Heartbroken

Our beautiful hummingbird time is over. While we were out for an hour this morning, something brought the nest down and took the babies. Mummy came back shortly after we did, hovered for a few moments, then flew away.

We are all grieving terribly - shocked to find how much we loved our little friends, who didn't even know we were there.

Goodbye, little sweeties.

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.
-Pablo Neruda

Babies on Board

Anna's Hummingbirds' incubation period is 13-24 days, and our bird's eggs were laid April 30 and May 1. Looking at the calendar I was a bit disappointed because we were heading to Vancouver right on day 13, and staying three nights. 

Not that we would have seen anything - the nest is too high up for us to look down into. But I thought we might miss something good.

In the event, the morning after we got home I snuck up while she was away, and took some quick photos. I couldn't see what I was looking at, but the camera did a fine job anyhow.

Funny-looking things!

So far, their eyes are still closed and they aren't making any sounds - a safety issue I'm sure. And, so far, they are small enough to be fed by one parent, so the dad is nowhere to be seen. According to what I've read, he'll come back when one beak is not enough for adequate catering. When that happens, I suspect it will become much harder to get family photos.

But for now, here's a little scrap of video for you. Every time a breeze shook the branch, the babies thought mummy had arrived with dinner. So cute!

Garden Flat, Tenanted

Two years ago we had the pleasure of watching a chickadee family raise their young in a hanging basket just outside our sliding glass door.

It seemed like a miracle. We kept thinking they'd get a fright from the dog barking, or the sliding glass door opening too much, and move out; but they stayed around until the babies had grown and flown away.

A few weeks ago, a windstorm brought this branch down into the corner of our roof:

That's the kitchen window. For days, whenever I was washing dishes, I'd look at that branch and think "I must remember to take that down - it's going to drive me crazy."

My procrastination was rewarded last week when this happened.

She finished the nest the day before yesterday (always seems to be something to tinker with, though) and left it for a few hours, giving me a chance to get closer.

And today I think she must have laid some eggs, because she has been in position most of the morning.

She looks quite reddish in this picture...just a lighting change.

It's a joyful process to watch. We feel quite honoured that these little creatures have decided to trust us, in a way...we come and go out the back door, mow the lawn, putter in the garden, and the birds move in anyway, just a few feet from us. For a couple of delightful weeks, they watch us, and we watch them.

rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat

We live on the very edge of a small wood owned by the city. In the middle of it is a water reservoir, so thankfully it remains undeveloped. It's only a few acres in size, but it provides a lot of habitat for birds. I'm happy to have them - robins, in particular, hang around almost the entire year.

BUT. Every spring, my house becomes the epicentre of frenzied mating and nesting activity. The birds go ape, basically, flying around the place in a wild-eyed riot of screeching and flapping.

Most of them, I don't mind. I can put up with that slightly sinister pair of crows who cleverly rearrange the dried grass and bits of scrap wool I leave outside for them, before carrying it off to line their nest. I like the two hummingbirds who square off for honeysuckle rights every year: they're a lot of fun to watch. Two years ago we had a little chickadee family living in a planter directly outside the back door, where we could look right down into their living room and watch their babies grow.

The ones I really, really don't like are the Northern Flickers. These pesky things have become more and more of a nuisance over the past few years. They hang around in the trees, beginning in late February or early March, doing their irritatingly monotonous call that makes the entire neighbourhood sound like the Amazon rainforest. To make matters worse, they love nothing better than sitting up on my chimney, getting a bill-full of metal flashing in the hopes of attracting girls. It's to the point where I spend all my early mornings (my best sleeping-time), eyes half-closed, stumbling around in the backyard looking for pine cones to chuck at them. Here's what they are doing:

 

You can't get the full effect from this video. But take it from me: if you're lying in bed at 7 AM and these idiots start up, you will think there are crazed gangsters with tommy-guns having a shootout on your roof.

Stupid nature.

'Tis the Season to Scream Like a Little Girl

I threw open the kitchen window the other morning and just as I drew my hand back, something tumbled down into the sink:




It narrowly missed my hand. PALPITATIONS, anyone? I called Mr HSB over in a faint voice, to get a look at it. Please note the similarity in diameter between the spider's leg span and the drain basket in my sink.



Not twelve hours later, I was crossing the living room floor in the dead of night, and saw another, smaller one, in the middle of the floor. Then, the next morning, I threw the kitchen window open again and ANOTHER one fell into the sink, just as it had before. Then last night, someone moved a box of donations I was gradually filling up, and Surprise! Thing Four.

Urgh.

I used to be afraid of them, but I got over it when I was really drunk one night at a weekend-long bachelorette party at Whistler, and in a moment of liquid courage saw fit to slap one with my bare hand. It was pretty funny at the time, not to mention a little disgusting, but the greater implication was that I realised I was more menacing than they were. Breakthrough.


And in the last part of this pointless and arbitrary post, I direct you to my sister's blog, where she and her children compose a touching poem about the many beauties and bounties of fall. (Warning - vegetarians may be disturbed.)

Plunge Right In

Erudite Mondays at HalfSoled Boots

Volume 4, Number 2

Planet Ocean

Laurent Ballista and Pierre Descamp

I saw the girls reading this (again) the other day, so I thought I'd peer over their shoulders and give you a little glimpse of this amazing book.

As a homeschooling mum I am always on the lookout for interesting resources. I don't really believe in limiting a child by their age level - that is, not giving them a book just because it is above their current comprehension or reading level. Content - that's another matter. I wouldn't hand Charlotte The Catcher in the Rye, for instance, or Dracula.

My kids have been glued to this book ever since it arrived, and they still haven't discovered everything in it. It's not directed to children, so the text is advanced and there is no attempt to make the science easier for young readers. This makes it a good challenge for the kids, and also means they get worn out fairly soon while reading it...there's a lot of information for a young mind to sort through.

The volume is over-sized, as a coffee-table book should be. The photographs are stunning - you can really count on National Geographic, can't you?

The coolest thing about this book are the photo captions. These contain the name of the animal, the location they were photographed, and the actual size. It's amazing to see some intimidating spiny crab with huge jaws, and then to read that the actual size is 5/8".

If you want to be smarter, read this book. Here is the chapter list:

The Ocean - That Great Unknown

The Undersea Prairies

The Polar Oceans

The Undersea Plains

The Undersea Forests

The Undersea Mountains

The Oases of the Open Ocean

The Coral Reefs

The Law of the Strongest

Adapting to Their Environment

The Love Life of Marine Animals

Living Together

The Indispensable Oceans

There is a heavy focus on sustainability in the face of the human population explosion, and the effects of human consumption on the world's ocean ecosystems. It doesn't hit you over the head, though - it shows you the breathtaking photos, tells you about symbiosis, describes the changing chemistry of water. You can't help but reach your own conclusions.

Every so often there is a two-page spread of text entitled "The Expert's Opinion", on such subjects as "Arctic Ecosystems", "Sustainable Fishing: The Great Challenge", "Coral Reefs: A Precious Asset in Peril", or "Tourism and Marine Biodiversity".

If you get a chance to look through this book, take it. It's a beautiful and challenging volume - in a jaded world there is still an entirely different, strange and wonderful planet to discover.

HalfSoledBoots Highly Specialised Book Rating System

Planet Ocean gets

Reread - Constantly

Given to Others - I won't let it out of my house but I push it on everyone who comes here

Bookplate - Yes

3/3

Well-meaning but Misguided

Making my garden rounds this morning I saw this poor old thing, hanging off a chive from one lifeless leg. At least he died happy.




And the deer have been around, as my beloved Northern Spy apple tree and my dwarf sumac can attest.






Now, you know I am careless about the inside of my house, but I am vigilant about untidiness in the garden. I weed like a crazed woman, hunting the beds for any sign, no matter how teeny, of an aggressive intruder. When I see a little sprout starting, I ruthlessly jerk it from its nurturing soil and toss it, roots-up, onto the concrete driveway in the blistering sun. Once it's dead and dried and wilted past saving, it goes into a garbage bin to be taken to the curb on "Yard Waste" day. I have no mercy. I am grim-faced and methodical.

I am a weeding Nazi.

I've lived here for four years and each year I struggle with this one particular weed, which keeps coming back behind my front bed. It's got kind of a furry, floppy, large leaf and it is pretty hard to get rid of. It must grow from root fragments or something.

Well, this year I did my first weeding day a little earlier than usual. I pulled out all the mystery weeds I could find. A month or so later, I noticed that two more of them had started up after I left, and were at a good distance from the edge of the bed. Hard to reach. I felt a fury and a hatred rise up within me, but I also felt something else - defeated. Demoralised. Woebegone.

I kept meaning to get out the long-handled cultivator and chop out those weeds, but got a little distracted keeping up with the perennial beds (and keeping Piper from uprooting and devouring them) and forgot about them.

Yesterday I went out to spend the afternoon in the front garden. I had to edge the front bed, tie up the peonies, deadhead the bachelor buttons, pull out the recurrent buttercup that is the scourge of my life and threatens to choke out the shrubbery, and weed the corner heather. I cleared out a meter-high collection of buttercup and stinky (but beautiful) pink weeds whose leaves look a little like bleeding heart. I stood back to admire my work, and that's when I saw them. Saw the weeds I have been pulling out for four years in an attempt to keep my front perennial bed beautiful and tidy.

While mourning the fact that I don't have enough money to buy any more lovely perennials to beautify my flower garden.



And here are the weeds.






And now I think I shall take up stamp collecting instead.

Sting, Stang, Stung

More on this fuzzy fellow later. Click to embiggen.

My sister has been asking what Piper looks like now, at the age of four months. He's gotten a lot taller:

but mostly he has become kind of a handful. You know how puppies chew, right? Well, Piper doesn't chew so much as he eats. The other day he was lying beside me in the living room when i heard a funny swallowing sound. Sticking out of his muzzle were 2 inches of a 12 inch collar. I had taken it off him earlier and put it in my cardy pocket, and he pulled it out and swallowed most of it before I caught him.

Dealing with that was disgusting, really (kind of foamy-slimy), but the larger issue is that we have to be awfully vigilant about this dog. Stupid animal has a death wish.

Our house has also become home to another kind of pet: honeybees have set up a hive in our crawl space, between the floor and the insulation. I first noticed them coming and going out their front door, a gap in one of the wall vents to the outside...

We have called the local beekeepers' association, and they gave us the names of five beekeepers who would probably love to come and collect the hive. I don't know how long it will take but the bees are not bothering us - I quite like having them there actually.

However, on Saturday Emily fell down into a patch of clover in the front yard (our lawn is about 70% clover now) directly on top of a bee. She got a bad sting in her leg, which got red and hot very quickly. Within a few minutes she had an alarming network of welts all over her calf.

My mother is anaphylactic and carries an Epi Pen for bee stings, and I was a bit concerned about it as Emily has never been stung before. I had homeopathic Apis in the house, so I gave her three of them within ten minutes of the sting. The welts disappeared completely, and by the next morning all that was left was a tiny little stinger hole.

So I'm definitely keeping that remedy in the house. It's part of my growing Family Kit. So far I keep Arnica (for trauma, bruising), Apis (for stings and bites), Aconite (for panic), Influenzinum (flu), Hepar Sulph (for earaches, congestion and infections) and Ignatia (for worry and stress).

The last thing I wanted to show you is Charlotte's Christmas stocking. Remember this?

I have picked it up again, realising uneasily that it is halfway to Christmas and I've barely touched it. I really need to get it done this year, but at this rate I might not make it. I'll have to sacrifice some knitting to the cause, eventually, but I'd like to finish the Cap Shawl first.

Maybe I'll show you guys a picture of this thing every week, and if there isn't enough progress you can set up a hue and cry in the comments to get me going.

Now I'm off to clean up that coffee table...it's moved to the top of my priority list because I want to knit for a while and I need a place to set my teacup.

A brief update

I had a busy week. I'll spare you most of the details - or write about them later.


First:





All right, which one of you sent me this great postcard? I thought I could decipher the initial on the back, and thanked no fewer than three separate people, in turn, who all then denied having anything to do with it. So who do I thank? The back says "Make these for the family next time you want to avoid cleaning. We're here for you!" That means that A) the sender is a reader; and B) they are my kind of people.




I was puttering in the garden the other day, and ambled over to my iris patch to admire the emerging flowers. They are far from open, as yet.




But......what's that?





OH CRIPES THOSE BLOODY DEER HAVE EATEN FOUR OUT OF SEVEN OF MY IRISES.


Wait a second...do deer bite off the flowerheads and then drop them behind the plants?



No. They don't. You know what DO, as it turns out? FREAKING FOUR YEAR OLDS WITH SCISSORS. She must be stopped.

Listen, Bambi: Actions have Consequences.

I forgot to show you guys the socks I cast on instead of fixing my lace mistake (which is currently in the corner having a time out). I went for the Marina Piccola socks again - hoping to break the Sockapalooooza hex.

This counts towards stash reduction - and frugality, too. I got the yarn from Shelley at Fun Knits, when the Group was over there for the afternoon last year. Judy Maclean, the Sweatermaker dyer, had given several tangled skeins of merino/nylon sock yarn to Shelley. These skeins had apparently become partially unbound in the dyeing process and were a snarled mess. Judy told Shelley that if anybody wanted to go to the trouble of untangling the yarn, they could have it for free.

OF COURSE I took it. I spent two days untangling my skein and winding it into a beautiful, perfectly symmetrical, centre-pull ball. After having given away my first, aqua-coloured pair of Marina Piccolas, I was determined to have some of my own, and these are them. They. Those. here they are.



Again, I'm happy with this pattern: it's easy to memorise. I also like how the colour is knitting up. I'm getting about 10 stitches to the inch, magic-looping on 2.5 mm Addi Turbos.

Oh yeah: and progress on the log cabin afghan. It's now too big to take with me anywhere, so growth has slowed considerably. It's about 4.5 feet across at the moment.


It isn't easy to get good pictures these days, by the way. It's so dark here....I went out to take some garden photos and the camera saw fit to use the flash. Outside. At 10.30 AM.

Anyway, I was poking around looking for signs of spring. And I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but white-tail deer don't like crocus. Or bamboo. And yet?

Exhibit A

There were 100 crocus bulbs in here, evenly distributed and all about 1.5" high. It's hard to tell in this photo, but the deer have pawed (or pulled with their teeth) half the bulbs out and cropped the tops off of the remaining shoots.

Exhibit B

My poor bamboo. THE NERVE. What do they think they are, freakin' pandas?

Luckily, I am a member of a superior race. These opposable thumbs come in really handy for delicate work, and taxidermy requires some dexterity.

Exhibit C



Just kidding.

From Bad to Better

A man barely alive. We can(not) rebuild him. We (don't) have the technology. We can(not) make him better than he was.
- adapted by Me.


All right, troops: the diagnosis is in.


FINALLY.

The biopsy showed "significant rejection", which I suppose means that it had gone quite far. It also means that the treatment they chose to administer was correct. The steroids will continue for about six months or so, gradually tapering off.

Doc says it was not "vascular rejection" which apparently is the worst one. So, yay for the second worst! Woo hoo!

It will take a long time for them to determine whether the kidney will heal or scar. Healing is good, scarring is less good. I guess there will be an ultrasound at some future point to check this.

From now on, his creatinine baseline will be higher than it was before, since some irreparable damage has been done.

Finally, Doc says "we have no idea what caused it and we have no idea whether it will happen again."

In case you are dying to know more.

And now, a few things to look at. This might be my concession to Random Wednesday... (Watch out - there are two scary pictures in this sequence.)

Gyrid front.

My butt. (Scary picture number one.) I bought some new capris but I'm worried they might be too girly for me. See? Flowers.

This one is for all those people who might be thinking I am exaggerating about the boldness of the deer around here. This one is less than two meters from my kids, and he is not even running. He was just browsing for some apples I had thrown in the compost. Bold as BRASS.

A West-Coast (read: huge) spider. (Scary picture number two.) I turned her over while recycling some more concrete debris into my garden. There you see her egg sac beside her. After taking this picture I ran inside to get my measuring tape and managed to lay it beside her without disturbing her. She was sitting squarely with her back legs at the 5", and her front legs at the 7". I lifted the camera to take the picture and BAM! she skittered off as fast as her legs could carry her (pretty darn fast when it's a 2" long spider).

My little friend. I tried to get a picture of him perched on the concrete edge of my new island bed (his favourite spot for worm-recon), but he had other ideas. I had to settle for a grass shot.