Happy Birthday, Corey!

Ut-oh. I've never done a birthday post for someone who wasn't an official member of the family, or our dog. What could it mean? Well, today is Corey's birthday; I'm breaking my rule because he's 22 today I say I say I say he's TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD and that, son, is not very old for all the things that boy can do.

Just picked up ukelele, then guitar, and he's already good at it, durn him.

Anyone who cleans and organizes my spice cabinet out of pity and a desire to introduce order to chaos has my undying gratitude. I try to keep it nice. But tonight I put a spice mix on the Unmixed  Spices shelf. I did that. You're going to have to come back and set me straight again. Soon, please.

But organizing cabinets is only one of his virtues. He has a romantic streak a mile wide, and he loves to surprise Phoebe, loves to keep her guessing. He showed up as a complete surprise once to take her to a formal dance at Bowdoin. She'd been planning to go with a bunch of friends, so she had a dress all picked out, but...sigh. He took a bus from Boston to Maine and texted her that afternoon, asking her to look out her dorm room window.

SQUEE!! Phoebe about keeled over. Needless to say, so did I when I got this from Phoebs.

CUTE or WHAT

He's teaching her to dance, the old-fashioned way. This is a Promenade. It's OK that there's no music, and we're on turf on Front Street. Just work with me here.

When he comes to visit there are pies, cookies, bars, arrghh. And they're all so good. We're helpless. He bakes. Lord, he bakes.

Liam adores him, and it's no wonder. Corey and Phoebe have always included him in whatever they do, never once treating him like a pesky little brother. 

 Saying goodbye after Corey's first visit to Indigo Hill.

July, 2013

Somebody's done a whole lot of growing since then!

January, 2017--Liam's taller than his honorary bro.

Also from 2017's visit, my favorite of a zillion favorite photos of Corey and Phoebe. He's caught her a New Year's bullfrog!

This gifted fellow has brought so much joy to our lives, in so many unexpected ways. He's like a bloomin' onion! peeling back the layers, to find yet another wonderful thing he can do.

Who could forget the lady bobcat Corey caught on trailcam a couple Julys ago? Probably James' mama!!

To be followed by Corey's latest unexpected gift: placing a longterm trailcam on our sanctuary. This is only the first of what I'm sure will be many howlers. Gack. I holler and whoop when he downloads his photos. As you have seen (remember the Owl on the Dingus?) He's got the camera running out there, and we're going to wait until he visits again to look at what he gets. This was from the test placement. Turned out to be a good spot!!

Derp?

Happy birthday, Corey Christopher Husic. You are a gift in every way. Thank you for gracing our lives!!

photo by Kris Macomber, atop the tower at Sweet Auburn.

And now, Phoebe's favorite fiddle tune: Maggie Mead, in a morning hoedown in our kitchen. What joy! What a boy.

Bill: I'm sorry about the legs. If it helps, I think it's cute. I like to watch Carmelita bounce as you strum. Had to get Corey's socks in there, Chet Baker looking for fiddlecrumbs too.

xoxoxox Co hurry back we miss you all the time! Love, Mai

Turkeys in the Straw, Geese on the Levee

In our birding safari, we proceeded from the Harmar Bridge in Marietta, Ohio, to the Levee, where Canada geese gather to stare out at the river, poop, honk, and wait for the people who feed them. This gentleman liked their lineup, and got down low to photograph them. It's not often I see people doing the things I do.

Several photos taken, he strode off.

I swung the lens around just in time to catch another smooch in progress. My goodness those young people do a lot of smooching.

I'm sorry. I can't help it. It's just so sweet. I'll leave you alone now. I'll go photograph somebody else. 

I found some hipsters taking pictures of each other. 

They were extremely skinny, and the guy had a big ol' bee beard. Somebody please explain to me the big ol' bee beard thing, especially when it's paired with super skinny cigarette pants and knit hats. I don't get it. Nah, that's OK. There's no explaining fashion to me. Fashion left me in the fog years ago. These people clearly know what they're doing. I'm wearing the same dung-colored clothes I've always worn.

We walked toward the confluence of the Muskingum and the Ohio, where it's legal to feed ducks and geese (they don't let people do that on the Levee. Too much poop.)

There was a young musician practicing guitar there. What a nice thing to see! On this murky warmish day, people were out doing interesting things. I love walking around Marietta. It's waking up in so many wonderful ways.

And there was Greta, Queen of the Levee! I love seeing my good old friends. She was looking strong as always. 

A pretty good looking black duck...but I had a feeling it had mallard genes, or it wouldn't have been sleeping on the levee with me standing right there. 

A sleepy mallard drake peeked at us, then closed his eye, then peeked. His eyelids are white. I explained to Liam how birds can sleep with one half of their brain at a time, and keep the other half engaged and peeking around for danger. I think I do something like that, too.

I was searching the levee's earthen slopes for a familiar shape. 

Mr. Lonely! the hybrid goose (Canada x Chinese swan-necked) who I saved from entangling monofilament back on Nov. 3, 2016. 

photo by Dorothy Lowe

I always fancy he remembers me. He looks like he does. I was pleased to see his feet healthy and unswollen once again. What a guy, what a goose. I love his spirit. 

He showed me how well his feet work. 

The next thing we did was drive across the river. We were driving along the flats in Boaz, WV, just across the river from Marietta, when we saw a zillion dark specks in a cornfield. 

We piled out of the car at an historic cemetery to get a closer look.

Ivy climbs the old oaks, and yuccas mark the graves.

I love cemeteries. Without this one, there'd surely be a housing development there. But such old cemeteries represent sacred ground, and nobody wants to mess with the people sleeping there.

We peered out of the trees at the massive flock of wild turkeys feeding on waste corn.

When they finally clumped together to adjourn to the forest, I counted 72--my largest flock ever.

I would not be surprised if this spectacular abundance of turkeys is a direct result of the periodical cicada brood of the summer of 2016. Every poult that needed something to eat got it, in spades.  The biggest flock I'd ever counted until now was 17 years ago, during the last cicada outbreak, and that was 41 hens and poults right in our meadow. And they were all eating cicadas.

Our last bird of the day was a rattling kingfisher, somewhere in the mists on the mighty Ohio.

Well, the time has come for another fiddle tune from the Talented Mr. Husic and the Talented Mr. Thompson.

This KitchenMusic tune comes with snap peas AND cauliflower, and a girl eating that cauliflower! Here's "Squirrel Hunters!" I love this one because Bill and Corey are nice and loose from an afternoon of sledding with Liam and Phoebe. I did not partake, for shingly reasons. I could not imagine sitting on a plastic sled, bumping over frozen ground at a high rate of speed. I may never be able to imagine that again.

 Please pardon my hillbilly hollering at the end. I get excited. I love having live old-time music in my kitchen!!!!! WOOOOO!!!

What Gets Me Through

Over the years, I've come to realize that this blog is not just my journal. It's my family's journal. 

I don't write as many posts as I used to, and when I'm otherwise occupied, I may not be able to get three posts out in a week (always the goal). I try to make what I do manage to post worth reading: for me, for my family, and for you. There is a good bit of perfectionism going on, because a writer has to satisfy herself first, before opening the door and putting it out for readers. 

When my blog is the only writing I'm able to fit into an overstuffed life, I try to make it good.

Corey and Phoebe returning from the Meat Pile, where he's put a trail camera set to snap away for a few months.

Note Meat Bowl.

I've just finished a cool book by Elizabeth Gilbert called Big Magic. It's about kindling one's creative flame. Shila gave it to me for Christmas. I'm savoring it slowly, munching on a few chapters at a session. It's full of underlined passages, exclamation points and notes--signs that its message is sinking in. I hope to pass some of that good fire on in talks and workshops in 2017. 

For years, I've been collecting quotes from writers. One that's sticking with me lately is by poet Grace Paley. 

 "The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don't live with a lover or a roommate who doesn't respect your work. Don't lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don't write."

Come on, Mether.  You need to walk faster. I am not going anywhere without you, not even home.

Write what will stop your breath if you don't write.  OK. I choose to live in gratitude, because living any other way is not an option. And the thing that's keeping me focusing on joy of late is having Phoebe here with Liam for a month's midwinter idyll, she fresh off 6 months away, first in San Diego and then Panama. Bringing Corey into the mix for ten days kicked it up a couple notches, and carried me through a hard time. I don't like to think of where I'd have been without the kids around to talk with, laugh with, feed,  be fed by, photograph, and watch. 

The hard time included mid-December surgery (nothing scary, but painful) complications (painful, inconvenient, but healing nicely) and, for good measure, a case of shingles, blossoming right through the surgery site (ow ow ow. Ow!).  Happy New Year! You're grounded for a month! Maybe two. Shingles: We'll get back to you on that. We like it here, gonna hang around awhile. Basically, the shingles virus, which has been sleeping in my spinal ganglion since the day John F. Kennedy was shot, woke up and raced to the torn-up tissue at my surgery site to have a great big party. Recognizing the suspicious blisters, we caught it within 40 hours with Acyclovir, or I shudder to think what I'd be going through. Followed up with a vaccination once the vesicles dried up. And now I'm bathing it in apple cider vinegar, and that seems to be getting through. Anyway, it's not fun. If you haven't had a shingles vaccination yet, please get one. The government has just bumped the age limit for getting them down to 50 (it was 60). The vaccine will cut your risk of developing shingles by 51%, and believe me, that's a percentage you want on your side.

As is my wont, I like to wait to see how things are turning out before saying anything. A month in, I can see that things are going to be OK. I'm still weak, still don't feel like hiking, much less running, and I'm struggling to catch my mojo, which has wandered off through the muddy winter woods, walking faster than I can right now. I can see it from here, though! 

Back to better things. I don't mean to fawn on these kids, and I try not to embarrass them. I just mean to celebrate all the good they bring to my life. It makes me happy to get out in nature with them and shoot with my telephoto, as if they were frolicking deer (my usual subjects when I can't get any humans to frolic for me). 

More from that rare sunny New Year's Day walk!

Liam waits in ambush.

Corey and Phoebe pause for a little canoodling in gorgeous sidelight. Liam, bombing the photo.

We all read Reader's Digest. And laughter IS the best medicine. Dr. Liam is in the hizzle! That kid has all his dad's funny, with his own odd twist. I can't get enough of him.

He climbs aboard a tractor, the bigger twin of our old Massey 35. I think about how very different this strapping lad's life would be if this were 1917, or 1957. He might have to know how to run that thing, know all the implements, know what a PTO is, and what needs to be done with it. He might need to know when the hay is ripe, and what the weather will be doing in the coming week. Nowadays, hardly anybody needs to know that stuff, it seems. I still want to know that stuff, still want to hang out with people who know. I wonder if he ever will.

We double back to check something out and little Mr. Set in his Ways Chet Baker wants to head for home instead. So Phoebe carries him.

Good boyfriend: loves family dog

Chet's getting triple the love he usually does.

Love keeps us all going.

Phoebe and Corey spot and catch a New Year's Day bullfrog! Who's ever done that in Ohio? That frog should be sleeping in the mud.

Maybe he wanted some of that love, too. Ah, the blues in this photo, and the reds.

If all this weren't enough, there's music, sweet sweet music. I captured three of Corey's fiddle tunes on video, and I wish I'd recorded all of them. Suspect there will be other chances. I love the communication between Corey and Bill, whose backup guitar style is likely something the old-time music world hasn't seen. But it works so well! The synergy between these two musicians is palpable. Yes, I'm glad to have these videos. I go back and watch them, listen to the music flowing out of those guys, and remember how it feels to have an old-time band in your own kitchen, with the cauliflower sizzling in the pan.