About That Skunk...

While all this is going on with pets inside the house, there's a pet who roams outside, too. Not gonna lie. Going from a Boston terrier to a mountain cur has been a big adjustment. Chet's reason for living was to keep me company. I remember once when he treed a raccoon deep in our woods. He stood up against the tree, barked, got very excited. I watched awhile, then said, "OK, Chet, let's leave him in peace. I'm headed home." That little dog took a last look at the coon and trotted over to me, and that was the end of that. Chet knew what his job was, and he put his whole heart into it. He followed me to the washing machine, to the bathroom; he'd butt the door open with his little melon head when I was showering (never failed to get a peal of laughter from me as the cold air would rush in). And until he lost his hearing at the end, he never even needed a collar on our runs on the busy road, because he listened to every word I said.

I can't say that about Curtis, but he's listening much better than he was a year ago. I don't love him any less for his wandering spirit. My love for him is different, because our relationship is different. He's more like a friend than the everything that Chet strove to be, that I needed him to be. Curtis is just the dog I need at this stage of my life. He's taught me to loosen my grip and let go.

I am usually looking at the hind end of this dog. Not exactly a heeler.

Just like Chet, Curtis knows what his job is. He was bred to hunt. He's a fabulous companion, as you've seen, but his first love and calling is the hunt. So when Curtis trees a coon, he stands up against the tree, bites some bark off it, bays a little, and, if he's not a half mile away through the woods, I watch for awhile. And then I say, "I'll see you at home, Curtis. I'm headed back."  And there we part ways, because Curtis is not a Boston terrier. He is a Treeing Tennessee Brindle. I'll see him again in oh, maybe two or three hours, when he's good and ready to come home. He'll be riddled  with thorns, ear tips bleeding from their tears, tongue hanging down to his brisket, hungry and exhausted and oh, so happy. Overdoing it is his way. He is doing his job, as he feels it in his very cells. 

Work mode: sniffing scent trails old and new. 

So when a badly injured skunk showed up in the yard, Houston, we had a problem. As explained before, he'd gotten himself odiferized three times in only eight months since he'd joined our family. I had concluded that Curtis was one of those dogs who would never stop trying to catch a skunk.

And yet, in that one magic moment explained a few posts back (Fun With Skunks and Dogs), Curtis put it all together. Even as he was charging for the attack, he registered my anguished plea for him to leave SugarBean alone. And alone he has left that skunk, despite myriad opportunities to ruin all our lives since. SugarBean has become a bit of a fixture in the yard. Can't imagine why...

About ten days ago, I heard Curtis ranging about in the woods to the north, his bells jingling. Without even thinking, I called to him to come home. The shortest path was through the tunnels in a trumpetvine tangle that sprawls behind the compost pit. It's a highway for Curtis, for the opossums, raccoons, rabbits...and for SugarBean. Too late, I saw SugarBean, crouched in a vine tunnel. I heard Curtis coming straight toward the skunk. I couldn't do a thing. You can't stop a dog from coming to you once you've called. You can't tell him, "No, I've changed my mind, don't come home." I heard twigs crackling as Curtis drew closer. Frantically, I sent him mind pictures of backing away. And then he caught the scent and stopped. Backed up. Went back the way he'd come, and allll the way around the garage. I ran to meet him as he emerged from the woods a good 300' from where SugarBean was hidden. I threw my arms around his neck. That's when I knew this dog gets it.

I've been very worried about SugarBean. Her right hind leg is nearly useless; she puts it down only lightly and it obviously hurts. I've thought and thought about how to help her. The injury dates to sometime in early March, when I first started seeing her around the yard.

 

The idea from the start has been to support her nutritionally, and hope for healing in the leg/hip. 

Because as sweet and cute as SugarBean looks, she's not a housecat. 

She's not even a feral cat. She's a mustelid, and she packs a ferocious bite as well as a scent bomb that WILL ruin my whole life if it goes off. About a week ago, something perturbed her in the night, and she sprayed, and that scent drifted in Phoebe's open window and permeated the house. It woke everyone up, and kept me up the rest of the night. I spent that time thinking about what it means to have an injured skunk in residence in one's yard.

A friend of mine tried to help, investigating as to whether the Ohio Wildlife Center would admit the skunk if I was able to catch her. She really, really wanted Sugarbean to get medical attention, and made some offers and suggestions that included offering to drive the skunk to Columbus if I could catch her! (That's love!)  Well, I really wanted her to get care, too, but I knew that her injury is too old (more than a month) for the leg to be set, even if one could operate on a skunk and keep it in a clinic, which one simply cannot. Once it wakes up from the anesthesia, the first slamming door would bring a stinkbomb! And the word came back from OWC that, even if SugarBean were somehow caught and brought in, they wouldn't attempt to operate on her leg. So what's the point of catching her?

the first falcate orangetip of spring

But while I was in the flush of being persuaded that maybe something could be done to help this poor hobbling creature, I set out a cat carrier with the door wired open, and decided to feed SugarBean inside it.

She entered without hesitation. It's all about the food with skunks. But then when she was fed, she did the most interesting thing. I had piled dry straw up in the back of the carrier, and SugarBean went on in and curled up in there, and slept for five hours!

 

While she was sleeping, it began to rain, and I was able to put a doormat over top of the carrier to shield her from the rain without any trouble or protest from the skunk. 

That night was cold and wet, and, but for a foray around 10 pm, she slept in there all night. 

Well, how do you like that?

Skunks normally have a low profile, but this one is snakelike. She flows over the ground, very very slowly.

One of the most winsome and endearing little animals I've ever known.

I am forever trying to think of new ways to help her.

Hard Times Make Happy Pets

Life these days, at least for me, doesn't look all that different from life as it has been. There are two other beloved beautiful people in residence, and you can be sure that I'm reveling in that. I never thought I'd get to spend more than a couple weeks at a time with them both. And now, it seems, we have many weeks together to look forward to. All that other stuff aside (and that is a lot of stuff) that is a beautiful thing.

People say dogs and cats (and birds and all other pets!) are the greatest beneficiaries of this shutdown. Curtis is certainly getting an abundance of attention and affection. One of my dad's favorite sayings was, "Attention makes the pup." He used it to refer to children, too. If that's true, Curtis is getting even moreso. We are so grateful to have him here to love on. There's little that's as comforting as the scent and feel of a good solid animal when you're freaked out. I love this shot. Curtis is taking the Wide Stance which is becoming his trademark. He's got strong shoulders.

This dog is truly in hog heaven with his pack all together in one place. He still prefers Liam as a sleeping partner above me or Phoebe, but that's fine with us, because he kicks and has hunting dreams which involve lots of foot paddling, deep breathing and muffled yelps.

Our beautiful betta, whom the kids insist on calling Boogle, is another beneficiary of the attention of his humans. Bettas are very personable and Boogle enjoys his perch from his new desktop tank atop a column in a busy corner of the kitchen. He creeps on us all as we work and eat and demands treats, grabbing fresh bloodworms and shaking them like a tiny aquatic pitbull, darting enthusiastically after his daphnia. I hear the kids talking to him all day long. Liam does a noodle dance in front of the tank and Boogle goes crazy, shimmering up and down. Who knows what the noodle dance means to a betta, but Boog seems to be digging it.

Boogle is all I have now for tropical fish. After 25 years of cleaning it every three weeks, I finally broke down my 38 gallon freshwater Amazon tank. I was down to 8 fish (one of them Boogle) when a hideous cyanobacteria, expressing itself as blue green algae slime on EVERYTHING, overtook the tank. I fought it for more than a year,  endlessly scrubbing glass and plants, and finally conceded defeat. It was killing my beautiful plants; it smelled like rotten patchouli, I could NOT get rid of it, and I was finally and completely DONE with it all.

Mind you, in its prime, it was a glorious tank. The tank itself I'd bought well-used in the Pennysaver; it was not beautiful; had ugly peeling contact paper over pressboard on its stand. But the live plants made it an enchanted place, a world of its own, and I looked past all that at the life within it. I filled it with rainwater from my barrel. Emperor tetras bred like mad in it, and I actually sold them and vast armloads of excess plants to my fabulous local Marietta pet shop, We Love Pets. I had to weed it every couple of months and my plants were so gorgeous--they loved to see me coming with a cooler full of plants and young tetras! The tank paid for itself and all its accoutrements and then some! That part was really cool. When I look at this lush and vibrant shot from 2009 I realize how far down it had gone thanks to the cyanobacteria. Ah well. All things have their time.

I found a beautiful home for the 7 tetras with dear friends who have a 50 gallon tank, bought a 5 gallon Contour tank for Boogle, because I could not give him up. I rigged up my beautiful and expensive color changing LED light fixture over it (because the fixture that comes with the tank is, to put it kindly, merely decorative) and am a happy fishkeeper and aquatic gardener again. Plus, bonus! another well-lit plant growing space atop the water filter! Ha ha! The Zick way--cram 'em in!

I love water energy, fish energy, aquatic plant gardening...but a 38 long? Way too much for me now. I'm much better able to see what's too much for me now, having been through too much of late. This tank is juuust right. The cyanobacteria came along for the ride, doubtless on the plants, though I scrubbed them under running water and even gave them a 10-second diluted bleach dip. So I'm still scrubbing glass, d'oh! If anybody out there has a cure for slime algae, I'm all ears.

I would like this post to be longer and have more photos, but two nights ago I went to reach for a mug half-full of cold herb tea and instead of picking it up I knocked it over and guess where the tea went? All over and intothe keyboard of my new MacBook Pro, purchased in August 2019. I had just updated its OS to Catalina and was so enjoying it. 

Despite early hopeful indications that it would shrug off the insult, and my turning it upside down in a New York nanosecond, then setting it up for 24 hr. above a box fan, the tea did its work and my New Hotness is deader than a donut.  I am coming to you from Old and Busted, with no new photos in its library and an operating system that dates to its purchase (Snow Leopard...remember the big cats that came before the mountains?)  

Apple's gonna send me a coffin for it, and then I send it out and wait a minimum of 7-10 business days for the repair. Though I was told it could be longer due to you know what. Luckily I know myself well, and I'd purchased the turbo version of AppleCare that covers stupid human tricks like tea in the keyboard. After years of haranguing my kids about liquids on the same table as a laptop, I've done it now, too. I blame quarantine brain.

I finally feel like I'm settling into some kind of rhythm, and I was able to finish one job and am now going onto another. It's a big illustration job, and I took it because it was awesome and I needed something to get me painting again. Now I'm SO glad I did, because my book tour is totally cancelled/postponed/FUBARed. In happier news, I'm hearing from lots of people who are finally finding time to read Saving Jemima. I get emails every day, and actual letters in the mail from people who truly love it. That feels so good! Almost as good as having Phoebe and Liam cook dinner and call me into the kitchen!! And we're gonna watch a movie tonight, the four of us on the couch. Boogle will watch from his tank. Life is good. Hope it is for you, too. Hold your loved ones close!

 

Photo from Feb. 2019 by Shila Wilson. I was letting him run leash free on long hikes. Aaack! Once I got a load of who I had here, I started using a lead. Only now, a year later, do I very judiciously let him off the lead on hikes off our land. Progress is slow and steady. Dog is good.

Turning Inward--Home and Garden Solace

Out in the greenhouse, I went to pull something I thought was a withered bud off Hibiscus "The Path."

It was not a plant part. It was a huge female Bold Jumping Spider (Phidippus audax). And she had something in her jaws.  A brown marmorated stinkbug! I cannot imagine eating one of these, but maybe if you avoid the stink glands, you're good...This one was on a bud, sucking the life out of it, before its career was summarily ended by Ms. Phidippus.

I love jumping spiders. I hope this one makes a million babies. I'll put them all in my bedroom with the orchid collection. I let jumping spiders sit in my hand and zoop around on my arms and I have never, ever had one try to bite. No, they look up at me as if they understand that I am their friend.

I've had a bad bug year in the house. Zillions of Asian multicolored ladybugs. And way too many  brown marmorated stinkbugs. I hate them both with a passion. Here's what stinkbugs do to my orchid flower spikes INSIDE MY HOUSE. They pierce them and suck all the juices. This would have been an Encyclia cordigera flower spike with 5 incredibly fragrant lilac flowers on it, but for ONE stinkbug that I found on it. Ladybugs will pierce and chew orchid spikes too! I haaaate them so.

In past years, I bought yards of pale green tulle netting and made growing bags for the plants. It was a real pain because the stinkbugs and ladybugs still managed to find their way in. 

This year I hit on a more efficient protective device. It's Saran wrap, taped around the stem of the flower spike, with plenty of room for the buds to grow inside their makeshift protective bag.

It's ugly as hell, but it works. I have to look at bagged flower spikes for months. But oh, when they bloom! It'll all be worth it. 

In years past, before ladybugs and stinkbugs. This, my friends, is what's at stake. Encyclia cordigera:

Not only are they cool looking, they smell like muguet in heaven.

For some reason, stinkbugs leave Phalaenopsis bud spikes alone. They like to kill off rare orchids instead. Here's a fabulously graceful, full spike of 13 on its way. I've had this one for about five years. I remembered to use  orchid fertilizer late this winter. Duh. They do better if you feed them!

Next day, more are open. It's that ever-changing thing I love about growing plants. Checking in on them, seeing what's changed. Seeing the results of a well-timed feeding.

I like this strangely colored mini. It's more blue than magenta.

And this little clownface opened yesterday, and made me laugh. The whole plant isn't 5" across.

Speaking of mini, I'm in love with this supertiny aroid, Syngonium podophyllum "Mini Pixie."

The plant to the far left is the mother plant. I've had it since I took a cutting off my niece's plant, Thanksgiving 2017. And it still isn't 4" tall. I've split all these babies off it, and each one makes a gorgeous little specimen, variegated broadly with white. They're like microminiature caladiums. I have heard that people use this plant in fairy gardens. This is not a fairy garden, LOUISE. It is a planter with some very small plants and an oversized toad in it. Because Homey don't do fairy gardens. Well, I will put a toad in a planter, but that's as far as it goes. 

Another thing I'm growing in the house is sprouts. Many kinds. My very favorite, though, are sunflower. These are ready to harvest. You start them by sprinkling black oil sunflower seed atop moist potting mix, vermiculite or orchid mix, and you cut them off at soil level with a scissors when the shells finally pop off. It only takes about 10 days to get them to harvest. If you let them grow too long they'll get true leaves, and those are hairy, and not so good to eat. But the nutty flavor when you harvest them right after the shells pop off is amazing. So, so good. Anyone can do this. You don't have to live in the country! Just put them near a sunny windowsill and they'll turn into food.

The lettuce plants in the tower room ranch all bolted when Phoebe came home, but we got maybe six big salads out of them before I yanked them out of their planters. New understudies in the greenhouse here. I've got the planters all refreshed and ready. I'll grow them on the front porch from here on out, until October/November, when I'll have a new cohort ready for the winter tower room fun.

Outdoors in my shade bed, I'm watching these Virginia bluebells. When they are in full bloom, I figure the woodland plants will be, too. Then it'll be time to hit the trail! This year, I'll have both kids and Shila (at a distance) with me. Bliss. Heaven. 

Our daffodils have been absolutely spectacular this year. 

Phoebe's been making elegant bouquets. She says we have 13 varieties. I have never bought fancy bulbs. I have, however, dug a few here and few there at the margins of old cemeteries and abandoned homesteads, preferring to shop the heirloom section of the Earth's variety store.

Many firsts this year. We've tackled a bunch of spring chores much, much earlier than usual, simply because the weather seems finally to be breaking a bit, and we're here, and I have help and the time to do it.
The vegetable garden is cleaned up (with a team of three!), fully tilled, and I planted the peas this morning!! In order to get this done, I had to get the bonsais out of there.  I heel the bonsais into the vegetable garden in early winter. I take them out of their pots, dig a pit and sink them about a foot below ground level, and they do just fine. These are the small ones.

The big maples are getting really big.  I-can-hardly-lift-them now big. The one on the left is 43" tall. The right-hand tree, also my oldest at about 37 years, is about 38" tall. Scale is deceptive here. 

I'm so excited to see them leaf out slowly. It's the most beautiful thing to watch. Sometimes I'm so busy in spring I can't even get them potted before the leaves unfurl. This spring is different. I'm busy, but with different things. The things that fill my heart. Getting these trees out where I can talk with them and watch them change every hour is the thing.

Right now, this is my best looking tree. But things change.



This smaller one has real potential. I love that sideways sweep it has.



I've only got four potted maples to tend now. You may remember I sent the fifth out the meadow to become what it was born to be. It was so dang big, and it was trying to get out of its pot, getting taller and taller. I gave it a bigger pot and it started sending out crazy straight sprouts, headed for the stars.



The obvious thing was to liberate it, and put it out by Bill, where it gets daily visits and watering when it needs some.

I was most gratified to have a shaft of sunlight fall on this tree just as I was composing its picture.

 It is so very beautiful now. I can't wait to see it become a full-sized tree, like the two liberated bonsais in our yard. I mean, I can wait.  I want to wait. It'll just be fun to watch it all unfold.

This western red cedar that I got in maybe 1987(?) when it was about 8" tall has grown into the most beautiful specimen, complete with sweet little blue cones in season. It was given to me by a gentleman I knew in Connecticut who I'm sure is long gone. He asked that I remember him as long as I have the tree. His name was Dodie and he was wonderful. Loved bluebirds and used to put orange halves on dowels around his yard for the orioles. It was in his yard that Vanna, my Savannah sparrow, was found, rendered flightless by a cat. I kept Vanna for 17 1/2 years, effectively defining the possible life expectancy of that species. That's how Dodie and I became friends. Vanna is long gone, too, but the tree and my memories live on.

Thirty-three years on, here's that cedar you gave me, Dodie. It's 21" tall now. 

Still taking care of it, and the bluebirds too. They are initiating clutches earlier than any year in the 27 I've been keeping records. Birds are always telling us things. Those of us who listen to them have to tell the rest of the humans.