Goodbye, Groanhouse! Down It Comes!

 On the 17th of July, I said a final goodbye to the Groanhouse with a grim smile and a shake of my head.  I couldn't say I'd miss it, knowing what would replace it. We'd had ten years of good times and bad. Mostly good. It had saved me in the winters, and it had destroyed me, too, when the gas would cut off and its contents would almost instantly freeze (which happened about every three years, on average). To say it was uninsulated was kind. 

Over time, as you can see, the plastic turned yellow and deteriorated, and I really noticed the effect of that decrease in light transmission on my plants in winter. 

I also noticed the Arctic breeze coming through the holes in the roof. I was tired of patching everything, the seams and now the roof, with Gorilla Tape. I was tired of everything about this structure. Good riddance, you bunch of poorly planned obsolescence. Thanks for the memories!

I had a large amount of work to do before the excavators got here and demolition commenced. There was some beautiful crocosmia "Lucifer" and a ton of nice Rudbeckia "Goldsturm" in the bed closest to the construction site. The retaining wall that supported that little bed was coming out, and I had to remove all those flowers. I potted them up and got them out of there the day before the excavators arrived. 

I put crocosmia all around the yard. This is the back deck bed, which I reclaimed this year from the giant kiwi vine that had eaten it for the past 16 years.  More on that later...that was a thing.

The side shade bed, emptied of its gold and scarlet treasure. The Groanhouse awaits its fate.

I don't like to waste anything, especially not living things. To my surprise, the Rudbeckia barely batted an eye when I dug it out and potted it--as long as I kept it in full shade and watered it every day. 

I loaded the 16 pots in the trailer and drove them around to live under the back deck for the rest of the summer, where they put on a beautiful show. I just had to remember to water them every day or two...I'm STILL watering those pots, two months later. 

Operation Relocate Rudbeckia in progress.

I took a deep breath. I was ready for the next morning, when the excavators would arrive. 

Lane was concerned that the weight of his mini-excavator might crack my sidewalk, so he executed this nifty leapfrog, taking the weight of the machine on the scoop and sort of jumping over the sidewalk!

Here comes the demolition crew: two young men. Lane, in red, and Stone, in gray, use their bare hands, arms, and legs to dismantle what took us a whole bunch of Saturdays to construct. I took a weird delight in seeing it taken apart. 

Witnessing Curtis watch the demolition squeezed my heart. He's nervous, licking his lips and shifting his gaze. He doesn't understand why I seem to be OK with my Groanhouse being destroyed. He thinks maybe he should do something about it, but he's taking his cues from me. Bless his rounded little head. He's got thoughts packed in there, he does.

Going, going...

Just a bunch of pieces. It left this world as it arrived. A deconstructed kit. 

Off it goes, carried by hand. Sheesh. Such an ignominious end.

Summer Flowers and Shameless Commerce

I can't find a time of day when I want to sit down and write a blogpost. I'd rather be loping along, grabbing images of late July. I've fallen into my delicious stay-at-home routine which keeps me healthy, happy and wise, if not materially wealthy. I wake up with the first cardinal at 5 and am out on the road by 6:30, enjoying the sunrise and the opening chicory and the long beamed raking light and shadows. I'm proud to say I have an addictive personality--but only for beauty and exercise and being outside.

I get a huge dose of all this every morning, and it sets me up for a day of painting blue jays for Saving Jemima. If that isn't a good life, I don't know what is. I'd love to share my new paintings, but Houghton Mifflin Harcourt frowns on that. October 2019...watch for it!

I thought last year was beautiful. This year, though...

Sweet peas and chicory, a rare Three Graces view in the back, plus bonus bumblebee!

 

Across the road, the very first tall ironweed bursts into bloom on July 18! Very early. It's announcing the festival that'll be going on in August, whetting my appetite for great swatches of royal purple, for the round heads of Joe-pye weed and dancing swallowtails of three species.

 Had to get those Graces in the shot. Not a great angle for the tree dancers, but with ironweed, a rising sun, and The Three Graces, how can you lose?



I've been having the kids drop me off a few miles down our county road on their way to work in the morning. We get a wee bit of car time, a bit more time to yak and be together, and I get to be out where it's most beautiful way earlier than I could get there if I ran from the house. It's fabulous. And all the ground I cover is new, because I'm only running one direction. Yes, I run the same road most every day, but it changes overnight. 

Chicory and rust-red dock seeds and hayrolls and a barn. Winning!

 

Yep, that's me, crouching by the side of the road, in case you were wondering as you sped by. I should probably wear a shirt with my Instagram address in big block letters. I amuse myself by thinking what they must be thinking as they smile and wave every morning. Oh, there she is. Doesn't get all that much running done, does she? Usually hunkered down peering at the flars.

On this morning's outing, I discovered that these glorious roadsides had just been mowed down. Goodbye, evening primrose and chicory...

 until mid August. See you then. That's what perennial roots are for.

I ran down our dirt road yesterday, singing our Rain Crows song, "Dirt Road." I'll sing it TONIGHT, July 20, 2018, at The Blennerhassett Hotel with the full band! That's in Parkersburg, WV, and we're playing 7-10 pm, old people's hours. If you're within striking distance, come see us. We'll be in the delightful rose garden if it's not raining, and in the gorgeous leather lounge if it is. Win win. From left: Wendy Clark, keyboard/vocals; Craig Gibbs, bass/guitar; JZ, vocals, woodwinds, percussion; Mike Austin, drums; Bill Thompson III, guitar/vocals.

 

Wasn't that smooth, to talk about our dirt road, then segue into an ad, then go back out on the road again?

Real good chicory skies on a side path.

I found a couple things on our dirt road that got me all excited.

First was a perfect, still shiny-wet pile of bobcat poop. Adult bobcat poop. Big stuff, maybe 3/4" in diameter, but broken into the short, square Tootsie Roll segments that say CAT. I was happy about that! That's the kind of cat I like to have spooking around my house.

 

Second was a little smashed bottle. I knew it would be good, because it looked like something you'd get at the Impulse Buy counter at a gas station, so I picked it up.

Nobody there to hear me crowing, first over bobcat poo, then over

SEXIEST FANTASIES  
tempt me sweetly

Alas, no bouquet remained, as it had been squashed many times over, but I was delighted to learn that one could enter a new world of sensual fantasies with a little alcohol, denatured water, fragrance and propylene glycol. Humans are such suggestible creatures. I'll spray this on and he'll go wild!

Thanks, I'll take the bobcat poop.
( I realized at this moment, with a small sigh, that I lead a very dull life by ordinary human standards. I find it incredibly exciting, but I get excited by things most people don't even notice.)

When I got home, Phoebe had Blackberry Cloud Cake, a Martha Stewart recipe, waiting for me. Sugared wild blackberries and pistachios top an impossibly light concoction of meringue and blackberry whipped cream. She had whomped it up late the night before, rolled it, refrigerated it, and had it waiting for me when I got back from my run. It's the food of angels. The tart blackberries and crunchy salted pistachios make it.

 

We had to do something with all those wild blackberries that have sprung up around our totally neglected oil derrick on the back 40. The company that leases the well is happy to take our oil, but is definitely not keeping up its part of the bargain to maintain the well. The welljack is busted and covered in brambles, and we're heating and cooking only on the natural pressure of the gas as it comes out of the ground, unaided by the jammed welljack. It's been out of commission for more than a year!! Makes me very nervous. Will the pressure hold all winter, keep my greenhouse warm?

 The only good thing about this deplorable situation is blackberries.

 

It is SO GOOD to have my girl and boy home this summer, together.

Things people don't even notice:
The 3/4", impossibly blue blossoms of dayflower. 

The Lamborghini of beetles, the dogbane beetle. With my cellphone reflected in his chrome. Click on this one.

 

 An oddly bent petal, 

 

which turns out to be the silken shelter of the wee looper who's been eating
all the true flowers out of the black-eyed Susan's eye, and leaving lots of
frass, too.

 

And under the silk shelter of the flower in the back?  

A yellow crab spider who has doubtless eaten the wee looper that went with this flower. Gonna have to click on this one to see the spider. Noticing...it's the thing to do.

So. I've found myself far more interested in loping around, playing with my kids, cooking, gardening, looking at bugs, checking bluebird boxes, taking photos, and painting for my book than blogging frequently this summer. Not apologizing, because everything is free here.  However. I have a situation that has smoked me out, that I'm hoping someone out there enjoying this post might remedy.

I'm taking a group of ten travelers to southern Ecuador for a birding/natural history/photography/ridiculously fun and indulgent trip, October 24-Nov. 2, 2018. And I had it all sewn up, had a beautiful group assembled, and life intervened,  as it often does, and three people had to drop out at essentially the last minute. So I have three spaces open on a Holbrook Travel-sponsored private Zicktrip that's coming up fast.  Guiding will be me, the fabulous Mario Cordoba, and Ecuadorean guide Manny Lopez. That's three guides for ten people, and that's deluxe. Here are a few critters we saw in 2017.

 Booted racket-tail.

 Lubber grasshopper nymph.

 Donna, Mario, and our local guide scoping the canopy.

 Violet-tailed sylph. Lord, lord, lord.

Moustached antpitta.

 Plate-billed mountain toucan in the rain.

 Ecuador is SO MUCH FUN. Southern Ecuador will be new territory for me and Mario!  Traveling with a small group of 13 total, 3 of them guides, is wonderful. If you have the means and the time, and would like to join us, click this link! And if it fills right up, I keep a waiting list, so leave your email with Holbook. Thank you for reading, for noticing, and for indulging me on this rare two-ad post. I hope there's enough bobcat poo and floral lore to balance the shameless self-promotion.

 Zicktrip Oct-Nov 2018

Chicory Blues

It was a perfect Science Chimp morning. Chet and I took off at 8 AM when the temperature was in the 60's. What a beautiful summer it's been!!

This morning's run started with a little doggie CSI. 

A baby bunny (of which there are approximately 8.2 bazillion this year) met its end in our driveway.

How did we know it was a baby? Hair's too short to be from an adult. 

I'm curious about the tiny divots of hair plucked from the rabbit. Not sure what would do this. A Cooper's hawk? (There's one around our driveway a lot of the time). I don't think a fox, brush wolf or bobcat would bother "plucking" a rabbit. Their droppings are full of hair, so they must ingest it. But a hawk just might. Still thinking about this. Falconers might be able to help here. It seems to me that a Cooper's hawk, which always plucks its avian prey, might be moved to pluck a rabbit, yes? No? I'll ask Matt Mullenix. And I bet Liam McGranaghan will know, too! 

Chicory is out all along our road. Hallelujah!

Spontaneous compositions arise wherever chicory blooms. I like the way its cool pinky periwinkle blue plays with the honest straight-up strong blue of the sky.

Really love the sort of street art quality of this one. Chicory opens in response to light and heat. Shaded flowers keep their color longer. And cool mornings with deep shade are tops for chicory photography. 

Let me once again sing the praises of the iPhone camera. What other camera could pick up color in deep shadow, yet keep the sky blue in the brilliantly-lit window hole? Love it, love it. It sees the way I do.

I was excited to find freshly cast, still moist crow pellets on the path. Pellets come out of the bird's digestive tract, but they come from the top part--the crop, and pop out of the bill. They are not poop. They are odor-free, clean, compacted boluses of indigestible things, in this case blackberry seeds. At any rate, a crow pellet is analogous to a hawk or owl pellet, but made of vegetable material. There were also a few beetle elytrae in there, too.

These crow castings had a fetching raspberry hue from the blackberries, and a light sweet fragrance. I loved thinking that I was the first person who'd touched this avian product. 

If you're curious what's written on my left hand, it's "Bucket Nest Change." (I use the delta sign for "change" in my notes). This is an example of foreshadowing.

How did I know they were crow pellets? Well, I deduced it. There was a family group of crows cawing away at my intrusion. There were very fresh fabulous crow tracks just a few feet away. And I've found identical pellets atop round hayrolls, and I know from the fruit seeds in them that they aren't hawk or owl pellets. Crows love to sit on hayrolls. Not rocket science, but it does take a little thinking.  There is a very entertaining post about how I figured out these boluses came from crow craws at this link.

The basic premise some might not realize is that most birds cast pellets. Not just owls. Most birds wind up with a bunch of indigestible stuff in their crops, and that needs to come up, not go on through the digestive tract. Bluebirds, kingbirds, orioles, gulls, shorebirds...they all cast pellets. These are the ones I've seen do it. Many more, I'm sure, do it too.

More fabulous flowers, on a private home construction site near us. Rudbeckia is such a pretty thing, and it's just coming out. There's some Queen Anne's lace and daisies in there, too.  I like this composition, with the steamroller wheels and the black-eyed Susans prettying up the piles of brick.

On to the foreshadowing. This afternoon, I checked the frail little runt bluebird again. No longer frail, it's living strong! Once again, on the right side of the nest cup. (Baby birds tend to keep their places in the nest).

For comparison, here are its biological siblings, the day before. I'd say this bird has caught up, in a big way! It's barely a day behind developmentally, although when I kidnapped it it was looking like a three-day-old to its siblings' seven days. Glory be!

And it is a female, just like its four biological siblings. It's rare to find a bluebird nest with five of the same sex, but it happens.  This photo, taken June 30, 2016. The bird is 13 days old. A bit behind, but well within the range of normal now. We have its dedicated foster parents to thank for that!

Because blowflies infest most nests, I change the foster nest with the "runt" in it. I put the babies in a bucket for a few moments while I clean out the infested nest and fashion a new one out of nice soft  dried hairgrass. And in the old nest, I find more than 30 nasty larvae of Protocalliphora sialia, the bluebird blowfly. They suck the nestlings' blood, and can weaken them. It always makes me happy to think of how much better they'll sleep when not being vampirated.

I tucked the chicks back in their new, clean grass nest and turned for home. It occurred to me that I could probably slip this little female back into her original nest and she'd be fine, albeit the last to fledge. But it ain't broken, so I'm not going to fix it again.  Let's let her be the first to fledge! Girlpower! Runtpower!!

The best part of this shiny blue day? Chet Baker was out in front of me, trotting smartly the whole way. All hail Analapril (the blood pressure med he's on), chicory abloom, bluebirds thriving, and these cool summer mornings!