News from the Hill

Two festivals back-to-back--one in Tennessee, and one in Florida, have just about laid me flat. I breathed something in on the germ tube to Tennessee, and it hit me the Saturday of that festival, and by gum it's still here, 12 days later. Sick as a dog in Florida, but managed to muster enough voice to give a talk and sing a two-hour gig with the Rain Crows. One thing I'll say, being that sick and having to soldier through makes one re-examine one's priorities. I've got one more year of total craziness coming up, with a couple of dozen festivals and talks, and then, by God, I'm gonna stay home and do my real work. I've been slathering myself in Vick's Vapo-rub, sucking on Fisherman's Friend lozenges, and going to bed at 8:30 every night. Tell the coroner when they find me to check for menthol overdose. 

With few exceptions, all I really want when I'm away is to come back home. I think about my neighbors and friends and know they're missing me. 

Buffy definitely misses me when I'm gone. She looks pretty good this winter! She's easily 9 or 10, but her weepy left eye looks a lot better than usual, and she's keeping the weight on. Proud of her.

I never see Buffy without Ellen's daughter Flag. I love seeing them together, love believing Buffy adopted Flag and Pinky when Ellen was murdered. And I wonder where Pinky might be keeping himself. Haven't seen him since fall, but I'll know him when I see him.

Weirdest thing: my chipmunks have stopped hibernating. They're here every day, no matter the weather. You'd think they'd crawl into a well-lined burrow and sleep away the single digits, but no. What is with that? Anyone else noticing chipmunk activity year-round? O Powers that Be, what does this mean?

The males are fighting a lot these days, which I always find amusing to photograph.

Whoop! that's two chipmunks in a pancake and syrup blur of motion. I'm thinking of the tiger running around the base of the tree until he turned into syrup in the problematically titled story Little Black Sambo, an 1899 vintage kids' book still popular when I was young. Dating myself, much? Man. I'm older than dirt. This happens when you blog for 13 years.

In case I had any doubt as to their gender, I figured it out when they took a breather...mighty fine pair there, sir.

I really dig photographing chipmunks. They're always up to something. And one really nice thing about them is that when they strike a pose, they tend to hold it for minutes on end. That's hard to find in a mammal. 

In other news from Indigo Hill, the greenhouse is beginning to show signs of life. Toughest winter yet for my plants. Most of my beloved geraniums have a black stem rot that is killing them off, and they're dropping like flies. I suspect it's fungal, or perhaps bacterial, and it seems there's nothing I can do about it. It just keeps spreading. This little alpine geranium, Erodium reichardii from Cyprus and Corsica, is a welcome exception. As in: Not croaking. We like that!

 The other geranium that isn't croaking is "Happy Thought Red." Great Scott, what a plant it is!! I took this photo today, with my glove for scale. Yep, she's 5' across and going for 6. Here's to plants that aren't dying. I'm so glad this one is prospering. I've taken a bunch of cuttings just in case.

If you're going to be overtaken by a geranium, this is a goodun' to be overtaken by. I adore this plant. Its velvety lime leaves, splotched emerald; its brilliant scarlet-cerise flowers. What's not to love?

One of my occasional fantasies was to be a grower of specialty geraniums. Root rot has put the kibosh on that dream. Let it go...

There are other plants to love, like this "Weeping Blue Ginger" that's actually a spiderwort, Dichorisandra. 

Speaking of letting go, I haven't seen Jemima since Christmas Eve. I've no idea where she's gone. A big flock of 13 swept in right around Christmas, when the severe cold came in, and they stayed until the cold broke. It seemed they replaced Jem's clan, which disappeared altogether. Now I've got seven jays in the yard, and I don't recognize them. Sometimes I think I'm seeing Maybelline and Darko, but I just can't be sure. My frame of reference is gone. I sure am not seeing my Jemima. Even though I put out the good stuff every day. Jay stuff. 

The letting go was incredibly difficult. Having Phoebe home for a month really helped with that, gave me some perspective and welcome diversion, someone else to love and care and hope for. I am given to obsessing, and I still look carefully at every blue jay I see, hoping one will turn out to be Jem or one of her clan. I've made progress though; I don't watch and hope all day long now. No, I just watch. 

I lost my favorite rabbit Notch last summer, probably to Cindy the bobcat. I then fell in love with a rabbit I named Red, a languid, lanky animal who lounged around artistically in the heat.

I'm now trying to figure out if the rabbit I've been calling Julie Fatbottom could be Red, disguised in winter fur. Her ears look too short to be Red's. But maybe it's because her fur is so thick? They share a wide thin white collar...I just can't be sure.

The only other thing Red and Julie seem to share is a deep red blaze between the shoulders. Maybe with spring and thinner fur, the mystery will be revealed. Maybe Julie Fatbottom is really Red. It doesn't really matter who the rabbit is, I know. But I reach, again and again, for these connections, this continuity, with the wild things around me. It keeps me going, keeps me hopeful. It gets pretty lonely out here.

My heated dog dish birdbath crapped out on me in the middle of the coldest period. I called every feed store and hardware in the area, and finally had to drive 1.5 hr. to Athens to get another because they were all backordered. I get such a kick out of this simple device. I understand from retailers that they rarely last two years. If there's anything I dislike it's built-in obsolescence, and having to throw out a perfectly good looking dish that no longer works. Ugh! But I'm hooked on the birds who are hooked on it.

I think that the female flicker who uses it may be the same one who visited the year I first acquired mine. This photo was taken Dec. 8, 2014. This little gal, to my great delight, was one of my first customers at the heated dish!

And lo and behold, here's a female flicker looking very much like her on Jan. 31, 2018. Coinkydink? I think not. Flickers aren't that common around here in winter, and female flickers who visit heated dog dish baths are an even smaller subset. Grasping for a thread of connection, again. I grasp with joy.

And while I was photographing her yesterday, wondering if she might have been visiting the yard for four years, a drop-dead gorgeous jay landed on the bowl beside her. WOW. What's gonna happen now? I can tell you, if that were a red-bellied woodpecker, there'd have been a rumble!

But she didn't bat an eye. She regarded the jay calmly. Dipped for another drink.

There's room here for both of us, she seemed to say. 

And my heart swelled like to burst when the jay dipped its head and drank, too. Little matter that the flicker could have put its eye out with one quick strike from that scimitar bill. The jay seemed to know she wouldn't. 

Ahh, birds and little plug-in dog dishes. They bring me such joy. 

So the winter days roll by, and I work and cough and cough and work. I've just put the finishing touches on a slideshow about the Vienna snowy owl. I never dreamt I'd be working on it for weeks, but I have been. When all was gathered together, I had 15,000 words and 160 images to sort through. I realized that, over the past month, I've written a book on that owl. I know why I did it. It's because Jemima left. I needed another focus. Gathering his story together and tying it all up with a bow has been a deeply absorbing pursuit, one I'm grateful to have had. I'll present it Tuesday, February 6, at 6:30 pm in Athens, Ohio.

Maybe I'll see you there. Until then, grab that last light of day. Get out there.

This evening marks Imbolc, an ancient pagan holiday that celebrates the midpoint of winter and the turning toward spring. I learned that from my friend Gale on Instagram. And I am ON IT. Listening for the woodcock, grabbing at those connections.

Setting Up Xanadu

When my sister Micky and I were young, we loved to play Trolls. We had these little folding vinyl lunchbox-like houses for them with a few bits of doll furniture we'd scrounged, augmented with rocks. We'd spend a long time setting everything up just so. And then it was over. Once it was set up, there was nothing to "play." Same deal in the sand patch in the backyard. We'd get our Matchbox cars arranged, make little garages and houses and driveways, and once everything was just like we wanted it, we were done.

I now embrace the reality, that the setting up and arranging and rearranging is actually the whole thing, and when I need a break from whatever I'm doing, I go down to play Greenhouse. Repotting and rearranging and preening my plants is the whole game. Just messing about with plants and soil, pots and pedestals. Do I ever sit there and just drink it in? Sure, in the dead of winter, maybe for a few minutes with a cup of hot tea or a rare pale ale. The rest of the time I'm working away, arranging it all just so. That work is my play. 

Bacon keeps me company. In the dead of winter, though, he demands to be on my lap, because the concrete's too cold. If anyone can make me sit down, it's Baker. Hey, he makes me run, too!

I don't know why my pitcher plants sulk in the pond all summer, with a few green strappy leaves, then send up a mess of spectacular pitchers in October, but that's what they do. Reasoning that they need to digest all the insects they've caught, I bring them into the greenhouse for the winter.

It's pretty chilling to look down in the pitchers. Stuffed FULL of bees, wasps, earwigs, and moths. None of 'em getting out. The pitcher plant slowly digests them alive, until they're just husks. When the pitcher leaf finally croaks, I slit it down the side and have lots of fun trying to identify all the things it's caught. 

Considering that the pitchers are about 2' high, that's a lot of pollinators! I check them daily and use a stick to help bumblebees and honeybees and the odd moth or hapless wasp out. Can't stand to see them suffer--or hear them buzzing in there. Earwigs, you can have!

You can see the pitcher plants on the floor, where they'll stay cool. I keep them wet, because they were submerged in the pond all summer. I've decided this plant is indestructible; doesn't seem to care if it spends the winter encased in ice or in the greenhouse; they still come back in spring and bloom!

Speaking of pollinators, I have a huge Polistes wasp nest in the greenhouse, built over the summer. 

Eek, you say? Yeah, me too. But the thing is, they've never once made a move to attack me, even through all the schlepping of plants in and out as autumn comes on. Every time I go in, I look up to see how many are still hanging in there. It's November! But it's warm in here. I guess I'm curious what they'll do.  They're not hurting anything living in here. There are no capped cells with pupae; they're done breeding. What happens now? In nature, they'd die, I guess. Or overwinter somewhere. Maybe here. 

Update: I accidentally brushed the nest with my hand while hanging twinkly lights tonight. The wasps looked calmly at me. "We know you didn't mean to."

I always remember what my parents told me when I was little and would freak out about a wasp. "Don't bother him and he won't bother you." 

Schlumbergia is not the prettiest Latin name for a plant. I have to say it fits Christmas cacti pretty well when they're not in bloom. But when they're in bloom, they belong to genus Euphoria!!!!!

I picked this little number up at a Kroger grocery store. I still haven't seen one I like better. 

When it's done blooming I'm going to divide it into several pieces. It's rootbound and getting sort of sad (blossoms notwithstanding). People say Christmas cacti thrive on neglect. Hmm. Nothing in my greenhouse gets neglected. I want to see it firm and dark green and happy again. Needs more root room.

Last May I ordered another hibiscus from Logee's Greenhouse. She arrived healthy and happy, about a foot tall. Now she's about 2 1/2' tall and loaded with buds. This is "Creole Lady," in bud. That bud stayed exposed but tightly furled for about a week. I almost burst with anticipation. Had I known what was coming, I WOULD have burst!

You're going to have to wait to see her. Because I had to wait. I had to wait since May!! By the way, that fabulous neon-orange flower in the background is not a fuchsia. It's a dwarf pomegranate! And it's fruiting like mad!

Waiting for Creole Lady, I kept myself happy with the gentle blue beauty of lobelia, that seeded itself into my poet's jasmine pot. Love it when that happens.

I took a cutting of this geranium from a planter outside a natural foods restaurant in Ithaca last October. It was the end of the growing season; she wouldn't miss it.

Now she graces my greenhouse. I think this is "Petals."

This glorious creature is "Happy Thought Red." It has become one of my favorite gerania, despite its easily shattered flowers. "Shattering" is a grower's term for a geranium that easily drops its petals. I used to dislike easily shattered geraniums. 

Older and wiser now, I look at the slow cascade of petals as hearts breaking and falling.

 Let it rain.

This big upright/semi-trailing fuchsia (Trandshen Bonnstadt) is my new fave. I have propagated it out the wazoo. They're everywhere! They're everywhere! Even have one in the master bath, where it's doing fabulously. Although I think, being a German cultivar, its name should be spelled Trandchen Bonnstadt.

You do not see fuchsias like Trandchen Bonnstadt in nurseries. I got it at The Glasshouse Works. This one (below) is a typical big-nursery fuchsia. Very nice, but without the impact of T.B, simply because it never gets much more than 8" tall. I don't know why, but fuchsias like these seem to lack vigor, lose hope easily. Give me big strapping ones like T.B. and Gartenmeister Bonstedt any day.

Yep, there's a party goin' on in Xanadu!

Woot woot!

The Path keeps the salsa music going night and day. Really, she can be a bit much as a roomie.

Some days, she's got her nose pressed up against the back window, hollering and waving, trying to get people to come inside and dance. 

It's hard to upstage a Rex begonia like "Cancun," but she does, oh she does.

Hold on, Miss The Path, because Little Sister's puttin' her makeup on.

I peeled back that unfurling tangerine petal on Creole Lady and saw... deep lavender?? 

 And an aphid, which I squished. 

Stay tuned! 

The Creole Reveal on Thursday!