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Nature

Late June (Dis)Pleasures.

Walk with me. A sedate stroll on Sauvie Island, easing us into a week where I will be working on a longer writing project and thus not posting across the 4th of July holiday.

Nature put on a show. Then again, when does it not?

Bloom and setting of fruit happening simultaneously for the black berries.

Oregon grapes already basically ripe,

while Hawthorne berries showed only a hint of the red that will later attract birds and squirrels alike when reaching full saturation.

Oak galls galore, a consequence of chemical injections by wasps who benefit from these growths.

Flowers in the meadows competing for my breathless mutterings – Oh, beauty!

Rufus Towhee hopping around, distracting me away from their nest, while ground squirrels watched with amusement.

Water levels high at the lake, serene at the canals, and small clouds lightening the grey skies.

The ospreys reliably resettled their nest that I visit every year.

If you stand close by, quietly, long enough, there will be coming and going, with lunch provided for those who wait long enough and screech loud enough.

Nature, relying on us to preserve it, since we have stressed it already so close to the limits. Preservation that will be made infinitely harder with the abominal Supreme Court Chevron decision last week which, as Zoe Schlanger at The Atlantic put it, shoved American environmentalism into legal purgatory. Read it and weep. The kneecapping of federal regulators will, of course, not just harm the environment, but also have huge implications for consumer protection.

This implies not just safety for what you eat and drink, or cars and planes, or warnings about chemical agents that might be harmful. It fully embraces the issue of pharmacological treatments, their safety and access granted to them, including the long sought prohibition of oral abortifacients. It also implies that a judge or a panel of judges can make decisions on the availability or necessity of vaccines. Think of another pandemic rolling around, and the judiciary, filled with anti-vaxxers, decides that vaccination is illegal. It will affect labor regulations, from workplace safety to pay requirements to the sales of goods no longer considered fairly made.

We cannot even conceive of the extent of the consequences this decision will have for the American people. Protection blown to the winds like grass seeds.

Justice Kagan’s dissent in Loper Bright Enterprises vs Raimondo is worth contemplating.

“A rule of judicial humility, gives way to a rule of judicial hubris. In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law. As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.”

Regarding stare decisis, the respect for previously made decisions:

“It barely tries to advance the usual factors this Court invokes for overruling precedent. Its justification comes down, in the end, to this: courts must have more say over regulation—over the provision of health care, the protection of the environment, the safety of consumer products, the efficacy of transportation systems, and so on. A longstanding precedent at the crux of administrative governance thus falls victim to a bald assertion of judicial authority. The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power.“

Mullein has the symbolism attached that it opens channels of communication with a higher power. Man, do we need that…..anybody out there????

Well, so much for sending you off to a holiday week. Enjoy your fireworks while they are still safely regulated in defiance of profiteering at all cost.

Music today is the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite # 2 in D-Minor. You can read darkness into it, or, as I do, a moment of hope. Preludes are beginnings – and we can always begin anew, putting things right. Eventually. Hopefully.

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Arcing, Stilling, Bending, Gathering.

Rather than spend time reading today, I encourage you to listen. Classical composer Lisa Illean creates music that is often serene, able to soften the knots in your stomach, head, back, or soul – wherever the pain currently resides.

If you want to read nonetheless and need to know a little bit more about the focus of her work, here are the composer’s words describing it.

Although most of the movements are inspired by oceans and waves, I picked the album for today’s photographs of caterpillars on common ragwort, who, too, are arcing, stilling, bending and gathering. They are cinnabar caterpillars who will molt into cinnabar moths, which play a key role in successfully controlling ragwort, a toxic weed poisonous to livestock.

They use nature’s tricks well. Newly hatched larvae feed from the underneath of ragwort leaves and absorb toxic and bitter tasting alkaloid substances from the food plants, becoming unpalatable themselves. The bright colors of both the larvae and the moths act as warning signs, so they are seldom eaten by predators, other than cuckoos! Not too many of those around here.

Here is the music.

Ragwort patch

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Salvia and Szymborska to the Rescue.

One of those weeks. Between the heat and a body with its own intentions I had to cancel all planned outings, miffed and distraught. As luck would have it, a friend sent out a poem that shut me up and set me right. It converts disappointment into the insight that all moments matter. They all contain their very own history, asking us to value what is, not what has been or might come along. We are embedded in a timeline, each moment of its own importance.

“So it happens that I am and look.” Which is what I did. At a single plant on my balcony, a blue salvia visited by the occasional humming bird, the bees preferring its neighboring lavender and the yellow zinnias (this year’s color scheme in solidarity with Ukraine. Much good it will do, other than reminding me to be a witness. But I digress.)

No Title Required

 It has come to this: I’m sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
It’s an insignificant event
and won’t go down in history.
It’s not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyrannicides.
 
And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact.
And since I’m here
I must have come from somewhere,
and before that
I must have turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.


Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday,
its May before June.
Its horizons are no less real
than those that a marshal’s field glasses might scan.
 
This tree is a poplar that’s been rooted here for years.
The river is the Raba; it didn’t spring up yesterday.
The path leading through the bushes
wasn’t beaten last week.
The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away.
 
And though nothing much is going on nearby,
the world is no poorer in details for that.
It’s just as grounded, just as definite
as when migrating races held it captive.



Conspiracies aren’t the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don’t trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.
 
The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
 
So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else’s but its own.
 
When I see such things, I’m no longer sure
that what’s important
is more important than what’s not.

By Wislawa Szymborska
 
From Poems New and Collected 1957-1997

Here is music about a summer garden.

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June Excursion.

If you like vistas, wildflowers and wondrous limestone ponds, come walk with me around a lake or two at the southern side of Mt. Hood.

If, on the other hand, you prefer your landscapes more accessibly packaged into paintings, go see the current show at Maryhill Museum on the northern side of the Columbia river. One of the artists, Erik Sandgren, is giving a talk about The Columbia River: Wallula to the Sea featuring works by Thomas Jefferson Kitts and Erik Sandgren this Saturday, June 15, 2024 from 2 – 4 pm. I will report on the work likely next week.

I had the fortune to explore Trillium Lake on a day with perfect weather, wispy clouds in a blue sky, snow-capped mountain brilliantly lit, green exploding all around me. Created in 1960 by the US Department of Fish and Wildlife by damming Mud Creek, a tributary to the Salmon River, the lake has become a favorite of day visitors, engaged in canoeing, kayaking, paddle boarding and angling. There is also a campground for longer stays.

The place is jumping, conveniently located less than a 2 hour drive from Portland, offering an easy, flat trail around its circumference with recently repaired boardwalk and bridges, and plenty of trout. The views were pretty, if crowded.

The wildflowers were abundant, many only now coming into bud.

Knotflower

Salmonberry, false Solomon seal, wind anemone, horn violets, monkey flower, skunk cabbage, shooting star primula, bear grass about to bloom and same for rhododendron.

Trillium on their last leg, wild strawberries and elderberry in full swing.

Bald eagles and other raptors circled overhead, dragon flies and butterflies rested here and there.

Marshes rimmed the lake and old growth forest contained quite a few campsites.

It was uplifting, but paled in comparison to the second stop of our June excursion, Little Crater Lake. It is a 45′ ft deep pond formed by dissolving limestone, fed by spring at the bottom and Little Crater Creek.

The water is crystal clear, with colors changing depending on where you look – overall it has a turquoise appearance where it is deep, at the rims there are orange shades where the water is less deep, covering the stone. Due to the properties of the aquifers it is 34 degrees cold year round (swimming – wisely – prohibited.)

You reach the lake by wandering through a pristine, mysterious meadow, clouds of yellow pine tree pollen wafting through the air. The path goes around the tiny lake – more of a pond – and eventually connects with the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.

I did not make it that far – too busy photographing the wondrous jewel from all angles, with light tinging both marsh, water edges and water with flecks of gold, setting off the bluish green with contrast. Submerged logs seemed in a state of suspension, the only movement coming from small ripples set in motion by the wind.

A silent spot, you could hear the pines, cedars and hemlocks sighing in the breeze, if you listened closely, occasionally interrupted by a screeching jay.

The meadows were damp, closer to marshes, rimmed with lupines in full bloom, stippled with camas and the occasional mountain bluebell, all softly merging with the greenest of green of fresh cordgrass.

It is late spring at the foot of the mountain. I hope for many returns during the months leading in and out of summer. These outings restore the soul. They also restore the body, if you don’t overdo it, because of the kind of stress relief that they provide: activating the parasympathetic nervous system, the one that handles physiological processes like digestion and breathing.

Lupines and Buttercups

I believe this is what many people overlook – we are so geared towards thinking that only meditation or some other mindfulness practice can relax us to the point where it restores balance to our overly busy systems, that it doesn’t dawn on us there are other ways to disconnect – doing something while doing not much of anything required.

Veratrum

In fact there are many, many people for whom a total disconnect as achieved in meditation, or sitting still and doing absolutely nothing, produces an enormous amount of anxiety or guilt: we are so trained to be productive or responsible for being on all the time to care for others’ needs, that disengagement has the paradoxical effect of making us panic. And then we feel the added shame that we are not accomplishing our meditation goals!

Engaging in focused activity that you enjoy, like cooking, gardening, reading to your kids, or ambling along a nature path, is indeed more healing for some people, particularly those with generalized anxiety, than completely disconnecting. (Ref.)

Walking in the woods around a lake, starting to listen to the wind or the waves instead of the inner voices of “you should!” or “have you?” is an acceptable alternative to meditation, partly because we consider connection to nature a positive, justifiable endeavor. Listening to the former sounds makes it easy not to listen to the latter inner voices, with no guilt attached.

Mountain Bluebell

Mindfulness, in other words, does not need to be disconnected from any old activity. You just need to find one that allows you to focus and that is sufficiently attention holding, that the old worries can be kept at bay. I recommend sitting under a tree at Little Carter Lake with a journal or a camera….

Music today honors the trouts – again….with a particularly poignant farewell recording.

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Juxtapositions

Walk with me. Be warned, though, you need to bring your ear plugs. I, of course, had no clue that they would be needed. The one day last week that I was able to hike was also the day that the Oregon International Airshow opened. Officially it started in the evening, but planes were already practicing during the day, low in the skies over Hillsboro where I happened to make my way through the wetlands.

The noise was deafening, and since I didn’t know then that the air show was slated, my thoughts went immediately to images of training for war, or some kind of emergency. Catastrophic thinking seems to be on a hair trigger these days. I wonder why.

I have written fairly recently about the soundscape of war and its long lasting psychological implications, for people living through war and suffering from PTSD. (Link for new readers, below). So, today I’ll just be looking at the positive side of things and share with you the sights. It will distract me from the fact that only 20% or so of all Oregonians voted, and the candidates I favored were, with few exceptions, not elected. Apathy sure enables the march towards less progressive times.

Thoughts about war, again.

Here is a link to a video from the airshow that provides a bit of the noise that visitors experience. I was immediately underneath the planes at the time during practice, as you can see from the photographs.

The rest of nature’s sounds were drowned out, particularly the soft twittering from the songbirds and swallows who I had come to photograph.

It was so beautiful to watch them loop around before they went into the nesting sites, or met with their mates on top of them, that I soon forgot the distraction and focused on shimmering cerulean blues and teals and whites instead.

Flora was ready to compete, pink swaths of mallows coloring the meadow, pink valerian (sea foam) dotting the grass, and pink bleeding hearts hiding in the underbrush. Coral bells just about to blush.

Mystery Pink

Bright yellow popped up here and there, with common toadflax, buttercups and thapsias.

There were blue lupines, purplish blue wild irises, and camassia.

Whites everywhere, a perfect match to the white clouds above, the white of the arrowheads, the blackberry blossoms, the cowslip, the dog roses in large clusters, you name it.

Piercy’s poem captures it to perfection, even though we are still in May, not June and the lilies still hesitant. The mood was matched – as long as you kept your hands over your ears, plugging them with your fingers.

More Than Enough

The first lily of June opens its red mouth. 

All over the sand road where we walk 

multiflora rose climbs trees cascading 

white or pink blossoms, simple, intense 

the scene drifting like colored mist. 

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy 

clumps of flower and the blackberries 

are blooming in the thickets. Season of 

joy for the bee. The green will never 

again be so green, so purely and lushly 

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads 

into the wind. Rich fresh wine 

of June, we stagger into you smeared 

with pollen, overcome as the turtle 

laying her eggs in roadside sand.

BY MARGE PIERCY

Let’s have some cheerful music from a lovely debut album that brings warmer temperatures back into memory.

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Tales from the Backyard

Yesterday I had a few visitors in the backyard, which suited me just fine. I figured ending the week with tons of pictures rather than ever more words would do us all good.

You know me, though. Words snuck back into my head – words, alas, that refuse to make their way into print in this family friendly blog. So use your imagination as to what I was thinking when I learned that the North Carolina Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public, even for health reasons. House Bill 237 would extend to everyone, not just protesters towards whom this ban is of course directed, to wear medical masks.

A proposal to amend the bill to ban hate groups — explicitly the Ku Klux Klan and Proud Boys — from being allowed to wear masks in public, which the law currently allows them to petition for (!), was shot down by Republican lawmakers with no debate or explanation, as were calls by Democratic lawmakers to amend the anti-mask bill to protect people who want to wear masks for health concerns. So for immune-compromised people like me there is now the additional worry to either be arrested for wearing a mask or risking infection that can basically kill you. Not that I will ever see North Carolina again, but how many people who live there and can’t leave will be affected? and how does that not violate Federal laws, like the Americans with Disabilities Act?

“The federal disability law requires governments to provide people with disabilities equal access to government programs, services and activities — including public transportation, schools, voting precincts and town meetings. Banning masks could diminish access to those kinds of services to people who are covered under the ADA, such as cancer patients who may need to wear a mask due to a weakened immune system, disability rights advocates say. It could also limit their day-to-day activities.” (Ref.)

I wasn’t the only one watching the deer decimate the apple trees and then leisurely chew cud while resting on the grass, ignoring a cacophony of noises – my dog barking his head off, the Thursday Pickup garbage trucks circling the neighborhood, and my neighbor using a chainsaw to deal with the winter windfall. Be glad to have these pastoral scenes without the sound track!

The crows watched as well, eventually doing some up and down flying maneuvers to get their own luncheon, served on my balcony. Up and down triggered the notion of upside-down, another image eliciting a number of words in my head, “We’re living in a FARCE,” among them.

The upside down flag, a symbol for “Stop the Steal!” used by Trump supporters, was apparently flying in front of Justice Alito’s home. According to the New York Times, the flag was up in January 2021 for multiple days, while the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case. We are, of course, still waiting on two other cases to be decided by the Supreme Court, involving the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, including whether Mr. Trump has immunity for his actions. So far, no recusals.

Concerned neighbors took the photos and informed the Court at the time – what say you, Justice Roberts? We do know what Justice Alito had to say:

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

Isn’t it funny how Supreme Court Justices are completely fenced off against the dealings of their wives, while the sitting President is supposed to be responsible for alleged misdeeds of his adult son? Just wondering.

Here is a crow’s reaction – you may use your imagination once more.

If your blood pressure reacts like mine to these news, here is the perfect music to bring it down.

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Spring, the umpteenth look.

Nostos
There was an apple tree in the yard —
this would have been
forty years ago — behind,
only meadows. Drifts
off crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor’s yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from tennis courts —
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

by Louise Glück

Gustave Caillebotte Apple Tree in Bloom (1885)

I do not agree with Glück’s assessment, “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” We look at the world – able to see it – a million times, if we only move about with intention. Or share in the wonder expressed by next generations. Or allow art to be more than representation, pointing us to the beauty inherent in the real world. Maybe we can’t return to the exact childhood tree, but there are plenty apples around.

In some funny way, the title of the poem, Nostos, makes that very point, doesn’t it? The term comes from ancient Greece and refers to the homecoming of the hero after a prolonged absence (one of the main themes of the Odyssey.) Not remembered, but re-experienced, connected again, the world seen, not just recalled. If it was only about a particular childhood garden, it should have been Nostalgia, the combination of Nostos /homecoming with the word Algos/pain, although nostalgia most often descends into this sentimental wistfulness that I can’t stand.

Back to spring: In today’s images, spring has returned, after a long absence. So has this viewer, in my annual exploration of spring’s bounty, seeing it afresh. And so have paintings, that are not molding in museums, but here, in front of our eyes, conveying a shared appreciation of this season. Forget memory! Here are this week’s perceptions, on walks punctuated by heavy rains and sudden reappearance of the sun.

Max Beckmann SPRING NEAR SÜDENDE (1907)

Hawthorne blossoms shimmered through the trees, or exploded in full view.

Dwight William Tryon Spring (1893)

David Hockney Hawthorne Blossom Near Rudston (2008)

Cows were curious as to what I had to offer…

Doris Lee, Blossom Time, 1959

Plants unfurled, echoing van Gogh’s brush strokes.

Vincent van Gogh, Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890

Meadows exploded with Camassia, and other early spring blooms, many reminiscent of rockets, all shooting towards the light.

Janene Walkky Common Camas or Camassia quamash (2013)

Ruth Asawa, Spring, 1965, lithograph

Then there are the fruit tree blossoms, holding up their own against the orange bloom,

Vincent van Gogh Orange Blossoms (1890)

Claude Monet Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom) (1873) 

Walking through the woods was a green, dripping, wet experience, then sunbursts the next minute.

Abbott Handerson Thayer Landscape at Fontainebleau Forest (1876)

Did someone say birds? Ducklings! Orioles, yellow rump warblers (butter butts!), kill deer, wood ducks, geese, barn swallows and purple martins all showing off.

Magnus von Wright Mallard Ducklings (1841)

Tracey Emin Believe in Extraordinary (2015)

AUDUBON bird Red-Breasted Nuthatch Purple Martin (1890)

Even the turtles came out.

The only thing I could not find were these:

Franz von Stuck The sounds of spring (1910)

Maybe they went that way.

Music captures it all.

 

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Bear Divide

A friend sent a poem this week that had me thinking ever since. I was riveted by the way it palpably conveys loss, the way it captures how pain can suddenly emerge in the most mundane situations, and the way it contains phrases that are incredibly well forged, “a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature nature sound.”

There Are Plenty of Angels,
She Said in the LADIES

in the rest area LADIES on the road to 
Terre Haute. Plenty of angels, she said again.
But not one, I’ve heard, not a single one
will mission to the fade as it does to the darkness.
A stall door latched. Her bag got hung.
Seen that sign, back west a ways?
The one on the warehouse, in a movie marquee?
Blessed Hope, it says. Blessed Hope, she said.
It’s meant to be a sign from heaven,
but hope’s, I’d say, more a human invention,
like freeways, she said. Funny word, she said.
They call ’em highways when you pay to ride ’em.
Mama’s buried off one in Missouri. Had her
forty years and forty days on earth.
And the day we did it was a noisy day,
all out-o’-doors like a day at the beach:
the tearin’ down sounds of the sun and the wind,
clouds and trees, grass and stones,
a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature
nature sound. Mother never did care much
for nature. Enjoyed a sunset well enough
Those shameless ones like colored candy,
those ones can look like wall-to-wall
in a Cineplex foyer: pinks and purples, reds, she said.
It was so noisy, anyway, that day
even the birds shut up for once.
Or got their singin’ drownded out.
But I could hear when the box hit bottom:
Get on with it, is what it sounded like to me—
She had dried her hands on a paper towel—
I’m done here.

by Kathy Fagan
 
From The Paris Review, Issue no. 129 (Winter 1993)

I experienced a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature nature view a few weeks ago, and was thinking that my own mother and paternal grandfather loved nature, as do my children and now the next generation who partook in the views of that day. Somehow that shared affinity softens loss, since you can always recall the joyful moments when you were inseparably linked in awe.

That morning we drove from Altadena, CA north into the San Gabriel mountains. Clouds of lifting mist weaved in and out of the valleys, giving the scenery a mysterious, fairy-tale look.

Ceanothus covered the hills in differing shades of blue, occasionally punctuated by yellow tree poppies that looked like sun confetti.

Our goal was the Bear Divide, a location on the Pacific Flyway, the north-south migratory route that connects Alaska to Patagonia for innumerable migratory birds. The San Gabriels provide both rest and food for the flocks, who tend to seek the specific passage way at the location that we drove to.

The corridor which allows passage at relatively high altitudes, was discovered by chance in the spring of 2016. Brought to the attention of the folks at the Moore Lab at Occidental College, a systematic monitoring of the migratory flocks started soon after. (Everything I learned, including the statistics, I found here.) In 2023 they counted 53,511 birds of 140 species from February to May, (the return trip for the birds seems to happen somewhere else) with some mornings as many as 20.000 birds recorded. The sheer variety is stunning.

The lab uses the help of citizen scientists, local birdwatchers and volunteers, to help with the observations. As it turned out, we chanced on a group of volunteers with the USFS who were netting and banding birds the very morning we arrived.

The nets are erected in the mornings and inspected every thirty minutes. They catch birds without harming them, who are then banded with a very light metal ring around a leg that provides numbers for scientists all over the world to report on flight routes, durations, survival.

The data reveal helpful information about birds’ responses to changes in environmental conditions and ecological shifts across the world. If that made me feel good, something else lifted my soul even more: seeing son and toddler rejoice beyond the sheer fascination with the procedures, sensing their appreciation of the world around us (if only lifting every single pebble or bug on the path as behooves a 14 month-old) reminded me of my own happiness during nature walks with my mother or my Opa. Little is lost. Much lives on.

Orange crowned warbler

Highway restrooms: I no longer fear you! When hope is met, who cares if it’s a human invention!

Music today from the Bowerbird Collective. The video alone is worth it.

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Of Deer and Depletion

Walk with me, on a rain drenched Sunday in the Pacific Northwest. First we trudge through my garden – have the galoshes ready.

These are columbines, some of the early bloomers in spring, dainty as they come, and, as it turns out, a delicacy for wandering visitors. As are the apple trees.

These are deer. They have made daily appearances in the yard for the last week, and as of Sunday afternoon, when I am writing this, there are no more columbines. Blossoms completely depleted. Disappeared. Digested. Man.

I have a choice: mourn the destruction of my flora or celebrate the fact that I look out of the window to see four frolicking creatures, feeling at home, at a location that is a 15-minute ride from Portland city center.

You can see the remnants of the destruction of the winter storm – still a lot of windfall around.

True to form I do both, and then I go visit a friend’s wondrous garden that is carefully deer-proofed and full of spring’s signifiers: growth that is tender, soft colored, dripping with wetness and sending out tendrils and shoots to claim the next cycle of life.

It feels like walking through a watercolor painting when you look at the bloom.

The tree peonies proud like queens,

Just the maple leaves show sharp, contrasting rims, but they, too, are softened by their unfocused surround, enveloping them with diffused light.

They come in so many different colors

Such beauty – let it help start the week on the right note, grateful for what is, not what’s been lost. Now tell me what I should plant that the deer won’t eat….

Here is a romantic period Ode to Spring by composer Joachim Raff.

No ode to the deer, but grudging admiration.

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WHAT A DAY

My morning visitors, just beyond the kitchen door, were two parrots. I was lured outside because I heard their incredibly loud squawking and wondered what was going on. There they sat, happily chatting or gossiping.

At some point they got fluttery, hopping from position to position on the telephone pole.

Suddenly a pair of acorn woodpeckers made themselves known – I had completely overlooked them on top of the pole, because I was so taken with the parrots.

Aaaaaaaaaaand: attack. Victorious. Parrots fled.

In case that was not enough excitement, my lunchtime visitor was coming by to check out if I had maybe dropped some food, while eating and reading my email at the same time. No luck. She disappeared disapprovingly, picking up the last few peanuts I had offered the ravens (who will soon be featured in another post.)

But that’s not all: around 5 pm this bobcat appeared, and I just happened to have the camera in hand sitting on the patio, to catch her. She left promptly, soundlessly.

Tell me, how can this year get any more magical? We’ll see. I will be returning to this ranch in November.

I am back in Portland, doing lots of catch-up errands after a month away, and sorting through a number of interesting California adventures that still need to be written up. Hope to get back to regular rhythm soon.

Here is music from the land of the parrots, Brazil.

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