My hydrangea has been filling out nicely and has six heads of flowers now.

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 didn’t blog this a few days ago; I wanted to see if I would see it again.

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.

That green hat? Now I can say it.

We had a tree come up near the house, oh, about ten years ago, a nice little tree. I’m an East Coast person who grew up in the woods (just enough grass at the front there to be, you know, proper, although we loved the wild violets that popped up all over and let them be in all their delightful little purpley glory).

I like all the green I can get around here.

But it became not so nice. Our patio started to buckle and we sure didn’t want it to do that to the house, too. I read up on it and it was apparently an ailanthus, an alien species that doesn’t support the local wildlife and a fast grower because it hogs all the water–and its roots reaching under the shed to the other side looked like they were tangling with the neighbor’s tall and much-loved redwood that overlaps onto our property.

I pointed that out to the neighbors and promised them.  The young tree had to go.

I waited for nesting season to be over, just in case, although I’d never seen the birds or squirrels stay in it for long.  Too open. Too vulnerable.  They clearly preferred other types.  Curious.

The guy I called for a quote came last week with his little boy in tow, an absolutely adorable preschooler who shyly shook my hand too like his daddy, who was beaming proudly, as well he should.

After they left, I went through my stash: years of knitting lace and fingering weights for book material (did you SEE last week when the cheapest new copy of Wrapped was listed at $96.07?!) meant there was nothing really there in the way of little boys and hat material. Purlescence was having a big sale Saturday, though, and surely I could find something good.

Right. Finding good yarn at Purlescence. Difficult, I know.

And so that Jo Sharp merino/silk/cashmere went home with me and a very soft hat got made for an unbelievably small amount of money. Two balls five bucks. It took me just one.

Guess who came along with his daddy for a few moments this morning on his way to preschool? Did I mention he’d already melted my heart? And how much he looks like David, my sort-of-other-son from way back when?  (The oldest child of the Tara’s Redwood Burl Shawl story.)  But then the little boy’s face lit up and he waved hi at me with a smile when he saw me, not quite so shy this time–and I went right back inside and got his hat.

Chris, if he should ever lose that and be heartbroken, you let me know and on a day’s notice for the knitting, I’ll sneak you a spare. (I know, it doesn’t work with baby blankets either, the kids can always tell. But if he’ll let me, I’ve got the yarn, I can knit him another.)

And if you live in the Bay Area of northern California and you want a good tree service, I thoroughly recommend Chris’s.

Oh, and? The barbecue grill got moved over a bit during all the goings-on. Later, I got to see a gray squirrel give it a quick glance from a planter, take a flying leap, and… miss! It landed on its feet but I think it stubbed its nose, poor thing.  Then it got up on the lower bar and posed a moment in triumph, as if to declare, Tadaah!  I *meant* to do that.

And here I’d been just waiting for one of them to leap for the missing tree.

I hesitate a moment to let the chickadee grab a last sunflower, the goldfinch, too.

I open the glass door.

The chickadees are always the last to leave and the first to come back. Also the most likely to fly right up by me while I’m at work and then veer off at the last second; they are as close to fearless as Darwin will allow. Upside down and hammering at the suet like a woodpecker, testing out the prickly elephant leaf for a toehold, flitting fast but never, ever hitting the glass, they’re my favorites.

Those and the Bewick’s, the little wren flipping itself around by the tail like a living helicopter.  A juvenile Bewick’s! Cool! I guess we’re raising them right!

The jays, though–they’ve completely disappeared. It surprised me when I realized how long it had been since I’d seen one.  Huh.  I guess the Cooper’s hawk showed them who was bossiest; they clearly nested a few backyards away this year, and the young seem to have imprinted somewhere else–not like the last few years, where the parents yelled at me for jaywalking if I went out my own back door. They kept it up at dark o’clock, too, screaming at only they knew what and off and on through the night.

Michelle slept better this spring.  My mother will recognize this phrase: joy and raptor.

I stand on a chair and pour the seed mix into the feeder.  Forget what the bags say: finches do not thistle while they work; nyjer, and safflower, too, stays put.  Back to the usual.

I love seeing the juvenile finches with their long skinny teenager look trying to land like a kid with a learner’s permit, their wings flapping furiously an inch above the patio,  sweeping them slightly backwards like a stickshift on a hill, then a hoppity-hoppity-hopp-phew-I-stopped! at last.

Lovebeads of millet in there too for the sun flower child, the dove mourning peacefully.

Looking up, I see a waiting line above me on the telephone wires and over there on that one tree, every top branch beperched.

It’ll be a moment before the squirrels come back; the finches and titmice, the towhees and occasional warbler or cowbird will have the patio to themselves a little longer because I stamped my foot at the squabbling furrytails. That’s one more peanut for dove, one less sunflower for squirrelkind.

I put the lid back on the Squirrelbuster–heads above me turn a little at the sound–scoot the chair back under the picnic table, and go to the sliding glass door.

They wait to hear that latch click. (I’ve experimented to see if they would take longer to come back if I don’t click it. It’s true, they do wait for that–but only so long, dinner’s ready!)

Click.

Time for LaughIn. Flock it to me flock it to me flock it to me flock it to me.

I now have a safe, non-working dishwasher, but at least it won’t set my house on fire. And no, Maytag did not pass along the other information to the fellow who came out–who was hesitant to work on the thing once I told him, and wanted to know, was I sure?

He was already here, so, hey. My other choice would have been to get a discount to buy a third one in a row of these, and that was so unacceptable to me and not likely an option anymore anyway the moment he stepped in the door. I do not want to add to the landfills.

I want the thing to work. Is that so hard to ask?

Turns out the last recall for a fire hazard– our previous Maytag–happened in 2007.  So that machine sitting there dead was three years old.

I really really needed me some Sea Silk time. Even if I only have half a skein of Glacier left.

Meantime, if you have a front-loading GE washing machine, those could be downright entertaining: flames shooting out the front? Every little boy’s dream!  Break out the coathangers and bring on the marshmallows!

(Ed. to add) I think the moral to the story is, when millions of people are suddenly trying to buy the same brand at once because of a recall and an offered discount and it’s on backorder while they try to make them all at once, give the local guy the fix-it job rather than risk the lag in quality controls.)

There was a meeting at church last night, and it being a perfect summer evening, the nearest door was propped open for the cooling ocean air to breeze in.

“Oh! It’s a little bird!” Fluttering suddenly above our heads.

“It’s a finch, here, let me, that’s what canes are for.”  A house finch. Female, and by the looks of it a juvenile–a young one out exploring a bit and now lost from its flock and it didn’t know its way back to where it belonged.

That’s what houses of worship are for, right? Finding God’s place in our world. A little bit of God had been brought to us.

I stood up and walked to the other side of the room. I knew I didn’t need to be threatening from its point of view, I didn’t need to get any too close; just hold my piece of wood up a bit (it would make a great perch if it didn’t come with a human attached) and the movement near it would get it to change its direction.

It did. But the room had a raised ceiling at the interior, not too high, with a lower edge all around and wall sconces along that ledge up there; it needed to come down and go around before it could go out.

It grabbed onto the popcorn-ceiling-type stuff above a sconce.  There was an “Oooh!” around the room marveling at its ability to hold onto the seemingly impossible.

C’mon little one, I thought, you’ve lost your flock, you don’t want flocked walls, you want blue sky and the berries on that bush over there to eat. That’s how the males get such red heads in your family.

We danced a little dance: Alice over there stood and raised her arms and it flew back towards me, I raised my cane (my folks can tell you that’s nothing new) and it zigzagged back and away–out the door of the room just so, straight across the hall and outside to the great blue sky waiting for it. So perfectly and so fast that it took me a moment to take it in that no, it hadn’t gone down the hall and lost to who knows where, it was home.  Free.

She appeared to be his caretaker. Wife? And honey, she was pretty but she looked tired.

He was maybe in his 40’s, happy as a clam and very extroverted.  He greeted whoever moved and thereby caught his eye: How ya doin’!  He told the woman with him all about the fish in the wall aquarium they were looking at.  I don’t think I ever saw him sit. He was all about being up and lively and chattering away.

It was striking how she seemed patient but resigned. Not upset, more like a mom at the museum stuck with her small child in tow after the babysitter bailed. Because as the minutes went on, watching her watching him, I think I understood–when he turned and saw me looking his way as I reached into my knitting bag to pull another length of yarn, I got a happy, How ya doin’!  too: in the way of a small child, utterly harmless. I got an impression of lack of memory and of a soul distilled to its essence.  Its goodness.

I thought, if you’re going to have a brain injury, a cheerful one seems to me a very good one to have. But I did not ask.

They called his name and he went back for his scan alone while she got a few minutes to herself.

One of the nurses who popped out the door to call off names, the second time I saw her, took a moment to come over and comment on my knitting before disappearing again. Later, she came out again and talked a little more. She mentioned a local yarn store. When I said I’d heard Louise had had a stroke and had sold the shop, she brightened–so I did know the place!– and told me how sweet the new owner was. I confessed to not having been in in awhile; I tend to go to my favorite, Purlescence.

Which was a new one to her. I didn’t think (I was on Benedryl!) to give the context, in case she might be a longtime knitter like me, that it was in the former Carolea’s Knitsche. So I’m writing it here in case she sees this; I gave her my blog addy.

She said something tentatively that–I was sure I heard “Stitches” and it was! Oh yes, I know about Stitches, I signed books there! (Been going since Tess, the namesake of Tess Designer Yarns, was a preschooler, and she’s in her early 20’s now.)

You know what the result of all this is: I couldn’t put down my knitting. I had cast on and done maybe three rows before leaving home, and there I was growing it as fast as possible for showing off.  No reading my Newsweek for a hands break, no way.  Knit knit knit! On this cool idea I’d had a month earlier, when I’d bought the Camelspin at–of course–Purlescence.

I was trying to figure out the details of a new pattern for it while on Benedryl. Dumb, but that’s what motivated me so I did it.  I made it look terribly complicated, counting stitches, running my hands through my hair, tinking back stitch by stitch over and over, wondering why something so easy wasn’t intuitive–DUH! It’s the drug, stupid–making slow progress  anyway.

It’s not finished but it’s a goodly way along and I am very pleased. And very pleased to be nearly done. Post-Pred crash tomorrow and then that is that and it’s a race to see which is completed first.

One other thing: a couple came in and as the woman’s name was called, I looked up as she passed me and I smiled and wished her good luck.  She relaxed at that and smiled too for the first time.  A few minutes later, as she and her sweetheart were leaving, she turned before the doorway and called across the small waiting room to me, “Good luck to you too!”

Totally made my day. And you know? It was that cheerful man before, whom she’d arrived too late to see, who’d set the tone so that I felt comfortable speaking up like that.

Richard left work early to take me home. (To be fair to him, he’d offered to stay with me but hey, he works just up the street anyway.) There was a box waiting at our door.  Who…? The Sibley Guide to Birds and The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, hardback, even, with love from Dad.

My folks had no idea I had been seriously coveting those very books. Those exact ones. I couldn’t justify them, I hadn’t bought them, and now here they are anyway.  Wow.

I tell you. I have the best parents ever. And they have perfect timing.  Speaking of which, and? My friend Debbie, who lives near where my Dad grew up, emailed me pictures yesterday of what she’d seen while birding over the weekend.

Dad? Pelicans in Nevada? You never told me that!

My hands slipped and I accidentally pulled my tip out of at least a dozen stitches, and on those small needles it took me a moment to piece it back together. That Mooi tends towards the slippery side and the loops were not large.

I thought about knitting it on Benedryl. And my clumsiness. And tomorrow’s long drugged wait at the hospital.

So after a discussion with my daughter about my reluctance to have two competing projects at once, I started a second anyway, hoping it might perhaps even be finished by the time I leave Stanford tomorrow.

You know what that means: hunting down another ball of something, somewhere, to start with just in case I run out of my 3oo meters. (Right.)  You know how it goes–pack yarn first.  Needles? Oh, hey, they’ll have lots of those there.

Meantime, the Nuttall’s is letting me get a little closer.

Fireworks again tonight, same place. Curious.  Only, this time I went outside and watched most of the show–after noticing the falcon behavior on the cam: both juveniles had already taken up their posts for the night, and it used to be, when they were new at this flying thing, that they roosted together on the louver. Of late, they haven’t always been there and when they’ve both been on the louver, they now stay at opposite ends of it.

They’re not ready to go totally off on their own quite yet.  A little independence at a time.

But when those big Fourth of July booms started, Maya scuttled halfway down it towards the reassurance of her brother’s presence. After the booms stopped, she went back to standing  sentry duty at the far end from him, facing him, watching over him as their mother had watched over her young by night.

Meantime.  I knew my friend Marguerite’s mother grew up ethnic Chinese in Hawaii, and Marguerite’s father, whose family emigrated from China when he was two, taught their daughter that the only description that mattered was “American.”

Her mom got talking a little about that today.

She was a young woman coming out of church one day, wondering at what all that sound going on out there was about.  So did everyone else. It became immediately obvious as they stepped out the church door: Pearl Harbor was under attack! They watched and cheered on the American side of the fight.  Bearing witness. Remembering forever.

Today, as I listened and realized Hawaii hadn’t even been given statehood yet at that point, she bore fervent thanks for the privilege of being an American.

To which, with equally fervent thanks to my ancestors (here and here are two, others came later) who braved their trips across a different ocean, seeking freedom, I say, amen.

Michelle made a dessert with the neighbors’ plums and some star fruit for the occasion.

Meantime, we had one of those afternoons where looking for a tool that hadn’t been used in over a year led to closet cleaning and the non sequitor of this discovery from the early days of my spinning, just waiting to be uncrumpled and admired out of its bag.  Briefly.

I’d splurged on the 50/50 angora/merino fiber at the now-missed Straw Into Gold in Berkeley and had carefully spun up the most luxurious fiber I’d tried yet on my wheel, not knowing that Michelle would prove allergic to it and that I would later be getting angora out of my house.  This was for her big sister.

And it’s…pretty big.  Angora has no sproing to it.  It might fit one of my sons.   But I was looking at it, going, wow. I did spin that fine back then. And really evenly, too, even though I was a rank beginner. Not bad!

Then I took it back out of the breathing space and zipped it back up, a little wistfully.

Meantime, we have two juvenile falcons perched for the night at either end of the louver in view.  They don’t always now, but they did come back tonight.  Curious.  I was surprised by fireworks going off a few hours ago–maybe one of the towns was saving on overtime on traffic control?  Dunno, but I did get to see some of it from my street, crowd-free, once I looked to see what was going on.

Maybe the falcons were boomed out by the noise and headed for the familiarity of home.  It was good to see them.  Happy Fourth of July!

A constant reminder to myself: it doesn’t get finished if you don’t finish it. That half a cast-off row isn’t going to cut it.

Right, right. So there you go.

And while we’re talking about glorious deep rosy reds like that–a return doorbelling, plum jam, a surprised plum-tree-owning neighbor, a protest of “But you didn’t have to do that!”, a response of “But may I?” (And I explained that Michelle had wanted to learn how to make jam, so it was from both of us.)

And then I got invited out to their garden.  Squashes were picked and I was gifted right back again.

My kind of neighbor wars.

Oh, and–they showed me a large leaf, quite shredded; insects, I thought, and a bad case at that. Birds, they corrected me: they’d liked it for their nests. (They clearly thought that was pretty cool, actually.)

So THAT’S where they…! So we talked birds a moment, and when I described my Nuttall’s, they smiled, oh yes, they knew that one. It has really taken to my suet feeder–that’s today’s picture, and I’m hoping it’ll let me get closer and closer.

Meantime, my black squirrel climbed a tree and stared at my being somehow on the wrong side of the fence.  What are you doing over there?!

Speaking of squirrels–my tomato container got dug into, bad, and trying to figure out how to keep the bushy-taileds out, I hit upon this: I took the lid of a plastic spinach box, cut out to the center and wider there for the stem and pushed it down into the pot. Voila! Mulched, sort of, and squirrel free. (Picture taken after the digging and before the sweeping up the mess.)

One of the things about the pot is I can haul it inside when I’m not around to give those squirrels The Look. It is the funniest thing to see one of them stop dead in their tracks and even sometimes turn tail.  You don’t mess with the momma here. You can have sunflower gleanings, but the tomatoes, those are mine.

I’d share them with the neighbors when they ripen but they’ve got their own ahead of me.

Thank goodness for blogging, or I’d never have the sense to stop and give my hands a break.

I have a question to ask: has anyone seen any one seed sprout two sprouts before? (Don’t mind the toothpicks there; they kept collapsing anyway.)  I haven’t. I can’t see why plants can’t come up twins, I just never thought of it before.  It was a particularly large avocado pit, so I thought it had a good chance of growing–got that one right!

And finally, today, the woodpecker I’ve wanted to see close up discovered the hanging suet cake. A female Nuttall’s, I think it is: and it is gorgeous. Dressed to drill.

There they still are.  (And yes, those are my straight needles in the unexpected reflection.) I guess it’s not too late in the season, then: the junco is still feeding his lady love the house finch, and later flew off with her as always.  I’d love to have some biologist explain it to me–even more, I’d love to see their nest and if any young were raised and which type of bird they were and who adopted whom.

My husband had an early-morning meeting today and headed out–but forgot something and had to come right back in to get it, all the way into the bedroom, rattling around a moment.

I figured, well, I’m awake now, and after he left I went into the family room for just a moment before heading towards my morning shower.

A sudden surprised but very soft-spoken exclamation of Well hello there!

There was a little towhee, bigger than a house finch, smaller than a dove, with its droopy wings showing that it was relaxed, and it was hopping tentatively across the carpet immediately at the foot of where my knitting perch is.

This is where you build your nests with all that string, right?

We stood there a moment and considered each other in wonderment.

Why, it’s Feederfiller! I know you!

I immediately realized I was not going for a photo.  (Camera–stage right). I was not going to take my eyes off my new friend nor throw aside the awe of the moment.

Right. So.  The slider was close by, but I didn’t want to risk having one bird fly in while trying to herd the other out and the sunflower tower was a busy spot just then. Besides, stepping between the bird and where I wanted it to head towards was a no-go.

The towhee settled the matter by hopping/skipping/jumping ever so lightly, no concerns, towards the living room, as if it were eagerly inspecting the possibilities with its realtor in tow.

Heed me.

I opened the front door about halfway. I followed my new houseguest.

It never panicked, it never scrambled, it just carefully stayed the proper distance between us.

But no, honey, I don’t want you behind the organ bench, now.

Oh, okay. It fluttered up into the skylight as I stepped away.

I was concerned: I didn’t want it to get hurt hitting its wings there. I sent up a silent prayer to its Father and mine–and immediately the little thing came down just a bit and out of there, straightened up, flew, turned in front of the kitchen and went straight on out into the waiting bright sunlight through the doorway. I stood there agape for I think half a minute, trying to take in what I had just seen.

Hours later: “Did you leave the doorway open when you came back in?” Because I had found no bird poop–no sign whatsoever of the little thing being stressed, but also meaning it hadn’t been there long, either.

“I don’t know–I might–I don’t know.”

And then I told him why I wanted to know.  I didn’t even have to tell him it had been a surprisingly beautiful experience. He totally got it.

“Oh cool!”

I love that man.

And we are minding that front door a little more carefully now.

Stitch by stitch, row by row.

The tail on that young one at the beginning of the week (the other pictures were taken day by day afterwards, but I think the last one’s a parent) caught my attention: it was a fledgling’s version of a sunfish, as if Nature had forgotten to finish the job.

And yet, it works; the thing flew.

Even better, it came back.

And there was this, and I write it with a sense yet again of gratitude to the many on staff at Stanford Hospital and my clinic last year: when I got up yesterday morning, there was a small female finch on the other side of the glass, holding very still in a manner that immediately concerned me. A friend who is a birder has assured me that if you give it a half hour or so to recuperate, one that has struck the window will often be able to pull itself together and fly away.

But I wasn’t sure she was still with us. I got down to get a closer look. We were perhaps two feet from each other, with only the glass that she had just learned about in between.

She slowly blinked. I was so relieved. You know, my pride was wanting to argue with fate and say, hey, I didn’t wash the windows so the birds wouldn’t see their reflections so much and and and–yeah.

The best thing to do, since she was alive, seemed to be to give her some space, then. After what seemed a very long time of looking in each other’s eyes, I slowly, slowly, trying not to be threatening, backed away and moved up and over to the day’s work, about ten feet further away.

I glanced over about five minutes later. She had not only perked up, she had hopped up to the outside of the sliding glass door and was perched there, watching me intently.

I was utterly charmed.

I had looked after her the best I knew how, as ineffectual as I had felt doing so. Even offering her food would have scared her into flying before she was ready; all I had been able to offer her was that she was not alone.

And now she was looking at me.  She was okay now.  Waiting for me to see, then making eye contact.

Powerful, that.