I’m leaving on a jet plane…

It’s hard to believe, but the time has come for the first Alaska cruise of my summer.  Yes, I did say the first, because I really am going on two!  This one is all paid for by my dear mother.   I am going along with her on a sea/land tour from Vancouver to Denali.   My two sisters will be on this expedition too.

Then in August, Jim and I are going on an Inside Passage cruise from Vancouver, which will be a mini family reunion for him: one of his brothers, his sister and their spouses will be attending that one.   I feel sort of like a jet setter this year.

So anyway, I will be off line for a couple of weeks.

I got busy and finished the top half of the son and daugher-in-law’s quilt.   I think it looks rather spectacular myself.

The two nests of baby robins I featured in the Snow in May post have developed nicely.  By the time I get home, they will be fledged and prancing about the lawn in youthful plumage.   Right now, they are rather cute.

The yard is wonderful.   The wisteria will be all done by the time I get home.  It is in the last flush of bloom right now.   When you stand under the pergola, it literally hums with bees.

There is a snowball bush in the stroll garden that is in full bloom right now.  Also, my clematis have begun their display.

And the rock garden is looking very nice.   I imagine I will have to dead head the candytuft when I get home.  And hopefully the dianthus will not be completely finished.  I just love to stand there and smell it when it’s in full bloom.

Well, you all stay healthy and happy while I’m off gallivanting, okay?

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Witness protection, anyone?

I couldn’t think of anything to title this post.   I am considering that perhaps The Havens will need a name change in the near future.  Out in California, there is a city called Twentynine Palms because when it was settled there were 29 palm trees there.

I’m thinking that we need to change the name of The Havens to Twentynine Thousand Elms:

You see all those little seedlings down along the driveway in this picture?   Those are sprouted elm seeds.   It is like that all over my gardens right now.    Like I need another project:   pulling up elm trees.

While I was throwing water at my lavender bed today, I noticed that one of the shrubs was shaking in a most emphatic manner.   When I moved the branches aside, this is what I saw.

That is a baby rabbit, that was stashed there for nursing purposes by its mamma.   I think it is very interesting that soon after rabbits get past the two inch stage, the mother separates them out of the nest and stashes them in various safe places, then visits them regularly for feeding.   I can see that this would be a good thing because if a predator comes across one baby, it has not come across the whole litter.   It must make for a very busy day for the mother, though.

Anyway, the burden of what this little guy was telling me was something like, “My mommy told me to stay put but it is so WET all of a sudden and I just don’t know what to do now!”

Yes, very wet behind the ears.   And everywhere else, too.   Despite the knowledge that in short order this little bunny will be eating my flowers, I did NOT snap its neck after this picture was taken.   I put him back down in the lavender for his mother to take care of.

I probably was feeling kindly towards all young wild ones this morning as I discovered that the robin nest under my window that I was featuring is empty this morning.   A skunk, raccoon, owl, cat, or snake cleaned it out in the last 24 hours.   Sad.   But we still have lots of robin nests around the place with kiddios, and the parents are starting over again already.   They have chosen and high place in the elm this time, probably it will be better luck for them than a shrub at nearly ground level.

 Out in the vegetable garden, the garter snake was hunting in the lettuces.

This is basically what my father thinks I am right now, since I am part and parcel of the conspiracy to “isolate” him at an apartment in town.    Like he isn’t isolated right now, at the end of a half mile driveway that crosses a hollow and is washed out so badly the only vehicle that can manage it should be a truck, preferably 4 wheel drive.   Like he isn’t isolated now, since all his friends are dead and no one around the neighborhood can stand him because he is so opinionated; even my mother lives in a separate house and doesn’t go to visit him, he goes to visit her.

Oh, he blows hot and cold.   He tells me that he can take care of himself, does just fine, and blows off the suggestion that the fact that he was admitted to the hospital malnourished and dehydrated belies this statement.  Then in the next breath he wants to know what he is going to do for food at the apartment  if he is” isolated” in town.  This is because deep in his heart he knows the only square meals he gets are the ones my mother prepares for him, and if he’s in town she won’t be catering for him.   Jim and I will be, but he doesn’t know that yet.

I am taking note of all this experience.   I will give Jesse a link to these blog posts so he can show them to me when I get old and difficult and need help and am insisting that I can do it all myself.

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Blessed event

Remember the nest full of blue eggs?

I’ve kept an eye on them, much to the dismay of the proud mama.

Yesterday, when I looked in the nest about 9 a.m., this is what I saw…

About an hour later, I looked again.   If you look closely, you can see that one of the eggs now has a little hole in it where the chick is pecking its way out.

I had to give a massage, so I went and did that.   As soon as the massage was over, I went out and found a freshly hatched chick.  Still wet.

Hungry too, it seems.

This morning, the last egg had hatched too.   There are four babies in this nest.

When we first moved to this place, my mother gave me some iris tubers.  One of them was pink.   It bloomed a couple of times, and then it disappeared for years.   Suddenly this spring, I noticed the tubers which had not bloomed for years made a reappearance.

This next one is one of a set of six different irises that Jim’s mother sent me the first year we lived here.   She lived in California, and the box of tubers arrived here in early November.   I found a place to put them in the ground, which was cold and wet.   A couple of days later it snowed.   I was pretty sure that those irises wouldn’t survive, but they certainly did.   And they bloomed the next spring, too.

They’ve been blooming every year since.

Odd how such an ephemeral and delicate blossom can be so very very hardy and durable.

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Crescent moon

I guess I’ve been studying Syncopated Eyeball’s work for long enough now.   I was walking the dog at sundown the other night and captured the three day old waxing crescent.   While I was cropping it, I realized that I was tuned in to the textures and forms that I see in her photos and finding them in mine.

The clouds were pretty amazing that afternoon.   A big thunderstorm was just over and the front was blowing through as the sun went down.

One of the things I dislike about my town is its insistence on above ground power poles.   It makes it hard to get any “clean” shots of atmospheric phenomena.

In other news, we have the Iowa Niece living with us now.   We are very much enjoying her presence in our home, she is a lot of help and a willing worker.   Of course, we want her to eventually be able to get a job and pursue her education, but right now I am REALLY happy to have a minion to help me with the garden chores.

The dianthus are going nuts now.

Little robins not fledged yet.

The mother robin was on the nest when I went over there, and I was cussed up one side and down the other while I was getting that shot.

The bees have left the ajuga and have turned their attentions to the Ninebark.

And, I have done a few more journal pages.   These are actually two separate pages, done two days apart.   When I took the protective paper away from the left hand side I found that there were certain congruencies between the two that were interesting.

So, I’m off to the garden to do some pruning and weeding.

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We got our grade!

As I mentioned previously, I have been involved in a fifth grade science project.  It has been quite the experience in many ways.

One of the best results of this endeavor has been an increase in closeness with our neighbors.   We have been “good neighbors” for quite some time.   The husband works at the barrel factory and he often brings home kiln dried oak which was destined for the waste fire.   This is absolutely the best kindling ever.  When I have extra fruit and veggies, I share with them.  But helping the daughter with this project has really cemented good relations.   I am starting to really bond with the mother, who I am sure will start helping Jim and me with our Spanish project.   We feel that since we are destined to travel to Costa Rica fairly often for the foreseeable future, acquiring a certain basic facility in that language is a good idea.

So, great excitement all week as we collaborated on the final product of our little study of cherry seedlings.   I am sorry to report that I neglected to take a picture of the awesome display board that my young neighbor and her older sister produced, complete with home made lettering for the title, which was illuminated with hand produced construction paper cherries.   My role consisted of making sure that the project was more or less grammatically correct with as few mis-spellings as possible.   This was complicated by the young lady’s slight dyslexia, but we worked to minimize that.

I also spent considerable time discussing the results of the experiment with her, helping her interpret the numbers we came up with.   That was one of the learning curves I observed with my young student.   She quickly learned that when you are writing the measurements down, it behooves you to produce something legible enough that you can read it later when you are calculating your averages.   We also ascertained that when you are making calculations, if you leave out decimal points when you do your data entry on the calculator, it can really skew your results.  (!)

Anyway, we got the project done, and done well, and it was turned in ahead of time, which must have shocked the heck out of the teacher given the complete lack of anything at all being done a few short days ago.  And it was obviously her own work (with evident knowledgeable guidance) too.

So yesterday, with great excitement, my young student revealed the grade we received on our project to me.

I feel bad about the reduction in score on the “Procedure” section.   I realize in retrospect that I never really read that section over very closely.   I was a lot more concerned with our conclusions and guiding the thought processes about the numbers.   The young lady is smart as a whip, and I discovered very quickly that with her reading/writing challenge, she has a learning pattern that works best when she “hears” information and then discusses it.

Anyway, I couldn’t be prouder of the results of this activity.   Jim commented to me as we were getting ready for bed last night that I may have created an on-going job for myself.   I told him that I was certainly aware of the risk, and had indicated to the neighbors that I am available any time to be a teaching resource.   I suspect that I may be called on in the future, and I hope so.   I really had quite a lot of fun helping out and exercising my teaching skills.

In other news, there have been developments out in the robin’s nest.

A lot can happen in five days.  Those young-uns will be ready to fledge in a couple of days.

Also, the irises are being spectacular right now.

All I did with the above shot was crop it.  That is the rising sun refracted in that drop, and if I could have just moved one micron to the left that would have been red rather than yellow.

Finally, last but not least, we have been working crazily to get the yard whipped into shape for the upcoming nuptials.   Jim has been working on fixing the privacy fence, which suffered quite a bit from the heavy snows this winter and the strong winds this spring.   I have been working on the flower gardens, which at this point mostly involves weeding and cheerleading the existing beds.

Somehow, the clematis vine on the fence seems to have gotten wind of what is coming up, and has arranged itself appropriate for the occasion.

To my imaginative and romantic eye, this looks like the rough outline of a heart, and I wish I had the bride and groom here so I could pose them in front of it.  Maybe it will still be here in a couple of weeks when they are here.

Actually, my devious little mind has already applied itself to the problem of how to prune, nudge, and encourage this particular shape to develop more fully.

The sun has finally moved around to the north far enough that the dragon on the sauna wall casts a shadow.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this installation as the season progresses.

Now, I really MUST produce something for breakfast before my blood sugar crashes even further.

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