Phoebes

daily haiku

phoebe sounds alarm
little phoebe fell from nest
tender care for babe

Phoebes are not exactly my favorite bird. They squawk me awake at 4.30 am and poop down the window frame - in general they are noisy and messy. However, they love to live up here on the hill. They return each year to make a nest at the top end of a rain gutter - now who the heck would nest in a rain gutter?! Small brains, large poops!

When I comb the cat I throw her hair around the yard for the birds to use as nesting material, and Phoebe caught on to the idea since, if you look at the photo, you can see the white cat hair.

This morning she was flitting round the garden giving more than her share of soulful cries,and I noticed through the bathroom window a baby bird sitting on the bench where I keep some outdoor tools. I thought it fell out of the nest, went outdoors and picked it up whereupon it took flight and landed in the rain barrel! Poor wee timorous beastie! I rescued it and put it back on the bench figuring if it can fly that far it is leaving the nest and I need not try to devise a plan how to put it back in.

So I used it as my photo model for the day, and it was most obliging as I clicked away. The rest of rehab for it was to keep the cat indoors as long as possible to give it time to find it's wings. Sure enough it was gone by noon and Snowy went out to get her daily ration of fresh catnip.

I suppose I can count on that bird to come back and nest again next spring - wake me with raucous cries and go on pooping down my window frame. The cost of a soft heart.

The Nursery

daily haiku

plants spawn their seedlings
a little nurturing touch
then leave to nature

I had a place in the garden where not much was growing. It was a place where our underground fuel tank was once located. We had to have it removed because of Government rules and regs. It is fairly dry and weedy but it has found a niche, as a nursery of sorts, for growing new plants. Each fall I cut the dead heads from the few flowers that survive here despite the heat and drought, and throw them on the ground in the nursery. This year with plentiful rain I have a nice selection of Meadow Sage, Yarrows and Gaillardias to transplant into the flower beds

I identify with the nursery in many ways. A year ago I lost Peter; although I knew I would survive, I had no idea that I would have to face so many crises and need to learn so many skills to survive living in this beautiful place. When I was widowed at thirty years, I was able to adapt a lot faster. The house was relatively new having been moved here in 1955, so all the equipment functioned and the cost of furnace fuel was somewhere around 40c a gallon! Close to the end of my sixtieth decade I am not as fast or as fit neither is the house! I was thrown into the nursery of life and left to grow. I am grateful that I have been given so much nurture by friends and family, I would not have made it this far without them, but in the end you face the grief and regrowth alone.

As I triumph over each crisis, a flower bud grows in me, and now I feel like I am almost a new plant. The same stock that brought me to this place is there, but my roots and stem have had to change and adapt to survive the storms. With each new task I undertake comes a new awareness of myself and appreciation of each little accomplishment.

I do not know whether I will stay in our little town, but I plan to stay another winter, go dormant as it were, and see whether I can flower again next spring.

Nothing I could write can describe these clouds

June Lilacs

haiku

lilacs scent my world
june goes to my head like love
overwhelms senses

This is one blog to which I would like to add one of those "scratch and sniff" cards!

What a wonderful time of year this is, there are lilacs in full bloom everywhere. As I walk through our little town the aroma pervades the air - sometimes lightly sometimes when near the trees they take over my smell entirely. The Post Office has two bushes by the door, a white and a purple planted in the same hole - sight and smell together. The old teacherage is abloom in purple, Clara has a hedge of purples in her back yard; her grandson Elliot next door has some that abut the street and the new teacherage has them in front.

My white lilac is outside the bedroom window and to open it at night scents me into dreamland. This morning I remembered a poem that I wrote a few years ago, "Pruning the Lilac" - and it brought back wonderful memories of Peter and me working together in the early spring.

Pruning The Lilac
Together we prune the lilac,
Dead branches from last summer’s drought
As I trim
Brown twigs
Fall down inside my shirt,
Into cleavage
Stick in me as I move.
He takes the more strenuous role
With the saw, and manages to scratch
Hand and arm
And him
On Coumadin,
So he bleeds all over shirt
Pants and deck.
We take a break
Bind wounds,
Then go at it again,
Finish the cutting.
The lilac bleeds in silence.

© C. Valentine