Jaci Dawn

Today was gorgeous. I think it got up to 63°F, but I could be wrong. I put my flip-flops on. Remember when we called those “Thongs”? Yeah, not any more.

The bees were out all over the place, especially the small carpenter bees. People freak out about insects: bees, wasps, and arachnids (which are not actually insects) are at the top of the freak-out list. A friend posted a photo of paper wasps on her timeline on Facebook along with a hint on how to trap ‘yellowjackets’. Nice try, but the meat on a stick over a bucket of water doesn’t really work for paperwasps (they don’t eat meat, just other insects) or for yellowjackets this time of year (they’re not aggressive until the late summer when they are stockpiling for the winter).

The birds were busy in the yard: song sparrow, junco, scrub jay, robin, and northern flicker. The turkey vultures are home from their southern migration. Anna’s hummingbirds are everywhere, which brings me to the point of the birds conversation: poor little male Anna’s hummingbird made a mating dive overhead today that resulted in a disappointing “whirr” of wings. It should sound more like a loud “CHEEP!” as he pulls up and the air flows through his feathers. Don and I gave him a thumbs down, as did any esirable mating age female within hearing. Poor bachelor Anna’s hummingbird.

One of the crows has been hauling long sticks up into the tops of the neighboring Douglas fir trees. We think he is wooing a potential mate. No idea if his gifts are being accepted or not.

Twice today, I watched a fairy flit over the Hawthorne in the back yard. Most people refer to them as mayflies, but since you can never get a real good view of them without swatting and killing one, I think they are really fairies. Swat and kill one and they turn into insects to hide their true identities.

Lean back and watch, you know they are fairies.

New neighbors moved into the rental due north of us. We watched several U-Haul loads come and go yesterday. Today, there was no movement but there was a small trampoline in the backyard so either they have a small child or the woman is pregnant ant that’s her exercise stimulus. Bounce-bounce-bounce. BTDT. It didn’t work.

I conceived an idea yesterday but had to sit on it overnight. Today, I acted on it. I wrapped a pretty ribbon around a roll of toilet paper and hand wrote a note welcoming the new neighbor to the N’hood and introducing ourselves. Part of me thinks they might be very offended (“What? Our new neighbors think we can’t afford toilet paper?” or “what? We just moved in next to a TP hoarder?”

I really hope they get the irony of the gift: “There’s no Welcome Wagon anymore but we really value your presence in our community so much so that we will sacrifice a roll of toilet paper to welcome you”.

I was going to dry my laundry on the outdoor line, but I had a white rag disintegrate in the wash of (mostly) black items. Yeah, I had to rely on the dryer to filter that shit out. In my defense, it was supposed to just be a load of towels and I didn’t know the white rag was going to disintegrate. Yay for dryers.

I did hang our bed sheets out.

How are you surviving as of today?

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Afternoon. I have moved planters out from their place of isolation and back into the flower beds where they belong. I have set out all the peony rings I own and counted to see how many more I could use. It hasn’t been hard work (I used a dolly to move the planters), and I haven’t moved at my usual frenetic pace, trying to get the most done in what time I have. I’ve uncoiled the sprinkler hose and snaked it through the north flower bed where it proves most useful.

Now, with the sun bearing down on me, I am sitting in a lawn chair, sipping on my water, and doing what I do best in the warm rays: bird and insect watching.

The paper wasps returned home a few days ago. We coexist gently: they don’t bother us if we don’t harass them. I take macro shots of them as they crawl out to sun themselves.

The mason bees are coming out now, and a few honey bees from someone’s hive are busy working the blue flowers of the rosemary. The long-horned bees are there, too, and some smaller ones. Bee flies hover over the grass, hunting. Gnats and other tiny winged things flutter about. I saw a Painted Lady butterfly rest on the side of the garage.

In the flowering tree northwest of us, a flicker calls. Over and over and over. He pauses, waits for a reply. Calls again. Some mornings, he bangs on the side of the house or the drain pipes, trying to make as loud a knock-knock-knock as he can. She is out there, whoever she is, and he is hopeful she will hear him.

The crows make their calls: caw-caw-caw or the strange purring call we refer to as “The Predator Call” because it sounds like the noise made by that creature in the Arnold Scwharzeneger film by the same name. One crow repeatedly poses a question: ‘ka-CAW? ka-CAW?’

I am alone at the moment, basking in the sun and feeling warmer than 58° F. My view is of a hanging bird feeder and several bird baths distributed around the back yard, as well as hummingbird feeders. Wind chimes and mobiles hang from shepherd’s hooks.

A dark-eyed junco (formerly Oregon junco) takes a tentative dip in a hanging birdbath. Another tests the water in the concrete pedestal bird bath. Within minutes, seven juncos have taken turns, dipping their heads under water, fluffing their wing feathers, and shaking their tail feathers in a shower of water droplets.

A low flying prop plane buzzes overhead, having just taken off from the nearby small airport and trying to gain height.

It dawns on me then, watching it rise into the sky, that there are no chem trails. We sit under the flight path of many major airlines as they make their descent to PDX International or they soar on past on their way to Sea Tac or San Francisco. There are always a few chem trails paralleling each other in the sky – and this afternoon there are none.

It feels as ominous as the days after September 11, 2001 – except for the small plane that buzzed by and a Lear jet that came in low on its way to Aurora airport to land.

And yet – the birds and the bees go about their daily lives, unconcerned. My heart soars like the sparrow’s.

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We went out to The Hive on Sunday to have our last public beer drinks before self isolation for the next few weeks. We’ll still have to go out and pick up the occasional grocery item (yay for Fred Meyer’s having “click-list” where you purchase online, go to the store, and someone delivers your filled cart to your car for you) (if only the liquor store would do that) (one of our favorite brewpubs is offering delivery within a small radius) (parenthesis are like hashtags – they can go on forever).

Self isolation for my husband and I means: life as we normally live it but with slightly fewer trips to the craft store, grocery store, or hardware store. We’re introverts by nature and staying home comes naturally but there is something about *having* to stay home that makes us a little bit stir crazy. “Wait, you’re telling us WE HAVE to stay home?”

Then the mind makes up a billion little errands you need to run.

If I could give any advice to you it would be this: keep your sense of humor. There’s a reason “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine” (Psalm 17.22KJV): there’s healing power in laughter. It won’t save you from the most dire of circumstances, but it will get you through most of the darkest ones. I suspect the reason my family sends out the most scathingly funny cards for birthdays and other celebrations is that both of my parents survived the Great Depression. Or maybe we’re just a sick people, I don’t know. We laugh.

A word on The Great Depression. Americans (I only know our history) were plummeted into abject poverty overnight. Crops failed, the Dust Bowl obliterated thousands upon thousands of acres of previously good soil, and food and gas rations were instated, You had to have rations to purchase food or gas. Sugar, flour, salt, dry beans – all rationed. The ability to travel where you wanted and when – stripped away.

By the way, those rights were reinstated after the Depression lifted, so we still have some hope that we will regain lost rights during this time of trial.

I have been messaging back and forth with my daughter-in-law as I write this. She has six children 12 and under and she is suddenly a homeschooling mom through the end of the year. I feel for her: this was never her plan. She wanted some time to herself to work on HER dreams and plans, and suddenly – kids. Six of them. Four boys, two girls. Two athletes, a couple artist-types, and two little hellions. Six different learning styles. Six different personalities. No husband to help her out as my son/her husband is deployed to a foreign country right now.

TheHomeschoolMom

This is a small plug for a really dear friend. I met her years ago when I was first looking into homeschooling. I ended up in a support group for unschoolers, a philosophy that expouses children will naturally seek out that whick interested them and learn. John Holt is considered the Father of the Unschooling movement. I actually fell under “eclectic homeschooling” more than unschooling, but there is so much to be learned by studying the underlying educational philosophies.

On a side note, I have met The Homeschooling Mom in real life. Some of the writers for her website are also mutual online friends. These women have wisdom.

One thing I urge you to do is to NOT take this COVID-19 threat complacently. It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s not a device to undermine a presidency. Do not post a meme asking how many of us “really know” anyone affected by the virus, please. I have 4 people as of today. 5 if I count the man who died. I won’t name names, but I know them.

One of my acquaintances is a young woman named Daniela, who lives in a small town in Italy. She was in a “red zone’ as of February 27 and wrote to a online group about her fears. Days later, the entire nation shut down. Days later than that, Italy declared that they could not handle the CORVID=19 deaths and anyone over the age of 80 would be left to die. Think about that.

Daniela is younger, is recovering, and I hope to read soon that she has been set free. She lost wages, but she had a certain online group that asked her to be accountable. Not everyone has that kind of group or circle.

Such a depressing post.

This weekend, we would go out to Bent Shovel Brewery and spend a few bucks for friendship, fire, and good brews. They are a very small brewery. My personal plan is to write them a check for what we would have normally spent there and to thank them for the hours they have poured into their brews.

It doesn’t have to be a brewery. A coffee shop? A breakfast dinery? a bar? Any place you go to every single week and spend money at.

Oh, and only if you ae on a fixed income and not hurting yourself.

Think I have rambled enough for tonight.

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It’s not that unusual to have flowers in the Portland metro area by Valentine’s Day, but it never ceases to amaze and bless me when the first flowers peek out of the mud and from under the cover of old flower heads and un-raked leaves.

Don’t get me wrong: we try to keep the lawn leaf free over winter, but there are some advantages to leaving the leaves in the flower beds until early Spring, and most of those advantages are beneficial to invertebrates and insects. I’m not so fond of the local invertebrates (slugs are a garden pestilence in the Pacific Northwest), but I am extremely fond of the insect life harbored under those nasty oak leaves. I haven’t raked them out of my flower beds just yet (next week probably – I do have to stay a step ahead of the native slug population and the best way is to not provide them with hiding places).

We had two fifty-degree sunny days this past week. I got out and dead-headed all the plants I didn’t get to last Autumn. Again, I deliberately didn’t deadhead some things as they were still providing seeds to the birds. We gained a new sparrow family over the winter: the golden-crowned sparrow. I’m certain that the stalks of seed heads played a huge role in keeping them here over the winter. I also kept the insect suet well supplied and the hummingbird feeders full, although there were days we were lax in refilling the black oil sunflower seed feeders. In a word: squirrels.

We welcome the squirrels and even have a peanut feeder for them (and the scrub jays), but they are greedy and voracious… and obese.

Today was a good day. I’ve been under the weather, down, and feeling disjointed. That’s good for me creatively, but not good for me spiritually. Weeks of rain take their toll and being a confidant for struggling friends also wears on the heart (but I wouldn’t change that). I’ve managed to take control of my art studio and have been creating like a whirling dervish, but I *NEED* the out-of-doors to give me a reboot.

I was up early. I wanted to go walking, but I’d forgotten to lay out clothes the night before and didn’t want to wake my husband up (note to self: always lay out clothes the night before because I get up early and he sleeps late). I did eventually go on that walk. Something about the act itself that clears the mind, fuels the imagination, restores the soul… and leaves all the muscles drained for days afterward. The price we pay.

I finished dead-heading the garden afterward, having already accomplished half of that the other day. I made mental note about which flower garden spot to start weeding in on our next pleasant day. I put out nesting material for the birds.

Then I picked flowers from my garden, the very first blooms! Granted , I only picked four half-open daffodils, two stems of Forsythia, and a very vibrant wallflower (Erysithium linifolium). – but the first vase!

(That’s a stock photo from Pixabay of a wallflower like mine).

So – Happy Valentine’s Day.

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