Kid's Lit and Cats.

When my two kids were little, we shared many happy hours together reading a series of wonderful nature books entitled Mr. Seemore Says - Look Up..Around...Down. It was a beautifully illustrated trio of books with a very simple story line. Use your eyes and look at everything around you;  linger and learn about your place within the greater world.

The lessons, such as they were, were very simple.
#1. You have your place and  purpose.
#2.  So does everything, and everyone, else.
#3. We are all connected.
#4. Together we can work miracles.
#5. If you don't step on me, hurt me, or harm me, I will reward you.

Mr. Seemore says, "Look down".

This is a very different lesson from what we learn once we get into a more formal, regulated educational system which dictates: "if you step on me, hurt me or harm me, I will punish you."
But that lesson can also be found if you look around...

While the lessons will vary for those who wish to partake,

one thing is common to all ..it will be a memorable one.

There may be great swaths of destruction that rain down from time to time, causing havoc and creating chaos...

and from the chaos, tiny miracles emerge on purpose,

and so intent with purpose as to be almost invisible.

Only eyes that wish to see will.

Mr. Seemore says,

"Look for the interruption along the thin green line."

I listen. I look. I think about what I am hearing. And seeing.

And I believe that given the use of our senses, when we come to our senses,  we'll be just fine.

BUT

In the meantime?

Dawson is teaching me a new set of lessons

on stress reduction.

Didn't change the world today??

Ah well.

Relax.

Tomorrow's coming soon enough.
Rest up.

Nesting Instinct

If you're a female and you don't live under a rock, the term nesting instinct is likely familiar. You know, that  feeling that you get  sometime in your mid to late 20's, sometimes in your  early 30's - it's that little voice inside your head that says, "Tick, tick, tick -time's a wastin' girl and you better get to it and do it."   Make babies. Throw away the diaphragm, toss out the pills. Reason takes a hike, and hormones rush in.

It's a big step, and all it takes is about 10 seconds. Zap! You're pregnant! now start decorating the baby's room, shopping for cute little onesies and diapers and really expensive diaper bags that come in really cool colours and patterns now with all sorts of pockets and pouches for baby necessities while travelling to your mom's for an hour to escape the fact that this is a REALLY BIG STEP you took, and it lasts a lifetime!

Deep Breath!

Yup. Nesting.

 But imagine being a bird!! And doing it every year. And every year the kids leave - yay! so you can get busy and do it again, and again. That is what you do, if you're a bird. You take a leap of faith one day, and plop out of the nest. Then you fly around free as a bird for a short shiny spell.  Then some brightly coloured gadabout catches your eye, and before you can flip him the bird, there you are - sitting on a  bunch of eggs! Feathering your nest and waiting for the "pick, pick, pick " to start so you can start flying hither and yon catching bugs like a crazed  bird brain, burping them up into outstretched beaks leading to huge empty stomachs, and then off again, and again, and again! Then one day, the fluff balls take a leap of faith, and you fly 2000 miles south, and do it again, and again.

Oy.

Is it any wonder then that some birds build rather uncomfortable, flimsy nests that barely qualify as a nest? That appear to be just a bunch of twigs thrown at a branch? Not for the Green Heron a cozy, grass lined pouch swinging gently to and fro in the soft summer breeze while hugging the beautiful little oriole chick inside, safe and warm. Nope! That ain't happening. It's more like  - there's your nest. Don't  like it? Hah! So leave!

The Green Herons' "Kronk!"  is about as rude a call a bird can have- kind of like saying  "Git outtta my way! Here I come with food. Open yer mouth right now!"  And I'm  guessing it's a good thing the babies are so gosh durn cute, or Tired Old Bird (Mom for short)  probably wouldn't even bother feeding them!
Just look at those little eyes...what's not to love!?

Down By the Old Mill Stream

My Mom and Dad were pretty "Hip to the Jive", as they used to say. And they had this huge collection of LP's (Ed. note: gentle reader born after 1980, you may have to look this one up) to prove it. There were the Mills Brothers,  Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, The Lemmon Sisters, and many other collections of albums, including some by the Langevin Symphonette Society- the precursor to elevator music....or Muzak, as it's known amidst the  mad men. Musak is actually a patented type of music delivery system for elevators, department and grocery stores. Shoppers, it has been proven, buy more when there is perky, cheerful music to shop by. And they fight less when a funeral dirge is droning in the background of the outdoor stadium as the losing hometeam exits. On the same note, it is also why municipalities often play opera outdoors and illuminate an area with zit highlighting black light to deter teenagers from hanging out late at night.
But, I digress.
Back to the old mills, brothers.
On a recent country drive, looking for signs of spring, we took the road less travelled, and followed a local area map to Burnt Bridge Road. It is always, to me, a bit of a shock to find a lovely, hidden little patch of nature, and one of the thoughts I find myself always thinking at these times is, "Has anyone else been here before? Am I the first? " I might add, that this is asked hopefully, as I am one of "those people" who will find secret places to sign my name, like on the inside of window frames in my childhood home the day we moved, so that years later, it would be discovered that I had lived there. I know. Sad. But true.
In this particular case, I most assuredly  wasn't the first...but I felt like no one had been here for  at least awhile...

I've lived in the Ottawa Valley for about 25 years, and have never seen this grinding stone, or heard of it's existence before. But indeed, here it sat. A round granite monolithe in the middle of sort of nowhere.

And it had a friend.

You know, when you're expecting something, like say, the Eiffel Tower to appear because you happen to be in Paris -when it appears, you're excited and slightly giddy, because it's smaller than you thought it would be, but exactly like it's supposed to look like. Only, uh, smaller.

Well. That's remotely what this was like.

"Well, lookie here!! Two grinding stones, in the middle of absolutely the bush in the middle of the  Sunday drive to nowhere!"

And they're big! Well, teeny mini stonehenges, but still -about 5 feet in diameter. They didn't roll here all by themselves, that's fer sure!

(We don't get out much you now know.)

So, the Burnt Bridge had actually been rebuilt and standing on it, I could pick out this year's now not so secret   picnic spot to which you're all invited.

(on the right..see? where the sunlight hits just right?)

And time was spent in that ponderous moment wondering "where does all that water come from? Where does it go?"

 Someone should have built a grist mill here a hundred years ago!

Oh. They did.

Clever, resiliant, reliable pioneers.

And while there were a few water watchers down by the old mill stream,

 it became apparent that they'd rather be left alone.

Out in the middle of somewhere.

Someone had already signed their name. So, of course,  I didn't.

Chip Off the Old Block

Today was a sunny winter day, crisp but no wind,  a perfect day for a look around the yard. It was also a perfect day to  climb up a tree

and beat the pulp out of it

...if you're a Pileated Woodpecker of course.

There is no mistaking the sound of a Pileated Woodpecker pounding the living bugs out of a branch. They move purposely up one branch, and then another, foraging their way through the woods.

There is no such thing as subtlety either. This is a bird that knows what he wants, and will go to great lengths to get it. Chip-off-the-old-block is his middle name. And he leaves large chips of bark
and wood all over the ground -a sure sign of his visit.

In Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion, he calls the Pileated Woodpecker (aka Dryocopus pileatus) the slightly unseemly

Log Cock.

But if you think about it, there's the Cock of the Walk  -  or the flamboyant rooster who is master of the chicks.

And this guy, old Chip,  is definitely the biggest bird on the tree

in this neck of the woods!

So Log Cock it is - A finely feathered pecker indeed.

The Tom Sawyer Approach to Renovations

Haggle, bicker, nag and bribe...none of these traditional  methods of getting something done around here was being particularly effective this past month. The screened side porch was in dire need of paint and a polish, and  most definitely new screens. The bugs didn't have to bash  and bruise their tiny probisci to come for dinner. Uh uh. They just made a bee line for one of several holes that had appeared over the past decade.

Something had to be done, and early one Saturday morning in mid-June, after a fortifying cuppa coffee, I did it. While my prince lay resting his weary bones, I tore a strip of screen off one panel,  and then another...and that was that. Gaping holes in the porch wall where now anything ...bugs, bees, bears, and anyone...could amble in and join us for breakfast. The gauntlet had been dropped and the project was on!

I was pretty sure that this would be a quick little job, as they so often are...so set about emptying the porch of all furniture, washing the floor, and preparing a list of stuff that we needed to finish the job by supper time: floor paint, brushes, rollers, screening, paint for uprights, and beer.

When  John arose, we were off to the races, or at least to Home Hardware for the necessary supplies...and back home, ready to go by oh, about 2:00 pm. First the floor...a quick fresh coat of butter yellow so it looks like the  sun is always shining...I barely got started, when John began telling me to go parallel to the wall.

"Hmm, "  I wondered to myself, "which of the three walls might he be meaning?" So I picked the left wall and began the long w-shaped roller strokes.
"No, No", he promptly said, as he sipped his coffee, " not that wall, the other one."

So I switched directions, and chose the other one. Oops! Wrong again!  And two wrongs made me realize that Tom Sawyer was absolutely right! During the course of painting his fence he  had "discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."  That (a perfectly painted floor) seemed to be happening right at my finger tips! So I handed the roller to my friendly critic and suggested he give it try to show me how, while I 'd go in and  see about rustling up some late lunch.

Perfectly painted porch floor was glistening as we sat down to a quick bite to eat half an hour later. And on we bungled. First removing the rest of the screening, then getting ready to paint all the battons, and naturally discovering a host of little "problems" that had cropped up over the intervening years...like wood rot and 2 x 4's that would need to be replaced. Ah well. As my dad always said, (and yours too, I  bet) " If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right." So we worked 'til the light left us, and said okay, tomorrow we'll get at it bright and squirrely. Which we did actually. I awoke at dawn to the sounds of cat meeting squirrel on the deck, as squirrel was interrupted trying to have a little breakfast of sunflower seed I'd inadvertly left in the porch overnght. No fur flew, but it was time for day 2.

Problem with day 2 was the weather...I mean who wants to paint in the pouring rain? So we waited 'til it cleared up, then slowly got assembled, and started the tedious task of putting the porch back together again. My brother and his lovely wife were arriving the next day , so it would be really nice to have this wee project done!

But, alas...it wasn't. It was partially done, as in some of the posts were painted, some of the screen was up, some wasn't down yet, none of the battons were back up...and then arrived the brother. And the second Tom Sawyer truth along with him."Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

Well, my brother did not consider fixing the porch work at all! And neither did my sister in law! Holy get the job done right! They were totally into making this porch a master piece. Battons? Ha!! Battons, molding, mitre cuts, measuring for gawd sakes! These two saw a project, knew John and I were pretty much incompetent DIYers, and they just took over! The Taj Mahal Porch is something we never envisioned, and had we emphatically stated that it wasn't necessary to go to all this trouble. "You're on holidays you two! Relax!We don't need to do this while you're here " was met with deaf ears, and Tom Sawyer noted that, "To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing."

What can I say! Total time to finish the job? Seven days! But the final result looks great, my brother got to practice his finishing carpentry skills, my sister-in-law had something to do besides listen to the men natter about men stuff, and my prince got to watch a job well done, er, done well!
And me? Well, I got exactly what I wanted too!

Just Another Manic Monday.

I was late getting to work this morning. I left with plenty of time to pick up a Tim Horton's coffee, and have a leisurely drive to put the day, and the week, into perspective. I headed out the driveway, admiring the bright yellow daffodils that look so perky and cheerful, and feeling pretty proud of myself for actually remembering to plant them last fall!

As I came to the first bend in our driveway, I also noticed a bunch of little pinecones sitting straight up on the edge of the road? That's weird - so of course, I pulled over for a closer look, and Eureka!! Not pinecones at all, but a whole little herd of morels! We have spent many hours to little or no avail, combing the meadows of our area looking for what is  thought (by many gourmands) to be the best edible mushroom that grows wild in eastern Ontario and western Quebec.  And here!! Right here in my own backyard, there's a flock of them!

 

They're pretty easily identified. They look like little conehead brains and are hollow on the inside.

There are blonde, brown, and grey versions (just like my own personal hair stages). It's antithesis, the False Morel  is poisonous, doesn't have a fully attached cap, is black and slimy, and has white frothy stuff inside the stem. Everything about the False Morel says, "don't eat me".

I was pretty excited and called John to come with a bag and help pick them - which he did. So, guess what's for dinner tonight?  It made for a memorable morning. 

And it made me late.  Thus, when I pulled into the parking lot of the arena where my office is located,

I had completely forgotten that we have visitors in town today.

Not everyday an elephant takes my parking space - but she's 38 years old, and gentle, and she can have it for as long as she wants. She is sharing it with a few of her friends too.

Awww. They're very cute, and while I don't generally advocate for live animal circuses, I do know that these animals are well cared for and loved by their trainers and keepers. Our Animal By Law Enforcement Officer checks to make sure they are being properly tended - as does every other ABEO in Canada, wherever the Circus visits.

The big questions, of course, always revolve around the poop - as in "Who's going to scoop the poop?" and "What do you do with elephant poop, or pony poop?"   and  "Can I purchase the poop?", and of course that favourite question that inquisitive minds just need to know, "How big is  elephant poop?"

Imagine! All this, and it's not even noon yet.

Muskrat Love

It's definitely impossible to write anything about muskrats without humming along to Muskrat Love in the background...one of those little ear worm thingies la da da da, candle light...so I'll just put it out there right now, and after you've finished reading this, you can go to 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKw8j7GLSdw  

That little housekeeping item aside, while I was doing some housekeeping of my own the other day,

I looked out the window, down towards the beach. It's hard to miss, as we live on the beach, and have direct access to it, and all that lovely sand that occasionally I am forced to sweep up if I want to open the door to the patio, or if John has gone missing!

Where was I? Ah, yes, digging myself out of a hole...I looked out to the river's edge, and saw a little brown blip where previously it was just flat, cool, blue water. So, gleefully abandoning my broom, I grabbed the camera, and moved slowly across the top of the sandy slope to take a closer look.

It's definitely a muskrat, and definitely heading towards the shore, with purpose and intent.  Why so definite? Because beavers are much bigger, and as you can see, there are no tasty trees on this beach for a beaver to trim down and feel safe while doing so. Like this...

So, now, back to the sandy shore and Sammy Muskrat...I took that first shot, and blinked, and he was gone - he'd totally disappeared! No tell tail - er, tale - wake, no little brown head bobbing further away,

no nothin'.

So, I ventured a little closer.

Ha! The little bugger has a hidey hole home, right at the water's edge, and obviously, he had leapt ever so quickly  -or slithered, whatever, right down into it! Clever 'skrat.

So I waited, and of course, he did reappear in pretty short order.

He posed for a split second, and then faster than you can say lickety split, turned tail, and headed off up river ...likely looking for some furry piece of fluff to share his dark and murky den.

NOW, you can listen to Cap't and Tennille...

And if you'd like some scenic sky shots, click here:

http://www.skyley.blogspot.com/

Knock. Knock.

Who's there?

No, not me! I'm your common (but cute) garden variety Downy Woodpecker. You see me practically every time you come out onto the porch. You should get rid of the screen so can see me better...and the guy behind me. Knocking.

Yup. It's me. Pileated Woodpecker. PW for short. You can call me Woody.

 Got any food in there? Hahahaha ha! Nope.

This is fun! Food and a swing! Hahahaha ha.

Tastey, too.

Hey check out who else is hanging out today...

American Tree Sparrow!  Like your bi-coloured beak .

And your yard guardian

Pining for some nuts. In a pine tree. Hahahaha ha.

Nice little restaurant. Maybe I'll be back!

Hahahaha hah! Wonka wonka.

Paws de Deux Part Two

 She may have the smooth moves...but I yam the one youall lovemost. I wonce had a mouse in my mouf. Blechchhchcharttkh! I lik my fud in canz.

I am very cleffer. I reed many boox. I do not suffercate my humins either. Whoever made up that mith knowth nothin. Ask himin.

Ima lovablecudable. And I  have menie trix. Look!

i ROTE THis holeblog meslef. Itwas haard werk. She cudnnt do this. I cudandid. YAAaaaaaawbbnn. lof DAwson

Cuppa Tea and Some Morning Mergansers,please

It's 6:30 am on Friday morning, all is quiet as I putter around, slowly waking up.
I love this time of day...my quiet time when I collect my thoughts, and bit by bit, get ready for the day ahead. Until, that is, I look out the window. Then I may as well phone in late right now, because the view on the river is far more interesting than anything I need to do today!
There's the beach flock of Common Mergansers out for their morning swim with Mom.
We've been watching this particular flock for the past 2 months, first as cute little fluff balls that seem to run on water, and now they're almost teenagers! Mom's still in charge though. Every day, she's got them out of the nest and on the river swimming laps up and down the beach. They practice their synchronized swim routine - heads down, under water. Go! Go! Go! Make waves, git those webs workin'! Now dive! Make no waves, leave no trace, leave'em wondering WTF, where'd they all go?
Now, up up up UP!...hey, you out front, you're too far ahead! Get back here! We're supposed to resemble a flock of geese in flight,as in s,t, u, V not p, i, d you daffy duck you!
There's a lady standing in the window up there, trying to take a picture, and your job is to help her!

Now, all together, let's do this again, from the top, 5, 6, 7, 8....

Sheesh! You boids need a lot more practice, but one thing's for sure. The lady with the little grey box in her hand is totally distracted now - completely featherbrained no doubt! She'll probably have to make a second cup of tea 'cause we made the first one go cold. Good Job!