Our World......

[laughingwillow]

Early this morning I was sitting in the fog on our suburban front stoop. The street was quite, but the nuthatches were noisily picking sunflower seeds from the feeder right above my head, calling out "yank- yank," while taking a single seed in beak and heading back toward the tall trees shrouded in gray. Right then, while watching the fog drift north on a slight breeze, the wonderful scent of honeysuckle drifted past on a sweet misty wave and all was right with the world.

Please feel free to post your personal observations on the world in which you find yourself....

I'll post more later.

lw

[laughingwillow]

Last week I was watching a robin hunt might crawlers on the neighbor's front lawn. It would hop around the grass, cocking its head as it listened for worms and then thrust its beak into the soil, usually coming up with a fat worm. Pretty soon a little sparrow came out of a nearby conifer and landed near the robin. The sparrow hopped around in a half-circle, imitating the robin and then approaching from behind, stealing a worm just as the robing caught it. The sparrow flew into a tree to eat the worm, or give it to a fledgeling and was soon back in the grass, imitating the robin and attempting the maneuver a second time. But the robin had caught on. It acted like it was going for a worm and then turned and rushed the sparrow as it was coming in for seconds. After the sparrow was chased away, the robin went back ot bidness as usual. But the sparrow had mimicked behavior of the robin that it wasn't capable of performing in the real world. (Cocking its head to listen for worms.) Sparrows can't hunt worms that way. But they can use that acting ability to lull a robin into forgetting the sparrow is a thief in waiting. And the robin can learn the con and be on the look out after getting fooled once.

A couple weeks ago I was visiting a friend out on the prairie. We were sitting on a porch with a view of the lawn falling away toward the north, then a gravel road with farmland and timber rising on the other side of the road. A doe made her way through a plowed field across the way and suddenly stopped after catching our scent. She stood there for a few minutes before turning a full circle and then slowly headed toward a grassy draw near the trees. Right then we spotted the tiniest fawn I've ever seen, clumsily navigating the plowed field. The little thing was all legs and couldn't have been over a foot and a half or two feet tall. The fawn followed its mother to the grass and then sat down. The doe circled and then continued into the timber. I could see the silhouette of the little fellow for a few minutes before it laid down. My guess is that the mother was leading her fawn away from the spot it was birthed and we were watching its first steps. I'd never seen such a tiny fawn before.

lw

[JRL]

If you go out my back door, you can sit on the second floor deck and look out at our yard. To the left you got a butterfly bush, then creipe myrtle, some roses and a maple tree we planted 10 years ago that is now close to forty feet tall. In front of it on a small lawn are bird feeders, two finch socks and 2 regular seed feeders. Typical morning you get  a dozen various finches and sparrows, 6 or so doves, a junco or two, and other visitors.

Hanging from the beam are hummingbird feeders and we watch them feed in front of our faces. They are cranky little things and don't like sharing.

Oh yeah down to the left is a brugmansia with peach to rust colored flowers in profusion. In the middle of the lawn an arbor , covered with Grateful Dead roses (the bush was here when we moved in),leads to the pond with a couple of elusive bullfrogs. Back of the pond we got another white brug, a nectarine tree, crepe myrtle, acacia maidenii and a parking pad made from pavers and another lawn.

To the right we got some kind of pine and another brug covered with yellow flowers under what was our xmas tree 10 years ago and now is a towering redwood with an ever thickening trunk. The trees are home to a bunch of squirrels, jumping from tree to tree to telephone line to roof to the attic of the ghetto apartments behind us to the right.

Some nights we get visits from skunks, possums, and racoon families.

There is an alley behind the yard and we can watch the world walk by. First it's an old muslim guy in traditional dress walking his grandkid (or kid?) to the park. A chinese family may be next or hispanics headed to the big church. Loud Mexican oompa music plays from the apartments, church bells ring and from the park a block away someone is doing a soundcheck for a festival on the big bandstand. Our 3 dogs bark at some kids running down the street in front and we yell at them to shut up. Someone fires up a chain saw or jackhammer.
Some kids drive by bumping the rap and rattling windows.

This 'hood was once the redlight district then went downhill from there, when we moved in this place had been abandond for years, the yard a pile of rubble and weeds. It was a squat for junkies, and we found 35 hypos in the yard.

A typical day down here on the ground, I love it here!!!!! It's the opitome of diversity and that kind of selects out people that are uptight about stuff. If you don't like blacks,muslims, asians, hispanics, gays, hippies,  pretty much anyone, you wouldn't dream of living here. But all these groups live in harmony under the 100 year old trees.

[laughingwillow]

Right on, jrl. Thanks for drawing that picture.

Our yard has been designed to attract birds. There is a chokecherry, service berry, mulberry and wild grape vine on the property. We also hang a sunflower seed feeder under a conifer in front and mixed seeds for sparrows and juncos near the garage. The cedar waxwings have finally been coming around for the service berries for the first time ever. The hawks still hunt the feeders in the winter when it snows. And the cats reign over their own nature preserve. At least as long as Paco, the neighbor's sissy-assed rottweiler doesn't get off his leash. hehe

Paco likes to come around for garbage sacks before they are taken from the back stoop to the dumpster. One day a couple of months backI caught him and attempted to get him out of our yard in a civil fashion. But Paco circled the house and went back for more garbage. However, this time, I was bent over cleaning up the mess he had already made. Paco took one look at me hunched over the garbage and apparently decided I was horning in on his free meal. So he growled right in my face. I stood up and kicked him in the ass. He turned and snapped at my foot. So I grabbed a plastic lawn chair and went at him like a lion trainer, holding the back of the chair and pointing the legs his way. Paco took a little nip at the chair and then turned tail and scooted toward home with a yelp after I poked him in the ass with a chair leg...

Fast forward to last week. Paco is in the yard messing with a garbage bag. He turned to go when I opened the door and yelled at him. And when I picked up the lawn chair and brought the legs down hard on the sidewalk twice paco flinched twice lowering his butt and letting out dual yelps, like I'd just prodded him with the leg of a chair. However, paco was already running through the neighbor's yard when I picked up that chair and prolly 100 feet away when struck with those phantom pains stored in his memory. hehe

lw

[JRL]

One night a couple years ago I heard a bunch of rustling leaves at the side of our house and the dogs goin nuts. I head out to the side of the house and there s a fat possum sitting on the low fence. If you have ever been real close to a possum you know how creepy they are. Filthy, smelly and dripping from its nose and mouth. I looked around for a weapon and grabbed a broom. I wacked the possum hard as I could but I couldn't knock it off the fence. it it again its just looked at me. I turned around to grab the hose and it took the opportunity to take off running.

What's weird about all this wild life is we are 4 blocks from the downtown part of our city. This area has been urbanized since Queen Victoria ruled( some of the houses are beautifully restored Victorians).
But we are also 4 blocks from the Sacramento River and across the river is rural Yolo County plus one block away is a large park with a big pond home to many kinds of ducks(a lot of mallards and Chimese wood ducks) Canadian Geese, sometimes an egret or two. We have  hawks that flies over, one time TJ watched as one pounced on a baby sparrow.

[laughingwillow]

This afternoon I took a little walk out on the prairie and found a wild rose. While it's the Iowa state flower, I haven't come across a wild rose since I was 12 or 13. This little 200-300 acre prairie area has a slough running down the middle that feeds a little lake at the bottom of the section. I'm guessing this piece of land hasn't been worked for decades or maybe ever because of it being too wet at the bottom and hilly at the top.

lw

[Amomynous]

A year or so ago one of my dogs was out on the front porch, just hanging out. It was nighttime and we were going to be going to bed soon.

All of the sudden the dog starts freaking out. As anyone who has a dog knows, they use certain distinct barks to signify different things. A sound at a neighbor's house gets one bark, a deer next to the house gets another, and so on. In this case she was using her there is an animal here bark, so I went out to investigate.

Laying in the middle of the porch -- about two feet from the front door -- was a dead possum. She was starting to calm down, doing more sniffing that barking at this point. I picked her up and put her inside and started contemplating the best way of disposing of a dead possum. Should I use a trash bag and put it in the garbage? Should I pitch it over the cliff and let it do its thing for the scavengers? And just how did a dead possum end up on my porch anyway? Had the hound killed it that quickly?

And then it hit me. It was a possum. The dog and I ran outside to investigate.

Yep. We had both been fooled. There was no dead possum.

[laughingwillow]

LOL THose possum are sure ugly creatures. I've had to chase one off our yard from time to time. Funny thing is, the cats just ignore the damn thing. I went out to call the cats in one night and there was a possum right by the door eating garbage from a bag. The cats all jumped over or just went around the possum to get into the house.

One morning when we lived in the Santa Cruz mountains near Santa Cruz CA I opened the back door to find a possum half in a garbage bag. I yelled at him but that got no results. So I stepped forward and gave his tail a yank. That got his attention. He came out of the bag and glared at me with beady little eyes, hissing through dripping fangs before finally ambling off into the woods.....

lw

[laughingwillow]

Yesterday was one of the hottest days in quite some time out here on the prairie. It was a sweltering 97* when I took a little stroll through the dogwoods and wild roses at about 2:00 pm. As I was driving home along a gravel road there were TALL clouds  peeking over the western horizon with wind from the south. I was so beat when I got home at about 2:30 that I crashed for about an hour. When I woke up at about 3:45 it was dark outside. Stepped out the front door and was greeted by  72* breeze from the north that immediately gave me goose-bumps. So I sat outside on the stoop with the cats enjoying the beautiful weather until the thunder and lightning ushered in the rain. And boy did it pour. We dropped 25* and received prolly over an inch of precipitation in a short real time. All in all, it was an interesting day on our neck of the plains.

lw

[laughingwillow]

I've been snooping around the prairie the last few weeks attempting to edjumakate myself on the native prairie plants. At first I was only looking for Desmanthus illinois, (with no luck so far.) Then I started getting curious as what I was finding and decided to buy a local identification book with color photos and known traditional uses.

I discovered a patch of partridge pea in flower the other day. This beautiful plant has small yellow flowers, acacia like leaves and develops typical legume seed pods.

Yesterday I came across a low-growing plant with clusters of what look like small, unripe (green striped) tomatoes. HOwever, upon biting into one of the "fruit" it turned out to be more of a nut that oozed a bitter, astringent juice that stayed with me all the way back to my truck no matter how many times I spit.

I had no luck locating this species in the book so I'll prolly head back out in a few minutes to get a better look at the rest of the plant.

lw

[laughingwillow]

Took a little hike on da prairie this afternoon and stumbled upon a patch of ground cherries. The individual fruit hangs inches from the ground and is wrapped in parchment like a tomatillo. These were yellowish orange and sweet with no pits. I read that the native americans used this fruit for making sauces.

The green nut/fruit clusters I mentioned in a post above appear to be on a thistle plant of some kind.

lw

[laughingwillow]

Our corner of da prairie got walloped by quite the snow storm the past couple of daze. Over a foot of snow , winds blowing at 40-60 mph creating drifts up to 15' tall and wind chill factor of -15 to -20F.

I've had no classes for two days and mrs lw has been snowed in the driveway since tuesday evening. She ain't going anywhere until the guy comes by with the blade on his truck, which should be any time. However, I parked my truck in a parking lot behind our house that is kept pretty clean, so I stayed mobile through the whole storm. Not sure why, but I really do enjoy running errands in a blizzard and always have.  

lw

[Amomynous]

Over a foot of snow , winds blowing at 40-60 mph creating drifts up to 15' tall and wind chill factor of -15 to -20F.

Remind me: what is the attraction to the mid-wast again?

[laughingwillow]

Uh...... the wife's family?

lw

[JRL]

We nearly had a snow storm here in Sacramento. A friend at 1800 ft has been snowed in for several days. It got down to the mid twenties, beat the shit outta my brugmansias, the salvia is doin ok.

It got down to 26 here, as cold as I remember in my 50 years here.