Changing the Lunch Shift

Off goes the woodpecker and in comes the titmouse.

Commonness

Exalted and honorable.
From the Miocene.
August and noble.
I perceive my smallness.
You were there.
I cannot comprehend
this intersection with
eternity.

Patience

My dear cardinal-friend, I can tell by your look that you are getting a little confused. First the week starts out cold and with light snow. In two days the weather is back up teasingly close to the 70 degree mark. Then, just as our blood begins to thin and run with joy, the cold winter wall pushes once again across our land dumping chilling rain and sleet and sending us all scurrying for shelter. Mother nature can be such a tease.

Spring Sproing

Technically this is an inside activity and belongs on my other blog. But I am so happy to see that my work a few weeks ago is being rewarded. Soon this window will be filled with bright red flowers.

What Caught My Eye

My inside hours on the weekends are filled with lists, such as cleaning, filing and sorting. Since I am only here on weekends, I tend to be a bit puritanical in my efforts toward completing these lists.

Still, while moving some plants closer to the window mid-morning yesterday, a very bushy gray tail caught my eye as it moved with a level and steady pace dusting across the fallen leaves on the forest floor. The rhythm of movement as well as large size made me question whether it was truly a very large squirrel. So I stopped and stared intently at the open space ahead and was rewarded with the view of a healthy gray fox. His ears and tips of the tail hair were a rusty red. He walked casually but also carefully with his nose to the forest floor in search of small gray snacks, I am thinking.

He was not cautious in his behavior and did not look up once during the steady pace across the ravine. Eyes on the ground, he even came closer to the house in one of his zags which gave me a nice chance to see his lovely anatomy better through the binoculars . My husband has said that in the early mornings he has seen the same fox head out on this same trail and then by mid-morning it appears he comes back from his shopping trip heading away from the river.

We have a small mound of top soil which sits on the side of the gravel turn-around. I can see his foot prints and bottom where he rests on the warm earth in the evenings waiting for a rabbit dinner perhaps.

Another regular neighbor has made his presence known.

A Ghost of a Morning

I am up early before the sun, as usual, even on this Saturday. As I smell the richness of morning coffee, I look out the window and see the pink and purple dawn coloring the lower sky, just above the silhouetted trees. Each morning is familiar but also like a new gift. A recognizable silhouette in the tree along the shore catches my eye. It is a very large hawk? - osprey are gone for the season. I get my binoculars and although the light is still faint I am sure that I see the shape of an eagle's head and the whiter feather's filling that shape. I lower the binoculars and move to another window to get a better look and like a ghost, the possible bald eagle is gone. I saw no spread of wings and no movement of branches...it has dissolved into the pink sky in a second. As I look out across the water I also see the ghostly movement of winter fog, hanging over the river like the smoke from a long ago camp fire. It also will disappear in a second.