I guess it’s official: everybody’s into knitting now!

There’s been a goldfinch just outside my window putting on quite a display today:  it’s been holding its tail stretched open as wide as it can go, trying to cool off.  I’ve been watching it relax, go oh wait that’s right and stretch it back out–hold it right there–that’s better. Relax, flare out, hold. Repeat.

On the ground, the mourning doves are winging it in their own AC effort.

My hanging sugarpine cone was held to its string up there, I learned, by glue. It came unglued in the heat.  Smashing Sugarpines would make a great rock band name.

The suet cake is dripping slowly.

The squirrels are looking longingly through the window at my tomatoes that are grabbing at their chance to finally turn color–inside, out of reach of their greedy little thievery.

A house finch lands and spreads his tail in a wide V too as I type this.

I tell you. It’s feather-and-fan weather out there.

A total non sequitor, but, I haven’t seen a possum in our yard since we cut down our date palm years ago.  Brought back memories.  But there was one on the back patio tonight and it ambled away at the sight of me, sniffing at the birdseed can and then hunkering in a corner behind the earthquake-supplies larger trashcan; I called out to Michelle. Hey! You want to see a possum?!

She came, but in the dark it was hard to tell where it had gone off to. I went out there in my stocking feet (not handknit), thinking one should only be so stupid about this (have you seen the teeth on those things?), camera in hand, and hoped the flash would find it for her and me both. Flash flash flash. Or if nothing else it would discourage it from staying.

Next time.  And surely there will be one.

Meantime, I pulled up the tight-fitting handle over the lid on the birdseed to lock it shut for the first time in a long time.

We kept our car back a little bit after the first time that truck hit a bump. We didn’t want those fresh round rocks in an argument with our windshield.

This is the second year in a long while that I’ve planted my own and I’m hoping it becomes a habit.

And so I was so looking forward to that first really good, sweet, homegrown tomato on my (yes just) one little plant.  That biggest one was a goodly bright orange and getting brighter, not quite red yet; it didn’t have that intense tomato essence yet, but give it time.  I tried not to examine it too closely too many times a day.  Getting there…

And then the water that I always have set out for the critters got pulled over by one of them and emptied out and I didn’t notice immediately.  I found out when I looked out the window and discovered my so-anticipated veggie out in the yard: when I stepped out to see, hoping that maybe just maybe I could simply retrieve it (good luck with that), I found that one of the squirrels had stripped the side open, sucked it out, and left the hard outer carcass lying there in reproach.  It didn’t even eat the piece it had torn off.  It didn’t even pull it to the trees for a proper burial in hopes it would sprout more like the one squirrel had done with the whipped cream cup.

It didn’t like grocery-store-hard tomatoes.

Turkey.

Chucked that one. Okay, then. Four more to go and lots of tomato flowers.

Since then, no more fruit has set and the plant has just barely been hanging in there. I’m thinking I got a determinate variety, which sets all at once and then dies, good for someone doing canning, rather than an indeterminate, which keeps producing merrily till frost like I’d hoped for.

The plant is in a pot and I keep threatening to bring it inside out of the squirrels’ reach, but it’s pretty leggy and windy and viney, y’know?  Those four tomatoes, hanging on. It’s been a slow, cold season this year.

I noted a black squirrel rubbing its face vigorously today–I’d shaken some very hot pepper flakes around those four after the theft. Busted!

Meantime, a few days ago I thought part of the problem with losing our water supply out there is these plastic disposable cups I’ve been using (because I don’t care what happens to them) –they’re old, they’re thin, they crack easily.  I ought to put something sturdier and steadier out there.

And so I braced an old Tupperware cup in the usual spot and filled it up.

It didn’t stay put long at all!  It disappeared, and I had to go looking.

Dang, that must have been one hard tomato.  But someone kept on trucking–I found the plastic slivers.  And this time it *was* over by the tree trunks.  That squirrel kept on chewing, sure the juice and seeds must be in there somewhere: Come ON! GIVE it to me!

I don’t think Tupperware’s lifetime warranty quite covers that.

I took the damaged birdfeeder down yesterday and gave it a good cleaning and disinfecting and let it dry inside overnight.

What was amazing to me is how fast one of the black squirrels figured out, before I did, that it was open season–a couple of hours is all it took: the feeder cage wasn’t going to close down on it now.  Did it make a different sound now when the birds landed? Did it give slightly under their weight and now it didn’t? Did the squirrel remember the short time awhile back when I put it together wrong and they could get at it and what it sounded/looked like then?  I don’t know. But clearly, it had been looking forward to this for a long time and I had made its day. Forget those nuts over there–I’m going in!

Nope. Sorry. Mine.

What made me laugh later was, after thinking how smart the one was for figuring it out so fast, how dumb a sneaking gray one was for trying to gauge jumping distance from the forbidden pole (that they normally really do stay off of)–not quite noticing that, duh, dude, it’s.not.there.now. If your friend takes a flying leap, does that mean you have to take a flying leap? Huh? Huh?

Off to the shop.  They replaced the inner tube, it was under warranty, all taken care of, good to go.  Got it home, set it back in its spot, filled it up, walked in the other room, walked back, and it was–well, let’s just say I was no longer the bad Finch who stole Christmas. *Nah-voo dore-ace to you too, guys.

Meantime, I got some knitting done at Purlescence tonight and my hands were doing okay–I tell you, it feels good to be back in the land of the knitting.

————

*Richard thinks it’s ah-voo dor-ace. Michelle thinks we’re both not quite right. Wikipedia was no help, but I did find the theme song singing here.

The ancient mystery is revealed. They worked for peanuts and yet accomplished so much. Tourists now flock to the site to see one of the Seven Wonders of the World:

Stonehinge.

My arthritis has been flaring for the first time in a long time–too much sun, I guess, and some heavy lifting I shouldn’t have done–and I knit one row today and stopped for fear of doing damage.  Ice and (I hope) tomorrow for that.  But I got day-t0-day stuff done that needed doing, watched the squirrel watching the day, and all the while you could almost see that flower opening up; it looked like the bud above it, this morning.

And I went off to buy birdseed to take good care of my flock.

Where I encountered someone I’ve seen just a few times who, when I said, with no previous conversation, that I’d like the patio mix and the sunflowers, expecting her to ring those up too, tried to tell me, rather tersely, that those three and a half inch square suet cakes I had at the counter were not my 20 pound bags of birdseed.

Wait, come again?

Yeah, that confused me as much as it does you.  What on earth?! I smiled sweetly and said, Yes, I have a suet holder. I feed lots of birds. (I didn’t add, a suet holder plus three kinds of birdfeeders and a giant sugar pine cone the chickadees love to dance on and I have nuttall’s woodpeckers–a male today at last, so there’s a pair now!  And juncos and titmice and house finches and goldfinches and Bewick’s wrens and pine siskins and bluejays and  chestnut-backed chickadees despite being at the edge of their range and drab California towhees that let you in on the secret by seeing they really do have a lot going on when they’re up close and a brightly-colored Eastern towhee going neener neener at its cousins and mourning doves and the occasional brown-headed cowbird that had taken over the bedroom and the fridge at some other bird family’s nest and a yellow warbler and what am I forgetting here, bright erratic hummingbirds, the Cooper’s hawk and a red-tailed hawk, the brief lamented budgie, the Golden Eagle next door–and then a mockingbird, the day after our trip last week, finally showing up on the porch for the first time after all this time to stand there staring me down from right there at the other side of the glass to demand, So where are MY favorites?  And so I’d read the packages and had picked out two suet cakes this time, one, my usual, and one that had dried mealworms in it. Mockingbird? You’re welcome.)

If I can’t be outside, bring the outside to me.

If only I understood why on earth she seemed put out, still, that I was buying that suet.  Huh.  Here, hon, I wanted to tell her, maybe you need to learn to knit. Maybe some feathery lacy patterns would be just the thing.

Or to take some time watching a black squirrel happily birdwatching on a perfect 72 degree Bay Area day.  Eight, nine, ten… And that’s just the ones on the feeders.

(I really needed some knitting time afterwards to bring things back to normal, a book wasn’t enough. I may just push my hands into it tomorrow anyway and maybe it’ll even help them recover.)

Curious.  I wonder if the people working on Lyme disease know about magpies eating the ticks right off the deer and moose?

I wondered where the little plastic plant tag that came with it had gone off to. Huh. I had carefully kept it there in the ground so I could buy more of the same variety if it flourished as I’d hoped. (E., this is the one you gave me last year and it is the perfect plant in the perfect spot.)

The brick o’doom? There were two like that made of a calcium base that John had bought for his forge he’d turned the old grill into.  They’re lightweight, and lately the squirrels have been pushing them around: I put them back in their places in the circle, I wake up the next morning and this one’s two feet over that-a-way and that one’s sideways over there, and they’re a little more gnawed on. Wonder Bread! Grows strong bodies twelve ways!

Remember this? That was just the start. For three Wednesdays, I found some odd small lightweight thing stuck in the same place in the yard, in front of the barbecue grill and that circle of bricks. Each time it had not been there the day before. Some creature out there had developed a fetish for stashing its treasures in that one spot. (Oh. Wait. Remember the squirrel with the whipped cream? That’s where she’d eaten most of the thing, before she finished it off in the spot where I took the picture. Ah, maybeee…?)

And then last Wednesday it didn’t happen. I was actually disappointed.

My squirrels must have gotten wind of that, because on Saturday I found the missing hydrangea plant tag–it had been carefully deposited in that spot and a brick moved over towards it.

So am I expected to light up the grill and fire up an offering to the squirrel gods with it, or what?

I did. Its gait was just slightly funny and there’s still one feather a bit cock-eyed near the tip, but it clearly was doing okay, flying and eating like a good bird should.

I was sitting at my knitting perch earlier in the week when there was such a loud smash behind my head that I was sure that whatever that was, it could not have survived. There’s a certain time in the early evening when the floor-to-ceiling windows here mirror the trees too well; I tend to turn on the outside light hoping to cut down on the effect.

I went looking for it. It had to be on the ground.

It was. It was a finch on its back and I was sure it was dead. I went outside to look, and its feet were quivering, its beak opening and closing repeatedly in a way that to me, as a human, felt as if it were crying for its mama. I projected love at it as best as I humanly could, wishing I could offer comfort.

It didn’t need me making it more miserable, though, so I didn’t get very close. I went back inside, saying a prayer that whatever might be, it might not be in pain. Or too much, if I could at least ask that.

About a half hour later, I saw it was up on its feet and doing the bird version of breathing heavily, rocking slightly back and forth at birdspeed. A few back feathers looked bent askew, but she was up.  It was more than I’d hoped for.  I went out and carefully, not too close, rolled some sunflower seeds right to her.

She ignored them. Too soon.

About an hour later she was still there and I began to wonder if I should try to do something. The local wildlife rescue center is in walking distance. But she was having none of me, and tried to flutter away this time (I was glad she could–this was progress.)

Best leave her alone.

The effort seemed to have exhausted her, though. More time passed. It was dusk now, and she was still there on my patio and I didn’t want the neighbors’ cats to get her. I remembered something a birder friend had once taught me: I didn’t have a plastic laundry basket like she did, but I could riff on the idea.  I found a box that Costco sells pairs of gallons of milk in. I punched out the handleholds in the cardboard, enlarging one a bit. I put it down over the finch–the fact that she let me… Poor thing… with the larger opening right in front of her. Now she could fly or walk out when she wanted but she had shelter if she needed it.

It had been a long time since she’d eaten by then, so I slid some more sunflowers in there from underneath, on a piece of paper, in case she’d changed her mind.

And then I let her have her space and her own time.

It was darker in the box then out there past that gap. Maybe that was the motivation she needed to get back to the safety of the trees, hard as it had to have been to do.

After awhile, then, she flew.

Wonderful, too, is that I got to see what was clearly my finch back at my patio yesterday, eating food I’d set out for all.  Having cared about her personally, out of all the finches out there in the world, and for her, a part of her will always belong to me.

It was so good to see her flitting out and about again.