Happy Birthday to Me!

 I usually get a post up on Sundays, but I was working on a new talk and I had to get it done. 

It's only supposed to be 20 minutes, and it'll be delivered at the Saturday banquet for the Sedona Hummingbird Festival (Squee!!). I've figured out that I work something like two hours for each minute of the talk. The amount of time and brainpower I expend on these things is ridiculous. If it comes out right, it sounds extemporaneous. Well, it isn't. Snort.

So I was tied to the desk all day, except for an insanely cool evening walk down Dean's Fork, the subject of its own post. Sunday happened to be my birthday, so I decided if I had to sit all day, I would count the blessings that came my way. Each one would be a present.

My first gift was a handful of protoplasm. A couple of days ago, I looked down at a tire rut at a construction site and saw a puddle of tadpole goo where the day before there'd been rainwater. Because it's late July, the only thing they could be is Cope's gray treefrogs.  I touched them and sure enough a few wriggled in a SAVE ME!! kind of way. Oh no. More than a mile from home, and it's going to be a blistering hot day, and there is no natural water I can reach in shorts for at least another mile, unless...

I glanced around the site and saw a gallon of drinking water on a folding table, with a stack of plastic cups. Eureka!

I scooped up the taddies and a good bit of silt and plopped them in a cup, pouring life-giving water over them. Imagine how good that feels to a tadpole on its dying day. Jogged that mile home carrying the cup of taddies, laughing to myself about how that must've looked to the neighbors. Poured it in a plastic jar and added beaucoup rainwater. I gave them a couple of days to rehydrate before releasing them, and they needed it. When they started acting like tadpoles instead of crumpled bent fetuses, I knew they were ready to go.

This was my first birthday gift.

For future reference, they love koi sticks. Nomnomnom.

On this morning, I took the jar down to our fishpond, fed the comets to repletion, then installed the jar on a shelf in the pond.  One by one, the taddies who had survived their ordeal came up for air, saw the great expanse of water and delicious algae, and swam off into the deep. 

This one swam curlicues, dove, wriggled through the algae; its joy on being in proper habitat that wouldn't dry up was palpable. Honestly, I don't know how tadpoles do it, always watching the water levels, praying for rain, facing the imminent prospect of death by baking. Ugh.

There being no puddles left anywhere in the sweltering July heat, our water garden was my best choice. I had to hope the fish would leave them be. Comets aren't very predatory where small swimmers are concerned. As I was monitoring their exodus from the jar, I saw a tiny comet, the first spawn of my four fish, swim by. If he can make it, they can, too. 

Second present: BUN.

 There's a litter of three young cottontails in the yard who, having grown up in the sanctum sanctorum of Indigo Hill, have no frame of reference for humans as dangerous animals. They barely recognize Chet as a threat, which (let's be frank) he barely is. So these foolish little animals perk their ears attentively but go on chewing clover when I speak to them, kneel down and take iPhone photos of them from barely five feet away. Dumb bunnies. But of course, I adore them. So, Bun. They're all three named Bun.

I have a little family of brown thrashers in the yard! I don't know if any of them are Cletus, Melba or Harper; I think not, because the adults aren't tame at all. But oh, being able to look out and see thrashers doing thrasher things, dust bathing, sunning, hunting bugs or, in the case of one of the parents, grabbing a sunflower seed and pounding the shell off--it's just the best. This is a juvenile. Gift 3.

Seeing the laborious way a thrasher, which doesn't hold seeds in its toes for shelling, has to pound the hull off a seed, I spread sunflower hearts in all their favorite spots. Watching them gobble them down: Gift 4.

Present # 5: Someone dribbled squirrel! He appreciates the sunflower hearts very much. He ooches around on his belly picking them up one by one. I have to say I love my squirrels. They annoy the hell out of me, but they're such fun to watch! So they're paying their way, at least partly.

The sunflower hearts brought in MamaCoon and her three kits! Gift #6: July 24 was first day she's brought them out at noontime.

It's amazing how long those raccoon babies are dependent. The smarter the animal; the more complex and comprehensive its diet, the longer the juvenile dependency period.

It takes a long time to learn to be a raccoon.

Gift 7: the yard robin resents crowding by a ruffian house sparrow, tells him to back off! Just having a robin in the Spa, ahhh. But this combo was too much.

 

#8: speaking of Back Off, a mourning dove warns a squirrel it's too close.  I am big! I will beat you with my wing! Interestingly, a dove would NEVER let a chipmunk get that close. Chipmunks are far more dangerous than squirrels. They're nastya-s little animals. Chipmunks remind me of the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 

 Adult male Cooper's hawk makes two passes through the feeder zone. I manage to capture its bill, leg and foot, enough to identify it, as it fetches up in the Japanese maple. Not a great photo, but still gift #9.

This just in!! July 25: I saw the Coop take a pass at some doves just now and scuttled with camera downstairs to shoot it from the bedroom. This is through two panes of glass, at a terrible angle, but OH MY. Talk about a gift, hurled from the Other Side. Thanks DOD!!

On the first shot, I captured the whole hawk. When it turned toward me, I lost my head and focused on its face. Ah well. Too excited to shoot well.

Please note that this hawk is perched in a retired, or as I love to say, recovering bonsai. DOD, you place your gifts so well. He adored my bonsai. 

You beautiful thing!! Please help yourself to mourning doves, and  take a house sparrow as a chaser, willya? You're also most welcome to squirrels, but please not the one who sccoches around on his belleh.

#10: Seeing a gray squirrel use its tail as a hat and parasol.

At this point it's 98 in the shade,  easily 102 in the sun, and I'm so thankful to be inside mostly (not) working on my talk. 

 # 11: a rubythroat investigates the coneflower, seeming to find a sip of nectar in the disc. Not something I see every day, but these midsummer juveniles try everything.

There has to be nectar in this big fat bud. Just has to. I'll wait for it to open. This photo: Gift 12.

I have a variety of wire supports for my tall cardinalflower and Fuchsias, and the hummingbirds adore them. Hummies appreciate thin perches. They can watch for Cooper's hawks from them. It must be nice to be too small and fast to bother with. But you still have to stay vigilant. 

 

This photo: Gift 13.

Meanwhile, fall migrants (yes, I said it; fall begins in July for warblers!) are sifting through the yard. A young yellow-throated warbler on its leisurely path southward. Or westward, or eastward...they do a bit of wandering.  This has to be one of my favorite warblers, Gift #14. Get the picture? Everything out there is a gift. I had intended to put all my birthday gifts in one blogpost, but it's evolved into at least three. And that is a gift in itself.

Happy birthday to me! Now you can see why it takes me so dang long to put together a talk. Or a blogpost. A giant set of Venetian blinds for the studio window would probably go a long way toward increasing efficiency, but ignoring the show going on just outside those windows in late July? Unthinkable! All but a couple of these photos were taken through my studio window, through the crop netting screens that cover them. Gift #14: having such a big, comfortable blind for a house!

Blessed, that's all!

Monuments and Memories at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. With Gratuitous Cats.

There was a bunneh holding a sunflower balloon when I got to Hodge's house on my birthday morning.  That night, there was Grandma Cree's lemon pound cake, swimming in lemon sauce and so, so delicious, to share with Hodge, husband John, Corey and Phoebe. How wonderful was that?

I have more images from Mount Auburn Cemetery, which is so rife with wonderful things to look at that I could probably blog from there for two years straight without running out of material. Add in the change of seasons, weather and light, and I could blog it for a lifetime.

I met bluestone on my birthday. A trip to Wikipedia leaves me confused as to whether this might be Pennsylvania or Shenandoah Valley bluestone; whether it's feldspathic sandstone (PA) or feldspathic greywacke (VA). Or neither. Dunno. The Webz being what they are, somebody might flutter in on little cupid's wings to tell me. Rocks. I love 'em, but I don't know 'em.

Look at what they can carve from this stuff, though. We found a family with fabulous bluestone tablets, marvelously hard and fine for detail.

I'm just guessing here, but I'm thinking the family name of Beebe might have something to do with the hive and its inhabitants carved hereon...Maybe they called Edward "Bee" in good New England fashion.

Loving the stylized wings that promise to lift these children (or their heads, anyway) into heaven. 

I'm not sure what's going on here, but we really dug this one, a sort of disgruntled face with a surprise turkeytail of feathers around it. If I had to guess I'd say it was an attempt at a likeness of the deceased.

This is a particularly lovely stone. I really love the botanicals on so many Mt. Auburn stones. 

Speaking of lovely botanicals, a sea change is occurring at Mount Auburn as management is emphasizing the use of native plants to beautify and attract pollinators. It's working!

The mound on which the viewing tower stands used to be landscaped, if I remember, in grass and shrubbery. Now, a native plant garden is springing to life!

I couldn't have been more thrilled to see these plantings, with tiger and spicebush swallowtails and silver-spotted skippers flitting through.

Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) and purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) are the big splashes of color. The butterflies were so happy. Butterflies in a cemetery lift the heart. Good going, MAC.

American goldfinches appreciate the seeds in all these coneflower heads, and they'll check out the bergamot come its time, too. A Baltimore oriole tootled overhead, red-eyed vireos sang; house wrens darted behind stones. It was divine to see what had been a non-descript hillside spring to life with unbridled meadows of native plants that belong and prosper here.

We climbed the tower for a breathtaking view of beautiful Boston. 

The light had a shimmery, surreal quality that made me feel as if the sky were putting on a show just for us.

Near Willow Pond, half-hidden beneath massive dawn redwoods (Metasequoia), Hodge showed us a gigantic boulder, cloven in half, that she'd never noticed before. It was the perfect compliment to the biologically ancient trees overhead. Corey swiped Phoebe's phone to shoot her portrait against the rock.

We grooved on some exotic hydrangeas on the way down to Willow Pond.

Since Phoebe's been working with Caroline Waller of Passiflora Studio, her already keen appreciation of flowers has expanded. She's helped Caroline pull off several weddings this summer, and learned volumes about floral husbandry, arranging, work and life. 

She now knows how to make these!

hence her enchantment with exquisite oakleaf hydrangeas such as inhabit Mount Auburn. She was itching to make bouquets! but of course restrained herself.

Watching the birdwatcher watching turtles at Willow Pond.

35 years ago, I found many life birds at Willow Pond. Vireos love weeping willows, and that's where I'd find them--white-eyed, yellow-throated, red-eyed, warbling--even Philadelphia sometimes!

To be there with my daughter and her love, well, that was a full-circle moment, one that filled my heart.

The paths beckoned us onward. 

We found more putti. I especially loved the artistry in these. Gorgeous faces, and pretty darn good wings, too, if you don't get too Science Chimpy about the two sets of secondaries or the overlap of the underwing coverts. Let's just say they're better than the bluestone wings.

Oh, the Easter lilies, singing of spirits rising again! One of my very favorite stones, natural and pleasingly asymmetrical, like nature herself.

Any trip to Mount Auburn would be incomplete without noting some of the weirdness that weather and acid rain wreaks. I'm always a bit creeped out by the sleeping children, but when they melt...

A cradle full of groundcover.

There is a dorm called Wigglesworth at Harvard. 

More weather-related alchemy... I'm pretty sure this little fella was not scowling when first installed. Hey! Where did my dadburn hands go??

We have lots of fairly irreverent fun at Mount Auburn, but we try to keep our chortling muffled.

Corey takes a dip at towertop.

Truly, one of the best birthdays ever. All right. I'm done celebrating, but I'll never be done reminiscing about time spent with people I love in a place I love too.

Gratuitous cat photos from Java Macomber

What? I wasn't just slouching unattractively.

Yes you were.

and her more decorous sister Star

who takes up a kitchen stool in a most delightful way.

These two are da bombs. I get a huge kick out of watching them interact with each other and totally manipulate Hodge and John into doing their every bidding, which revolves around (at last count) four metered daily feedings. Lots of very soft, pitiful coughy mewing and give-me-kibble-staredowns, all day long.

You forgot to top me off after the morning feeding.