feed the birds!

Just added a membership/donation form (PDF) to Birds of Vermont Museum's site. If I can get them up w/ PayPal we can do online memberships as well!

Rodents Awake!

Saw a lovely gray squirrel this morning, and for the last three days or so have been seeing at least two eastern chipmunks (their tail lengths are quite different). I'm surprised the squirrel is so plump-looking, but perhaps he or she has been awake a few times this winter and restocked on the black oil seeds we supply. Or possibly just fuzzy with a winter coat, still.

Yay for mammals wakening into spring!

overheard

I am walking the dog, elderly, tottery. It's FAR too early in the morning -- perhaps 5 o'clock, more or less. It's dark.

Threading though the hemlocks, barely heard over the sound of the thawed snow splashing over ice in the stream, the thin faraway call of a coyote, perhaps too. A long howl dropping into a short yipping chatter. Again.

I'm relieved they're out past the ponds, far enough to hear, not too likely to come by right now. I know they have left tracks in the past days and weeks, not even 200 yards from where I stand now. I'm glad they're in the woods, but comforted at the distance. One fewer worry of things that bother my beloved old dog.

Great Backyard BirdCount 2009

They also send out a newsletter as well. Click, click! Find out more!

Company Drops By

As we were arriving home tonight I saw a white-tailed deer in my yard. I mean, in -- as in about 3 feet from the doorstep. I suspect she was eating birdseed; she was standing just under one of the feeders and we saw tracks later: both hoofprints and scrape marks. She was shaggy as all get-out, but I couldn't say how large, since she was partly hidden from me and I'm not very good at estimating that sort of thing. I'm sure I was taller than her back and her head might've topped mine, but this is hardly useful or precise.

I slowed and stopped in the road, I was so surprised, and of course because of the slope and snow, wound up revving the engine to make the turn into the parking space. And accidentally hit the windshield wipers, which squeaked terribly. All this startled the poor doe, and she leapt away in a heartbeat.

I am inordinately tickled. Yes, we see their tracks many mornings, but it's a delight to have caught this glimpse of her as well.

Hinesburg-Huntington Christmas Bird Count

This Saturday Jan 3

from eBird Vermont:

The 109th Christmas Bird Count will run from December 14th through January 5th. Last year, thousands of volunteers counted nearly 60 million birds across the Americas and beyond. Each count occurs in a designated circle, 15 miles in diameter, and is led by an experienced birder, or designated “compiler”.... The longest running Citizen Science program in the world, the count originally began on Christmas Day in 1900 ...

The Hinesburg-Huntington Count will be January 3rd. Contact: Paul Wieczoreck mgcpw@gmavt.net

ooh, ice!

The creek is half frozen, great swaths of chunky silver-blue ice punctuated by the occasional dark pool at the foot of a waterfall. (Exactly the colors that don't photograph well with my camera, especially when I'm looking through the window.) R says it did this last New Year's too.

Iit's between -7°F and 0, depending on which thermometer you look at. Bundle up!

Small Neighbors between snows

Pine Siskin (Carduelis pinus)(female?) feeding under hydrangea bush

Pine Siskin (female?) on the black oil seed feeder

We had a good dozen or more Pine Siskins appear today, now that it's thawed (again). I understand we're supposed to get more snow, after the rain that wiped away much of the Christmas snowstorm. (There are still soggy piles, one of which you can see behind the feeder, but a good bit of wilted and chilled-crispy grass and mud is now visible all across to the yard.)

The photos were taken through the glass door, and on a fairly high zoom, so any blurriness is probably camera shake and vague dust. IF you click them, of course you get them larger... and there's the album as well.

I think I've seen this species before, but haven't had a chance yet to root through the older photos and journals to be sure. Ah well, some other organized version of me in some other alternate universe is keeping a detailed, accurate, citizen-science-y life list... With any luck though, I'll remember to post this at least in eBird!

Three of a kind

Driving home, we reached our mailbox around 6 p.m., full dark. The mailbox is at the junction of a side road; opposite is the old farmhouse (the reason our road is here at all), and on the far corner is an apple tree (same variety as ours?) and a low cement-block dairy barn, used now for storage and the occasional pigs.

Between the apple tree and the barn were three white-tailed deer, eyes gleaming in our headlights, bodies deep bark-colored shadows.

A pause, a neighbor pulled around us and two sets of headlights illumined them briefly. The neighbor passed up the side road and then, easily, they leaped down the slight slope under the spreading bare branches, over the road, and into the old meadow and a different neighbor's leftover gardens.

Clearing lines, clearing apples?

So the electric company clears branches from the power lines, in their ongoing maintenance to avoid a repeat of the extended outages we had in the Ice Storm of '98. They hire a pretty decent tree-cutting company to do so. Vaillancourt (if I spelled it right) tends to cut very tidily, stacking the branches and logs away from lawns and traveled ways. On the other hand, they mostly cut as to what's needed for the lines, over what might be best for the tree (in my very limited clue about trees) (although I suspect they'll do both when they can). This is all well and good, and in fact is why there's habitat for Indigo Buntings near our otherwise fully wooded second-growth land.

On the other hand, they don't come knocking on your door to say, "Hey, we'll be cutting off another 5 branches from your maple that we could've done last year" or "Hey, just want to let you know that we're taking the entire top third of your apple tree." I wish they had! I walked out in the front yard the other morning, and thought "that's odd, it seems lighter than it should be." And yup, looking around, exactly those branches/tops were gone.

The maple was (is?) a very lovely open-grown sugar maple. (Maple identification: Forestry at About.com or Mass Maple ) Now, it's about half the tree it was... The raspberry brambles will probably be thrilled next spring. (And I'm going to pull those branches -- some of them) back over for my next year's firewood-seasoning pile.)

The apple is one of about a half-dozen still surviving (there are some dead ones) from the time when this was half-pasture/half-orchard. The state actually has a program for saving and releasing old apples like this; I'd've liked to take out 2 of the 4 maples crowding it (except they also guard it from the depredations of the snow plow). It's by far the largest (trunk diameter at least 12 inches) and probably the healthiest of the lot (or was? Spring will tell).

Windfalls, been on the ground for weeks

I wish I knew what kind of apple it is! My best guesses are something crossed with Lodi or Yellow Transparent (clues from Vermont Apples). The fruit ripens more latish summer/early fall -- why didn't I take better notes at the time? Argh -- which is a bit late for both those varieties, though. Except that we're up the mountains, so maybe not.

The fruit is about 3 inches in diameter, and yellow-gold with some red streaking. It's tart and fairly crisp at first, and then the windfalls are very mushy. The flesh browns quickly. I saw a great apple poster somewhere not too long ago and thought I knew our apple from it, but I can't remember where I saw it! I went googling for apple varieties, but none of these (otherwise fairly nifty) sites had enough for me to tell. (Enjoy the links, though!)

Grandpap's Apple Orchard

Vermont Apples

Golden Russets and Cake

Heirloom Apples at Scott Farm

Vaerity list from Big Horse Creek Farm

Apple Varieties: more web sites

soft light

Of course, now it's up to 60°F. Heh.

This is good, for me personally. What with one thing and another, I'm afraid I'll worry about "enough wood" all winter, so every warm day comforts. It's slightly hazy now, but the early morning sun slanting up the slope and through the trees, splashing across the mossy stream rocks, was stunning. I think of Fall, like Spring, as two seasons almost: Foliage and Quiet. I love the light in November, slantwise at the turns of the day, whether on ice or warmed over leaf litter.

Blue jays, juncos, chickadees here at home, but last week I saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk at the Birds of Vermont Museum!

second snow

It snowed again last night; thicker, wetter, heavier. It bowed the lilacs, the roses, the crabapple.

The chickadees seem to enjoy the resulting arches. All I have at the moment is mixed seed and two small feeders half-full, but there are about 5 chickadees and 3 juncos visible right now.

first snow

looking southeast from the French door

There's a light wet snow falling this morning. I'm dreading winter this year for some reason, but the loveliness of this still touches me. Orca, the twelve-year old Bernese Mountain Dog, loves it; I didn't nickname her Icebiter for nothing!

It's still really dim out, and hard for me to take photos.

Hydrangea in bloom, cream and marroon. Sedum in bloom, magenta. Various small wildflowers, more lovely, nameless (to me).

wood of one kind and another - #2

Cord #2 (of 5) delivered today by our neighbors. Price: Highish. Quality: Excellent. Well-split, well-seasoned.

The hillsides are starting that color shift, where it's still green...ish. Lots of deeper tones coming forth each day, and a few early shifters in bright yellows and some reds.

Wood.

Wood of one kind and another

Pressure treated (bleah) is a third the cost of cedar. Guess which one we went with? Right. Oh well! Over the weekend we made two runs for materials, attempted to put poor K-dear to work (thwarted in some sense by me thinking we knew what kind of railing design we were doing, and then discovering R didn't think we knew yet), and generally made about an average-for-us amount of progress. Thus:

R and LittleBirder carry decking

So far, so good!

R spent this evening getting the back deck prepped (ripping off fungus-ridden plywood, bleaching, and cutting the first couple of decking boards). Might get as far as posts tomorrow!

Today I stacked what wood we do have as well, which is something. And paid our neighbors for it. I'm a pretty good stacker, if I say so myself, and this is nice wood, all one cord or so of it (might be a tad less; our neighbors asked us to stack it and check because they weren't sure how much this truck held). I didn't feel up to decking with just me and LittleBirder, so we didn't.

WIE touches WorldChanging

Picked up in the Midd Co-op a magazine called What is Enlightenment?, last October's issue. A bit heavy in the "we're so enlightenedly cool we can hardly stand ourselves; Let Us Show You the WAY" in a NeoBuddhist kind of way, but cheerful and some interesting ideas.

One article with interesting places to poke and jump from is
"A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century" by Ross Robertson [HTML]

The PDF version has the sidebars and the advertisements. I recommend the sidebars, actually if you feel like downloading about 10 pages of colorful stuff.

Share and enjoy...

mildew

I foolishly left the stroller on the front porch. It's a tiny porch. Probably smaller than what you're thinking. That's not that relevant, except all of the porch can get wet from rain, despite having a roof.

Then it rained. And rained some more. It got warm one day... but rained some more again. Nice warm July thunderstorm weather!

It's not like mildew is news; I just wasn't paying attention.

I've disassembled it now. LittleBirder hung the fabric bits on the clothesline in the little direct sun we'll get for the rest of the day, and we've wiped the frame down with vinegar.

I'll wash that fabric in our breaking-down and leaking machine*, and probably machine dry it somehow. Not the small measure I would wish, but I need to keep the mildew out of the house as much as possible, or my sweetie's allergies will force us to finish/quit trying and move. And drying on the line is just not the ticket this summer.

---

* Apparently front-loaders are designed to last about 7 years, while the less-efficient waterwise (and electric?) top-loaders last longer. A bearing goes, and they leak, and Sears will only replace the whole drum for 2/3 the cost of the machine, instead of just replacing bearing and seal.

our very own lettuce for dinner tonight

I mentioned R had built us garden beds. At the end of May we filled them with dirt (topsoil/horse manure mix -- I think 75/25), some old seeds (varying ages) and new seedlings.

As luck and remembering my mother's garden and his grandfather's, we managed accidentally do some good companion planting! Carrots (ours are wee tiny things right now) & Tomatoes (very healthy seedling), Marigolds and Melons, Nasturtiums and Cucumbers! Yay us! (Our cucumbers really came up... whew! thinning 'em now, I feel so heartless...) Have seen only a few possible spinach, beets, and beans (old, old and very old seeds); wish us luck for those. We also have peppers (hot and sweet; the driving rain took care of most of the aphids, wow); swiss chard (mmmmm); lettuce; 1 zucchini (who needs more?). I think that's all ... it's a wee tiny garden.

Companion plant links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=howTo&p=LawnGarden/GardenResults
http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html
http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-2-10-697,00.html

Happenin' In the Dooryard

A Boy
A Hose
A Mud Puddle

Sunlight

Orca (the dog)

Brand-new (mother's day) boxes for raised bed garden! (Made of old lumber and nails we had leftover around. No money spent for the exactly-what-I-wanted present!)

Chickadees
Titmice
Dark-Eyed Juncos
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks (a pair)
Nuthatch
Goldfinches (a pair)
Chipping sparrows
White-throated sparrows

Eastern Chipmunks (at least 4)
Red Squirrel
Bumblebee
White Butterfly
Dark brown teeny butterfly with white stripes

Blooming, or nearly:
Bluebells
Lilacs (white and purple buds)
Tulips (from [info]lepi's drive-by crocussing)
little purple-and-white ground cover
White Violets
Ruby and Yellow Pansies (from last year!)
Red and Yellow Primroses
Dandelions

Recently Planted:
Bee Balm (to compete with the Snow-on-the-Mountain)

A Slide and Large Rocks to climb on

Heard recently:
Black-throated Green Warbler
Oven Bird
Robin
Hairy Woodpecker
Eastern Phoebe ("SqueeKee Phoe-Bee!")
Wood Thrush