THROUGH THE WINDOW: Haiku

In the First Frosty Dawn I Lie

Birdsong prevails, but.....
separate (by pane and sash)
- the windows! - all shut.

FIELD NOTES: When you feel like walking away from everything...

...first, you buy good boots...

...and it doesn't hurt to buy matching shades to walk into the sunset...

Good Morning, New Neighbor!

Lived here since 1993. First time I've seen a fox sitting in my backyard...

...guess it's not very interesting here.

FIELD NOTES: Through the Window

Listening to the wind...

...On an average Sunday morning, I might put light jazz on Pandora. Today, some might describe the wind as howling, but it is not howling. It is continuously crashing over the house like an ocean of wind, surging up the snow - bone dry from the extreme cold - like a sand storm and reminding the window frames of where their cracks are. So I need to be quiet….and write. The sun is in its usual place, but odd white clouds and snow dust wrap around it like a mummy’s cloth. It is blindfolded, beaming without the benefit of sight, using the branches on the towering locust trees like long bony fingers groping for something to hold on to. A few birds make a run at the feeder, perching on the railing, taking off like skilled fighter jets when the time is right. How are they out there? If it were me, just wearing feathers, I would die! But out there they are…and with plenty of company. The snow cover is not pristine; it is crisscrossed with a collection of tracks like Grand Central Station. There is a raccoon living on a shelf in the shed. A woodpecker flew out of a hole in the side of the house. I sometimes hear scratching in the attic from mice. I am a reluctant Dr. Doolittle. The violence of nature often draws me in, like a voyeur, but only when I know I am safe. I like to press my palm against a cold window and feel how thin it is. Right now….I see my whitened landscape as the direct opposite of desert on the other side of the world. Could I just flip it like an hourglass? I suddenly feel as dry as the desert – the furnace keeps running after escaped heat, the indoor air is static, my plants are brittle, my throat is dry, my skin is dry, my muscles cramp because in the absence of heat, we have all forgotten to drink! I listen to the wind unceremoniously taking down the things I once meticulously set up and I can’t do anything about it. I am physically apart from much of what I want, but I have sensed that the universe in general is through testing my patience and is stirring, preparing to reintegrate into something extraordinary.

FIELD NOTES: What a difference a day makes in CT...

Storm David

Friday

Saturday

FIELD NOTES: Between a rock & a hard place...

...or a post & a shingle... A sound had puzzled us for days...not only was it a high-pitched whirl that was loud for small, backyard nature, but we couldn't figure out where it was coming from...Chip is known to scurry around the back patio, under the deck and in between the planters, but this trill was high up...yet not avian...I couldn't see anyone on the roof, so it was someone small enough to hide in plain sight...I wondered if a chipmunk was capable of 'throwing' his voice like a ventriloquist?...I settled on that thin hypothesis only because I needed a reason to quell my curiosity. One noonday I lunched at my bistro and in my daydream, the answer caught my eye! There was a mottled gray lump wedged between the deck post and the house...it had a inflated throat which I later Googled to find was a vocal sac that acts like the hollow wood on a guitar amplifying the sound of the strings, or the sound of an echo in a large cave, projecting it across long distances! It's satisfying to solve a mystery... Read more: How Does a Toad Croak?

Listen to a toad!

FIELD NOTES: The rest of the 'tail'...

The cat that ate the birdies.

Suspect #1:

DESCRIPTION: white, gray, tail-less; last seen wearing a pink collar with fake diamonds.

NYT: How Many Computers to Identify a Cat?

FIELD NOTES: Storm Alfred's haiku...

Found: red feather, while
collecting tree arms turned to
harpoons, arrows, rams.

My Top 10 Gifts From Storm Alfred - Java

FIELD NOTES: Trick or treat...

...has pretty much been the theme of the entire year, but it is especially true after this record-breaking weekend. Our class jack-o-lantern expresses my feelings accurately enough! Throughout the afternoon and night, continual cracking and thudding kept me on alert and indoors. It was nature's battle and all we humans could do was take cover. It sounded like a snowball fight on the roof...or ammo...trees fell like soldiers being hit...one after another. I appreciate my lessons from nature...this one demonstrated the power of small things in large numbers...think of each leaf catching wet, heavy snow and multiply that by hundreds...thousands...there aren't usually leaves on the trees when we get 15" of snow (needled trees have the better design for this)...it pressed me to think further...a penny, a pushup, an Occupier on Wall Street...none represent much by themselves...neither do votes...except when you add them all up, which may be the hardest part of all...

Lucky..

...not so lucky.

FIELD NOTES: Everyone's talking about it....

...winter, that is…particularly this one…as if something ripped open the canopy we call sky at the start of the year and its contents has been hemorrhaging ever since. Going on history, this is usually followed by a rise in temperature and lots of rain. With no rest for the weary, we put down our shovels and took up our tools and machines to remove ice dams and uncover drains and although Mother Nature is still acting as strict as a British nanny, she has also shown temperance, rocking us back and forth between snow and sun, wind and warmth, sparing us the road-closing flooding. But I don’t mind a ‘good hunkering down’ as I did last Sunday night with Chinese take-out of hot & sour soup and vegetable lo-mein in front of PBS’s Nature episode of The Himalayas…spiritually sensual, beautiful, ancient and new, reflective, personal in interpretation, unique. In the act of creating - whether it be written, sung or performed - we strive to produce something unique, but sometimes finding a human collectiveness is just as heady. I noticed the snow level around my house going down, the tops of things vegetable and mineral reappearing, as well as newspapers and fast food containers along the road…and on last night’s Prairie Home Companion, so did Garrison Keillor make note of candy wrappers and trash, the snow shovel you’d thought you’d lost revealing itself on your neighbor’s lawn…we seem to all be finding sunken treasure…

PBS Nature: The Himalayas
Full Episode

FIELD NOTES: Crazy Winter Caption Contest

...can't think of a prize, but just for the fun of it....

Disclaimer: No squirrels were harmed in this photo. It's a plastic solar one from Home Depot that sits in my perennial garden atop a faux-bicycle plant stand.

HAPPY 40TH EARTH DAY!

REDUCE...REUSE...RECYCLE...REPEAT

Just a few encouraging words to be kind to our planet with simple, small steps...

ONE: Try composting from your kitchen...it's EASY!...it really is! (email me if you have concerns)...I'm excited about the new compost-able Sun Chip bag and also the corn starch packing peanuts I received in a recent mail order (why aren't ALL packing peanuts dis-solvable like these???)...then I'll bring this compost to my preschool's science center for the kiddies to experiment with too!

TWO: limit plastic water bottles

THREE: recycle as much as you can

Side note: one of my favorite parts of visiting my daughter in Seattle, was how much she was able to recycle...how ironic that there is now a garbage strike in progress...

The Plastiki Expedition
The Cove: Japan Dolphins

FIELD NOTES: First Rake Haiku

Saturday, the First Day of Spring 2010

Piquant green on tines,
Extension of my fingers,
The scratch ‘n sniff of spring.

FIELD NOTES: In pure New England style, there has been a reprieve…

Sunday: Before & After

…from the predicted rainy weekend and now I can take a swipe or two at those leaves that last weekend were doomed to overwinter on the lawn. At the stroke of 9:30, the first leaf blower has sounded in the neighborhood giving me the go-ahead to put on my work clothes and head out, although I will be quietly hand raking and then mulching the piles with the lawn mower. Never buy a house before you research its trees; dangerously old oaks with leaves as leathery and large as baseball mitts and the spindly locusts with confetti for leaves that will hang on nearly until new buds evict them do not respond very well to mulching. Oh for a stand of compliant primary colored maples! Mercifully, the entry on Lawns in Wikipedia has given me a place to lay blame for my love-hate relationship with lawn and leaf:

“In the United States, it was not until after the Civil War that lawns began to appear outside middle-class residences. Most people did not have the hired labor needed to cut a field of grass with scythes; average home owners either raised vegetables in their yards or left them alone. If weeds sprouted that was fine. Toward the end of the 19th century, suburbs appeared on the American scene, along with the sprinkler, greatly improved lawn mowers, new ideas about landscaping and a shorter workweek.”

...and towards the bottom of the entry, further explanation (and a long list) of the meaning of ‘maintenance’ in the ‘burbs:

“There is often heavy social pressure to mow one's lawn regularly and to keep up with the Joneses. Maintaining higher quality lawns may require special maintenance procedures:”

But I feel more like Pooh today, so perhaps I’ll rake a pile…and just jump right in!