem so exciting as we sat down to calm our breathing.  It hadn't occurred to us until then that we weren't going to be air lifted off that hill.  We would have to make the hike back.  We survived, but never divulged any of that experience to mom and dad.  Even though the hike didn't kill us they probably would have.

Well...we were hiking again...isn't it wonderful that there is a brief age when brothers actually listen to their bigger sisters?  We had hiked past the hospital that was a short distance outside of town, and eventually made our way to ice canyon.  You know, when I say hiking, we weren't puny little runts in those days, when we hiked...WE HIKED.  Five miles was just five miles.  Ice canyon...a narrow canyon mostly of rock with a waterfall up it a ways, and its mouth opening up to a patch of willows in the small wet area...it was a sheet of ice in the winter months of freezing weather.

That canyon that tried to kill me once when I was trying to go back down the waterfall, and would have flown right off the edge into the hereafter if I hadn't managed to wedge my heel into a depression of the rock to stop my acceleration.  That canyon that I always went back to for more punishment, although I did acquire an instant fear of heights that I have never been able to throw off after the waterfall incident, and I could never force myself up that suicidal sheet of smooth rock again.

We were leaving the canyon, walking that long span of ranch land with no fences, open range, when we happened to look back and were surprised by a single long line of cattle, maybe fifty of those little hefties, side by side, behind us.  Ooookay...we turned around, thinking how odd, and walked a ways further.  We looked back and were alarmed that line of cattle was a little bit closer to us.  We started walking backwards, and as we moved the line of cattle moved.  Spooky.  We started walking fast and the cattle picked up their pace to keep up with us.  We were really freaking out by now, but we reasoned that we didn't want to run.  Once those docile looking monsters started running we were worried they might not stop, and then we would be range pizza so to speak when they trampled us flat as a pancake.

The hospital became their magic boundary line, and we were able to stop feeling like convicts on the run.  It was eagerly agreed between us that no way should we ever let anyone know a herd of dumb baby faced steak on legs bullied us for all those miles home.  Around this time brother was beginning to realize that his sister was...well...his sister...yuck!  He was growing up, and soon deserted me for big guy stuff with manly man classmates.  Alone again, I was on a quest for another pal, preferably one that didn't ask too many questions before following me off the face of the earth.

A Heavy Softness in the Air

Cool green dripping with lushness...an invite into my gardens of refreshing atmospheric perfection.  An illusion...some say a lie...as there's a heavy softness in the air...a lovely poetic interpretive way of saying baby! it's hotter than hell outside.

Dustin's been patiently waiting for the little click clatter of tiny claws scampering across the deck railing for his favorite pastime of exercising the squirrels.

Zoe's calculating how many seconds it will take her to fly out that sliding glass door, and crunch her razor sharp teeth into that yummy soft body of red and black feathers that's munching on sunflower seeds near the dog house, when her significant person exits the house again after she finishes wiping all that dripping sweat from her face.

A piece of the green ash tree crashes to the deck with an enormous sound that belies its real smallness...that green ash tree that takes up half the back yard...that green ash tree that's waiting for the emerald ash borer to find it in its game of hide and seek...that green ash tree that will be a dead green ash tree when feasted on by that invading foreigner of devastation...that green ash tree that will become a nightmare to remove after it dies.

 

White beauty berries nearly picked clean by the resident mockingbird and her two little tykes, the purple beauty berries are just coming into color of their own; and the viburnum berries are beginning to rose up and turn blue, creating a gorgeous rose, white, and blue effect, which will become quite stunning as the color deepens.   

Passion vines are lately looking like swiss cheese as the gulf fritillary caterpillars leave only stems in their wake.  They're a hungry bunch of munchers, that show up quite late in the season, with almost too short a time to turn into those beautiful orange butterflies before winter covers the yard.  Most plentiful the first year the vines grew, we saw them pupating all over the sides of the house by the dozens, creating a wonderful nightmare, as each hatching left a bright stain behind.  Never have they been as plentiful as that first year they found the gardens. 

Almost an impossibility to see the ground in the prairie garden keeps Dustin from harassing the wildlife, if any should happen to show up out there.  Yesterday as I cut more maple and bradford pear seedlings out of that space, a rabbit came flying out of the grasses and disappeared into the gardens beyond, renewing my faith that something really is living here besides insects and birds.  Mosquitoes are bugging the hell out of me, so the photo shoot is abruptly ending with me flying into the comfort of my air conditioned home of 80 degrees.  You know its way too hot when 80 degrees feels cool!

The dog days of summer seem to be going nowhere any time soon, so I'll be hibernating indoors, thank you; that is, if I can survive being tormented umpteen times a day by a pudgy kitty kat on a diet reminding me with a barrage of endless meows that he's starving to death and living with a mean mommy.

Just tea for two and two for tea, Just me for you and you for me...

"You can't think how I depend on you, and when you're not there the color goes out of my life."     Victoria Woolf

Happy 24 Years Together!

Island of Suburbia

Far and few in-between, our yard of lush native nature, an extension of the wild and wooly countryside that city folks often run to on their escape mode weekends...we are not the darling of the city planning association.

The wild ones visit us less often then before, as the expanding neighborhoods isolate us from natural nature.  The box turtle migration is relegated to past memories, and the raccoon tots filling up on ripe juicy grapes haven't been back for many, many years.  Rabbits surprise us seldom with our yard now far from wooded terrain.  We lament their babies are no longer viewed in the gardens.  Skunks still roam the nights and some days, but they must be one of the most misunderstood creatures to roam our world.  I've researched their ways, and have successfully gardened with them close at hand, but not out of worrisome eye sight.

I know I have lizards in the rock piles, but they are impossible to be viewed easily in all this haphazard greenery and fluff.  Pond frogs plop-plop into water before I get close for a view.  Tree frogs have delighted us visiting on the sliding glass doors.  Garden toads are sometimes viewed in the early evenings as they make their rounds for yummy ants and garden slugs.  The leopard frogs haven't been seen for more than a decade, and one summer a Norwegian rat caused quite a stir.

A pair of voles busied about a few summers ago while friends panicked and assured us they would overpopulate the grounds; but you know they disappeared with hawk and owl visits.  I miss them munching about the wildflowers and grasses.  Mice are few now, but amazed once to stand in their path as they crossed in front and behind me until I uttered a sound that sent them scurrying for cover with their bad eyesite not to their advantage.  And those wonderful winged and earthbound creatures we call bugs, insects, beetles, arachnids...their varieties numbering into the multi-thousands...totally amazing.

It's mostly about the birds, though; those angels and devils of the heavens that are always searching for new digs as man wipes out the old.

The ones you don't give two hoots about...house sparrows and starlings.

The ones you give one hoot about...northern ravens, american crows, rusty blackbirds, common grackles, and rock doves.

The ones you give a lot of respect to...cooper's hawks and barred owls.

The ones you give ten hoots about...northern mockingbirds, blue jays, cardinals, house wrens, carolina wrens, tufted titmouse, black-capped chickadees, song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, flocks of american robins, american goldfinch, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, the common flickers that haven't been seen in the gardens for almost twenty years, eastern bluebirds, red-breasted nuthatches, cedar waxwings, mourning doves, common nighthawks, tennessee warblers, slate-colored juncos, purple finch, common redpolls, and on and on and on.

Nature's always in flux as species thrive and species die.  She adapts the best she is able...I'm a mere dot on the horizon in my small efforts to give her half a chance of at least lasting my lifetime.

            No Hope

            She has enslaved my weary heart in chains,

            so demanding and much unforgiving...

            only on me will I lay any blame,

            such vanity so intoxicating.

Pink Turtlehead

Wild Senna

Light orange Butterfly Weed

dark orange Butterfly Weed

Dark Green Bulrush pond plant

Southern Bush Honeysuckle 'Butterfly'

            The Nature of Beggers

            Weet weet

            weet weet...

            two mockers

            in baby fluff

            call impatiently

            for momma

            and food.

            She stuffs

            them plump

            with sunflower

            chips stolen off

            the deck railing.

            That same railing

            the night before

            found an opossum

            in search of

            bird treats;

            with Dustin barking,

            growling with intensity

            safely behind closed doors

            at that long tailed intruder

            adorning the deck trellis

            watching safely

            from his perch...

            for drought has a way

            of bringing nature

            closer to my backdoor.

Woke up one morning to find this 3 pound

concrete statue in a new position.

Maybe the opossum?

Clematis viorna seed heads

Spicebush berries

American Beautyberry-White

            *why two cats and a dog

            should never have adopted

            a gardener*

            sweat burned eyes

            peek through wisps

            of wind frizzed hair

            aching fingers still

            in a death grip

            around those

            dulled pruners

            as the sun rests

            below the horizon

            with the job

            half unfinished

            and resignation

            is erasing the

            determination

            of a tomorrow

            absolutely free

            of #%!(&* work

            because

            Andee,

            Zoe,

            and

            Dustin

            are wondering...

            will dinner

            become

            breakfast

            as they wait

            and wait

            and

            wait

               *

Coolest place in the gardens

Persimmon just before Dustin gobbled it up...crazy pooch!

Prairie Patch Dragons

May all your problems be ittsy bitsy ones

and

all your blessings more than a hundred hands full.

Death on Hobson Pike

Mindlessly cruising down Hobson Pike, powered on coffee and totally void of motivation; I'm heading to that last place on earth I would ever visit if I weren't in need of a roof over my head, vittles on my table, and a few rags in my closet...THE JOB.

I've been passing this congregation of blackest black buzzards for the last three days, munching on something humongous in the grasses...a deer...a cow...perhaps a hiker???   Humongous because that's where the whole gang is except one.  That one dolt is munching on a small speck in the roadway.

That evening, as I travel faster than the speed of light in my escape from THE JOB, that poor roadway munching dolt is discovered to be just a wad of broken feathers plastered to the asphalt.  The next day...being mindless...remember, I'm on my way to work...I begin to ponder, as I swerve around that wad of broken feathers still plastered to the asphalt, if buzzards ever munch on a buzzard that is road kill.

It's a valid inquiry.  A friend of a friend of a friend knew someone that unhappily had a buzzard commit suicide under his 60 mph right tires, and he claimed he was blessed with a rotten puking date killing stench that lingered around his beloved vehicle for weeks.  Not even skunk removal concoctions could peel off that cloak of death from his set of wheels.

I google it at work, being the inquiring soul I am; and hey, it's important to satisfy curiosity, even in the work place.  It's a valid question that could pertain to some aspect of my job, inside or out.

Well, I'll be a monkey's auntie!  Buzzards are related to storks...kind of like the black sheep of the family, so to speak.

They carry around their own portable air conditioner dribbling crap on themselves to stay cool...okaaaaay.

A buzzard's digestive system will cremate anything, so disease organisms are history when gulped down hitch hiking on that putrefying snack.

Buzzards have even been known to snack on young defenseless itty bitty creatures that are still briefly in awe of that wonderful world before their eyes.

They prefer herbivorous road kill, you know, a muncher of greens; although last year I did see a trio flipping tiger striped kitty road kill around a bit, perhaps praying for a tastier grass grazing mouse to pitter pat along sooner than later.

The human consensus is that wad of broken feathers plastered to the asphalt will stay that wad of broken feathers plastered to the asphalt until it disintegrates.

Do buzzards ever munch on a buzzard that is road kill?  The answer from any respectable buzzard, even if his stomach is shrinking to the size of a marble, is "HELL NO!!!"

               

All I am is half my mother's fault!

Middle childhood did not always shape me in the most positive of ways, but my mom did open that door for me to the world of music, art and finer things, though she seldom ever had any of these in her life, whether by choice or not by choice. 

She had albums upon albums of 78 records, and a few 16 inch records.  I never saw her play any of them.  They must have been from a time before her marriage, and just laid in cardboard boxes until I began to explore the closets.  I played them on an old portable phonograph.

I also, for my own special keeping, had those little yellow vinyl 78 records that looked like miniatures of the regular sized ones.  I still remember Dean Martin singing 'when the moon hits your eyes like a big pizza pie, it's amore'...someone else singing 'somebody stole the wedding bells'...and who knows what else.  I had a small stack of them, but those two are the only ones I still remember at all.

The day a floor model credenza type stereo was delivered to our front door and mom turned the delivery man away, refusing to accept something she hadn't order; was the beginning of her personal lifelong deprivation goal giving new meaning of ones dedication to obstinacy.

Dad, without conferring with mom, decided to put themselves in more debt, more debt that mom totally did not want, debt that she had to accept to squelch all the arguing that ensued between them when dad discovered the stereo he ordered was turned away.  She lived with that stereo that took up one end of the living room floor.  Dad had it blaring away all the time, records and radio; but mom never, never, never ever played it in his lifetime or in hers up to the day she sold the house and gave the stereo away or had it trashed.

The only movies I remember mom ever watching were the ones when we all piled into the car with sleeping arrangements in the back seat, and spent the evening at the local drive-in movie theater.  The only movie that made such an impression on me that it has been impressed in my brain in indelible ink to this day was 'The Blob'.

Mom NEVER went to the movie theater houses with us except in our little tyke years, and dad went with us only a few times when we were older; but we almost always had permission, so it was just me and my younger brother Eddie, or just me, watching those 25 cent movies with a 10 cent bag of popcorn and a 5 cent Popsicle. 

I absorbed magazine culture from the constant supply of current women magazines mom kept in our home, and slowly built up a storehouse of knowledge of all the finer things in life, and was dismayed that none of them existed in our home.  A one income household with five hungry mouths to feed, five growing bodies to clothe, and five inquiring minds to satisfy...the finer things in life for us were only all those things that money could not buy.

In later years, I would go antiquing with mom, sometimes buying small babbles to decorate the shelves or walls, mostly for mom, but sometimes for me.  I loved and still love old doilies and runners that are crafted with a fine hand and eye for art.

As an adult, I've gone through times when I've had nice things, sometimes very nice things; but I've also gone through times when I've had crap...just crap.

I do enjoy all types of music, art, and finer things; and the seeds of these loves were planted by mom...the records, the movies, the magazines...even though she had very little of her own.

All the finer things in life, those things that money could not buy, I also learned from mom; but that's another story, another post perhaps later.

Dark Side of Eden

Turkeys...we have plenty of them on this park, but today I'm not talking about the human ones.  Out of nowhere, three hens and sixteen chicks have materialized near the pond area.  The adults are scratching wildly around that large dirt patch, chunks of soil flying in all directions, sashaying their bodies back and forth as they flip dirt on themselves before settling into a nesting type mode on that bug quenching dusty mound with wings outstretched.  The chicks settle in to the same routine after the hens have risen and pecked their food picking way over to the pond.

After a while a few of the chicks rise up and join the hens, but most of those chicks are content to just stay put with wings outstretched in their huddle of bodies on that dusty patch of ground.  The biggest hen moseys over to that display of lovely young bodies, and starts kicking the hell out of the dirt sending the rest of the chicks scattering to the pond.  She settles down to a second dust bath before rejoining the gang.

Eventually they begin pecking their food picking way into the tree covered beyond and become invisible to my eyes.  I'm looking at all those 'weeds' out there.  Most people hate them with a vengeance, but the turkeys need them for the seeds they provide and the insects their green leaves hide.  Turkeys would starve if we had our own way and herbicided all those pesky weeds into oblivion to satisfy our need to have nature wrapped up tidily in a straight jacket of neatness.

Do gardens have a dark side to their personality?  Mine do.  Baby thugs hid in the greens I've planted, silently becoming tomorrow's teenagers of destruction.  Maple, elm, bradford pear, eucalyptus, chinese redbud and japanese/chinese honeysuckle seedlings become six foot monsters before I discover their existence.  Bermuda grass, yellow nutsedge, japanese knotgrass and stiltgrass, and who knows what else, busily tries to smother my natives and non-natives into oblivion; and this is all with the courtesy of mother nature and my lovely neighbors; both whom I have no control over whatsoever, kapoot, zilch, nada nada nada, zero baby zero.

Neighbor to the left has a healthy patch of bermuda grass mingled with another coarser grass on steroids.  Always a day late and a dollar short on the mowing time table, those grasses are trying to set up housekeeping on my grounds and are succeeding quite marvelously much to my horror.  Neighbor to the right has developed an allergy to yard work beginning some years ago, and has become the living manual of all that is so wrong with life among the lazy elite.  He has every known obnoxious entity the world has ever harbored proliferating wildly away in his reserve of dubious origins and questionable motives.

I've even become my own worst enemy and have begun to sink in a losing battle with the eradication of that oh-so-cute native river oats crap that I planted three little tykes of some ten years ago, and now at last count have cut down more than fifty clumps of that baby-faced monster.  I need some time for myself outside of the gardens and have deserted the healthy and gone over to the dark side.  It's spray, baby, spray...kill, kill, kill.  I'm on a mission...I need a life outside of my gardens..so sorry National Wildlife Federation, Audubon, and Wild Ones...my bad.

Japanese Stiltgrass

River Oats

Dwarf Joe Pye Weed 'Gateway'

5 to 6 feet tall

Part of cicada damage where eggs were laid

in the stems of Spicebush - after eggs hatched,

stems are warped and split open

Miss No Name

Was given a piece off a lily bulb

at a Master Gardener Meeting.

Took about seven years for it

to become big enough to bloom.

Love it - whatever it is.

Keeper of the Pond

Beautiful blue dragonfly

Blackhaw Viburnum berries

after the rain

Blackhaw Viburnum berries after a short drought -

they all fell off the tree

Hosta 'Halcyon'

Have to water this baby everyday, or

it refuses to bloom. 

Hairy Sunflower

Giant Coneflower

Rudbeckia maxima

against a 6 foot high fence

Too hot to actually use this deck

for anything but a collect all

Dustin's stamp of approval is lacking on the front yard.

It's leash territory for him, as he is so addicted to

running down the street with his owner

hot on his trail, her arms wildly waving,

yelling 'come back here, you little sh*t!'

Glossy Black Chokeberry

I tried one of these...only a bird could love it.

Clematis i. 'Hendersonii'

Royal Catchfly

After five attempts to get a completely undamaged

85 pound  umbrella stand, I gave up.  The only piece

lacking is a screw tightener replacement, but UPS

keeps insisting on using the straps for handles

even though it is printed on the straps that's a NO NO.

The last shipment for me to just remove a tightener

from the tube and have the rest returned, was actually

missing the tube...it fell out somewhere along the route. 

I'm buying a large bolt from the hardware store,

and will just live with that conversation piece.

Blue Star Threadleaf

Belladonna Lily

I'm in love!

Beautiful pinks with golden and bluish highlights.

Fat strap leaves in the spring disappear,

then the flower stems shoot up later in summer

two feet tall,

and produce these deadly sweet blooms.

July 28, 2010

Birth of my little baby

Perfection...More or Less

and

the beginning of

my descent

into

blogging

addiction 

most sublime

with my first post

"Just Perfect".

Thank you, Tracy,

It's an Average Life,

my first follower

outside of family...

although,

 I do sort of think

 of her as distant family.

She encouraged,

plugged my blog,

wonderful comments

 left and right,

she's a sweetie!

Thank you all

for reading

 whatever I throw at you...

normal,

near-normal,

abnormal...

you're awfully good sports.

And

to all of my friends

who post more than once a week,

you're killing me...

it's like running a marathon

 trying to keep up

 with all your posts,

lol.

Love you all.