Landed in Oregon VI

August 6, 2007


Cleaning ladies. Right here. Right now. Cleaning the house. Top to bottom. First time. Why? It’s a great idea, but why now? Ah! Daughter is bringing a boy friend to visit! Now, she has done this before. Why now? Something special! No one has said there is something special. Something special ... anyhow... anyway. Excitement! The tempo of August dog days has picked up.

More tomatoes. Still don’t look like Brandywines.

Near the walnut tree we have a stump that is slowly decaying. Last year and this year, from time to time a critter comes and scratches at it. It is starting to pull away on one side. It has attracted yellow jackets. They are either living in or dining in. I haven’t figured it out yet.

Weaning. Last week I looked out the kitchen window and watched finch on the sunflower bird feeder. There were two eating away. And there, three or four inches away, was a third, slightly smaller, facing one of the others, with its beak open and wings quivering. The baby. So, every so often the adult would go over and regurgitate (I guess) into the baby’s beak. I did not wait around while this enabling behavior was going on. I don’t know when the young finch got the idea. It could watch its folks feed out of the trough. The trough was right there. It could feed out of the trough at any time.

Next example. June. Swallows. Early on they swoop and dive and gurgle sweet nothings at each other. But in June there is this (relatively speaking) a squawking that starts to occur. You look up and there are three swallows. The squeaking squawker is the one chasing the other two. It is slightly smaller. They are swooping and diving, in a mature swallow way, the squeaker is frantically flapping behind them. They could easily ditch junior or miss, but don’t. They gather their dinner and frantic flapper observes. Maybe. Finally. I never waited around for that a-ha moment.

Finally, week before last, the young osprey were getting their final flight training. Then last weeks the folks vamoosed. The youngster sat in the nest or on the crossbar of the power pole -- alone. And finally the youngster was gone. The nest is about a mile from the river. I don’t know what happened to the stalwart and lonely bird. I don’t know if its folks were watching from afar. Ready to rescue. I hope for the best.

In the summer when I was going on thirteen, one afternoon someone came up the house and told my mom that my dad wanted me down at the shop. Very unusual. The shop is where he repaired shoes and harness and made saddles. I hustled my buns right down there. He told me to go get my sleeping bag and pack my stuff because I was going out to a ranch to work for the summer. He introduced me to a paunchy man in Levis and a clean flannel shirt, saying he would pick me up at the house in one hour. My mom helped in the packing. I worked three summers for them and another four summers for ranchers in the area. It took me awhile to get the hang of it. There were places where there was no electricity and no hot water and no showers. During this whole time, with the exception of one six week period, the food was always good -- and sometimes great! When I was working out in the summers and going to college in the winter my folks always kept a bed for me. Pretty nice.

Today Sharon and I checked the plum tree. Plums are about the size of apricots. Not ripe. Sharon had to try. Pucker. Pucker. She ate it all. Clearly the tree could use some water so we set up a sprinkler. On the way to the tree Sharon spotted a nest of bees. It was about seven feet high in a madrone above the path to the plum tree. Like those bee hives one sees in children’s books. Paper wasps. Black, Sharon said. The black bee is the paper wasp.

August 8, 2007

The boys, Cappy and Manny, sleep in the sun room. We don’t want them in the house because they wake up and play and create loud ruckuses. We fear turning them loose in the wild at night. Great horned owls like skunks and probably like cats as well. So, we lock them up.

This morning when I went out to let them out, they were sleeping together. Just like when they were kittens. Guess Manny no longer finds Cappy (post surgery) an alien cat.

August 9, 2007

This morning I had a epitamy. An epitamy is a small epiphany. I was holding a slice of bread for Annie to chew on. Brat likes one to hold his bread also. I guess in the wild, the bush, leaves or grass they eat is made easier when the plant resists. That way they can bite off, a bite and pulling action, what they want. Also, it holds food at a convenient level for the animal.

So, I was acting like a bread bush and thinking that Annie really ought to be called Digger. She has mounds of dirt all over her pen. She has holes she has dug all over her pen. On hot days, she rolls in the dust. She is covered with dirt and dust. Ah-ha! Here it comes: Annie is a “dust bunny.” I had never made the connection before.

August 11, 2007

We have had some cooler weather. Mornings have been running in the mid-forties. Afternoons can hit mid nineties or low one hundreds. By bedtime, back to fifties-sixties. A fifty-sixty degree swing. Might change clothes 2-3 times a day. I have lived in other locales with this kind of swing. I never noticed so much. (Maybe, now, it is a sign of age.)

August 12, 2007

On the Rogue River today with loved ones. Osprey, heron, bald eagles, beaver lodge, young Canada geese learning to fly and sunburn.

Going on vacation. Now where would a person who lives in a forested area go on vacation? Of course! To another forested area.