With a few tiger pictures for Lene among the others, courtesy of Kim, Richard and Parker.

A bird day here.

Everybody scatters, even the squirrels, when a jay flies in; they have long sharp beaks and bossy tempers and they’re happy to use them. I’ve seen them threaten a cowed squirrel, hopping after it, neck outstretched. Like their cousins the crows, they will steal and eat the young out of other birds’ nests.

I have endangered Bewick’s wrens. Find another yard. Although, the hawks’ presence does seem to have encouraged the jays to nest further away these days.

One flew in to the wooden box yesterday.

Not your suet. Scram.

It came back and I opened the door and it veered off. And again (as I stood there, curious). And again, like a game of hide and seek.

I did not expect what happened next: a fight among the leaves as it attacked a towhee in a tree, and suddenly the towhee fell straight down to the ground.

I don’t know if the robin-size bird was defending its nest or just itself, but to me it was a shock–birds just don’t go that direction that way.

Stunned, it couldn’t believe it either–and then it picked itself up and flew for freedom. Oh good.

What was clearly that same towhee showed up a few hours later, to that wooden box, where its favorite was: the suet cake crumbles. Maybe the jay attacked it out of jealousy: it has seen who’s allowed where.

But the brown bird was clearly hurt. It was trying to scoot on its belly and one foot, using the other only if it really really had to, and when it flew it looked a little tilted and I thought, well, that one’s hawkmeat, poor thing.

It came back today. It was trying its foot out gingerly from time to time, actually using it a little. Hop? A little lopsided, but doable.

A few hours later, it looked even better.

Cool. I wish I could heal that much that fast. Plucky little thing.

And then suddenly another towhee flew in.

The first immediately planted both feet flat on the box and started doing the I am a studly puffball! routine of Spring, pouffing its feathers, wiggling its wings and craving attention.

Okay, I guess I don’t have to worry about that one so much.

And then in the afternoon it was the doves’ time to put on a show. Mourning doves produce young pretty much all year round in our climate, a food factory for the predators, and one was small, I’m guessing barely fledged.

And yet it bossed the other two larger ones that showed up with it. They played leapfrog twice to scramble away from it.

Triumphant, it sat down on the narrow wooden plank separating two blocks of the patio floor, surveying its domain, and then after awhile simply blending in with the concrete.

It didn’t notice or didn’t know enough to note that the squirrel had gone. The birdfeeders were empty. Nobody was there but one very young mourning dove, claiming the world as far as it could see.

I knew what that means even if it didn’t. I looked around, hoping to see it–and then suddenly felt I was getting in the way of dinner.  After all, the female’s pretty shy.

Oh, okay.

And so I went off out of sight to the other end of the house for a few minutes and came back.

The bossy little dove was gone.

Soft little dove feathers decorated the top of the box and below it.

And the peaceable towhees lived to tell of the one that got away.

One of my earliest memories is from the summer I was three. We were driving across the country, and a cable snapped and wrapped around an axle: we were on the freeway doing 70 when suddenly one wheel wasn’t turning. We spun out–Mom remembers we missed a gasoline tanker by inches, I just remember going airborne and bouncing around and around the far back–and down we went, over an embankment.

I remember being mad at my daddy. What was he doing?! I didn’t LIKE it!

This was long before carseats, or even seatbelts other than in the front.

My older siblings remember that there was a petting zoo at the bottom of that embankment and that we got to pet the animals while waiting for help on the car, the owner taking us in on the spot. This was an unexpected fun adventure, a lot more fun than sitting in some dumb old car forever.

Meantime, the truck driver had found a farmhouse and pulled over to call the police, saying a family had just died back there.

Actually, not so much, but the help was much appreciated.

B a a a a a a ah! Petpetpet.

I wish I remember that part. But I’m glad I got started on appreciating fiber animals at a tender age–and Mom was always knitting on car trips. Go Mom! I love these pictures of Parker discovering wool on the hoof, too; maybe he’ll be a spinner some day. Here, have some lion mane to cement the deal.

Now, if you ask someone to open up and tell you all about their childhoods, they’d likely go uhbuhduhbuhduhbuduhhhh…

Narrow it down. One of my sisters emailed all of us siblings out of the blue today and asked for memories of the cars we had growing up–particularly the limo.

My folks once needed a new car that could haul six kids on long trips and handle a camping trailer as well. Guess what car, in Washington DC in 1972, was cheaper than a new station wagon? And in the days of shoddy auto work, was designed not to break down?

Yup.  Dad bought a three-year-old used embassy limousine. (Link is to Scott’s strawberry pie story.)

There was the time Mom, turning right at a blind intersection, stopped a school bus that had lost its brakes on a steep hill. Just a dent to the limo. The thing was nineteen feet long and a tank.

The irony is that my brother once was stopped and someone roaring up behind rear-ended him so hard that the nose of their (MG, he thinks it was) went right underneath, all but totalling their brand new car. The guy got out ripping mad, screaming that it was all my brother’s fault.

Um, hello?

The cop admitted that he could write the guy a ticket, and certainly would–except that the MG guy would just rip it up in front of them.

The guy worked for an embassy.  Diplomatic plates. Defense de parler au chauffeur. (That was a sign one of us bought for Dad one year to hang on the back of his headrest.)

And when I mention shoddy auto work, from back before the Big Three had competition: my uncle once bought a brand new station wagon that, the first time he raised the hood, one corner near the windshield simply crumpled. As Walter Cronkite used to say, And that’s the way it was.

When he moved away from the DC area, he sold it to my folks.

Years later, I decided I wanted to drive it to college. Mom thought this was a really bad idea but didn’t tell me I couldn’t. She did (clearly) set an older sister from a family we were close to on me to tell me how much her college life had revolved around working to pay for car repairs and how much she regretted buying hers; a $200 VW bug was anything but $200, and college learning kind of dropped by the wayside, missing the point of why she was at school.

So. The wagon needed a lot of work and Mom wanted an estimate on it (probably to tell me sorry, couldn’t be done). I still had some hopes. We were going to leave it at the service station across the next town. I was driving the other car, Mom was following in the old battered battleaxe–and that hood suddenly twisted upwards and hit the windshield!

We finally pulled into the gas station. Mom asked where we should put it.

The guy looks at it, looks at her, looks at it in a long slow wondering stare and answered, What do you want ME to do with THAT, lady?!

I should add that that was after it had sat in the driveway unopened undriven for two weeks and someone had left their wet bathing suit in it. In July. In 100+ degrees, 100% humidity, windows rolled up.

I had scrubbed and scrubbed in anticipation of being able to have a car… Because not only did it stink worse than rotten eggs, the seatbelts were a thick fuzz of inch-high poofy white tendrils.

I did not know before that mildew could do that.

I still thought it was salvageable.

I don’t think anyone ever drove that car again.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a plane! It’s a bird!

A pair of double-crested cormorants, as far as my friend Sibley and I could make out. I can only wonder why they were flying away from the Bay. Taking a vacation to the ocean?

Got 3200 stitches knitted in silk while avoiding working on the taxes. Finally put down the knitting, picked up the TurboTax, and made good progress.

Blog time! (Escape!)

So, to cut to the chase: Parker, letting Disney know they’re down to 100 Dalmations now: one went Up!

New Parker pictures! (Don’t miss the captions.)

Curious after yesterday’s patio incursion, I learned more about opossums today. It says there that they stay in one place for two or three days, then move on. That they keep the roof rat population in check and we’re fortunate to have them. Seeing one in the afternoon in Spring means a pregnant female looking for extra food.

I would add, if the shed smells of possum then it would continue the eviction notice on the rat that scuttered into there a week ago.

The last time I saw our only marsupial species was when I was having a palm tree taken out, years ago. It was not a friendly tree to have around kids; the long fronds bent low to the ground and were sharp as a sewing needle–one of my kids had to go to the plastic surgeon after falling into one.

Having it cut down is how we found out that for years we could have hauled out a ladder and picked fresh dates and had had no idea. They were at the crown, hidden behind the orangey mossy-looking stuff at the top of the fronds.

But a momma possum knew, and she was fit to be tied at the sounds of the saws and the presence of people. Babies clinging, their tails writhing, she stomped off (and on them, they were pretty big) across the yard, climbed the fence at the far end, got to a three-way intersection, picked the yard that had the most fruit trees and dove out of sight.

Meantime, I’m back to the Colourmart silk project. It’s shimmery, it’s gorgeous, and the pattern on this fourth iteration is what I was steadily discovering and working towards all along. There’s a great sense of success. It’s hard to put down.

A little leftover pie crust just sitting there.

A big bag of frozen berries.

A memory triggered. Of the intense comfort food that it was when I was given a single-person berry pie in a restaurant in Federal Way, Washington when I was far from my home, my husband, and my young kids.

When I was growing up, my mother often made homemade pies, a way to get more fruit into her kids and baked I’m sure with memories of her grandmother, who had a pie shelf built right into her kitchen: it was just expected that one would have pies on hand for whoever might show up on a random day, especially if there were young men to meet who might be courting one’s daughter. One could greet them most sweetly.

We picked fruit at pick-your-own farms, most often Catoctin Mountain Orchards in western Maryland. And so, strawberry pies, peach, berries, pear and lime, grape pistachio, it was always the best dinner ever when there was pie coming afterwards.

Then came the day I was in the Seattle area for my niece’s wedding and my brother, parents and I found ourselves with some time on our own and stumbled across that restaurant.

It was a great deal of mixed berries with just enough crust to hold them, not too sweet, just right, the way such things should be but that I had never seen from a commercial establishment before.  As close to mine or my Mom’s as it could have been.  It was so good that we went back and bought more to have for breakfast before our flights home.

A ten inch mixed berry pie just came out of the oven. Biggest pie tin I could find.

But the only thing that fit that leftover crust was a stainless steel 8 oz measuring cup, designed with a handle curving down at the end to steady the thing from flipping over as you fill it. Works on an oven rack too.

Its interior is now bubbly and cinnamony and just sweet enough and it is just right.

And on another note. This afternoon, Richard turned and exclaimed and got me to look up in time to see the second half as the female Cooper’s hawk (ie the bigger one) did a complete figure-8 around the two support poles to the awning and away.  “So fast. SO fast!” he told me. I so love our front-row seats!

Our grandson Parker and his cousin.

Lace:  I had eight going into a large almost-prime number, intending to fan out at the larger repeat but not too much of an increase, and after much scribbling and mathing and wondering if it could even be done, figured out how to get the two lace patterns to come out lined up just so with each other.

If only.

So I showed Richard what I’d done and why and how I’d made a visual representation of what I was doing and why it clearly should come out right–shouldn’t it?

He puzzled over it. I explained it again. He puzzled some more and finally offered that it seemed right to him; maybe it needed tweaking at the boundaries?

I laughed. A seamstress would have said selvedges. A knitter would say edges. A photographer would say frames. A carpenter would say corners. Someone remodeling their house would say there’s a beginning to it but there’s never ever an end. And someone like me who (due to a brain injury, I’ve tried for years, it just is what it is) struggles with knitting charts, can say this.

Spaces: the final frontier.

An older friend who doesn’t drive anymore needed a lift. As we drove the main road coming home, I was keeping an eye out: I’d seen one around there several times before, and then–Ooooh, look! as I grabbed my eyes back to the road, hoping she would see what I meant before we passed it. It was sitting on the telephone wire, being anything but their usual stealthy.

“That’s *beautiful*!” she exclaimed, her head turning to follow it as the car continued on.

“That’s a Cooper’s hawk,” and I wondered if it was one that might have fledged from our nest two miles away. I was so delighted that she was as thrilled as I was; thank you, Gail.

Dropped her off, came home to my own quiet house, had a hard time getting myself to relax and sit down and accomplish some knitting. There’s a lot going on. Cancer surgery for the wife of someone we know, Richard covering some of their job at work just like they did for him when I was sick, and cancer treatment outcome tests this week for a relative of ours.

Our daughter Sam is doing better and for that, and for all those who have reached out to help her in any way, we are infinitely grateful.

I sat down at the computer.

It’s nesting season. He always seems to be more sociable during nesting season, and so, with a feeling of someone’s eyes, I looked up to see my male Cooper’s standing on the box just the other side of the window, looking in at me. People watching. Beautiful, beautiful, big bird, and I birdwatched back at him. He opened his beak and spoke in hawk talk that I wished I could understand, and then, having said hello, flew.

Maybe an hour and a half later, there he was again. Right there. Getting my attention and posing for the camera I wished I had in my hands. Looking at the look of wonder in my face.

And he came back again! But that time I didn’t see him behind me till I laughed at a Frazz comic, I think the one where one of the elementary kids asks why the Thanksgiving people dressed like color blind leprechauns?

And with that, a swoop of the wings and there he was, on his way by. His work here was done for today.

I can cope with anything now. And I went off to Purlescence, where, surrounded by good friends, I knitted towards making someone happy.

Found another Frazz comic that made me laugh. (Well, they all do, but hey. Birds.)

Saw something new today: a squirrel with its nose pressing hard against the wooden box, squeezing its pointy little face as far as it could go underneath, right next to one of the 2×2s the box is resting on (ie as far from me as it could get while trying this). Two inch space: the final frontier.

That’s where I occasionally toss food for my wrens when they’re being shut out by the bigger, more assertive birds: only the Bewick’s will dash into that tight, dark space, and even they have to duck their tails down. Not even the chickadees explore there. Perfect.

As I’ve mentioned before, northern California is the only area left where those wrens have a healthy population and I am determined to take good care of mine. They are the tiniest birds with the biggest burst of song, many songs.

That left black paw was just about to sweep and grab to try to finish the job. I’d seen dog fur already shaped into a circle vigorously disappearing under there before with a wren going at it; there might well be an active nest and I didn’t know how far back it was.

Ooh, tasty nestlings!

Boundaries clearly needed to be reestablished and my initial foot stomp and loud GIT! wasn’t going to cut it. Time to bring out the big guns.

I have a bright red shopping bag, about as tall as an inquisitive big Fox squirrel, with twine tied to its handle at one end, and I set it up coming in at the side of the glass door with the twine tied to a cardboard tube at my end for a nice handle. I put some beat up store-bought pie crust tins and random broken ceramic bits in it for a nice noisemaker effect and to keep it anchored in the breeze.

(I know. What would Scott say. I bought the pie crusts.)

The door was closed. I was inside, innocent as could be.  Waited.

Took awhile. A black one and a clearly pregnant gray (yeah, I saw what you two were doing the other day, so do we get to see speckled squirrels? Palominos? As close as I’ll get to my childhood wish for a pony.) They took turns on the patio for awhile, and finally both were there at once and it was getting a bit crowded under the feeder. So one sniffed, then took cautious, tentative steps where it knew that peanut-suet crumble was hiding….

BAM! That bag was outside right there close to them–it came flying and crashing and those two marauders nearly risked a sonic boom. Just missed crashing into each other, too.

If I had to spend all afternoon working out the math on a pattern I’d thought was already ready to go (well, it is now), a bit of squirrel fishing certainly brightened the day.

But I would love to be able to do what a member of the peregrine forum told me she does: she buys mealworms at Los Gatos Birdwatcher, then throws them in the air and the waiting phoebes see her and catch them! Wow.

And you know who the cleanup crew would be.  It’s only fair.

Richard glanced out the window and remarked on how loud those birds were being.

Singing? Or just chirpy?

He considered that a moment, still looking at the feeder. Chirpy.

Went to two farewell parties today, brought a blueberry cake to each and coconut cream truffles as well to the second: the first was for someone who will be coming back next year, but the second was for a young family where the husband’s new job is near Denver.

If chocolate and blueberry cake can’t make that family stay, it can at least make them want to come back to visit. Even if I gave them the recipes.

I blocked the Findley shawl this morning and that fine yarn was dry in hours. It’s different. I like it.

I have two blueberry cakes in the oven and a timer on my Iphone loud enough to wake the deaf. Perfect.

There’s a Frazz comic written totally for me, even if the author didn’t know it. Cool!

Oh and, just because. The eagle doing the breast stroke at about the 1:20 mark. I have never seen a bird swim like this.

Another Parker picture.

Went to the main meeting at church, then bugged out and drove to Santa Cruz an hour away where Richard’s cousin was baptizing his son.

In the Mormon Church this is done at age eight. That is when children are beginning to really get the concepts of right and wrong for themselves and to understand cause and effect in their behavior, to be able to actively choose how they’ll react. Beginning to. We spend our whole lives from there on out working on that.

And so we call it the “age of accountability,” with baptism opening the way for repentance and a return to joy when we mess up, surrounded by people who know that we all make mistakes and that it’s okay to be human; just keep trying to be a better person. The habit begins of turning to Christ again and again to see us through by His patience, that we may learn to live His example of unshakable love.

We’re all in it together.

Okay, so that’s the background. What we did not know was that Jonathan’s brother and two sisters were coming, too, as well as Aunt Mary Lynn and Uncle Nate, and some of Jonathan’s in-laws with their little ones. People we love but seldom get to see.

We had a grand reunion. We got to meet babies we hadn’t seen, to exclaim like old people over how much the kids had grown. Alexander is ten? How did that happen!

They served an early dinner; there was at least one plane to catch. We were done there in time to get back up here and meet Marguerite’s future son-in-law. There was our second chocolate torte of the day, gee, how did that happen.

Her daughter’s fiance grew up in a ward in Boston where my cousin Grant was bishop, and so we had an instant connection there.

Friends showed up whom we hadn’t seen in ages and, again, hadn’t expected to.

I’m not sure how one day grabbed so much joy all in itself, but I’m selfishly asking for more like that.

(Oh, and the other part of that post in the link? I asked tonight, wanting it to be just right for her. Red, she answered, delighted. And so the next project shall happily be.)

And guess who was there tonight.

That same couple–and their baby, whom I hadn’t seen since she was an infant, 11 months old now and almost walking; she and I played for quite awhile. Peek a boo! *giggle giggle giggle*

And Penny and her husband, too.

She had been diagnosed with lymphoma shortly after I knitted her that shawl, and it was a comfort through all those months of treatment and solitude as her chemo-battered immune system could tolerate no risks for months and months.

That yarn had known exactly whose it was from the get-go.

I showed her the project I was working on–and admitted that although it had absolutely demanded to be made, and I’d thought I’d known who it was for, the further along I got into it the less sure I was that that was where it was meant to be.

And so I have already decided what I really will make for the person I’d been aiming towards, while this? I don’t know. I just know I have to knit it. Monday, when I rescued its UFOness from oblivion, I actually only had the first four rows on the needles; now it’s halfway done.

She reached to touch the Findley yarn and exclaimed, Ooooh! As she did so, I suddenly knew: this was exactly the pattern I had knit for her.

Everything came together in good will from both of us in that moment towards whomever it holds in its future.

Monday, it was going to be a different pattern in the body but my counting was off, and so…

I told Penny in mock indignation, My knitting bosses me around! She guffawed–she knew. Hers does too.

I’m curious to see what will come next with this. I do know that yarn time is in its own variable universe.

(Parker and Kim in the photo.)

The doorbell rang and I put my knitting aside.

My sister called from Atlanta last night: her husband was in California on business, and a meeting had been moved to–Wait! she told him. That’s where my sister lives!

Business trips usually leave no time for anything but work, but he had a break during this one. And so between that meeting and Ned’s 5:30 flight, he came on by and we caught up on each other and our kids, the first time we’d seen each other on my home turf in 13 years.  He’d seen three of my kids at college a couple years ago while visiting his and told me how great they were (and both winced and laughed at himself for doing a double take when that pretty tall blonde who’d joined his boys out at dinner called him Uncle Ned. Wait–*Michelle*?!

And as we caught up, he was happily facing my birdfeeders and occasionally laughing over squirrel antics as he told another tale or two. We had a great time.

He loves birdwatching, my sister told me afterwards. They’d had a birdfeeder, but it got put away when Ned had enclosed their porch.

I have no doubt it’s going right back up when he gets home. He was enjoying my flock just way too much not to.

I was going to send him home with some Meyer lemons but forgot. He’ll just have to come back.

You can’t divide 16 into 58 and 26 doesn’t play well with it either.

I did goofball math three months ago when I started this shawl, in trying to transcribe my scattered notes at the time.  I only caught it after working all day on it, all the while admiring the way the light catches and dances off the silk in the yarn.  It was seriously pretty and seriously soft.

It still is. No way was I going to rip it out.

It took some grumbling and a “what’s wrong?” from my sweetie and finally realizing there simply was no way and giving up. Redesign time!

And now the rest of it is going to be beautiful, too. Totally different from what I’d envisioned, but hey.

I promise not to say to the recipient, Oh, but it was really supposed to look like…