News from the Hill

Two festivals back-to-back--one in Tennessee, and one in Florida, have just about laid me flat. I breathed something in on the germ tube to Tennessee, and it hit me the Saturday of that festival, and by gum it's still here, 12 days later. Sick as a dog in Florida, but managed to muster enough voice to give a talk and sing a two-hour gig with the Rain Crows. One thing I'll say, being that sick and having to soldier through makes one re-examine one's priorities. I've got one more year of total craziness coming up, with a couple of dozen festivals and talks, and then, by God, I'm gonna stay home and do my real work. I've been slathering myself in Vick's Vapo-rub, sucking on Fisherman's Friend lozenges, and going to bed at 8:30 every night. Tell the coroner when they find me to check for menthol overdose. 

With few exceptions, all I really want when I'm away is to come back home. I think about my neighbors and friends and know they're missing me. 

Buffy definitely misses me when I'm gone. She looks pretty good this winter! She's easily 9 or 10, but her weepy left eye looks a lot better than usual, and she's keeping the weight on. Proud of her.

I never see Buffy without Ellen's daughter Flag. I love seeing them together, love believing Buffy adopted Flag and Pinky when Ellen was murdered. And I wonder where Pinky might be keeping himself. Haven't seen him since fall, but I'll know him when I see him.

Weirdest thing: my chipmunks have stopped hibernating. They're here every day, no matter the weather. You'd think they'd crawl into a well-lined burrow and sleep away the single digits, but no. What is with that? Anyone else noticing chipmunk activity year-round? O Powers that Be, what does this mean?

The males are fighting a lot these days, which I always find amusing to photograph.

Whoop! that's two chipmunks in a pancake and syrup blur of motion. I'm thinking of the tiger running around the base of the tree until he turned into syrup in the problematically titled story Little Black Sambo, an 1899 vintage kids' book still popular when I was young. Dating myself, much? Man. I'm older than dirt. This happens when you blog for 13 years.

In case I had any doubt as to their gender, I figured it out when they took a breather...mighty fine pair there, sir.

I really dig photographing chipmunks. They're always up to something. And one really nice thing about them is that when they strike a pose, they tend to hold it for minutes on end. That's hard to find in a mammal. 

In other news from Indigo Hill, the greenhouse is beginning to show signs of life. Toughest winter yet for my plants. Most of my beloved geraniums have a black stem rot that is killing them off, and they're dropping like flies. I suspect it's fungal, or perhaps bacterial, and it seems there's nothing I can do about it. It just keeps spreading. This little alpine geranium, Erodium reichardii from Cyprus and Corsica, is a welcome exception. As in: Not croaking. We like that!

 The other geranium that isn't croaking is "Happy Thought Red." Great Scott, what a plant it is!! I took this photo today, with my glove for scale. Yep, she's 5' across and going for 6. Here's to plants that aren't dying. I'm so glad this one is prospering. I've taken a bunch of cuttings just in case.

If you're going to be overtaken by a geranium, this is a goodun' to be overtaken by. I adore this plant. Its velvety lime leaves, splotched emerald; its brilliant scarlet-cerise flowers. What's not to love?

One of my occasional fantasies was to be a grower of specialty geraniums. Root rot has put the kibosh on that dream. Let it go...

There are other plants to love, like this "Weeping Blue Ginger" that's actually a spiderwort, Dichorisandra. 

Speaking of letting go, I haven't seen Jemima since Christmas Eve. I've no idea where she's gone. A big flock of 13 swept in right around Christmas, when the severe cold came in, and they stayed until the cold broke. It seemed they replaced Jem's clan, which disappeared altogether. Now I've got seven jays in the yard, and I don't recognize them. Sometimes I think I'm seeing Maybelline and Darko, but I just can't be sure. My frame of reference is gone. I sure am not seeing my Jemima. Even though I put out the good stuff every day. Jay stuff. 

The letting go was incredibly difficult. Having Phoebe home for a month really helped with that, gave me some perspective and welcome diversion, someone else to love and care and hope for. I am given to obsessing, and I still look carefully at every blue jay I see, hoping one will turn out to be Jem or one of her clan. I've made progress though; I don't watch and hope all day long now. No, I just watch. 

I lost my favorite rabbit Notch last summer, probably to Cindy the bobcat. I then fell in love with a rabbit I named Red, a languid, lanky animal who lounged around artistically in the heat.

I'm now trying to figure out if the rabbit I've been calling Julie Fatbottom could be Red, disguised in winter fur. Her ears look too short to be Red's. But maybe it's because her fur is so thick? They share a wide thin white collar...I just can't be sure.

The only other thing Red and Julie seem to share is a deep red blaze between the shoulders. Maybe with spring and thinner fur, the mystery will be revealed. Maybe Julie Fatbottom is really Red. It doesn't really matter who the rabbit is, I know. But I reach, again and again, for these connections, this continuity, with the wild things around me. It keeps me going, keeps me hopeful. It gets pretty lonely out here.

My heated dog dish birdbath crapped out on me in the middle of the coldest period. I called every feed store and hardware in the area, and finally had to drive 1.5 hr. to Athens to get another because they were all backordered. I get such a kick out of this simple device. I understand from retailers that they rarely last two years. If there's anything I dislike it's built-in obsolescence, and having to throw out a perfectly good looking dish that no longer works. Ugh! But I'm hooked on the birds who are hooked on it.

I think that the female flicker who uses it may be the same one who visited the year I first acquired mine. This photo was taken Dec. 8, 2014. This little gal, to my great delight, was one of my first customers at the heated dish!

And lo and behold, here's a female flicker looking very much like her on Jan. 31, 2018. Coinkydink? I think not. Flickers aren't that common around here in winter, and female flickers who visit heated dog dish baths are an even smaller subset. Grasping for a thread of connection, again. I grasp with joy.

And while I was photographing her yesterday, wondering if she might have been visiting the yard for four years, a drop-dead gorgeous jay landed on the bowl beside her. WOW. What's gonna happen now? I can tell you, if that were a red-bellied woodpecker, there'd have been a rumble!

But she didn't bat an eye. She regarded the jay calmly. Dipped for another drink.

There's room here for both of us, she seemed to say. 

And my heart swelled like to burst when the jay dipped its head and drank, too. Little matter that the flicker could have put its eye out with one quick strike from that scimitar bill. The jay seemed to know she wouldn't. 

Ahh, birds and little plug-in dog dishes. They bring me such joy. 

So the winter days roll by, and I work and cough and cough and work. I've just put the finishing touches on a slideshow about the Vienna snowy owl. I never dreamt I'd be working on it for weeks, but I have been. When all was gathered together, I had 15,000 words and 160 images to sort through. I realized that, over the past month, I've written a book on that owl. I know why I did it. It's because Jemima left. I needed another focus. Gathering his story together and tying it all up with a bow has been a deeply absorbing pursuit, one I'm grateful to have had. I'll present it Tuesday, February 6, at 6:30 pm in Athens, Ohio.

Maybe I'll see you there. Until then, grab that last light of day. Get out there.

This evening marks Imbolc, an ancient pagan holiday that celebrates the midpoint of winter and the turning toward spring. I learned that from my friend Gale on Instagram. And I am ON IT. Listening for the woodcock, grabbing at those connections.

Tending toward RED

We were looking for folding camp chairs to sit in for Liam's crew regatta on a chilly Saturday morning at Home Depot (because of course we'd forgotten to throw them in the car) when I spotted it: a gigantic pot of gerbera daisies, marked down to $2.67???!!!

OK, it IS mid-October, and this isn't going to be sitting on the front porch for very long...but $2.67???!!! You couldn't buy a bouquet of cut carnations for that!

I bought my first red gerbera this spring, and that plant bloomed hard all season long, delighting me. It always looked like a million bucks, and still does! Here it is after giving its best all summer, now groovin' on the greenhouse warmth. Not sure what it'll think of the lower winter temperatures, but it's all an experiment anyway. I don't want to be without gerberas again. They're just surreally beautiful, and besides, they're from South Africa!

So I looked at the enormous pot of gerberas, asked myself why I needed more, reminded myself it is mid-October, walked away, looked at it again...

and lifted it into the cart.

Oof! That's a lotta biomass. I figured there were probably three plants in that one pot, but I'd have to knock it out to be sure.

It sure dressed up the back of my car!

As I get older, I notice I'm gravitating toward RED. Red house. Red seatcovers for the Subaru. Red flowers. Hell yes. Red. Red is assertive, even when I'm not. 

 Wish I were more red! Red says I'm here! get used to it. Red gets me revved up. Red makes me happy. Red shouts, instead of whispering.

Not putting the red hat on just yet, but getting redder all the time.

When I got home, I got out the Leonard Deluxe SOIL KNIFE that my friend Vicki sent me for my birthday.

 

This is the baddest ass garden tool you will ever have.  Get it for yourself; give one to a friend, but make sure you hide it when you're really, really mad at anyone. Because it is Dangerous.  

It has a razor-sharp serrated edge, as I found out very quickly. OW.  Red. Gravitating toward red, making red. Lovely shade, that. Matchy matchy! I kept working. Soon the wound was packed with potting soil and quit bleeding. I'm not much for Band-Aids, nor sterile technique.

Plant One

I knocked the plant wad out of the pot, peeked at the leaf clumps and ascertained that yes, there were three individual plants in the same pot. With the soil knife, I simply sawed the rootball into thirds in a matter of seconds. No teasing apart, no trauma to the plants. I could preserve the soil around the roots intact, and just separate them cleanly. 

Plant Two--slightly lighter coral-red

Plant Three--a fetching fuchsia pink--which looks horrible with the two strong reds anyway. A separate pot for each!

At the middle of the mass of crowded gerberas, I found what I expected: rot.

This is caused by poor air circulation, and it can attack new flowers. This one will never open. It's been strangled by rot.

It was high time these were divided. They never should have been put three to a pot in the first place.

Muuch better.  And with the soil knife division and room to expand, they never wilted for a moment.  If you click on the picture you can see where Vicki wrote "Happy Birthday, JZ!" on the blade. Ha! 

Let's see. These glorious plants cost me $.89 apiece. I can guarantee you I'm going to get $89.00 worth of joy out of them this winter. 

Speaking of winter joy, here are six tuberoses I dug from the gardens, which are in full spike, and will burst into bloom in late October and mid-November. Those puppies are coming into the greenhouse when it gets cold. 

I can just imagine sitting under soft twinkly lights, inhaling that matchless fragrance as the first snow  ticks on the greenhouse roof. I'll lean over and turn up the gas heat a notch and smile, breathe deeply.

This time of year, it's all about preparing for winter, in my own squirrelly way. Knowing deep inside, the way a bear knows, that it's going to be a real stinker, with some bright spots sprinkled here and there. Making a happy place for myself, filling it with the things that sustain me, in that endless and tireless quest for beauty. Beauty: my prime motivator, my sustenance. For some people it's money, or movies, theater, dance, music, or food, or some combination of all that. Or different things. Travel, riding, running. For me, it's about the beauty of living things, growing things. It's caring for them and making them all they can be. Maybe I should list my profession as "Aesthetician," but the kind with bloody knuckles and dirty fingernails. Without the makeup, hairspray or heels.