Curiosity

I live in a small, intimate apartment complex...hidden, actually. It's situated next to a wide irrigation ditch, lush with trees like maples, box-elders, mountain ash, plums, and cherry.

I have the choicest of eight apartments. I am damned lucky. My apartment is such that it has its own set of stairs and its own landing. The only reason anyone need climb these stairs is to enter my apartment. This means the walk, the stairs, and this landing have become my territory to do with as I please. And I've done plenty. I have 3 benches along the walk, in addition to several planters crowded with impatiens and lobelia. There are also bright flowers potted on each step coming up to my door.

This area of the yard is somewhat cut off from the rest of the apartment complex...making it private. And while no one could call it exclusively mine, people do not casually venture into this area. This makes it a perfect refuge for many animals already attracted to the water, fruit, and foliage - racoons, chipmunks, geese, ducks, squirrels, mice, finches, magpies, sparrow hawks, crows, the odd deer, and one lone canary who's survived a single winter, so far.

One of the box-elder trees reaches very close to my "porch." Squirrels climb to the edge and leap to the railing here. And there's one crow who will come to the edge of the tree and coo at me.

Today while standing on my porch, enjoying the rain, I was cooing back to this crow who seems to have taken to me. While I was standing there, she hopped from the tree on to the railing! And then tentatively cawed at me. It was a quiet noise...for a crow. Taking care not to move, and as calmly as I could, I said "hello," using the coo-coo singsong tone she uses. So then she clucked at me, and then a single, kmpll coo...followed by more soft clucking...she walked sideways on the railing getting to within 6 inches of me, then blinked a few times. Then as she lifted off the railing, she made a louder single caw. Not an alarm caw...more a single cawww. She landed on the ground below, and proceeded to nibble on a piece of bread I'd tossed out earlier... she picked up the bread, and flew back into the tree she'd left in the first place, and her baby joined her there...sharing her bread...

I didn't move for another 10 minutes for fear I'd startle her. I'm totally blown away.

Fresh

When gathering sage, be sure to honor the plant with a prayer of thanks, and an offering of tobacco. Collect the sage in cotton, linen, or wool - no synthetic fabric or plastic. Be sure that you've first purified the fabric, and any tools used in collecting or bundling the sage.

When you bring the sage home, cut the branches to 7 inches in length. Bunch them up to about 1 ½ inch thickness in your hand.

Cut some cotton embroidery floss in a length of about 3 feet. (Cotton crotchet thread works, also.)

Lay the branches of sage on a smudged piece of clean cotton, all facing the same direction. Roll the bundle in the fabric to help compress the shape to a tighter cylinder. (do not make so tight that air cannot circulate to the center.)

Now open the end of the tube of fabric on the branch end of the bundle...and keeping hold of the bundle, wrap cotton thread several times around the branches, (making sure to leave a tail for tying later). Now, you can remove the fabric while you finish criss-crossing the thread over the rest of the bundle.

Wrap the thread around the length of the bundle in wider swaths...and when you get the the leafy end, crisscross back to the branch end the same way.

When you get back to the branch end, wrap the thread around the branches several more times. and then tie the two tail ends together, cutting off any trail of thread left.

Trim off any wayward branches that stick out from the bottom and the sides.

Hang bundle up to dry.

Spirit

It was something divine - the way this afternoon's sun fell through the changing leaves of a crabapple tree across the alley. I saw God's gold fingers touching the blue crate below, reaching for the small red apples inside. There were sparrows there, and house finches, too. All eager to be blessed.




Sacramental Recipe

- 4 quarts crabapples, cut in half
- 4 cups sugar
- 26 oz vodka

Fill a non-metallic, 4 quart container 3/4 full with halved crabapples. Pour sugar over top. Add vodka. Add remaining crabapples. Cover with lid. Store in cupboard. Everyday, for the first 8 days, tip the jar up-side down, allowing the sediment to fall. (Then return it to the cupboard, right side up). Then for another month, leave it undisturbed.

When appropriate time has lapsed, pour the contents through a non-metallic colander. Discard the apples. Strain remaining liqueur through layers of cheesecloth. Makes about 6 cups. Store in glass containers.

Escape

In physics we learn
(in the nick of time) that gravity's force
is weak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction

Whodunit

My mumbuds are missing!

Last fall, I bought seven bright orange, red, and purple chrysanthemums - 99¢ apiece. And when the first frost hit, I took great care protecting their roots so they'd survive the winter, above ground.

And 4 of them did.

I put them in pretty new pots, once winter's freeze had burned off, and they've been doing great. I didn't prune them, so they're all about two and a half feet tall, and their leaves are larger, in shades of deep royal greens. It's taken all summer for them to make buds...and there are scores of buds on each plant.

About 3 nights ago, I noticed that some of the buds were starting to break open, and their colours were starting to show. And so I've been checking in the days since, waiting for the petals to unfold.

Well, this evening, when I checked, all the buds with opening petals...were gone! Someone has bit them all off. I suspect everyone, and no one. It's just as likely to be the ducks as it is the deer.

Tolerance

I think the wasps have accepted me as one of their own.

Since spring of last year, wasps have been homesteading near the tall, Russian Sunflowers in my side yard. Their nest is only about 3 inches across, snug inside a shallow length of dry pipe...a pipe I come within inches of, everyday, when tending my garden. Last summer, some well-meaning neighbor destroyed their nest, and every wasp in it. But this spring, sure enough, new wasps came and started a new one.

These are yellowjackets. Hunters. They eat mosquitos, tomato worms, and grasshoppers. God Bless the mosquito eaters!

When I come to water my garden, some will come out of the pipe and hover...then land on the petals and leaves of the sunflowers, and drink on the drops there. Sometimes, when I'm just there to futz around, one or two might come over and hover near my hands. Sometimes they hang around, sometimes they go back to their nest.

They spend a lot of time on my sunflowers. There isn't a lot of room in that pipe, except for eggs and babies...I think the sunflowers' leaves have become the front porch they can sun on and doze.

[click on image to enlarge]

Migrants

Mine is not a good yard for pink cats. In the 3 years I've lived here, 4 different cats have tried to take up residence. All have shared the IQ of a flat tire. Plump tabbies in various shades of orange and pink.

One by one, I've eventually taken them to the animal shelter for neutering and adoption. Otherwise, they might have starved. The squirrels refuse to share, and pink cats are lackadaisical hunters. And my landlord refuses to allow me the company of an indoor cat.

Not to say other cats don't visit. There was a little siamese kitten that wandered over once, and the people who used live across the alley had a black and white that used to come by for house-finch dinner at least once a week.

This morning, someone new is passing through. A lavender-grey cat is stalking the sparrows as they venture out from the bushes looking for bread crumbs and overripe plums.

Charity

Everyday, squirrels jump onto my porch from a nearby tree. They come for peanuts and walnuts, and whole wheat bread. It's an amazing jump, and my porch railing isn't wood, but metal. I don't know how they manage to hang on.

There are two, in particular, I look forward to seeing. Both come to the door and scratch on it to let me know they're there, and ready to eat. The one little guy apparently escaped the clutches of a predator, just barely (it must've been last spring). For months he had to drag his right arm, and even now his right paw is almost a stump. His fingers healed into a clump.

The other fellow has a tooth that juts out from his mouth from the bottom up. It makes it difficult for him to eat some things. I'll probably be making a lot of little peanutbutter sandwiches this winter.

Territory

on sharp blades
wars are fought
over dirt
in square centimeters
small kingdoms
are defined
by the distance
an ant can walk in a day's time

Tea Time

The crows are early today. The word must be out; I'm a soft touch for bits of apple and cookies.

I am smitten with the one who coos to me. kmpull kmpull...mllmp mllmp. Even when I leave the porch to go sit out on the bench, she stays there with her baby, waiting for me to settle with my cup of tea. Once she's determined that she's not to be the main course, she drops from the tree for a nibble. It doesn't take long for her young one to join her.

The Properties of Ether

(CH₃ CH₂)₂O – hydrolyzed ethanol
colourless; aromatic;
highly flammable

Aristotle said ether
was inalterable,
having no beginning
and no end.

I thought
it would be safe,
-life in the ether-

You were ribbons of thought,
recipes for rye bread,
formulas for finding
the circumference of a circle.

Your existence
was a theory.
I didn't know you'd bleed.

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