Jaci Dawn

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.

I have been so achy and tired the past three days – so much so that I am thankful I do not have a job to report to because I truly would have just called in sick. I’m not sick, I just hurt everywhere and I’m so-so-so tired. I do not have an autoimmune disease but days like these halp me empathize with those who do (oh, and my thyroid is fine – I have it checked annually because of these episodes of pain and weariness).

January was a good month: I got up early to pray 5 days out of 7 every week. I spent 30-90 minutes each time communing with my God, telling Him/Her about my people, seeking wisdom, direction, inspiration, and praying for peace – not just my peace, but political peace, peace in this broken world, and peace in the hearts of family, friends, and strangers.

I accomplished quite a bit of decluttering throughout January. I started rereading a favorite saga (The Circle of Ceridwen by Octavia Randolph). I pruned the grapevine but forced myself to do no other gardening as February is often the coldest part of winter for us here.

And then.. Sunday morning. I slept until almost noon. I dragged all day.

I wasn’t much better Monday, except I managed to get out and buy necessary groceries and pay bills. I also managed to drop my debit card in the local grocery store – I didn’t notice until I was a a parking lot away at the liquor store. UGH. I had to hoof it back to the store and check at the Customer Service desk where, thankfully, my card was waiting for me. And hoof it back to the liquor store because I’m not driving across the parking lot when I can walk.

Last night, I fell into the easy chair and zoned into the television to finish a Norwegian series on Netflix (Ragnarok, a modern tale about a modern Thor, dubbed in English).

This morning, I got up early – and sank into the same easy chair only to fall asleep praying.

I felt so guilty. I’ve let God down. I haven’t powered through with my early morning prayer routine. I could not keep the vigil with Jesus (which is the argument the Church uses to make us feel guilty about our prayer practices – trust me, I “came of age” in one of those churches – hence the guilt).

Later, sipping coffee and scrolling Facebook (even though I told myself I was taking a break from social media), I stumbled across this meme.

Tell me that didn’t accidentally happen.

Thank you, Abba.

It has been a year since I retired and I wrote – what? Three posts is 2019? I have no idea. It doesn’t matter. I was in the business of decompressing and finding the things I love to do. I took a very long break.

Now it is 2020 and I have no resolutions to post. I did find a word for 2020: “discover”: uncover,reveal,disclose,manifest; find, espy, descry; detect, unearth; realize. See: DISCLOSURE, VISION, KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING.

2019 was not a bad year. I raised crows. Well, OK, I didn’t raise them, but I befriended the newest clutch and I think they have started to trust me. Sadly,  had to quit feeding them for a time because the Avian Pox made a run through the colony and I didn’t want to spread it to other birds.

Avian pox is that ugly growth around the eye and beak and that black thread-like thing coming out of the crow’s mouth. This bird is most certainly dead now.

We remodeled our 1930 Cape Cod bungalow: windows, doors, siding. It looks wonderful.

The best part of last year was getting my husband to travel – by air. He has a hard enough time traveling by car or rail, but this year he was forced to fly. Twice. Or is that four times (to and fro, to and fro?). He’s only flown once before and that was pre-9/11. Luckily for us, we got random TSA Prechecks on three of those flights, so he only had to endure the TSA lines, scans, and shoe removal once. Yay for TSA precheck (and, no, I do not pay for it. If I flew more, maybe. It’s not worth the cost for as much as I fly).

We flew to Pensacola, Florida, in November. Our son & his family live nearby and my husband has never met two of those grandchildren. The highlight of that trip was the combined birthday gift we prepared for the two kids who had birthdays on either side of our visit: a camel ride at Emerald Coast Zoo ( a must see if you are ever in the area – it is actually an animal rescue).

“Best present” said the nine year old.

We also spent a week in Phoenix with our daughter at Christmas. Lots of hiking and a ride on the Maricopa Live Steamers model train and Christmas light show. Get there an hour before they open if you want to do this – it was crowded!

The sum of this all is this: I didn’t blog (much) in 2019. I was busy. I was decompressing. I didn’t feel like my words matter.

I will try to do better in 2020.

We have been “suffering” a May heat wave here in the northern Willamette Valley. It’s been dry, sunny, and warming up into the upper seventies (Farenheit) – and even close to that lovely 90° mark. The heat doesn’t bother me, but this early in the season, it brings out the worst allergens (Aah-CHOO!). So it is with welcoming arms I greet the upcoming cooler, rainy days.

The flowers are blooming steadily now. I planted two roses, a hops rhizome, and sowed seeds of naturalized wildflower mixes (Renee’s Garden seeds). Oh, and lots of nasturtiums. My husband put in the vegetable garden for the first time in three years, and I can’t wait to make home-made catsup with those plump Roma-style tomatoes in the Autumn.

I have been tinkering at yard art. This is a beer bottle stuffed into one of those corn cob holders for feeding squirrels (they don’t work, or I have picky squirrels who prefer the easier pickings of the bird feeder).

Speaking of the bird feeder, I changed things up a bit with bird baths and feeders. We now have two small platform feeders in the backyard, plus the two regular feeders in front. We feed black oil sunflower seeds, suet+mealworms, and mealworms with sunflower seeds in the back. In addition, there are five hummingbird feeders and now, five bird baths of varying size. There’s so much I could write about the birds that come to our little haven to drink, bathe, eat, and find nesting material. We have juncos, song sparrows, spotted towhees, house finches, bushtits, cinnamon-backed chickadees, black-capped chickadees, downy woodpeckers, scrub jays, and robins. We also get Eastern fox squirrels and Eastern greys.

But let me tell you about our friend, Corvie, so named because he belongs to the family Corvidae. I moved the bird baths to the back yard to discourage his antics, but he has learned that we no longer have big dogs loose in the yard, and his antics have spread to all five bird baths. Usually, he sticks to the one out front, which is nice because today I found a dead mouse soaking in the water and I was able to merely hose it off into the daylilies.

This was the mess left after he “washed” a hamburger bun in the water. he washes all of his food, much like a raccoon. The dead mouse asn’t the worst: I’ve found dead chicks of other bird species soaking in the water. Currently, he’s finding peanuts somewhere and we have peanut shells floating in some of the bird baths. I change the water daily so the other birds can have a go at it.

I was recently contacted by a cousin in Florida, who is helping out a distant relative in Maryland. We all tie into my great-great-great-great grandfather, Thomas Force Palmer. The cousin who called me is descended from my great-great-great grandfather, Joseph Snow Palmer. This has opened a whole new resource of family history. I am so excited to learn more about my family’s heritage.

For Mother’s Day, we hiked a short section of the Salmon River Trail out of Zigzag, Oregon. The couple we hiked with have health issues, so it was a very leisurely walk amongst the old growth fir, cedar, and hemlocks. The trail is heavily used, which is not the kind of trail my husband and I usually hike (we go out there with the wild animals and no people). Lots of dogs on the trail – but we did not meet a single dog owner who was disrespectful of other people.

Left to right each row: false Solomon’s Seal, Hooker’s Fairybells, Indian plum (faded), Oregon oxalis, salmon berry (edible but not tasty), Scouler’s corydalis, yellow violet, and one giant trillium (I put my boot into the photo for comparison).

In addition to the wildflowers, it is a wonderful fairy world of roots, ferns, mosses, lichens, stumps, and eco-systems growing on the surface of dying ecosystems: downed trees providing the nutrients for more trees growing out of the timber.

We stopped in Sandy, Oregon, for a brew.

If you know me, you know I like my beer. Boring Brewing Co. used to be located in Boring, Oregon (sister city to Dull, Scotland). They lost their lease and had to start over in a new location. Same great beer (their hot Scotch ale – pictured – is wonderful).

Tomorrow, the rains return and weather will become normal: cool, cloudy, wet. That gives me a little reprieve from the hay fever (until the next heat wave). It also means that my peonies won’t simply all bloom at the same time and fade quickly, but they will bloom slowly and linger. I love peony season.