Things I Saw Along the Way

November 10, 2014. Seems like it was the last beautiful day I can remember. I used it well, with a long run along the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers in Marietta. We have a modest bike trail, growing a mile or two each summer, and boy does it get used!

I took a lot of photos, reveling in the last of the autumn leaves and flowers. I'm glad I did. For it's been unbroken gray and often rainy ever since. Bleh. It's nice to go back...

to the sycamore limbs, limned in low sun. A word meaning "illuminated," and one that I sometimes write but never say. There aren't many words like that. 

I don't know how many photos I have of these two limbs along the Harmar bridge. Many. They are spectacular.

They reach out and go on and on. I don't know how sycamores do that.

I was shocked to see a Dutch iris putting out a brave snow-white blossom in November. I wonder if that means it won't bloom in May? It smelled delightful. Front Street. Just noticed Smitty's Pizza in the right background.

A nearby hydrangea was not to be outdone. What a brave showing!

I was stunned by the beauty of this Japanese maple against the Potomac blue paint of its house. (I think of trees as part of the family, somewhere between pets and residents). Is there a more graceful tree? I think not. 

These maples are most beautiful when they're allowed to spread out and wave those baby-fingered hands wherever they want. It's a little tough along a city sidewalk. You have to keep them sort of trimmed. But these homeowners are doing a wonderful job. 

For stark contrast, a Japanese maple FAIL. 

Here is a haiku, by me, written about this tree.

No no no no no

No no no no no no no

No no no no no.

If the office manager comes to work one day and finds a gaping hole where this little tree once tried to grow, he or she should not be surprised. I would like to free it and bring it to Indigo Hill, let it grow the way it was meant to, beautifully, gracefully. Out. And Up. 

 This is not a yew or a privet hedge. This is a Cutleaf Japanese Maple. You BOOBS!!

I looked for seedlings in the mulch beneath, but found none. :(

I did find doggie tracks in the stamped, dyed concrete of the levee. I had always thought it was brick! Fooled me, until I saw this. Nice. I like the way the paddyprints have collected pebbles. I wonder if this dog is still with us? I always wonder that when I see prints in concrete.

Did you make them, DracuPug?

Never have I seen a more fetching underbite. Coupled with the potchy belleh, that's one kissable pugga. Little-known fact: I went into shopping for dogs intending to get a pug. After a little research and thought, I decided on a Boston terrier because I thought, having longer legs and muzzle and a more slender build, it would be able to run better. At that point (2004) I wasn't even running, but I hiked a lot, and I wanted someone who could keep up with me. The rest is history.

No underbite. Potchy belleh, check. Athleticism, check. Winsome expression, kissability, check. 

The romantic in me smells every rose, even landscape roses, which rarely have much scent. These were lighting up a November twilight near the bike trail. What a wonderful plant is the Knockout rose. Tough as nails. Mine all died to the ground last winter, and only one didn't come back. They were puny last summer, but they were alive, and that's saying something. The Japanese beetles left them alone. Maybe they all died last winter, too.

Sarah and Dandy, looking out of their stalls at the horsebarn at the Fairgrounds, casting some boffo head shadows.

 Girls board their horses there and ride them around little corrals and the racetrack. If I kept a horse there, I'd light out on the bike trail. But that's probably not allowed. I've never understood riding a horse around a ring. But then I don't get treadmills either. I have to go somewhere, see some things.

 I would make a very poor convict. So I try not to break laws. 

(Would rescuing a tortured Japanese maple constitute theft?)

Is there such a thing as justifiable theft?

A small part of the feral cat colony being fed and maintained at the Fairgrounds, handy by excellent riverine gallery forest habitat full of song sparrows, cardinals, Carolina wrens, eastern kingbirds, yellow-throated warblers and warbling vireos. Lots of delicate wild fare to choose from for the burgeoning kitty corps.

On to things that make sense to me...

A glorious sugar maple, somehow hanging onto its full raiment as every other tree drops its leaves.

I am stunned and amazed at its gold against the rare azure sky.

It's like an epiphany.

Back to town. There's a guy smoking out the back of our brewpub. I like to look for people smoking out the back of restaurants. I wonder why so many people who work in restaurants and bars smoke? And they're always so young.  It's quite odd to be asking your good old body to run 7 miles, and trotting past someone half your age, who is sitting there wrecking his nice young lungs on purpose. 

Two little apparitions in pink, chasing mallards down by the water. I can safely say I have never worn that shade in my life. Nor will I. Not even as a costume, or a joke, or for a cause. Phoebe says all my clothes are dung-colored. So be it.

It looks nice on them!

The geese put themselves out of reach.

Sunset on the Harmar bridge.

Walking the dachsies. Now there's a breed I love which could never make the athleticism cut. I grew up with a superb dachshund, fathered by a mini, with a standard mother. But a distance runner he was not.

Ended up with a little fro-yo with my boy at Whirl, where Phoebe worked last year. So good. I get the sugar-free stuff, then throw fresh fruit and Heath Bars all over it. :D I always misbehave, too, laugh too loudly, go for one too many samples, that kind of thing. It's tradeeshun.

Boston Terriers and Bluebirds

It seemed that my budding friendship with Fran and Mil was meant to be. For when Jeff brought them out to the farm on Sunday morning, they brought the bluebirds, and someone else with them. Someone named Hobo. Hobo's tongue hangs out, but I didn't ask about that, because I figure after eleven years they've long since tired of explaining why. He was a perfectly charming little gent. Mil says he brings Hobo everywhere except "where they sell food."

Hobo is eleven, and he was not at all sure he wanted to consort, canoodle or cavort with the bouncy and insistent Chet Baker, so in Mil's arms he stayed.

Hobo, I just want to smell you all over. Please put your dog down so I can smell him all over, and then show him who is boss. (That's Jeff in the background, smiling at the Tiggerish ridiculousness that is Chet).

  Mil and Fran had brought Hobo along because they said he would want to kiss his baby bluebirds goodbye. 

Which he did. Licked them. No sweeter Boston walks the earth. He made Chet look like some kind of hoodlum. Which he is. Chet's fine with baby birds; he wouldn't hurt them, but as this was going on he was whining and pawing at the outside of the tent, just wanting to get in there and bowl poor little Hobo over. Which wasn't going to happen.

One bluebird sat on Hobo's back for awhile. It was sweet to see. Well, these baby bluebirds would grow up thinking that there are Boston terriers everywhere, I guess.

Chet Baker, who looks like a fullback compared to the more gracile Hobo, ingratiated himself with Fran by leaping up and French-kissing her. She said he reminds her of their first Boston, who was more boisterous than Hobo. Good word, that. Boisterous.

Meanwhile, the baby bluebirds were settling in nicely, investigating their little wading pool, flying circles around the tent, and trying out all the new perches. They're about 25 days old in this photo, still several days from being able to try to pick up their own food. If I remember correctly that happens around Day 28. And then it takes another week or more until they're good at it. I'll continue to hand feed them until they're feeding themselves completely.

I was delighted to find all three are females. This may help give them a smoother release. I raised two orphaned bluebirds in Connecticut years ago. Cobalt was the male, Sapphire the female. Upon releasing them, the resident male bluebird in my yard came and beat the daylights out of Cobalt, driving him from the property. He left Sapphire alone, and she stayed on to be subsidized by my mealworm handouts. I do not think this selective aggression was a coincidence. So I hope that maybe, just maybe, our resident male bluebird will tolerate these three little girls upon their release. I have my fingers crossed. And I'm not going to release them until they're dead ready to be on their own, picking up all their own food.

 It's not perfect, but nothing in avian rehab is really perfect. You do what you must, what you can, and hope for the best. Even from a marsh in Maine. Even when you have a resident pair of bluebirds in your yard who may make life difficult for your orphans. We'll just have to see what happens.

 And outside, Chet Baker was still staring longingly up at Hobo, with a big I-want-that-doggeh-so-badly spitbubble in the corner of his flews. That's my boy.

I cannot believe you photographed me with a spitbubble. Someday I will do the same to you.

Chetcam--Meeting the Bus

Every afternoon, Mether takes me along to meet the chirrun at the bes. I love my chirrun. Their names are Phoebe and Liam. This is one of Mether's very old pictures of them waiting for the bes on their first day of school. They are much bigger now.

I know exactly what time the bes comes and I always walk into the studio to tell Mether thirteen minutes before it comes. That's how long it takes us to get to the bes stop.

Hurry, let me out. I have to do a quick chiptymunk round before we go. Do not worry. I will be back before you buckle your seat belt.
I run around the side of the house
and through the garden bed. Then I put on extra speed to surprise bunnehs in the backyard, and end up at the front porch. Some chiptymunks might be there so I sniff under the porch and in the hostas.
Where is Mether?
She is still inside. I can hear her shuffling around. Come on, Mether.

She's here! I run to the car!
The dogwoods are out and the scenery is beautiful. Here is your photographer, in the rear view mirror. You can even see my camera.
This meadow smells like heaven to me. I can smell bunnehs and deer, too. I think there are mice there. Maybe they are voles. I always get them confused.
I wish Mether would let me hunt this meadow. It smells of deer.

We are at the bes stop. I sniff the air and wait.

It's the bes!


Phoebe always takes my seat now that she weighs enough to sit in front. This is how I like to ride.
My sister Phoebe is talking about her day, I think. When she gets in the car she talks a lot to Mether.


Mether drives us home. She has strong arms.

When we get home Mether lets me out at the corner so I can chase any bunnehs that might have snuck into the yard while we were gone. I am very fast.
Sometimes bunnehs hide under the pines in the backyard. I let them know who is boss. It is me, Chet Baker.
Mether takes so many pictures of me. Here I am, birdwatching in the tower on a May morning. I ask Mether to set up my bar stool when I get bored standing around looking at Mether and Daddeh's knees.
I am enjoying being a photographer, but I think Mether needs to buy me a better camera. This one only takes pictures of my lips. And there is so much more to me, Chet Baker, than soft lips.

Although that is one of my many charms.

Now that I am a photographer, I can tell you more about what it is like to be me.

Monetizing Your Dog

photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson

I'm not sure how I feel about these not-so-subtle hints I've been getting, sprinkled here and there in the comments section. "It's been over a month and we want more Chet!" read the latest. And I checked, and it has, by two whole days. Obviously, some of you keep track (and have noticed that I don't), and it seems that there's some kind of Chetmeter ticking away in your brains that goes off BLANNNNG!! when you've reached the critical limit of Chetlack. These are the times that I wish my blog had a little slot into which you could insert a one, a five or a ten, after carefully smoothing it to make sure the machine will accept it, and making sure the president is facing up. I could blog away five days a week about birds and rivers and butterflies and anteaters, frogs and Fanta and orchids and otters, blissfully unaware that the Chetpressure was building up, and then I'd open my laptop in the morning and all this money would pour out of it, whee! from all the people who were finally starved out and willing to pay for their next major Chetfix.

Y'all keep having to remind me that it's really all about the dog.


He is lying at my side, smelling slightly of skunk (there's another story there), heaving those little rumbly dog sighs of contentment. Every once in awhile I take his smooshy little face in my hands and say, "Baker, you will be my ticket out of poverty. I don't know how just yet, but you're gonna get us out of this." His big pink tongue flops out and washes my chin and we laugh. It's true, we both know it, but I haven't figured out how to monetize my dog.

photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson

On Thursday, I drove to Middletown, Ohio, a neat four hours straight across the state, to guest lecture in a creative fiction class at Miami University's Middletown campus taught by Dr. Eric Melbye. I think I've written one piece of fiction in my whole life--the introduction to a 1997 piece on ivory-billed woodpeckers.

It was fun, but this is a big ol' goofy world, and it is so crammed with wonders that I have never felt the need to write fiction. Just describing what's going on all around me is more than enough.
So we talked about the creative process which probably isn't all that different between fiction and the kind of embroidered nonfiction I do. We talked about how to get out of the way of your subconscious mind, how to let it flow, because it writes much better than the conscious mind. The talk ran 'round to Chet Baker, who was slumbering back in my hotel room, and we traded stories about nonverbal communication between people and animals. It was cool.

Thursday night, there was a public lecture, and a lot of the people who came are also readers of this blog. And it occurred to me that some of them might like to meet The Bacon. Although Nina and Susan already had, they are always up for another crispy serving. So after the talk, I invited four women up to the Manchester Hotel and we sat around on the floor hooting with laughter as Chet Baker ripped Susan's new toy to smithereens,


decked Susan, purveyor of toys and Pupperoni, a couple of times,
had a scavenger hunt for bits of Pupperoni, aimed sudden and deadly accurate kisses at everyone's tonsils, and just generally lit the room up with his doggy joydaveev.**

**Joie de vive. I know. I just like making new words.

Unh unh unh unh unh unh unh rrrrrrrrrrrrrowwwwww. All the puppy training books warn you not to play tug o'war with your dog or he'll grow up to dominate you, make your life miserable, and eventually kill you while you sleep. Hasn't happened yet. So far, we just play tug o'war.

Four grown women sitting on the floor, hooting over a dog. You'll recognize Nina in the middle, too...


Think he knows what a star he is? Smile, Chet. Look at the camera. Yes, Mether. How is this? I am making my eyes extra googly.

I suppose at some point Chet will be attending the lectures with me. Or he will let me attend them with him. I can see me, dog on my knee, answering questions aimed at Chet, in the distinctive dawgvoice we've developed. Kind of a Charlie McCarthy act, but with a much cuter and smarter dummy. We'll take it on the road. I hope all the hotels we pick are as pet-friendly--I'd call the staff doghappy!-- as the homey sweet Manchester Inn in Middletown, Ohio.

Many thanks to Eric Melbye, his writing students, and MUM for making such a fuss and being willing to listen to a bunch of animal stories.