A Day in the Life

 I'll be honest: I'm coming down off the I have the whole house to myself! cloud and tiptoeing along the ditch of Is that all there is? I knew the shine would wear off it pretty quickly.


Make no mistake: there's plenty to keep me busy here, with a book deadline looming and me working at capacity. It feels really good to have my watercolor painting chops honed and oiled. But when you've been used to other living souls around to feed, clothe and care for, to share with and laugh with, it can feel weird to go all day without talking to anyone in person. So you keep yourself busy.

I decided I'd better get my sneakers back on the road. I ran down to check on the neighbors' place.
 On the way, there was the most beautiful mackerel sky. I wish I knew how the clouds form and line up like that. I'm just glad they do. I feel like a bug under a lace doily. It's all so huge and beautiful and incomprehensible.

 
I turned off the road and down a dirt path. I stopped and rested in the shade of a bulldozer. The smell of oil and diesel is comforting, because it reminds me of my dad. He was always messing around with things that used oil and diesel. I figure if he's going to accompany me, it'd pay me to hang around machinery that he's interested in inspecting. DOD was all about machinery.

 

I walked to the rise, where I could see the neighbors' castle taking its final form. I've been walking in and watching it, with their blessing, for about three years.  Phoebe and I even walked around inside it not long ago, and it's really, really cool. It's so amazing to see it turn from big skids and piles of block into a real castle. And it's interesting to live near people who have a dream, however unusual, and are willing to put all that money and work into it.

 

It occurred to me that there aren't all that many people in this part of Appalachia who could or would follow a dream like that.  So that's something special, to watch their dream take shape. I like people with dreams.

Also special to me: The morning glories are finally opening. I didn't have to wait quite as long this year as two years ago, when they were still in tight, tiny bud on October 12! Still, it feels like forever. I planted the durn things in the greenhouse in April! Fenced and barricaded them against rabbits and chipmunks. Only two of the six made it even so. The chipmunks climbed up and into the 2' cylinders of chicken wire to bite them off. The rabbits nipped off any stems that dared grow outside the cylinders. It's been a thing.

But being able to drown in that heavenly blue makes the battle worthwhile. Last year I grew "Flying Saucers," these ridiculous tie-dyed white and blue things that on the seed packet sound great. This was as good as it got. And it's pretty good, but they weren't all that nice by any means.

 

 The vast majority of their blossoms were this sickly bluish-white, and though they were nice against a pearly sky, I hopped off the Flying Saucer train.

 

 Nothing beats this plant. I'll be faithful from here on out, Clark's Heavenly Blue.

Let's face it. I'm a color junkie. Always have been, always will be. It's just getting moreso. Here are my impatiens stairs. You can't really walk up them any more. I don't care. I like the cascade of color flowing like spilled paint down the old sandstone blocks. From the time we were first laying the stones, I knew they would be no more than a backdrop for flowers. I used to grow sun-loving succulents like portulaca, purslane and ice plant here, but the Japanese maple that stands guard nearby had other ideas. Slowly its canopy overspread the steps, and I was emboldened to try shade-loving annual impatiens. It turned out to be just the thing. And the rabbits didn't touch them, go figure! I'll do it again! And they've seeded themselves nicely. Doubt the seeds will make it through the winter, so I'll start fresh in spring.

 

 As I work away in the studio, painting top-secret blue jays and wishing I could share them with you, my phone chirps and bloops, telling me when a message from the kids is coming through. I am still in a state of suspended disbelief that I can SEE them. Get photos from them. Sometimes talk to them, and SEE them talking. It's a Jetson's world. I'll never get blase about that. I think of my weekly telephone call to my parents when I was in college and just shake my head.

It's one thing to see Liam in his dorm room three hours away in Morgantown, but quite another to see Phoebe, sweatin' to the oldies on La Gomera in the Canary Islands! How can this be?

She's on a Fulbright fellowship, and she'll be a teaching assistant in an elementary school, where her Spanish is going to reach full fluency. I can hardly believe it, and I can't wait to see pictures of her school, her co-workers and students.

La pinche calima is a Saharan dust storm! Ack!

Meanwhile, Liam shares his wry observations from WVU, where he's taking four art courses at once. He's drawing from life! I just keep shaking my head. They were both here all summer, and now they're off and doing amazing things, and I get to watch.

Both my fledglings have a good command of the language. Liam in particular has a really interesting vocabulary, and an always unexpected choice of words. I love to read their writing. 

As part of the Fulbright fellowship, awardees are encouraged to keep a blog. As a result, Phoebe is blogging, and I can't imagine anything that could delight this old Blogosaurus Rex any more than to see my girl spread her writing and photography wings for all to take in. Maybe it's seeing Liam's art on Instagram ( @lht_artwork). That delights me, too.

Phoebe's already got several posts up at canarycurrent.blogspot.com 

 and preliminary results indicate that the child can tell a story. I knew that already, but it ought to be a pleasant surprise to those of you who have been reading this blog for years. Check her out. I'd recommend reading from the first post!

I find it all pretty incredible. And it's happened so fast. One minute I'm asking them what they'd like for breakfast, and the next he's in a dorm three hours away and she's halfway around the world. And I'm reading her blog. 

Today I got buried in my work, preparing for a talk tomorrow. I ripped my talk apart and hammered it back together again with a bunch of new parts. I loaded the car with all my merchandise. And only when that was all done did I turn back to composing painting number 11 of 19 for Saving Jemima. 

And when I couldn't work any longer I got up to look out the south window of the studio. I could see just a bit of the sky, and I could see there was something serious going on out there.

Maximilian sunflower in the prairie patch

Better, I think, with goldenrod. It lets the clouds be their magnificent selves.

While I'd been working and thinking and absorbed, this incredible cloud parade had been filing silently past, unannounced and unbidden.

I walked out to the meadow and literally fell to my knees, looking for the right angle from which to record it. They were so huge and beautiful and growing, growing, growing, ever upward, their cauliflowery heads expanding, reaching higher and higher into the stratosphere.

It all reminded me of what has happened with my kids. While I was busy, they blew up into these magnificent proto-adults. And then they marched off to the south, like these clouds are doing. I can't stop them; I wouldn't even try. I just have to watch them go. 

Remember Flag?

I spend a lot of time looking for and at deer. I am actually happy that Daylight Savings Time has started, because I love raising the blind on something more like this, instead of total darkness. 

It's depressing to wake up at 5:30 and have to wait until 7:30 for the first light to creep under the blinds. 

So I get up and get busy. People who ask me how I do so much each day probably don't take into account that I get up well before the birds do. Today, I'm finishing up the last of a million yard chores involved in buttoning the place up for winter. I cleaned the pond last evening, racing the fading light. I've given up on using the siphon, which, thanks to endless amounts of decaying plant material, clogs every ten seconds, and wound up just scooping up muck and detritus on the bottom with a net. Faster. Easier. Same net effect. 

This morning, having climbed to the tower to watch the sun evidently rise behind a thick blanket of clouds, I burned a year-old Christmas tree. It went with surprising difficulty, me thinking back wistfully to our tradition of burning it on May Day night. It would go up like a torch while we howled like wolves. The old, forgotten tree being soggy and mostly without needles, took every bit of spare cardboard I had to even get it going. It's still smoldering out there. The point was to get it and an enormous wad of morning glory vine, laden with evil seed, burned. I'm done with the Japanese hybrid Flying Saucers. They were early and floriferous, but the overall effect of this variegated flower was a dull bluish white. Nope to the nope. And they set viable seed like they intended to take over the earth. I've had to make two bonfires just to burn the vines. It's back to Clark's Heavenly Blue, for good, even if I have to wait until October for flowers.  

September 2016. Flying Saucers, ehhh, zzzzz.

November 4, 2016. Clark's Heavenly Blue. Now there's an apt name.

I probably can't mention Ellen without giving many of my gentle readers a pang. I get them too. But in the Circle of Life Department, all is well. Pangs just go with the territory.

Remember Flag, Ellen's little daughter? Flag is one of her last set of twins, born spring 2016, that also included a buck named Pinky.

Here she is on December 14, 2016, a little over a year ago. Her baby picture. 

October 17, 2017

And here's the lovely young lady now. This October, she began coming into the yard every day, looking for the corn and sunflower seed her crooked little mama used to love.

And in coming to my yard, she brings me joy. Great joy.

No asymmetry here. Flag is classically beautiful, untouched by whatever left Ellen crooked and bent. She has kept her big square throat patch and her enormous white eye rings. Yes, it's Flag, looking back at me with swiveling ears. What a difference a year makes!

December 14, 2016. She was such a baby! and orphaned since the first week of November. 

But she's come through fine, with a little help from Ellen's friend.

I know it's just habit and corn that brings Flag to my yard, but the halting trust in her soft eyes is real. It is something I have earned, and I'm keenly aware that it's a privilege to see her, each time. It's a privilege to be able to watch her drop her head, knowing I'm watching her, to eat. That takes a lot of trust.

She still wears her little white toe shoes, the mark that Ellen left on all her babies. I am looking forward to seeing Flag in full winter coat. It's just coming in now, and she's still patchy and a bit red. She's going to be so beautiful when her thick dusky blue winter hair is all in. 

I thank whoever sends Flag here to visit. These wild friends of mine have taken on new importance to me, bereft as I am of the animal companionship I'd grown accustomed to.  I hope to stay worthy of her trust, and I hope too that she will use her sharp young eyes and ears to stay away from people who don't know or care what she means to me. I fall in love with every deer I come to know. I can't help it. 

I've learned that it's easier on the heart to love the small does and the spindly bucks. They stay around longer. Be safe, dear Flag. I'm counting on you.

Crepuscular

When climatic conditions are tough, creatures like Chet and I adapt. We've got a thing going on here in southeast Ohio...day after day of blazing blue cloudless skies, temperatures hitting 90 degrees every day--in late September!

The only way you can tell it's September is that it cools off to the upper 50's at night. That, and the fact that a lot of trees are going yellow and dropping their leaves from sheer drought exhaustion.

We haven't had a break in the heat yet. I can't remember a September like it. A 32-degree temperature swing from dawn to 2 pm! It's like living in the desert.

So Chet Baker and I go out before sunrise to get our exercise. And we see things. 

The Heavenly Blue morning glories, which have made three tremendous towers (we're talking 15' high) of lush dark green heart-shaped leaves, are only just starting to bloom. Never seen anything like that, either, but then I've never given them a couple of shovels of aged cow manure before. Why bloom when you can make leaves? Duh, Zick. Duh. Starve them if you want flowers.

Still, it's going to be uberfabulous for the bare month that they're in bloom, before frost cuts them off in their full glory. I foresee some sheet and blanket draping in my future, trying to protect them in late October. They're just too beautiful, and there are going to be hundreds of them! I can't wait!!! My Instagram feed is going to be solid blue. 

So off we went on a fine September morning, finding a surprise display as we reached the end of the driveway, one we couldn't see from the yard. Much as I wish our neighbors wouldn't wrap their bales in all that plastic, they do a nice job of catching the skylight.

You're going to have to click on this panorama, to fully appreciate the land's contours, the glorious dawn cloudage, and the way the pond catches the sky in its eye. And don't miss the little house, set aglow by the rising sun on the far right.

I took a little slice of the beauty.

As we headed for the Shadow Barn, I noticed three turkey vultures roosting on its roof--a first for me!

Then a fourth came to land on the telephone pole. Whoot!!

I told them they had nothing to fear, but they eventually lumbered off into the cool air, having to flap their dignity away. This one is already facing right, ready to go. 

Chet and I headed out into the monarch field, but there were no monarch caterpillars on the yellowing plants. It wasn't such a good monarch year here, but then I wasn't around to check very much, so some might have slipped through. The important thing is that Farmer Bob left most of the milkweed standing after the May cut, to let the caterpillars grow up.  

The light was incredible. And a big female kestrel was pondering on a wire, her shape so burly I thought she was a merlin for a moment. She took wing and in the deep shadows she looked bluish-brown above. Broke out into sunlight and it was clear I'd been deceived.

Rising sun, caught in foxtails. I like this photo because it somehow captured the intensity of the sun. I almost can't look at the brilliant spot, even though I know it's just white. It seems to glow as intensely as the sun!  I've been programmed my whole life to look away from it. So I do.

If there's sun, then there are shadows. I looked over and found myself high up on the Shadow Barn's roof! 

I wanted to be in the red, so I gathered Chetty and walked down the hill. This time of year is Shadow Barn time!

Shadow Tree time, too. I never tried the Shadow Tree before. Think I'll do it again soon. 

There is so much to discover in this one morning, I can't put it all in one post. More anon.

A Gathering In

 

This fall has been a long, slow, luxurious time for harvest. Mostly, it's been a gathering in of beauty. I really appreciate Japanese maples for their form and the beauty of their tiny baby-hand leaves. But I love them most in November, when they start coming into color as all the other trees lose their last leaves. Thank you, Japanese maples.

 These are the two liberated bonsais now living in the yard.

I enjoy imagining them back in their tiny pots, twenty-three years ago. They've always been full-grown trees. It's just that being in the ground lets them realize their full potential of growth.

Here's to being planted in good ground.

I keep the bonsais out on display until they're pretty much leafless. Then it's time to put them to bed for the winter.

I've been thankful every minute for the mild, sunny weather this fall. It makes everything so much easier. 

As many of you know, I've been wintering these trees in a pit in the backyard. When they got too tall for the pit, I started heeling them in on their sides. Then I'd cover the pit with glass for the winter. I had to take it off and water them every couple of weeks. 

When they got too big for that, I built the pit higher with cinder blocks. 

And then they got too big for that.

This fall I'd finally had it with trying  to shoehorn them into the pit. They were losing branches from being half-buried on their sides.  And I realized I had been fighting this for more than a decade, and decided to change the program.

I decided to ask Bill to dig a hole in the nice loose loam of our vegetable garden, and bury the unpotted trees halfway up their trunks. This would put them about 8" underground, far enough, I think, to keep the roots from freezing.  They'd be in a deer-proof enclosure as well in Jurassic Garden.

Bonsais awaiting burial. At this point, my back was still buggin' me and I couldn't do it myself. I was very grateful for the boys' help.

 I was there in a supervisory capacity, helping bury the trees. I hope this works. It's got to be better for the trees than being half-buried in soil. If it gets wickedly cold, I may heap fresh straw over them to help insulate the tops from the cold. But they should be just as hardy as the big trees in the yard.

While the boys dug, I harvested the sweet potatoes. Last spring I found a sprouty sweet potato in the cupboard and lopped off the top third and stuck it right in the garden soil.

The fork turned up the most marvelous treasure!

A dozen red yams from 1/3 of one--that's math I understand. And the coolest thing, to me, was the way the yam fragment I'd planted in May stayed intact. It didn't rot or wither away. It simply sent out a fountain of roots that then made a headdress of tubers. That we are now eating. 

Being a tropical plant, I wonder if this old yam piece would keep on going, throwing out tubers, but for November cold. I guess I'll never know.

As I worked around the yard, I took stock of all the lovely things still clinging to life after one frost.

My old tea rose "Rio Samba" is on its way out. It sent up only two blooms this year, off one thin stalk.  How fitting that it should push forth a flower in November.

I watched the bud swell, while the zinnia hung in there, waiting.

The rose seemed to find strength from the red zinnia that found itself in similar straits: blooming in November, the last leaf on the tree. 

I found myself going out at dawn, dusk and other times to photograph them together. I liked the way they clung together.

By and by the rose opened full, and the sweet sunny days wore on and on. 

All told, they had more than two weeks together, rain and shine, watching the winter come on. For flowers, that's an eternity. Something was keeping them fresh. Maybe the cold nights.

 I found myself visiting those two flowers at all times of the day. 

My favorite shot of them together conjured a Sheryl Crow lyric from "Home."

I want to watch the sun come up

In a stranger's arms

That same morning, looking the other way...you can see the Groanhouse twinkling with lights and flowers. I'm already looking inward, building my fortress against the dreary winter.
What's my choice? Killing frost and snow are coming soon. Get those twinkly lights up, girl. Bring in everything blooming, cheat winter as much as you can.

And the rose and zinnia bloom on.

 I think this will be the last blossom we see from Rio Samba. There's no way it's going to send up another shoot next spring. It's 20 years, and goodbye. You were the best rose of all.

And then I walked out to see them on November 21, and a deer had come in the night and nipped off the rose, leaving the classic angled snip of a white-tail's tooth. 

A single petal lay on the patio. And the zinnia bloomed on.  If she mourned her sweet fragrant friend she wasn't going to show it. She was going to trudge on, into winter.

But I thought she looked a little puffy under the eyes.

And just behind them, what was left of the great morning glory tower bloomed on, taking warmth from the cement patio.

 

I had cut the frost-bitten top off the vine, and carted it over to my brush dump. While taking another load days later, I found Zombie Glories still blooming on the pile. Rootless but hopeful.

 I kept shooting the morning glories that were left, this miniature landscape of ethereal color, withered balloons of flowers past and the twirled buds of flowers yet to come, frost permitting.

 

 I'm pretty sure this is my last photo of morning glories. November 21. That's darn late, and I'm thankful to have had their beauty, however tattered, for this long.

Fall rituals: the hoisting of the Halloween jack-o-lantern to the top of the tower for tossing off. Liam's up top, cranking the dumbwaiter to raise the pumpkin, which is in a laundry basket. It was so far gone that when tossed 42' to the ground, it vaporized on impact, which made us laugh for a long time.

And the dog warms his old bones by Liam's birthday fire. Like a cat, he jumps up, finds the warmth wherever it will be found.