Pic of the Day
| Quote of the Day Senator John McCain on the blogosphere: When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed, and wiser than anyone else I knew. It seemed I understood the world and the purpose of life so much more profoundly than most people. I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me, and, consequently, had suffered some number of years deprived of my insights. I had opinions on everything, and I was always right. I loved to argue, and I could become understandably belligerent with people who lacked the grace and intelligence to agree with me. With my superior qualities so obvious, it was an intolerable hardship to have to suffer fools gladly. So I rarely did. All their resistance to my brilliantly conceived and cogently argued views proved was that they possessed an inferior intellect and a weaker character than God had blessed me with, and I felt it was my clear duty to so inform them. It's a pity that there wasn't a blogosphere then. I would have felt very much at home in the medium. |
| Tidbits In the 1400's a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb" ------------------------------------------- Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"...and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language. ------------------------------------------- The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone. ------------------------------------------- Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S.Treasury. ------------------------------------------- Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better. ------------------------------------------- Coca-Cola was originally green. ------------------------------------------- It is impossible to lick your elbow. ------------------------------------------- The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska ------------------------------------------- The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...) ------------------------------------------- The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38% ------------------------------------------- Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair. ------------------------------------------- The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer. ------------------------------------------- The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments. ------------------------------------------- Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what? A. Their birthplace |
The Gardens Grow and Spring 2006 Shines
It was mid-May 2006 and I sat on the front porch as the cool breezes kept the trees dancing and waving their new spring leaves.
It's been like this most of spring in this year of our Lord, 2006. There's been a noticeable lack of rain and as a gardener, I must worry. Yet here in the wilds of Delaware, almost every day of April and then May broke cool and clean. Breezes blow in from the nearby ocean and the temperature has remained a steadfast 65-70 on most days.
It's like living on a tropical island.
It was such a beautiful day that mid-May on my modest porch perch that I could not, even though lunch and Rush Limbaugh beckoned, pull myself up to leave the beauty of the weather and the bloom of the spring flowers.
Human beings have a tendency to worry about good things rather than just enjoy them. I'd been for the first two months of the spring 2006 fretting and clucking about the lack of rainfall, the unusual beauty of the daily weather, the need to augment natural rainfall with water from the hose.
On that porch day I finally leaned back in my chair and decided to enjoy the beauty of sunshine, breezes, waving foliage and spring floral displays. God, I pondered from the porch perch, wants us to have these beautiful days and here I sit worrying about it.
The human tendency, as I saw it, was to assume the "if things are looking up, watch out" line of thinking.
So Whoever sent this beautiful spring weather to the Delaware swamps this spring, know that I am thankful for the beautiful, breezy bounty. Across the fruited plains there are floods, endless rains, heat waves, odd snow storms, tornados and a myriad of strange weather, while here on the Delmarva peninsula almost every day dawned pleasant and comfortable.
I felt guilty about that. Yet if I had a choice I'd have detoured the Midwest tornados out to sea and stopped the flooding New England rains in the clouds. But I had no choice save the choice of actually enjoying the beautiful weather that provided amazing blue skies and comfortable weather for most of the Delmarva spring. So I remained on the porch, marveling at the beautiful weather and wondering if I was the only one on the planet to notice.
A few days later, at lunch at my niece's home, I remarked on the beautiful spring weather this spring. "It has been gorgeous," my niece responded. "And it's unusual; very often we barely have a spring before it turns into a hot summer." I was so delighted that at least one someone else in my surround took note of the beautiful weather. As my niece pointed out, it's a bit unusual in this neck of the woods.
I'm much happier now that I decided to stop fighting the anomaly and just sit back and enjoy it.
Of course, the dearth of rainfall and the unusually cool weather through to now almost Memorial Day 2006 has had some effect on the garden plantings. I put the annuals in the ground a bit early. Common wisdom has it that such as annuals should not be planted until Mother's Day. The notion being that around the second Sunday in May all danger of frost has passed.
My houseplants, also sent outside in late April, sulked and turn brown at the unusually chilly temperatures this time of year. Begonias definitely get an attitude in cool weather. Instead of welcoming their garden spot by growing proud and green, these annuals actually began to shrink in their garden spot! The marigolds tentatively began to grow but slowly and with not much enthusiasm. Petunias, an annual that normally thrives in hot and humid weather, oddly grew with at least a little bit of enthusiasm. Coleus, that annual more beloved for its colorful leaves, sulked so much that many of them have totally disappeared for the chill.
I suspect that come the first hot weather spell these annuals will finally show some spunk and begin to grow. They were, however, contributing to my worry about this unusual spring in that what gardener wants to watch plants placed lovingly in the eco-system actually huddle down real small instead of growing like they are supposed to do?
Despite the crankiness of the annuals, the gardens' perennials grew and flourished and the garden evolved from the stark of winter into the lush of spring. Just as they were designed to do. For perennials, unlike the annuals really meant for more tropical regions of the world, adapt to changes in weather quite handily and in fact, seemed to enjoy the bevy of cool-weather days just fine.
The container garden is essentially completed. Picture below.
Grackles and Baby Bunnies
Never mind the unusual weather, the birds, bees and bunnies have been busy here in Serendipity Shore in the wilds of Delaware.
The saga of the baby grackles is a story I've been following and it gets interesting.
For I've seen baby birds as they left their safe and beloved nests. In the case of the baby grackle I got to see one dive back INTO its nest. It was a hoot.
The grackles made their nest in an evergreen bush on my neighbor's property. Said evergreen bush juts high above the fence line leaving me easy view from my porch perch of the comings and goings of busy bird parents as they tended to their nestlings.
So I knew the grackle nest was in the bush and with bemusement I'd watch the grackle parents rushing to find bugs then flying into the bush. Right after the parents got to the evergreen bush I'd hear the baby grackles and boy did they let their parents know how hungry they were and why were they so late with the bugs already? The grackles would then feed the complaining children and on the way out of the nest they would carry off a fecal sac in their beak. Baby birds do not poop in their nest. Instead they poop a sac of fecal matter that the parents pluck out of their hiney with their beaks to fly it away from the nest and drop onto the ground. There are no special bird rules that stipulate that fecal sacs must be carried and dropped far away from the nest. Indeed these grackle parents would only go but a few feet before they dropped that fecal sac. Unfortunately, within a few feet of this particular grackle nest is my fine obelisk protecting my cherished rose bush. Which is now covered with grackle poop as the apex of my resin obelisk was a fine place to perch after leaving the nest and it was small matter to just drop the fecal sac right then and there. The bird poop doesn't hurt the roses and in fact, might help in keeping them fertilized and happy. Still, I'd much have preferred the grackle parents to drop their children's fecal sacs elsewhere.
I can't imagine any animal parents on the planet that work harder than bird parents when it comes time to build, lay eggs, incubate then finally raise their brood and get them the hell out of the nest than the bird fellows.
Ah. There's the rub. For if ever a rite of passage was so painful and fraught with danger, it's when time comes for baby birds to vacate the nest.
I knew it was fledging time when I heard the grackle parents calling their children from various points throughout the eco-system. Indeed at least one then eventually more of the baby grackles did exit the nest as God planned because I heard their baby bird sounds from all around the yard.
Save one bird youngster that rather liked his nest and there's always one bird youngster that gives its parents a hard time about fledging. I had one chance to witness one baby grackle and the tactics its parent used to get it out of the nest.
The parent had a fine bug in its beak, ostensibly to deliver to the only baby still in the nest. The parent grackle flew into the evergreen bush per normal and the baby squawked its joy at the incoming food. Except this time the parent grackle did not give the baby the bug. Instead, the parent grackle kept the bug firmly in its beak. Before my amazed eyes I watched the parent grackle backing out of the nest with the bug food still in its beak. Right behind the parent was the baby bird, now being lured out of the nest in a carrot-on-a-stick approach by the parent grackle. Likely the youngster grackle didn't know its parent was fooling it by pretending to give it a bug while luring it out of the nest. I saw the baby grackle follow its parent seeking the elusive bug and boom, there was the baby, now wobbling on a branch of the evergreen bush. The parent grackle gave the youngster the bug then flew off, assuming perhaps, that since the baby was finally out of the nest that it would finally get out of the bush with the urging of a few parental calls.
I just had to go wake up soundly sleeping husband as this was a sight to behold. The reluctant baby grackle wobbled on a thin branch of the evergreen bush and from points unknown its parents called it to come on down. Husband came out and together we regarded that baby grackle dangling on the branch and pondered when it would finally jump down and join the bird world outside of the nest as it was designed. The baby heard its parents calling and it responded by crying plaintively that it didn't like dangling on this dangerous branch and how could my parents do this to me.
For a full five minutes that baby grackle wobbled on that branch and its parents called it constantly. It was a tough call for that baby grackle. Surely it could hear its parents calling but only within a foot was the cherished nest that its parent had so sneakily lured it from. Husband and I watched the youngster and knew that within a few seconds the young bird would probably fly-jump down off of that branch and join its parents to learn to hunt bugs.
Only this particular baby grackle, after complaining endlessly to its parents, abruptly turned around and DIVED BACK INTO THE NEST!
The baby evidently decided it just wasn't worth it, not worth it all.
Husband and I chuckled at this bird drama. Eventually we must assume the parents got the reluctant baby to fledge but for five minutes of time I was treated to quite the drama as one baby bird said parents be damned, I'm going back where it's safe.
If the antics of the grackles didn't entertain me enough this spring in the year of our Lord 2006, I also had the wren show. Seems a pair of house wrens, who tend to build their nests in crazy places anyway, got it into their head that they were going to nest inside of an empty planter on my porch. Said planter pot is shaped like a pig and is purely a decorative thing.
I was enjoying yet another beautiful day on my porch perch when one wren flies within three feet of my rather big human body, some twigs jutting out from its beak. I watched the wren with disbelieving eyes as it flew into the pig-planter and evidently deposited the twigs for the nest. This pig-planter is directly on my porch and I wondered how on earth that little bird thought it was going to incubate and fledge a nest full of babies on a porch often populated by human beings and two dogs. Two dogs that would regard such as a pot full of baby wrens as an object of curiosity at best, perhaps living toys at worst.
I was then even more amused at the baby wren when he left after depositing the twigs in the pig planter and hopped down onto the concrete porch floor. I wondered what on earth it would find there. In front of my amazed eyes, the wren hopped around the porch floor, pecking here and there at something, I did not know what.
Finally after much hopping and pecking at the porch floor, the wren lifted its head and now I was flabbergasted. For jutting out from both sides of its beak was a handful of ...DOG HAIR! Indeed the big Belgian Malinois regularly lays on the same concrete porch floor and evidently bits and pieces of her hair were left behind. Birds love to line their nests with animal fur and dogs often provide a bounty of the stuff. Indeed we had a dog that the birds regularly plundered for its shed fur, often right off of the living, breathing dog while it snored peacefully.
Wrens make a bunch of fake nests as part of their courtship ritual so as of this writing I'm not sure if the pig-planter will be their final selection for nest locale.
Finally it's such a busy bird season here in the wilds of Delaware that bird dramas can be seen even while driving the Jeep down a busy road.
Crows are notorious nest-robbers and are forever being attacked by parent birds protecting their nests. As I drove happily down the highway I look up and see a crow being viciously, folks I mean VICIOUSLY, attacked by a mockingbird. This mocker was not out to merely chase off the marauding crow. This mocker wanted to kill the deceitful crow. I simply could not believe how that mockingbird attacked that crow, this while in mid-air! The mocker would catch up to the crow in flight and actually bite its tail-feathers. That crow was flying furiously in almost a complete spiral to get the hell away from this crazed mockingbird. A crow is at least four times the size of a mocker.
I had to drive on so I never seen the ending of this avian melodrama. But from what I saw of that one very angry mocker taking on that huge bird who would threaten its babies, I drove on knowing that all was right with the world.
If the birds of our eco-system weren’t busy reproducing and pooping all over the place, the bunny rabbits too are making more of their own. One evening, after hearing husband mention that he’d yet to see any rabbits, I looked over by our front fence and there, sitting so very still one would never know it was a mammal, was a bunny rabbit. Stealthily I summoned husband and he was happy to see his first spring rabbit and goodness knows we wouldn’t want any rabbit shortage or anything.
The following night I noticed something, right at about the same spot where the rabbit had been the day before, rolling around and frolicking in the grass. This time I had to lift my eyeglasses and squint. The long ears were the first clue. Again, I stealthily summoned husband and both of us walked out to the spot where the baby bunny had been frolicking. By this time the baby rabbit had assumed that perfectly still position and we were able to get very close to the little guy. He was sort of a calico bunny, sporting all sorts of colors in the manner of a calico cat. He had positioned himself in his frozen state right near my whiskey barrel planters.
“Don’t scare him,” husband cautioned.
“Well I’ve got to water my plants but I’ll watch my step,” I responded.
Indeed I did uncoil the hose and managed to water the plants all around the baby bunny, who remained in that frozen position. Had I not known he was there he was barely noticeable, such was his camouflage ability. As I watered and stepped gingerly around the little guy I talked to him. Yes I did.
He didn’t answer me, of course, but I prattled on about how I had to water my plants but I promised not to get him wet. All the while the baby bunny sat in his spot, probably hoping my big galoot self would just go away.
When the watering chore was done I bid the little rabbit goodnight. The next day he was gone. But we know that here in this small eco-system, the birds and bunnies are reproducing, frolicking and heh, sometimes refusing to leave the nest.
More Gardens and Bird posts HERE
1 comment:
Beautiful flower....
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