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Harbingers
Mar. 10th, 2006 01:04 pmI had lunch with my mother yesterday (at Zumbro's, pretty much as usual) and we called Donald Rumsfeld so many names that the guys at the next table looked at us. Then we went to PetCo for cat supplies, stopping to admire the guinea pigs. It was a sunny, clear day, and the solar effect was in full force in her car, or so we thought. I came home to an importunate and impatient cat, rushing up and down the house and pawing at the windows. I told him dubiously that I wasn't sure it was warm enough to take him out, but it was 50 degrees when I checked, and 52 by the time I got myself together to let him walk me around the back yard. I thought that must be a record, but it isn't. The record, set in 1911, is sixty degrees.
There was a lot of bird activity, mostly house sparrows, chickadees, and crows, with distant calls from cardinals, some whistles and squeaks from starlings, and the inevitable mocking crow. There were still large patches of snow and ice in the shade, and it is much too soggy and muddy even today to do any yard work. However, the tulips are coming up. We have a fair number of tulips, but "the" tulips for the purposes of saying in March that they are coming up are a large clump of Apeldoorns (those are the brilliant red ones with yellow centers and blue-black touches) at the back end of the bed that runs along the southern side of the house; and a medium clump of dark, dark purple ones in the bed under Lydy's office window. They don't bloom first -- the crocuses and daffodils will overtake them -- but they come up first. The shoots are still deep red, only half an inch high at most. Ari trod unheedingly over them, but they are used to that.
I think that the paw that was broken in November aches a bit when it gets cold and wet. He started to hold it up after about twenty minutes, and then made a beeline for the back door. He's not limping, though, so I don't think it's anything serious.
I decided that, since it was only March and snow was forecast for next week, I should take myself for a walk too. I went over to the Roberts Bird Sanctuary in Lyndale Park. I had been once before on a warm-looking but very windy chilly day, and seen a single tiny woodpecker working over a dead branch. I figured that I would see a great deal more on a day like this. I had to stop repeatedly along the way to admire nuthatches running up and down the elms on Blaisdell, house finches singing out of linden trees on 37th Street, cardinals all over, and chickadees buzzing and rattling around in evergreens. I took a turn through a quarter of the Peace Garden and heard both familiar and unfamiliar birdsong, including what I could swear were robins, though I never did see any; and the distinctive whiny laughter of woodpeckers.
The bird sanctuary starts with a plastic boardwalk over a swampy section and then gives you a choice of wood-chip -- or, at the moment, mud-and-ice, paths. The moment I set foot on the boardwalk a deep silence fell, punctuated only by the occasional roar of an a passing airplane. I walked slowly and predictably, I stood still for long periods of time, I sat down on the stump of a huge cottonwood whose pieces were lying all about, already festooned with lichen and moss. The afternoon light made the bare trees, the small buds on shrubbery, the moss and the individual dead leaves of oak and maple and linden, all look precisely and artistically placed. But there were no birds. I went back eventually, and was momentarily excited to see movement around a big nesting box of some sort stuck up on a large tree. I trained the binoculars on it. Yes, really, something was in there, something was coming out. It was a gray squirrel.
As I set foot in the parking lot a bunch of cardinals and house finches burst into song in the Peace Garden, chickadees called, and a red squirrel ran across the path. I know when I'm being laughed at. I went home and sulked, but not very efficiently.
The book is behaving pretty well, for a book, though I am annoyed that I don't still have the entire text of the Secret Country books and The Dubious Hills engraved on the inside of my head. David has been out of town for work all week but will come home this evening, and we have a crowded weekend, with a family birthday party on Saturday and an open house on Sunday. Eric is very busy getting his teaching credential, but will be coming to visit over his spring break. I am learning slowly to put fish into an otherwise vegan diet. There are many recipes, but it is somewhat astonishing how many there also are that require eggs or dairy.
I read a lot of new fiction, for me, beginning last summer, and still foolishly hope to write up my reactions to it at some point.
P.
There was a lot of bird activity, mostly house sparrows, chickadees, and crows, with distant calls from cardinals, some whistles and squeaks from starlings, and the inevitable mocking crow. There were still large patches of snow and ice in the shade, and it is much too soggy and muddy even today to do any yard work. However, the tulips are coming up. We have a fair number of tulips, but "the" tulips for the purposes of saying in March that they are coming up are a large clump of Apeldoorns (those are the brilliant red ones with yellow centers and blue-black touches) at the back end of the bed that runs along the southern side of the house; and a medium clump of dark, dark purple ones in the bed under Lydy's office window. They don't bloom first -- the crocuses and daffodils will overtake them -- but they come up first. The shoots are still deep red, only half an inch high at most. Ari trod unheedingly over them, but they are used to that.
I think that the paw that was broken in November aches a bit when it gets cold and wet. He started to hold it up after about twenty minutes, and then made a beeline for the back door. He's not limping, though, so I don't think it's anything serious.
I decided that, since it was only March and snow was forecast for next week, I should take myself for a walk too. I went over to the Roberts Bird Sanctuary in Lyndale Park. I had been once before on a warm-looking but very windy chilly day, and seen a single tiny woodpecker working over a dead branch. I figured that I would see a great deal more on a day like this. I had to stop repeatedly along the way to admire nuthatches running up and down the elms on Blaisdell, house finches singing out of linden trees on 37th Street, cardinals all over, and chickadees buzzing and rattling around in evergreens. I took a turn through a quarter of the Peace Garden and heard both familiar and unfamiliar birdsong, including what I could swear were robins, though I never did see any; and the distinctive whiny laughter of woodpeckers.
The bird sanctuary starts with a plastic boardwalk over a swampy section and then gives you a choice of wood-chip -- or, at the moment, mud-and-ice, paths. The moment I set foot on the boardwalk a deep silence fell, punctuated only by the occasional roar of an a passing airplane. I walked slowly and predictably, I stood still for long periods of time, I sat down on the stump of a huge cottonwood whose pieces were lying all about, already festooned with lichen and moss. The afternoon light made the bare trees, the small buds on shrubbery, the moss and the individual dead leaves of oak and maple and linden, all look precisely and artistically placed. But there were no birds. I went back eventually, and was momentarily excited to see movement around a big nesting box of some sort stuck up on a large tree. I trained the binoculars on it. Yes, really, something was in there, something was coming out. It was a gray squirrel.
As I set foot in the parking lot a bunch of cardinals and house finches burst into song in the Peace Garden, chickadees called, and a red squirrel ran across the path. I know when I'm being laughed at. I went home and sulked, but not very efficiently.
The book is behaving pretty well, for a book, though I am annoyed that I don't still have the entire text of the Secret Country books and The Dubious Hills engraved on the inside of my head. David has been out of town for work all week but will come home this evening, and we have a crowded weekend, with a family birthday party on Saturday and an open house on Sunday. Eric is very busy getting his teaching credential, but will be coming to visit over his spring break. I am learning slowly to put fish into an otherwise vegan diet. There are many recipes, but it is somewhat astonishing how many there also are that require eggs or dairy.
I read a lot of new fiction, for me, beginning last summer, and still foolishly hope to write up my reactions to it at some point.
P.
