Endings

Summer is still here enjoying her last call at the water's edge and soon her visit will be another distant memory.  She has been erratic this time like a go-go dancer in full heat and then a matron with tons of tears.  Being thankful that she was not an unpredictable teenager slamming the door with violent storms and unless she throws a tantrum before she leaves this month, we will all be mellow about her departure.  I decided to share a small collection of her farewell sunsets these last few months.

Up in the Tulip Poplar Tree

About three weeks ago I was awakened by crows throwing a fit over something.  They seemed close to the house, so I figured it must be a hawk too near their roosting place.  I sighed and tried to go back to sleep when I heard the hawk also yelling back at them.  Even if you live in the woods the animal neighbors can be just as noisy arguing as that screeching little old lady and the teenage boys on their skateboards!  Still this demeanor was way too early even for me.

I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed to see where this was happening, and discovered as I opened the front door where the cacophony exploded, that it was right outside the garage door in that big old leaning tulip poplar tree...that one we are saving money for to bring down as it is a threat to the garage and upstairs bedroom.

The crows were all around the top of the tree, some flying and some resting on branches cawing with vehemence.  Then I saw the hawk.  (No tripod, so apologies for the blurred images.)

He was not looking at the crows and he was screeching just as loudly toward the center of the tree and then he took flight, perhaps at my sudden appearance.

The 10 or so crows continued to caw in anger and flap their wings, but slowly a few flew away.  I studied the tree and suddenly noticed a HUGE wasp nest.  The shape of a football and three times that size.  Were they angry about a paper wasp nest??  I grabbed the binoculars.

Of course, as I studied with the binoculars I realized it was NOT a wasp nest high up in that tree that was creating such dismay among the feathered ones.

It was a Great Horned Owl. He was resting bored and patient but did give me a bit of a chill when he gave me the evil eye.  This magnificent animal returned on alternate mornings for almost two weeks to sleep sometimes opening his wings slightly on the hottest days and once appeared to have blood on the edge of his wing.  I think when we were planning our canoe trip later and had to load equipment onto the car in the driveway he must have decided to find a quieter roost because I have not seen him for over 5 days.

Still the short visit was a thrill!  Now we are undecided about bringing down that tree.

The Cardinal Pole Dance

For months now, ever since early spring, there has been a female cardinal tapping at each of the windows around the house.  Some mornings she hits the bedroom window just as the sun is coming up around 6:00 A.M.!  She does this several times a week and now we are into August when bird hormones and energy are supposed to be dwindling.  Yet still she and her significant other arrive on the patio, bathe in the birdbath, feed each other, and then, while he rests on the back of the patio chair and cleans his beak or grooms his feathers which now are molting hideously, she lands on the doorknob and taps at the deck window.

Somedays she puts on her crazy hat and rushes at the patio door like a suicide dancer scratching as she claws her way from bottom to top.  Maybe this is the feathered version of the pole dance?  Sometimes she just stops and stares a my interior decoration as if she has stumbled upon some bordello.

I chase her away if I am truly annoyed, but she seems to enjoy the interaction with me and laughs when she flies into the woods, so I have given up.  I wash the bird spit off the windows every few weeks, and try to ignore this aberrant behavior.  If she has built nests and was tending young ones, she must have lots of energy left over.

She seems to reflect this hot and angry summer we have been having with her erratic behavior.  We had good rains in July but now we are into high 90F weather with no rain most days, sometimes only an electrical storm; it is harsh.  Even the cicadas seem to sing with a rusty, scratchy sound rather than their rhythmic percussion and I hear not a peep from our frogs in the rain fed depression down in the ravine...and I am going to kill this bird as soon as I finish my iced tea.

Sharing the Peace

Recovering from my second batch of visitors and actually have this weekend free!  Let me share some peace and beauty with you in my photo painting morning!

Sniff, sniff.

Something smells...good?  I am guessing it is not him!

Zephyrs

A few heavy downpours over the early August days break the heat but hold onto the humidity.  Yet, they provide enough to quench the thirst of the tulip trees which in late, hot, summer are dropping an abundance of yellow floating leaves that almost instantly turn to burnt brown on the sidewalks and grassy hillside.  Their scuttling crispness sometimes startles me when a breeze pushes them across the driveway like a large alien bug.  

There are ethereal beauties that catch my eye as well in the small drop in temperature.  Our swallowtails are in abundance this year.  They are selective in which nectar filled trumpets they visit.  They avoid my purple petunias on the deck and go again and again pressing their faces into the verbena blossoms that are just inches away.  They lift like a drunken feather, then sink again to the next blossom.

They look particularly beautiful when visiting the cosmos which are struggling this year against the few pounding rains after weeks of heat and drought.  When these beauties are satiated they float across the yard like zephyrs with tiny silk capes; slow, dipping even, and clearly in some mindless pleasure.  If I could see their faces, would they be smiling?

Who Was Here?

As I watch the storm clouds move in bringing even cooler weather, blocking the gentle sun and making the grasses dance faster, I cannot help but wonder what bear crossed this land just hours before my eyes gazed ahead, what camper shifted her backpack and pushed inland from here just weeks ago, what trapper set a trap at the mouth of that river decades ago, and what miner shouldered his gear and drug himself up that hillside in search of gold a century before my arrival?  What human hoped to tame this land and what human fell in love and surrendered to its beauty and power at this very same place where my feet now are planted?

Strength and Leadership

While homo sapiens, and I use that word loosely, are fighting over the leadership of my beautiful and wonderful and magnificent country right now, I want to post some truly majestic profiles of leaders from the other animal kingdoms that I took on my Alaska trip. 

 Even the majestic ones let their hair down and their rumps up once in a while.

A Controversial Weed

Epilobium angustifolium or fireweed was abundant in Alaska. ( Known as rosebay willowherb in Britain as it grows circumboreal in range.)  This is a controversial flower.  How can that be?  Well, read on. 

This photo, a bit blurred, yet does show an egg mass of some insect near the top.

I heard several Alaskans say the did not like the flower.  It starts to bloom from the bottom and works it's way to the top.  When it begins bloom the traditional saying is that this is the beginning of summer and when the blossoms open at the top, then that means summer is over.  It is a ticking seasonal clock for some, it seems.

This perennial is a good source of vitamin C and vitamin A if the early spring shoots are harvested.  Slender leaves and buds can also be used in salads.  If the leaves and blossoms are older they are tough and bitter.  The full blossoms are four-lobed trumpet in shape.  The herb is antispasmodic, hypnotic, and can be used as a laxative and tonic.  It also causes tissues to contract.  It claims many other medicinal uses.

It grows at the edges of the woods and in places where disturbed soil is located.  It is cultivated for reclamation of landscapes that have been eroded.  It grew everywhere on the hikes and drives that we took.  I am sure my Canadian bloggers know it well.

Unusual Dance

Summer evenings and the skies get their party clothes on.  The opening act was just a teaser of what "might" come.

  In the second act a diaphanous wave of humidity came almost all the way across the sky trailing 700 veils.

She was imposing certainly.  My camera with its wide angle lens followed the dance to the right.

And that was when I noticed that odd caterpillar shaped "pup" beneath the dancers veils.  Do you see it on the mid-right?  Almost as if a finger had trailed the air beneath the humid cloud and stirred a different movement.

It moved gently to the left and began to undulate as if it was a younger dancer mimicking its mother and moving to center stage.  Such an unusual dance.

Beauty in the Eyes of the Beholder

Do you think he knows how beautiful he is or has he gone blind due to the 12-year-old girl behind him screaming? 

Simple Beauty

Along a trail, well traveled enough to meet a few others, the textures of Alaska's woods are everywhere. They are an art that mother nature paints to inspire our artists. 

Pablo Picasso? 

Salvador Dali?

Gustav Klimt?

Makes one want to get out a paint brush and paints....

Meeting of the Waters

Look at the photo above carefully....study it...and think about what you are seeing. 

It is probably not what you think it is.  It is not a chemical spill, run-off from some mud-slide, run-off from a heavy rain somewhere up stream.

This is actually two streams meeting.  One, the clearer one, is a river formed from snow melt that began high on an Alaskan mountain and raced down the side of the mountain past Dahl goats and big-horn sheep and down past black spruce allowing them to drink before racing on into the ferns of the boreal forest.  Then it trips over smooth boulders and reaches the flat lands where it joins the other river.

The other river races from beneath a melting ice glacier and does not fall so far nor have time to drop its fine silt, the silt is granite that has been ground into a powder so fine you cannot hold it, so fine when it settles on the river floor you can drown in it.  It can grasp your leg like wet cement and will not let go.

In the photo above I was fascinated by this meeting of the waters. (As always you can click on the photo for a closer look.)

We Are In This Together

It was an unusually warm day just south of Anchorage, Alaska.  We had only been there a day and decided to visit a conservation area to see the animals in a safe environment before we saw them in the wild.  As I said, it was warm...

 I almost missed this guy in the low 70 degree heat...removed my jacket and then walked around to the front of the log cabin but could not get him to smile.

 A grizzly cooling his tummy on the muddy earth does not seem as intimidating as they truly are.

The Traveler

A cool front came through quietly in the night after the rain.  Like a stealth bomber it surrounded everything with the driest coolest air. With coffee in hand, I smiled during my early morning walk across the front yard as an alter reality reminded me not of spring but of fall.  I swear, I almost heard crickets!  All of my roses and other flowers were smiling and sighing as well.  They were at peace because the warmer more humid air had retreated as we marched headlong into summer.

By noon, new strong winds pulled and tugged at the tree leaves and made the 50 foot high tree limbs dance in drunken pleasure and must have frightened any nested birds that had not yet flown.  The wind roared against the side of the house and kept the air cooler although the sun did his best to make it warmer.  In the shade it was May and in the sun it was June.  Strong gusts pushed leaves and small dead branches across my driveway in a race for first place.  It made the Coreopsis bob its new yellow blossoms as if they were part of a rap group.

I sat under the tiny arbor reading and smelled the air and then began thinking about where this rushing air had begun its journey.  Was it born in the slide of some crystal mountain glacier?  Did it begin in a high dessert that was still in spring?  The air was fresh with oxygen as if from some mountain top.  It raced past my face and pushed up my hair.  I wondered if it had come from an Alaska ocean and had touched the backs of salmon and the feathers of high eagles before it rushed across the continent to my tiny woods.  Had it surfed across some snow drift in a shaded valley far, far from here?

What secret messages had it brought that I missed with my limited language skills?  Was it miffed that my e-reader had no pages to flip capriciously.  What inspiration brought this joy ride?

Yes, it was in a hurry and will only race across here for a few days.  Soon we will be back to quiet summer with its angrier storms and heavier air.

Surprise in the Country

We have been so busy that taking a drive after dinner was an essential break from our routine. It was hubby's good idea as I had laundry I was concentrating on.  We live very close to some beautiful farmland, so come along and see what we found! 

Can you smell the freshly plowed earth and hear the cry of the hawk over the field? 

Can you feel the cool breeze coming off the river now that the sun is getting lower in the sky?   And look!  The farmer and his wife are taking their little ones for a walk.

What a nice respite at the end of a hard-working day for us all.  Even the farmer's horses want to get in on the action.

Now, That Was Embarassing

I always hate those awkward moments, like yesterday, when we embarrassed someone changing their clothes. 

He/she made a mad dash for shady cover the minute we reached down behind them for the skin which they had left...almost, and which felt very oddly alive still!