Bushtits

Summer has arrived, and so too, at last, has the sun.

Kris and I now spend our evenings roaming the yard. She prunes flowers and weeds her tomato plants. I tie up my grape vines or mow the lawn. The cats wander to-and-fro, attending to their cat agendas, stopping briefly to greet us when there is nothing more urgent to do.

The strawberries are nearly finished, as are the peas. The raspberries are bountiful, but their texture is odd: the fruit is small and crumbly. The lowbush blueberries have just begun to ripen — they’re fat and juicy. Our marionberry or boysenberry (we can never remember which) is enormous. It stretches the entire twenty-foot length of the berry trellis, its thick and thorny vine like something from Sleeping Beauty. It has produced thousands of little fruits, which have begun to change from pink to red, and which will soon grow purple and delicious.

Last night while examining the apple trees, I was treated to a chorus of cheeps from the corner of the yard. It sounded as if scores of baby birds were crying out in hunger. I walked over to find their nest (or nests). The birds were in the big camellia at the corner of the house. But they weren’t baby birds. The tree was filled with a swarm of bushtits.

In a fit of orneriness, I spread my arms and ran headlong into the camellia, hoping to raise a cloud of bushtits from its branches. Instead, I only raised a puff: about twenty or thirty of the little birds took wing, seeking refuge in the locust.

Later, Kris summoned me to the yard. “Look,” she said, pointing at Simon. He was crouched lawn in the grass, creeping toward the rose garden. I looked to where he was staring, and there was the flock of bushtits, flitting from bloom to bloom.

Tiff’s friend, Andrea, has been visiting from Philadelphia for the past week. Kris and I have joined them for a couple of meals, once at Mike’s hamburger stand, and once at Nicholas’ lebanese. Yum. Andi is a photographer, and a good one. She earns a living with her images. I took some time to pick her brain, especially about iStockPhotos, where she sells a lot of her work. Thanks for being patient with me, Andi! (Andi’s flickr stream.)

Re-Arranged

My startling transformation from a hoarder to a purger continues.

“I want to get rid of more books,” I told Kris last night.

“Which books?” she asked. She looked skeptical.

“Nearly all of them,” I said.

That was going to far, Kris protested. “You don’t need to get rid of any more literature,” she said. “If you want to get rid of something, get rid of your comic books. And the science fiction.”

Over the years, I’ve amassed a large science fiction library, one that takes up about 360 inches of shelf space. Maybe more. But I don’t read science fiction much anymore. I haven’t read a single book from my scifi library since we moved to the new house.

To make matters worse, the scifi books live on a pair of bookshelves in the guest room, a room that I keep complaining doesn’t give me enough room to work. (It doubles as my writing office.) I want to get rid of the guest bed, but Kris thinks I should get sell the science fiction bookshelves instead. We purchased them for $20 each from a disgruntled Borders employee. The shelves are angled so that the base rests on the floor several inches from the wall. They take up a lot of space. And they’re ugly.

“Yeah, I could purge some science fiction,” I said. “Maybe I could move the remaining books to a shelf in the other room.” We have a pair of bookshelves in our ‘cat room’ that we use mainly as storage for children’s toys. Since we have no children, these could probably be kept out of sight.

“Maybe I could move the small bookshelf from the media room into here,” Kris said. “Then we could put the kids books on it, and you could move your science fiction books over.”

“Could we get rid of the guest bed?” I asked, though I already new the answer.

“No!” said Kris. After a moment she added, “But we could move the guest bed into a corner, which would give you more space to work in.”

We’ve made a decision to re-arrange several rooms again. This happens once every few months, and I love it. I derive great pleasure from shuffling books between rooms, from dragging furniture to-and-fro. It’s as if we’re gradually seeking the ideal layout for every room in the house.

Spring Harvest

Late spring in the Willamette Valley — you know what that means: fresh strawberries. Some people tromp off to large farms to pick them. Kris and I harvest our own.

I’m particularly fond of our plants. The ones running wild in the rose bed come from the Gingeriches. They’re threatening to crowd out the flowers. The strawberry plants in among the raspberries came from Mac and Pam (who, in turn, originally got them from us — essentially, these are descendants of the plants I bought when we first moved into the house in Canby).

Our first strawberries of the season weren’t so good. We gave a batch of them to the neighbors, and it made me feel guilty. They were more “waterberries” than strawberries — they were flavorless from too much rain. Over the past week, though, their flavor has improved.

Last Friday, Kris picked five pounds from in and and among her roses. On Sunday, we put Will and Tiffany to work harvesting the fruit. There’s still more to come, too. Meanwhile, we’ve been snatching raspberries here and there. The berries aren’t very big, but they’re flavorful. (These raspberries are from Mac and Pam, too.) Our three highbush blueberries (transplanted from the neighbors) aren’t going to bear this year (they had a lot of fruit last year, even though they’d just been transplanted), but our two lowbush varieties are straining under the weight. Just a couple more weeks and I’ll be eating blueberries at every meal.

I’ve been eating fresh peas ever since the strawberries came on. Crunchy and delicious. They’re actually better after sitting in the fridge overnight, sealed inside a plastic bag with a bit of water.

There’s still lots more to come. We’re just getting started with the garden produce. Kris’ tomato plants are ENORMOUS! (I plan to climb one up to the clouds, where I’ll steal a harp and a goose and various other goodies from the giants who live there.)

Addendum by Kris: I am trying a new fertilizer this year, which may account for some of the tomatoes’ enormity. Also, we have six pears and countless apples, though they’re all quite small yet.

Meanwhile, other things are sprouting at the Cronk residence…

Swallowtail

I’m sitting on the back porch on a pleasant Saturday afternoon. I’m sipping a gin fizz. Toto is perched on the railing, surveying the yard. Kris is at work in the garden.

In the back hedge, a swallowtail butterfly alights upon the pale purple rhododendron, the rhododendron that towers nearly twenty feet above the ground. The scene is gorgeous — butterfly and blossom make perfect complements, framed by a forest of green. The swallowtail flutters from flower to flower. I’d like to take a picture, but it is only there for ten or twenty seconds before it breezes away.

Further Tales from Rosings Park

What’s a typical May evening like at Rosings Park? Let’s take a peek…

It’s not raining when I get home from work. In fact, it hasn’t rained since mid-morning. I check the grass: it’s basically dry. I check the sky: it’s grey and ominous, but there’s no rain. I decide to risk it.

I set the mower wheels on high and start it up. I mow at light speed, nearly jogging. Even so, it’s a slow go — the grass is tall from all of the wet, warm weather. After just ten minutes, it begins to sprinkle. I continue mowing. A light rain comes and goes as I sprint through the tall grass. I mow the road lawn, the front lawn, the side lawn. I’m just about ready to start on the back lawn when there is a crash of thunder and the sky falls in. Rain comes down in a torrent. I park the mower under the maple by the back porch and go inside. So close! Another five or ten minutes and I would have mowed it all.

Kris comes home.

Our gutters, which were well-cleaned in January, have become clogged in the recent monsoons. I cleared the gunk from the lower gutter last night, but I wasn’t willing to brave the cold and the wet and the heights to clean the upper gutter. We stand at the kitchen window and watch the rainwater splutter-splutter from the top of the house onto Kris’ precious planter box.

In the spirit of “responsiveness”, I grab a stepladder and make for the roof. Simon helps. When I lean the ladder against the guestroom wall so that I can open the door, Simon climbs onto the bottom rung and wriggles his way to the top. There he surveys the room. He isn’t happy when Kris pulls him down. (You may recall that Simon loves ladders, as demonstrated by the following photo.)

Kris holds the ladder while I climb onto the upper roof. A single fat, waxy leaf is clogging the works. (Not much can reach the upper gutters. They’re very high.)

When I climb down, Kris is gazing longingly at her gardens. She loves her gardens. Sometimes I think she loves her gardens more than she loves me! “You should take a picture of the gardens,” she says. “I’ll go move the yard waste container.”

I grab my camera and snap a few shots, but can’t get anything framed that I really like. (“These pictures aren’t any good,” Kris tells me later as we are reviewing them. “You’ve cut off this plant here. And what about those roses? And we don’t need to see the lawn.” sigh)

While Kris and I are otherwise occupied, Simon has come outside onto the lower roof and scampered along a little outcropping to the balcony outside Kris’ office. We decide to let him have some fun, and so go inside to eat our dinner. When we come back up to get him, he is gone. Kris goes outside into the yard to see what she can see. What she sees is Simon, now on the upper roof, lounging away.

“How’d he get there?” I ask.

She looks at the balcony outside her office. “I have no idea,” she says.

I look at the area around me. It is conceivable that Simon might have climbed up a low, angled bit of roof. But to have reached the upper roof, he would have had to twist himself at an odd angle while jumping, similar to the way he had climbed the ladder earlier. I shudder at the thought. Any mistake and he would have plummeted to the camellia hedge below.

I go to Kris’ office and out onto the balcony. Here the situation is almost worse. The only way Simon could have made it to the roof was to make a six foot leap to a small platform above another camellia hedge. A tough jump for such a big cat. (From there, though, it would have been easy for him to scamper up.)

These are the only two routes he could have used. It’s difficult to conceive that he would have tried either of them, but apparently he did, because now he is lounging on the upper roof. I climb up the rickety ladder and call him over. He trots to me, tail tall and proud: “Look what I did!” He trills and even purrs at me as I pet him. But then I turn into Bastard Dad, hauling him down to the top step of the ladder (which is wobbling beneath me).

He stomps off to sulk in the bedroom.

His little brother, Nemo, is proud of himself for sneaking into the basement during the excitement upstairs. At dinner, I went down to fetch a bottle of salsa. I must not have fully latched the door. All three cats have a special sense that tingles whenever they approach an unlatched door. I don’t know what Nemo finds so exciting in the basement, but he loves it. He can spend hours down there. (No doubt he’s tearing open the spare cat food bag — that’s one of his hobbies.)

At the moment, Toto, my misunderstood daughter is sitting on the arm of my easy chair, purring and staring at my face. She wants attention. Every so often she reaches out a paw and gently claws my ear, pulling it toward her. Why? Because she’s a cat.

Kris is upstairs watching the Lost episode from three weeks ago via BitTorrent. She’s sad that we’ve forgotten to download last week’s episode, because it further goofs up her sequencing. Basically, if tonight’s two-hour finale contains episodes D and E, and the one she just finished is A, she will be watching them in this order: B-A-D-E-C. I hope she can keep that straight in her head. (Update after the fact: she could not keep them straight in her head. Apparently episode C contains critical stuff, because she was completely lost. She gave up and will have me download it for her later.)

And me? I will soon be taking a hot bath while reading The Wealthy Barber, which I hope to review soon at my personal finance site.

And that is a typical evening during springtime at Rosings Park.

Further Tales of the Jays

Some of you may have been following the saga of the juvenile jays here at Rosings Park. We just had more major excitement, so I thought I’d provide a brief update.

To recap:

On Monday evening, Nemo caught a fledgling scrub jay. We rescued the bird, which was unharmed, and one its siblings, and put them in the bushes where we believed they lived. During this excitement, a small community of adult jays (not just the parents) scolded and harried us.

We grounded our cats for several days, locking them in the house during the beautiful warm afternoons and evenings. (“Unfair to cats! Unfair to cats!”)

On Tuesday morning, I found the decapitated corpse of one of the baby jays in the middle of the sidewalk. A neighbor cat had murdered it. We let Simon out for a bit on Tuesday evening while we did yardwork. He didn’t get into any mischief, but the adult jays let him have an earful when he ventured too close to the shrubbery.

On Wednesday evening, Kris spied a neighbor cat in the fledgling ground; it was being harried by the adult jays. She ran outside and scared the interloper away. She also moved a baby jay from the middle of the lawn into the shrubs.

On Friday morning, I found a second decapitated baby jay corpse in the middle of the sidewalk. A neighbor cat had murdered it. In the afternoon, I beat the bushes, but neither saw nor heard any jays, young or old. We let our cats outside.

Moments ago, Nemo caught another baby jay and brought it to the porch. This time, the bird was not unharmed. He did not kill it, but I believe he broke one of its legs. “We should bring it in and feed it,” Kris said. I convinced her that we could not possibly save it, and that its only hope is to gain flight (which it is close to doing). We watched it struggle across the lawn in the rain — the adults flew from tree to tree, swooping low over the ground to keep an eye on their charge. I spotted another baby underneath the azaleas, so got up and moved the wounded bird to be with its sibling. The adults raised a ruckus.

How many baby jays are there? Will any survive? I don’t know. But I dearly hope that, in just a few days, we’ll look out the kitchen window at the feeder to see a juvenile jay with a wounded leg.

Pigeons == Flying Bricks

I just got home from work. I’m sitting in the library, looking at comic books, when I hear a rattling bang in or near the kitchen. What could it be? Simon wonders, too, and he goes to look. I don’t get up.

A few minutes pass. I’m leafing through my comic book. WHAM! It’s that rattling bang again. I’m puzzled. Is Kris home, slamming closed the lid to the yard waste container? Did the mail carrier just drop two heavy boxes on the front porch? Is somebody outside vandalizing the house?

I get up to check.

Simon is sitting between the kitchen and the dining room, ears pricked, staring out the big window over the sink. There’s a group of pigeons on the feeder. You don’t suppose…?

I do suppose. There is a stunned pigeon on the ground, standing there, looking even stupider than usual. There are two new birdprints on the window. (There’s also a big, juicy one from last fall that I won’t let Kris clean — it cracks me up.)

Pigeons are SO DUMB. They’re like flying bricks.

Saving Baby Jay

Note: Though this entry may at first appear to be filled with cat on bird violence, it has a happy ending. I think.

I was sound asleep in the tub tonight when Kris came barging into the house. “Nemo just caught a juvenile jay!” she shouted, distressed. I woke with a start. Outside there was a raucous squawking riot. I rose from the tub and dripped to the front door, naked.

Nemo was slinking around the back of the house, treasure in mouth. Simon was making his way to the azalea hedge where the capture had occurred. “What do I do?” Kris asked.

“Scare Simon,” I said. I ran to the bathroom for my pants. When I came outside, Kris was pouring her water bottle over the azaleas. “No,” I said. “Hit the hedge with a stick.” She did so, and Simon bounded out. So, too, did another juvenile jay. Simon saw it, but Kris was quicker: she scooped it into her hands.

“What do I do now?” she asked.

“Hold on,” I said. I grabbed Simon and shut him in the house. Mama and Papa Jay were flying from limb-to-limb, squawking at us.

“I’m going to make a nest for the baby,” Kris said. She bunched up some ivy in the crook of some pine branches, then placed the fledgling inside. While she worked, I walked around the house to find Nemo.

He was back by the dogwoods, seated in loaf position, watching his baby jay as it hopped along the ground. Nemo wasn’t even trying to play with it. I thought for sure the thing had been mortally wounded, but when I picked it up, I was shocked to find that it was wholly uninjured. How was that even possible? As I carried it back to the front yard, it squawked — louder than any adult jay I’ve ever heard — and struggled to be free. Its parents squawked in reply.

“Is it alive?” Kris asked after she had locked Nemo in the house. She was as shocked as I was. “What do we do now?” she said.

“Put it in the tree with its brother?” I suggested. But when I crept behind the azaleas — naked except for my pants — the other fledgling was gone. “Ouch,” I said, pricked by holly leaves and pine needles. Kris took a turn looking in the pine and on the ground nearby, but there was no sign of the bird. Can a parent jay carry its children? we wondered.

I let the feisty jay free on the grass where it immediately hopped for cover underneath a lawn chair. “We should feed it,” Kris said. While she looked for worms, I grabbed my camera. I loved the little bird’s personality, his indomitable spirit to have survived Nemo.

“Worms are more difficult to find when you need them,” Kris said, bringing a little one for the baby jay. The bird pecked at it, but did not eat it.

We spent half an hour trying to get the parents and the baby to reunite. Mama and Papa Jay were aware that their baby was with us; they flew from hedge to bush to tree, keeping low to the ground, but they would not come into the open to get their child. And we didn’t want to let the fledgling hop into the bushes (which was what it wanted to do).

The mosquitoes feasted upon our flesh: I was still wearing only a pair of pants.

As dusk fell, we brought the bird inside and put it in a cat carrier. (Oh! The irony!) We gave it a dish of water and a dish of millet. We made a bed of straw. While Kris fussed over our young charge, I googled for information. I found a page about how to care for baby birds — unfortunately, its advice was to let the fledglings hop into the bushes where its parents can care for them, something we had prevented. By this time it was dark out, and we were worried that the parents had given up on their child when we brought it inside.

“I’ll get a box,” I said. I found a shoebox, and we moved the bird and its water and its millet inside. I took the shoebox and placed it behind the azalea hedge, beneath the pine tree.

Will our little jay survive? I don’t know. I hope so. Our feline children will not be allowed outside for several days, that’s for sure. The first place they’ll go when we let them out is the azalea hedge, hunting for birds. I’m hopeful that by the weekend the juvenile jays will be able to fly, and thus elude our hunters.

Cat and Bill disapprove of the fact that we allow the cats outside, partly because they do hunt, killing birds from time-to-time. I respect their position, and understand their concerns, but mostly I believe that the cat-bird dynamic is hardcoded into nature and ought to be allowed to play out. However, I recognize that as a moral human animal, it is my responsibility to do what I can to protect all intelligent life when possible. Nemo killing a goldfinch once or twice a year is one thing; Nemo picking off baby jays who have left the nest is another.

What line has been crossed here? I can’t articulate it, but I do know that so long as it’s within my power to save these baby jays, it’s my responsibility to do so. I feel no remorse at the death of a goldfinch, but the death of a jay seems reprehensible. Whine as they might, the cats are restricted indoors for several more days.

Resources about caring for baby birds:

Be well, little bird!

HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach

For my birthday, Kris’ parents gave me a Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer. This thing has an incredible reach, and suddenly my hedge trimming chores aren’t so daunting. Mostly.

Look at the features of the Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer!

2.6 amp motor
24″ extra-long blade
3/4″ max cut capacity
dual blade action
6.2# lightweight
2-position pivoting blade
improved control
extra reach
increased accuracy
“clean, aggressive cuts

The box claims that the Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer cuts branches faster and easier with 40% less vibration.

What’s my evaluation of the Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer after eight hours of use? Well, it does cut hedges, but it’s certainly not very good at it. Clean, aggressive cuts? Try ragged, passive cuts. This thing even has trouble cutting through boxwood! If you’re slow and patient, however, it will cut anything. Just not cleanly. It sort of tears the camellia.

This Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer gets 2-1/2 stars at Amazon. The most recent issue of Consumer Reports rated it as Fair with a score of something like 62. That’s not very good.

But don’t let that scare you off! I’m actually glad to have my Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer. Its extended reach feature is worth its weight in gold. Next year when I trim the arborvitae hedge, I won’t have to work from both sides; I’ll be able to get it all in one pass. I also like the 2-position pivoting blade, which allows me to trim from multiple positions. I am very grateful for this tool, and it’s sure to get lots of use.

(I won’t be getting rid of my Black & Decker TR165 16″ Hedge Trimmer any time soon, though. This badboy is smaller, lighter, and has almost as strong a motor as the Black & Decker HH2410 HedgeHog XR 24″ Extended Reach Hedge Trimmer. Each of the machines has its uses, and I carry them both with me as I roam the yard, keeping the shrubs in check.)

I’ve been meaning to get in our yard and use the hedge trimmer, but one thing after another has reared its ugly head: I started two new weblogs, we got busy at work, I got sick for two weeks, and so on. Finally, last week I was able to get outside for four consecutive afternoons to trim the camellias, laurel, boxwood, and skimmia that encircle our house. It took me eight hours, but I finally got the job done. I also managed to trim the camellias next to the workshop.

Now I need to find time to:

Mow the lawn again
Prune every other hedge on the property — I’m maybe half-way done with my hedgetrimming for the spring
Cut up all of the lilac and laurel limbs that we pruned recently — we took down a small fraction of the wood on this place, and yet it feels like we didn’t do a thing

I hope that this hedge trimmer comes in handy for many years to come. Thanks, Chris and Claudia!

Garage Sale Update 2006

The first day of our garage sale went well. I was by myself, so I couldn’t be as social as last year. This also meant that when I needed to relieve myself, I simply ducked behind the garden shed to piss on the camellia.

I had fun chatting up the customers, though I still haven’t learned which people lack social graces and see friendliness as invitation to ramble on about their Aunt Margaret’s gall bladder surgery. It’s like a minefield: you gab with the buyers about the weather, about the neighborhood, about the garden, and then all of a sudden there’s somebody who lingers for twenty minutes to discuss how evil those fucking Democrats are, how they’re ruining the country.

Mostly though, it was a relaxing day, warm but overcast. I sat on the reclining love seat (only $60!) and read. I used an extension cord to plug in my Airport Express outside so that I could have internet access. (The Airport Express relayed my wireless signal from the house to the driveway. I didn’t get much time to use the access, but it was there.)

I worked on an article about garage sale tips for my personal finance weblog. Simon kept me company.

He hung around all day, lounging in the garage, in the driveway, in the garden. Early in the day he climbed onto the roof, where he entertained the customers. After a couple of hours, he decided that he didn’t know how to get down. He meowed piteously. I tried to help, but he was scared. Ultimately, his solution was to step down gingerly on to the newly-trimmed ewe hedge at the edge of the driveway. This did not make him happy: the hedge sagged and bowed beneath him. He whined some more. I managed to get him down, but not without a struggle.

To recover, he spent some time lounging in the midst of Kris’ purple irises. He had been there for some time when a hummingbird came chit chiting along. The hummingbird and I were both startled when Simon leapt from the irises and came within inches of nicking a tasty snack. I never thought a cat could catch a hummingbird, but I’ve changed my mind now. Given the correct circumstances, I believe it’s possible.

Simon came to sit on my lap, where he was once again a crowd favorite. When he was bored of dad, he began to do whatever he could to climb into the garage rafters. He tried to scale a support post. He tried to jump up from a high vantage. Eventually he found a slanted wooden brace that he was able to walk up and into the exciting unknown territories. For the next hour or so, he walked around on top of the garage doors, causing trouble.

Meanwhile, we had a lot of traffic. It seemed about twice as busy as last year, in fact, though sales weren’t double.

We sold $153.25 yesterday (up from $123.50 on the same day last year). Of that, $64.00 is mine, $46.50 belonds to Kris, and $42.75 is Tiffany’s. Last year we collected $206 on Friday and $222.50 on Saturday. I have high hopes for this year, too. Somebody buy our television! Buy our couch! Buy Joel and Aimee‘s old intermittently-operational DVD player!

Most of all, buy my comic books!