They'll Rise Again

 Back in the early 90’s, Bill and I were doing yardwork on an impossibly balmy and sweaty April morning when my mother-in-law Elsa called us, absolutely frantic. New neighbors had moved into the old house next door. There, a pair of lovely women named Mrs. Best and Mrs. Bole had lived and gardened in beautiful harmony for decades. Their yard was a shady paradise of blooming trees and flowers. But all that was soon to change. On this gorgeous spring day, Elsa looked out her kitchen window and was horrified to see her new neighbor ripping Mrs. Best and Bole's blooming daffodils out by the fistful and throwing them in the alley. It was his yard now and he didn't want daffodils, apparently. Why would you want daffodils? Just frippery. An annoyance.

 I understand a lot about the natural world, the one that works the way it's supposed to. The world of humans I will never comprehend. To be honest, I don't want to understand a thought process that leads to behavior like that. Life's too short.

 Elsa was in tears. “Julie!! You’ve got to come get these bulbs and plant them out at your place! They’re all special ones, too! I can’t let them die!” She didn’t have to ask twice. Bill and I raced the 18 miles into town and picked up several grocery bags that Elsa had already gathered. They were full of sad, wilted daffodils in full bloom. We picked up every one of them from the alley, where they'd have been pulverized by passing cars. I hope that guy wondered about the three of us, down on our knees, undoing what he'd just done. He probably just thought we were saps. People who'd run around saving caterpillars, or sick birds. He was right. Saps.

As soon as we got them home I drenched the plants in cool water, and apologized profusely.

Bill, who hated injustice and waste and suffering, asked where he should dig. I spun around and pointed to a place up by the vegetable garden and the fire circle, and that good man dug a deep trench about 20' long. In it we tenderly placed the bulbs and watered them in. It wasn't long before their leaves shriveled away, but we knew that wasn't the end of them. They would come back next spring.

And oh, they did. They didn't bloom much that first spring, but in successive springs they have put on a show. And like Elsa said, they are all special ones, not a dud in the bunch. I particularly love the white one with the strong yellow trumpet. And of course the fried egg ones, and the frilly scrambled egg ones. I love them all. 

Now they live here, on Indigo Hill, in a sanctuary for lost, beautiful things. They seem happy here. I have beaten the wisteria and trumpetvine back off them, year upon year. Now, with the clearing I've done, I can mow all around them. They're safe, and nobody's going to rip them out, ever again. 

Feel free to doubt the intelligence and depth of soul of some humans, but never doubt the resilience of plants. 

I'd love to let that end the post, but my life's in a blender, and I posted this from my phone--a first for me. I probably won't get back to the blog for a bit, so  I'm going to mention my next speaking engagements here.

ZICK ALERT!

On Saturday April 9, I'll give TWO talks to the Delaware Master Gardeners in Waldo, Ohio. I'll appear along with the amazing Jim McCormac, whose talk is a pictorial trip around Ohio, with a diverse cast of our most beautiful and fascinating flora and fauna. 

Jim points out that Waldo is the home of the G & R Grill, and the world's most famous fried bologna!

I'll deliver my new Guerilla Gardening talk, which is a history of my relationship with my land, and the past three years' intensive habitat reclamation efforts (ack, I already need to update it with the latest!). In the afternoon, I'll give my Saving Jemima book talk, as dessert.

I have been insanely busy, preparing my most special plants for a little plant sale at my table. I really hope to find homes for some fantastic tuberose bulbs, orchids, Achimenes, evening primroses, fuchsias...oh my!

The public is welcome!

 For registration and further information, go here: 

Delaware Co. Master Gardeners Spring Meet

On the evening of Monday, April 25, 2022,  I'll give a garden talk and sell plants for the Morgan County Master Gardeners at the beautiful McConnellsville, Ohio, Opera House. For more information, please call Sarah McDougal, Adult Services Coordinator, Kate Love Simpson Library 740-962-2533

A Squirrel's Easter

Easter morning is when those who think about such things envision rebirth, everything and everyone becoming new again. What was dead is now risen. For the squirrels in my backyard owl box, Easter morning 2018 was, apparently, a time of emergence. 

I had suspected a squirrel was nesting in the box, because I'd seen one stretched out on its roof a few times, basking in rare spots of sun. I even said, "Liam, I think there are going to be some baby squirrels in that box before long. Keep an eye out."

And, always watching, he called me into the living room. "Ma! Come look! There's something peeking out of the squirrel box!"

Oh!! What a lovely April 1 surprise! The drama began at 9:23 AM on this gray, cold day. Two little squirrels take their first looks at the world outside. No idea how many are actually in there, but the most we saw at one time was two.

Ma comes to keep a watchful eye. The natives are restless. 

And hungry. Come on inside, Ma. Give us a nursing!

If you want to nurse, I suggest you come outside. 

It's nice out here. A bit chilly, but I have another warm dry place in mind. 

Here's how you do it. You cling, decide where you're going, then just...leap! 

You WHAT???!!

There is no way in the world I am going to do that. Nope. Staying here. 

Oh come on. We're squirrels! We were born to cling! If you don't want to leap, you can just scrabble. 

Like...this? You hang on with your claws? And you don't fall??

I...I can't. 

You can. You will. I will be here to catch you if you fall.  

And I am coming in after you if you refuse. You ARE all leaving this box, this morning. 

I'm hungry. You smell good. Come inside and give us a quick nurse. 

I love you. I love to nurse.

I love you too, but I'm not coming back in that box. If you want to nurse you'll have to come out. 

Maybe if I lean out and sneak a teat...

She left again! Ma! I...I...I'm going to try the clinging thinggg...

Brrrrrr woooo that is so scary! Back in with me. Nope. 

Nopeity nope nope nope. 

Cardinal whistles, "You can do it do it do it do it do it!"

I'm going to try again with you. Don't make me come in after you.

You cling with your hind feet and then you can do anything you want with your front feet. Like this!

By now, it's 9:47. The baby squirrels have been hesitating at the box entrance for 23 minutes.  Ma takes matters into her strong squirrely arms.

She's got him by a hind leg, and she's using her teeth now.  Ow ow ow!

I'm gonna get you out if it's the last thing I...mmmfff...

You little stinkpot. Hanging on with every claw you were born with.

I think I need to call for backup. This is like pushing soup uphill with a fork.

It's now 9:52, and Ma Squirrel's been trying to coax and finally manhandle her babies out of their warm box for 31 minutes. Your blogger's been glued to the window the whole time, shooting from inside the house, for none of this would have happened had Ma seen me outside, watching. 

The story goes on, of course, as they all do,  but it's taken me three hours to edit a zillion photos and get them posted,  and I've got to pack now. Because I'm traveling again! 

TWO ALARM 

ZICK ALERT! 

First: I'll be telling the story of Jemima Jay and my work on Baby Birds for the Explorer Lecture Series Celebrating Women in Science, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, 7 pm Friday, April 13. Booksigning afterward.

Click HERE for Cleveland Museum info! 

Second: I'll fly from Cleveland to Atlanta to kick off events with the Baby Birds/Jemima talk for the ten-day Atlanta Bird Fest on Saturday, April 14, 4 pm, Chattahoochee Nature Center. Booksigning afterward. Please note that online ticket sales end at NOON, Friday, April 13, so grab one of the remaining seats now. 

Click HERE for Atlanta info!  

Thank you, as always, for reading and sharing my adventures. 

I hope to see you somewhere farther on down the line. 

Second Chance For a Snowy Owl

A 3,112-acre happy hunting ground for Owl!

Presque Isle State Park is a mighty nice hunk of habitat for a snowy owl. Comprised of marsh, dune, and Lake Erie shore, it undoubtedly looks a whole lot more like home to an Arctic owl than do the  unbroken forests of West Virginia and southeast Ohio, described by Project SNOWstorm co-founder Scott Weidensaul as "hostile territory."

This map makes me happy. Find Erie on the south shore of that inland sea. Owl originally made his way far enough south to be just off the map, just below the lower notch in the Ohio/West Virginia border. By being driven to Presque Isle, he's been given a great boost north, 260 miles or more, the best chance the team could give him. There's lots of great snowy owl habitat all around.

 This wild beachy finger of Pennsylvania has the creatures Owl should be hunting: voles and rabbits and gulls, sea ducks and geese. No more quail and rat, served up on a wooden shelf. He's on to bigger game, and he's fit, fat, and ready to hunt.

photo by Joey Herron/herronbirding.com

A flight of scaup,  part of Owl's food base in his new home. He might be watching where they go to roost at night. He may swoop soundlessly down and pluck a scaup from the water's surface at 2 AM. Who knows what he will do here? Wouldn't we love to know!

The owl was packed in the same wild turkey box in which he traveled to Morgantown. It's tall and narrow and confining; it won't let him spread his wings or beat up his feathers. The rush about releasing him is that the longer he stayed in the small wood-sided mew, the wilder and more rambunctious he got, and the more chance he had of battering his feathers into uselessenss. And we didn't want that. 

photo by Joey Herron/herronbirding.com

The long trek to open ground, hearts beating in anticipation.

photo by Joey Herron/herronbirding.com

I got the sweetest email from photographer and saw-whet owl researcher and bander Joey Herron when I asked to borrow his photos for this post. I wanted to share his own words, because they show  how this bird touches lives, and the kind of awe and respect he inspires.

Joey Herron bids Owl adieu.   Photo by Vince Slabe

"As I downloaded these pics I was overwhelmed with emotion  at the honor of being a part of this!

The experience will ever be etched in my soul!.....sorry you did not make it. I know you would have felt the same!

These birds have such a presence about them.....as my wife said when you spread their wings it's like an angel from heaven! Majestic and beautiful!

On their way out the point, the team found a red-morph eastern screech-owl. 

I've also included a couple Screech owl pics....this guy was just sitting along the road!

There were a dozen people or so with scopes and cameras across from it looking and taking pics......we stopped to see what was happening........little did these people know that in the back of our  car was a Snowy Owl in a box!!!......if they only knew!!!"

photo by Joey Herron/herronbirding.com

I'll let Katie Fallon of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia tell it now: 

RELEASE:  January 20 2018 (a month after being taken in Dec. 21).

We are very happy to announce that the snowy owl from Vienna, WV, successfully returned to the wild today! 

The injured snowy owl was captured several weeks after being hit by a car; the owl suffered a fractured coracoid (a bone in the shoulder) and was emaciated at the time of capture, weighing only 1100 grams. Today, the owl weighed approximately 1800 grams, and he had fully recovered from his injuries.

While we would normally release injured birds back where they were found, this snowy owl was out of his normal winter range. We released him several hours north -- on Presque Isle along Lake Erie -- where snowy owls are routinely sighted in the winter. This area is near the southern edge of their normal winter range.

Thank you so much to everyone who sent the snowy owl well wishes, donations towards his care and feeding, and healing thoughts. He certainly has a lot of friends, and he touched many lives. 

Thank you to everyone who assisted and participated in his capture; thank you to the folks who documented and photographed the owl and his progress; and a huge thank you to the ACCA's volunteers for feeding, medicating, monitoring, cleaning up after, and nursing the owl back to health over the last month or so.

Thank you again -- and best wishes for a long, healthy life to this young snowy owl!

           

         Video by Vince Slabe, courtesy Joey Herron and Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia

And so it ends. But his story goes on in our imaginations, and perhaps in the binoculars and spotting scopes of lucky birdwatchers who come out expecting a wee red screech-owl and find a big white snow-owl. Of course, I'll be eager for reports from Erie area birders, if any come in;  you can contact me on my website, juliezickefoose.com  I'd be happy to post any photos. Maybe we can match them to our beloved Owl. You never know.

And meanwhile, the work at ACCA never ends. This barred owl was hit by a car, and came in with a badly fractured beak and two broken coracoids. When Katie sent me his intake photo, I wouldn't have given you a nickel for that bird. I couldn't see how he could survive injuries that grievous.  Look at him on December 10, less than a month later.

Not all ACCA's clients attain celebrity status, but each one is cared for lovingly, fed and treated just that well.

 I thank Owl for the gift of his presence. I thank him for sweeping me and thousands of others away in the sheer drama and amazement of his story; for showing the cool, slit-eyed face of the Arctic to so many Ohioans and West Virginians who had never seen and may never see such a creature again. I thank him for making his way to the Grand Central Mall to ask for help, if ask he did.

 I hope from Presque Isle, he heads west or east then, when the time comes, north and north and still farther north, his strong white wings bearing him with ease, his magnetic sense telling him where home lies. I hope he sees the Land of the Midnight Sun again, where the lemmings swarm and line owl nests with fur and food, swelling small fuzzy owlets' crops with abundance. Most of all, I hope he never has to endure any of this, ever again.

Photo by Vince Slabe

I wish him strength and health and joy in flying free again, and I'm certain he feels all that. No creance to bring him up short now. Just air and space, sun and cold, and the promise of going home to the tundra as spring draws near. Fare thee well, Owl! You woke up this morning with a second chance.  

photo by Joey Herron


Two Zick Alerts: I'm speaking about Baby Birds at 1 PM Saturday, Jan. 26, in a Spotlight Presentation at the Space Coast Birding Festival, Eastern FL State College, Titusville, FL.  $15.00 Walk-ins welcome! Writing from a small hotel room as we speak.

 And I'll be telling the story of this valiant snowy owl locally on Feb. 6 in a special presentation to Athens Area Birders. Details on their boffo poster, below.

Three Alarm Zick Alert

I'm in New England again! I've come here to give three talks. It only took 700 miles and 12 hours in my faithful Subaru.

File under: Arrested Development

 I got lost on the very last part of the trip. I took a detour to sign some books for an old friend, who has a cat named Bitsy with her own chair. 

 I got back in the car to drive to my sister's house, about ten miles away, and Siri routed me to the right street name in the wrong town. But I got magnificently lost. I found this place.

And this place. (Canton, CT).

It was a lights on-lights off kind of afternoon, the heavenly switches being thrown regularly.

I was arrested by the lichens. I'd never seen Cladonia like this growing on a stone. I'm told that lichens are indicators of good air quality.

I loved these lichens.

Then I looked closely at the inscription. Oh my. How can I decipher this?  I could get the first line. 

Praises on tombs are trifles

something spent

A man's good name is his

something something ent

So I'm playing with contrast and definition, eking out one letter after another, trying to see through the scrim of distractingly beautiful lichen colonies, and my brilliant sister Micky says, "Why don't you type in the first line in Google and see what comes up?" Which was an inscription on a stone at St. Botolph Aldersgate, London that read:

Praises on tombs are trifles

Vainly spent

A man's good name is his

Best monument.

She's not slow.

Basalt towers are a pretty good monument, too.

Talcott Mountain.

I needed that little climb, after two solid days of car. The fresh air was bracing.  The views were freeing.

All of which is to set off a Three Alarm Zick Alert . I will be at White Memorial Conservation Center in Litchfield, Connecticut tomorrow, Saturday, December 3, at 3 pm, speaking about Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest.  

On Tuesday, December 6, I'll give the same talk at the Westerly Land Trust , 10 High Street in Westerly, Rhode Island, at 6 pm. Bonus there: Original art from the Baby Birds book in a pop-up show! Tickets are available at  this link.

On Friday, December 9,  at 7:45 pm, I'll be at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, Morse Auditorium, East India Square (161 Essex St) Salem, Massachusetts 01970.  We'll have original paintings on display there as well. 

I always put this stuff in the left sidebar of the blog, but I'm never sure people check it, so I'm presenting it here. I'd love to see you!