Finding the way to the feeder.

I wrote that I'd keep this thing going. I'd be a liar If I didn't. Or a fraud. The Wizard of Oz was  fraud, a humbug to be precise. He was a good old dude so being a humbug wouldn't be awful. But I keep looking at that darned black pole with it's two bird feeders and suet cage...

Finally, I got to see some of the creatures Patty tells me have been at my bird-feeder. Bluebirds were on it and bright yellow birds, too. I think the yellow ones are gold finches. They sing and flit back and forth from the bushes to the feeder. The biggest surprise was the four turkeys That scared me yesterday. I wasn't expecting them. Patty had seen one earlier in the week so I thought I might see it. It brought friends and seeing them in the shadows startled me. I startled them too and they took off running down the hill. Now I'm waiting for the bear Ashleigh warned me about.

My new pet. He didn't bring the ladies today.

Another semester has come and gone at grad school. The class I began with is graduating except for the few of us who are taking extra classes or spreading things out. I'm one of the spreaders. Two courses a semester is all I can handle and there were days I couldn't even handle that.

Livy, my youngest, graduates from college next week. I was scared when I graduated from college. Not nearly as scared as I was graduating high school, though. Even with plans, graduating is a big step into the unknown. Graduating high school led to that mysterious thing called college that almost everyone who ever went said was great. Like her, I graduated college without having found the job I got a degree to do. I'm sure she's scared, but she'll never tell. None of my kids ever told me when they were scared. I never told my parents, either. Kids find their way. The birds found their way to the feeder at their pace, not mine.

Birds exploded from the soil to sing to me

This is the last of the required entries for the nature writing class I’m taking, but not the last entry.  This blog was supposed to be about looking at the same place each week and finding something to say about it. I looked at twelve places each week. Eleven of them were through the eyes and impressions of other people. Several of the places, the zoo, the cemetery and Schenley Park among them were places I’d been, but I didn’t see what my classmates saw there. I only saw trees and rocks, sky and snow, the animals and the trash, Pittsburgh’s skyline. They didn’t just show me details I’d not noticed. They taught me new ways of looking. They told me about themselves in ways conversations before class never could. In these blogs I’ve come to know about families, friends, pets and hometowns.

            Apacha’s adventures in the park with Kyle had me looking at my little dog differently. As Auggie has gotten older his walks have gotten shorter especially in winter since his coat is short and the cold hurts his arthritis.

            I walked many times in the same cemetery as Sean. I saw monuments and liked the quiet. He saw the earth’s’ patterns, the past, present, future and endless possibilities.

            I could go on about what my cohorts saw and wrote about. It would do them a disservice, actually. From this page you can get to all of theirs. Treat yourself to something special and go read the blogs by Kyle, Sean, Maggie, Katie, Ryan, Ashleigh, Shauna, Sio Lyo, Beca, Laura and Jonny.

*****

I’ve relearned my own backyard. For years now I’ve hated it. I only saw it as work to do. I’d stopped watching or even thinking about the things I loved about it. Each week, either standing at the driveway’s edge or sitting on a stone bench my dad made, I’ve watched and listened. I didn’t see fallen branches to pick up. I didn’t think about grass I’d be cutting. I looked at the trees, the snow and the birds. I felt the wind and the sun.  So what’s out there today?

I crept out quietly. Birds are around the feeder. They are on the ground! There are robins, chickadees and a couple of small birds I can’t see well enough to identify. Whenever I get within fifty feet of them-poof- they fly off so I keep my distance. They are pecking around at the seeds that have fallen out of the feeders. Yes, that is a plural. I got a second feeder to put a different seed mix out for them.  A suet holder and suet share the pole from which the feeders hang. Ashleigh, one of my classmates, suggested the suet. I’m not sure what suet is, but it looks a lot like butter with a bunch of seeds in it. (I’d look it up, but wondering is much more fun.) Only after the suet block was in place did Ashleigh remember to mention it might attract bears! Bears actually live in the neighborhood and though I have yet to see one my neighbors have taken photographs of the bear in their yard.

Patty has seen other birds along with the types I’ve seen around the feeder. Blue birds, doves and finches have been on it when she’s gone out. They don’t flee from her in the mad panic that overtakes them when I step out of the house or car. Can it be they birds think I put the food out in order to capture them? She has suggested I look from afar with binoculars.

Besides looking at birds I look at the ground under the evergreens and think of coming weeds and the gallon sprayer of weed killer I have inside. I’m thinking of how to get rid of the stuff. I didn’t know before this class and a class I had in the fall how toxic weed killer is. I’ve read that hot water is as effective as is getting down on my knees and pulling them out. Patty stopped using poisons on her flowers and vegetables a few years ago. She’s made or purchased insect repellents made with soap. Standing here, thinking of how much insecticide and herbicide has landed on my skin over the years I look at my arms and wonder if the spots I see were always there. Is changing skin a normal part of getting older or something sinister the chemicals made?

I have learned that that there is something between my car door and my house. I pause to look, listen and smell this little piece of Pennsylvania each time I step outside. If I take nothing else away from this class,  what happens in that pause is more than enough.

Picking Winners

I put up a bird feeder a few weeks ago. I only got a fleeting glimpse of one bird sampling what I thought were bird delicacies. No other birds came again. We thought that the seeds were old and tasted bad. I dumped that seed on the ground and put in new seed that was supposed to attract birds of the sort I saw hiding in the bushes not far from the feeder. I never saw birds, but food was disappearing. I thought it might be deer, but there were no tracks or scat.  A mystery. Maybe I could hang the feeder from a higher branch in a different tree and rig up a hoist system to raise and lower it so I wouldn’t have to climb on a ladder to fill it. Last year, my buddy Ron up the street fell off a ladder and did severe damage to his leg. I’m a little wary of needing both hands to accomplish a task on a ladder these days

Earlier today I watched my tree from a little farther off than usual.  I was very quiet and hid behind a car. I saw the culprit! It was a gray squirrel. There has never in all the years I’ve lived here been a gray squirrel in the yard. I’ve seen chipmunks and an occasional red squirrel, but no grays.  I stepped out from my hiding place and it took off like a rocket for the woods seventy or eighty feet away.

So now I’m staring at the tree for the second time today. I glanced at it four or five other times over the course of the day and each time I tried to formulate a strategy for ridding myself of the squirrel. I have a cone from when Auggie our dog hurt his leg and I thought I could put it around the branch to block the looter’s access. Patty said we could get a metal post the squirrel couldn’t climb. I heard the malamutes across the street howl a few moments ago. It is wolf-like and when I walk in the dark it is jarring. But there are no wolves here. There haven’t been a in a couple of hundred years. People decided to rid the area of them.

So now I’m standing here thinking of how I put out seed for birds and am begrudging other animals a taste. We, people in general not just Patty and me, put out food. Raccoons and skunks need not apply. Mice are vermin. Chipmunks get peanuts.

Humans pick the winners. We got rid of all the large predators in most of our country. We want to save tigers in Asia even though people in India are killed on a regular basis. One tiger has killed and eaten ten people in the past year.

Closer to home, the bounty on coyotes was passed by the Pennsylvania house and awaits debate in the state senate. It would pay a bounty of twenty-five dollars for any coyote pelt brought in to a game commission office. The last time that strategy was used the coyote population went to zero. Rabbits and ground hog populations swelled and did far more agricultural damage than the coyotes ever could by eating farm animals.

We really aren’t smart enough to decide who wins and who loses in the animal kingdom. I guess I’ll move the feeder someplace the squirrels and deer can get what falls on the ground and the birds can get what’s in the feeder. Maybe if I put something out for the squirrels and the deer they won’t want the birdseed. We throw apples out at work all the time. I think I’ll start bringing them home for the animals. Honestly, I would really like not to attract skunks. I’ll try not to put stuff they like near the house.

A Lost Leaf

I’m at my spot on this sunny, breezy afternoon. It’s a deception, nothing but the setup before the sting. Snow is coming tomorrow. Lots of it and it’s riding in the west wind.

On the bright side, the sun is shining right down the center of my driveway. It’s kind of like solstice day at Stonehenge. That would make this yard and its markers for the sun’s risings and settings-Tonehenge. Auggie and I greet the sunset often. His evening walk happens around then. It isn’t an accident. I love the colors. He doesn’t notice them. He’s happy sniffing the air and ground for what ever may have passed by. Dogs know a different history from us. I call him my stupid little boy and he jumps excitedly. He knows the time without a watch, knows who is in the driveway by the sound of their car, knows what happened on the street hours ago without having seen it. Who really is the stupid one?

Sunset on the evening this was written.

The birds are quiet right now. They were noisy earlier today. As the wind picks up and blows a B across my beer bottle they are probably preparing for the storm they sense. I know the note is B because I have a tuning app on my phone. I wish I had perfect pitch like some other people I know. Would it help me understand these birds any better?

Two more sips and the wind plays an E-sharp when I stand the bottle on the driveway so I can type. The clouds have slipped under the sun in gray ripples like a bland flying carpet.

Two days ago I emptied the birdfeeder onto the ground. I filled it with the fresh seed I bought. No birds. I watch from a distance. I watch from different windows so they can’t see me. They are in the bushes only ten feet from the feeder and are ignoring it. I have heard them and seen them, but not today and never near my feeder. I complained earlier today. Patty said it may be sitting too low or that they may just not have found it yet.

New Food

F. The note not the swear word.

She said they have places they are finding food and eat there. They will stumble on the bird feeder eventually. Bird feeding is significantly more complicated than I could have imagined. I thought all I needed were birds ands birdseed. I knew there were birds around. I put out a buffet. I become the guy who hosts a party nobody goes to.

E. I’d better pace myself so I don’t run out of beer before I run out of blog.

A dead leaf has been chased from the hiding places that protected it the past few months. It is tumbling down hill towards the woods that swallowed most of its kin in October and November. It looks like that lost goose that honks at the v formation far ahead. I’ve wondered about those stray geese.

G.

Did that goose sleep in or is it old and struggling to keep up. The v-formation makes it easier to fly. The straggler doesn’t benefit from the other geese parting the wind. I wonder what happens when they stop for the night in different places. Does that lone goose have a chance?

A.

End of beer. End of blog. Glad the formation has always waited for me.

Growing Trees

A windless day, rare for our hill, and warm enough for a t-shirt. Most of the snow has transmogriphied into wet leaves, mud and sticks.

To be honest, I miss the snow’s whitewash of the work the yard will need. A false spring or a hint of it? I’ve seen the weather forecast for the week so my brain knows the answer my heart and skin refuse to believe.

My wife, Patty, got me a bird feeder so I can see some of the birds I hear. It’s been up for days and I’ve only seen one little bird on it. I looked it up and the bird is a chickadee, a black-capped chickadee to be precise. They live here throughout the winter. I read that they prefer caterpillars to seed, but in winter there isn’t much of a caterpillar buffet.

I was cheap and filled the feeder with old seed. Who knew seed could get old? Patty, for one. She had an idea that the package was somewhere around ten years old. I kept staring at the feeder expecting flocks of colorful, singing birds to arrive and then to sit on my shoulders and at my feet like a statue of Saint Francis. As days passed and the flocks didn’t materialize I figured they just couldn’t find it in the cold and snow and begin to feel sad for the plight of these birds, cold and starving with salvation so close. I had become Charlie Brown’s friend, Linus Van Pelt, vainly waiting for the Great Pumpkin. To her credit, Patty didn’t make fun of me. She merely suggested that new seed would attract birds. I’ll be buying fresh seed for him and his friends and cousins. Maybe I’ll get some bird pictures for next time. Unless, of course, I am blanketed with grateful avians.

For the past few years, I’ve been watching a miniature evergreen forest spring up alongside my driveway. The big trees have made babies. It has been


fun watching them grow. I should transplant them but I have had little success with planting things and fear killing them. Enough things have grown here and left already. The boys, Mark and Scott, were two when we moved here. Livy was born here much like this little one that appeared when the

snow melted. I haven’t killed any of my kids. I made mistakes. They never mention them, but I know. Would these little trees be as resilient?

Patty is much better than me at growing things. It isn’t just nurturing. She pays attention to details I don’t know exist. To see her fawn over a tomato plant and know its needs is as remarkable to me as her getting off the phone with one of the children and saying, “There is something wrong. I can tell.” She’s correct much more than she isn’t. So one day soon I’ll ask her what to do with the little trees. She’ll know how much root ball to dig, if they need shade or sun and how much space they need to thrive. I’ll ask her right after I put new seeds in the bird feeder.

Night

I’ve written about the wind, the cold, how the wind makes it cold, snow in various stages of causing me work or misery and I’ll stop listing before this becomes a rant. Sure it’s windier, snowier and usually colder up here on our hilltop in the country but there is pretty cool stuff here that nobody ever sees in the city.

            Tonight is near perfect. There is no wind or clouds. No mosquitos buzzing threats of West Nile and attracting bats that swirl around me like day-trippers at an Atlantic City buffet. The bright moon casts crisp shadows around me and illuminates just far enough into the woods that I’m sure I see things moving in the trees with every creek and groan of snow burdened limbs.

            I look up into what seems to be forever in the stars. I know without a telescope it’s just two million years of light to the galaxy Andromeda. She is the farthest thing I can see. I share the view with my kin from back then. Our bodies have changed, the earth has changed. The sky is very much the same.

There are colors, faint barely discernable tints to some stars. I can identify a few constellations. The dippers, both big and little, Orion. Sometimes the Pleiades are out here, but not yet tonight. I never saw all seven in the city, but here in the this nearly lightless neighborhood I can. I wonder if there are is someone looking back at me from across distance and time and wondering, too. Did my ancient kin take notice of these lights?

            As I look up I can hear snow landing on my nylon jacket and wish I’d worn a quieter one and that I still had the pick up truck. I’d lie in the back at night and watch winter’s meteor showers, the Leonids, Geminids and Quarantids through fog of my breath and cigarette smoke.  I’d lie there until the cold took more of my thought than the flying light would.

            Some kind of owl calls softly and another answers. It’s a cooing hoo, hoo. I ‘ve always called them hoot owls, but I’ve been told a hoot owl screeches and a screech owl hoots. It hoo hoos again and waits for an answer. I don’t know what to tell it and then from another direction comes a faint reply. The first owl ‘s hooing moves closer to that of the second as they call back and forth. After a few minutes it stops and I’m left in silence broken only by the sound of my boots and the snow and my pen on paper.

Today, I’ve come back outside after Auggie’s bedtime walk. Fresh snow and a bright moon begged me to come out and look at my shadow. It points sort of north. I could have brought out my phone or ipad  and used the app that tells me directions and names the things in the sky, but I don’t want to learn anything or be sure tonight.  I just want to look, listen and wonder. 

Salt, Ice and the Sea

The ice crusted snow is an eggshell over the yard. It will crack and robins will appear. Puffed up robins growing fat from feeding on worms that grew fat feeding on grass clippings and shredded leaves of my last few mowings.  Some growing fat from the eggs that grow inside them. For now, I release rock salt crystals one at a time. I want to see if one will slide all the way to the woods.

Nose close to the driveway, I sniff around looking like my German Pinscher, Auggie tracking moles. I try to determine if the briny water I’ve made from ice and rock salt smells like the beach. I’ve always had a nose for the beach. It can tell if I’m moving closer or away miles from the shore. The water heals me It always has. Cuts, acne, depression all fade when soaked in the breaking waves. I like to imagine I was a sea creature in another life. I’ve never been much of a swimmer so I wasn’t a fish. Maybe a bird. The delicate dance and piping of the plover or the clumsy waddle and piggish grunt of a pelican? Most would say my temperament points at crab. I wouldn’t mind crab. Shore crabs are quick, industrious and even when in large groups go about their business alone.  I can see myself as a fiddler crab menacing anything that comes my way with a claw bigger than my body.

Rock salt is tenacious and finds small dimples or bumps to slow it down. It dies in a tiny ocean it makes from itself and the ice. So I slide pinecones, which go nowhere. I guess their not quite cylindrical shape is to prevent them from rolling too far. I know a pumpkin works and car keys have gotten pretty far in the past. The keys were not on purpose and were very difficult to fetch off of an inch of slippery ice that I had to traverse. Going down and stopping was rough. Coming back up was nearly impossible. Hats off to Tenzing Norgay and Edmond Hillary. Getting up this little hill almost did me in let alone climbing Everest.

            Once the ice was just a little higher than the bottom of the storm door leading to this flat part of the driveway where our cars, snow shovels and salt were. I had to go out the front door and slide down the hill on my butt towards our cars. Hatchet in hand, I looked like a Viking berserker raiding England. I slid into the cars feet first and used the hatchet to free the back door.

The briny water doesn’t bear the scent of the sea. I mix in some mushy leaf bits since I haven’t any sargasso or sea grass and jump in the puddle. Maybe the grinding of the salt into plant and the spread of droplets in the air will bring the ocean here to Beech Road.  That is the ultimate irony of all this. The name of my street is a homophone of the place I love to be. It’s not four hundred miles. It’s just one letter.