Ephemera

The last few days have been sunny, but with chilly winds gusting.  The grass on the hills is seeding up and turning yellow and the wildflowers are quickly closing up shop.  So it was a pleasant surprise when this peony (aptly named 'Sarah Bernhardt' ) burst open in all its fragrant pinkness.  It will most likely be past its prime and fading by tomorrow, so I'm busily appreciating it today.

Tadpoles

This has been the briefest spring we've ever had.  Even with last week's rain, the hills are already yellowing as they go dry.  Our daffodils and tulips came and were gone within two weeks and the lilacs and forsythia are almost finished.  Even natives like California poppy and bush lupine are stunted and struggling.

And from the barely one-fourth filled pond, there is absolute silence.  Normally at this time of year the bullfrogs are croaking up a racket as they lay claim to their territory.  Back in January and February, I heard and saw frogs in both the seasonal creek and the pond, but now there is no trace of them.  They have vanished -- a sad mystery.

So I was delighted when I walked down to the edge of the pond and my eye was caught by swarms of small, fat shapes wriggling away.  Hundreds of tadpoles have hatched (the January frogs must have been busy) and seem to be doing quite well.







So even when the weather's totally wacked out and it seems like more is dying than surviving, there is evidence of just how tenacious life is.

It gives one hope.

The Queen

Yesterday was a day of memories.  Seal left us in the morning and Bruce and I looked back on the fourteen years she'd been a part of our lives.  In the afternoon, the tree guys showed up -- a crew of three, along with two trucks, a huge wood chipper, power saws, and loud music.  They had come to work on our massive gray pine that stands on the upper pad.  Fourteen years ago, Bruce and I were married under this tree, who we had named "The Queen".  Gray pines are rather short-lived trees (60 years is about the average), but The Queen is estimated to be well over 100.  These pines usually bite the dust by literally biting the dust; one day their roots give out and they just keel over.

The Queen, over the past few years, has been doing the Leaning Tower of Pisa thing.  The tilt was gradual at first, but now she was so far over that her lower branches blocked the path and the ends of largest one was resting on the crown of an unhappy oak.  Our options were to do nothing and wait for her to topple over on her own, have her taken down before she fell, or try to keep her going a little longer by ridding her of the weight of the branches that were pulling her down.  We know that she's old and already past her prime, but we opted for the tree surgery to see if we could keep her a little while longer (I sense a pattern here).

From this side, she actually doesn't look too bad...

This angle shows her struggle with gravity

The unwilling oak that's being used as a branch-rest

I believe that the young man who swung up into this tree is part California gray squirrel.

The similarities between the two were striking.  Give the squirrel an orange helmet and a chainsaw, and they could be brothers.  Oh, and lose the tail.

(The squirrel pix were taken several months ago -- the little guy lives in the pines surrounding our house)

Here the tree trimming is almost complete.  The little oak to the right lost a branch in the process, but it no longer has the pine branch pressing down on it.

Bruce and I took an evening walk up to the pad to see how The Queen was doing.  She looked splendid against the sunset.  There's no telling how much time we bought her by the tree surgery, but we did what we could to help her out.


And that's all one can do.

Goodby, Sweet Seal

Seal and Murphy playing a last (very gentle) game of keep-away with the kong yesterday afternoon.

Today we let Seal go free.  After a week of pills and special canned and dried food, all to help her failing kidneys,  she'd gradually stopped eating entirely.  She didn't seem to mind not eating -- it was as though she had no need for food anymore.  She remained cheerful and she kept her tail wagging, but being sick was taking its toll -- she was losing more weight and spending most of her time asleep.  When I spoke with Dr. Mike this morning, he agreed that it was time.  An hour later, I sat on soft blankets on the floor with her in the clinic.  She lay against me as the vet gave her the injection.  Her passing was quick and easy -- she was gone in moment.

My heart is heavy tonight, but I'm grateful to have had her lovely doggy self as my friend for the past fourteen years.

April Storm

What a difference a day makes.  Yesterday morning, I took this shot of Corny standing in the shade, thinking deep thoughts.  The grass in the pasture is already going yellow from the heat and dismal lack of water.

This morning a decent-sized storm rolled in and we're being blessed with a day of rain.  It's not enough to change the big picture of severe drought, but the short term effect will be to prolong our springtime by a week or so.  At this point, I'm grateful for any sort of reprieve.

One of the things I wanted to do over my break this week is make strawberry jam.  Yesterday I finally believed that this storm was actually going to materialize, so I drove down into the Valley to our favorite fruit stand to buy a flat of strawberries.  Rain damages the ripening fruit, so it made sense to get them before the storm came.

I hauled in the canner and spent the afternoon hulling, mashing, stirring and ladling strawberries.  Some people might say that this seems like an awful lot of effort for something that can be bought from the shelf of any market.  But those poor, ignorant souls couldn't have had jam made from field-grown, just-picked strawberries.






I'm glad I did this yesterday, because today's storm started gently enough, but ended with torrents of rain, flashes of lightning, booming of thunder, flickering of lights and a deluge of pea-sized hail.  I loved every minute of it.

Nothing ever by halves around here.





Oh, and in the midst of all of this, Raleigh, the farrier, arrived to trim Corny's hooves.  We got caught up on all the news while she rasped away and the rain pounded on the metal roof.  Corny doesn't even have to have a lead rope on anymore when she does his feet.  He just stands there and does as he's told -- such a good boy.  I gave Raleigh a jar of jam and a carton of eggs as she left.

Very glad for this storm, but I hope that the strawberry field wasn't hit too hard.

Easter

Our Easter Table

After almost a month of very warm days and no rain, today arrived with gray clouds and a few sprinkles to settle the dust.  This is what the weather is supposed to be like in April.

Mama and Ian came up and we lunched on Salade Nicoise (made by Mama), steamed asparagus with homemade Dijon mayonnaise (me), deviled eggs (me again) and fresh strawberry shortcake for desert.  A perfect spring feast.


I have next week off from school.  This break is most welcome -- I'm looking forward to spending it staying home and seeing a lot less of humanity.  A little peace and quiet for the soul.






Speaking of souls, our dear elder dog, Seal, visited the vet last week and the news is that she's losing weight because her kidneys are failing.  There isn't anything that can be done to reverse the damage, but we can try to keep her going by managing her diet.  On Friday we'd decided it was time to put her down because she's gone downhill so quickly and we don't want her to suffer.  But the last couple of days she's seemed happier and Bruce is thinking that maybe she wants to stay with us a little while longer.  So I think we'll be canceling tomorrow's vet appointment.  Loving animals is simple but complicated.

Seal has never been an in-your-lap affectionate sort of dog.  She clearly loves us, but in a sweetly reserved way.  Very British, one might say.

So yesterday I was surprised when she walked up to me gently wagging her tail as I sat on the porch step drinking tea.  I was even more surprised when she stiffly settled her front half onto my lap.  We enjoyed the sun together and Murphy joined us (he was a little jealous, I think).  Maybe she was saying goodby.  Or was she showing me that she still enjoys life.

Complicated.  But we'll figure it out.

The Rule of Three

The rule of three is a writing principle that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things.

"omne trium perfectum" (everything that comes in threes is perfect)

I found these nine eggs equally divided between three nestboxes.



Who knew that our hens were so wise and literary (not to mention mathematical)?  

Still Life with Toad and Pansy

A helpful pansy sheltering a large and rather lumpy toad under its leaves in the front garden.  I've never seen toads about so early in the spring -- by Friday it's supposed to reach the low 80's.

The Stockade

It's been years since we've made any real attempt at clearing out the dead branches and trees that litter our two properties.  With the drought taking its toll, there are more of them than ever.  A modest amount of deadwood can make an area look woodsy and natural.  Jumbled heaps of them everywhere are just depressing (as well as being a fire hazard).

So I decided to repurpose the ones I could use and burn the rest.  And thus began my New Project: The Stockade.  Last summer one or more deer figured out how to leap over the eight-foot fence around our orchard garden.  The temptation that sent them over the fence was the small pear tree that taunted them from behind the wire with its load of sweet, golden fruit.  One late summer morning I discovered that most of the tree's branches had been snapped off and every pear was gone.  Fortunately the tree has survived and is bravely flowering in a lopsided sort of way.  

The deer are just trying to make a living, but they have to be stopped.  I already had some branches wired to several small sections of the fence, so it didn't take much thought to decide that this was the way to go.  I liked the idea of a project that recycled the wood that we already had to haul off the hills anyway.  The downside to this project is that sorting through and preparing the branches for being wired to the fence is slow going.  I work with a saw and pruners to trim down the twigs and trunks.  Wiring them up isn't hard, but fitting the branches together takes thought.  I'll admit to getting more artsy with the look of the fence than is really practical -- sometimes I'll try the same branch in two or three locations before I'm satisfied.  

I'm also a bit worried that the combined weight of all the branches might serve to knock the entire fence inward.  Wouldn't the deer get a laugh out of that.  At this point, however, I'm too far into this to change my mind.

Besides, I love the rustic, twisted look of my slowly spreading fence.  This picture is from the outside looking in.

And this one is from the raised berry beds looking out.  The new height should give a bit of additional shade to the garden when the heat of summer slams down on us again.

The above pictures make it look like this project is almost finished.  It's not -- I'm less than a fourth of the way around the garden  I still have over half of one of the long sides to complete and then almost all of the stretch along our driveway.  But I'm carrying on like a little worker ant emptying a grain sack, one small piece at a time.

The hope of this two-legged ant is to get the stockade completed before the next pear crop ripens.

March

Well, it's March and the rainy season, such as it was, is winding down.  Earlier this week, a weak storm finally broke through our high pressure system and gave us about a quarter of an inch.   I'm grateful for this rain as it means I don't have to water for a few days but it doesn't do much to raise our water table or fill the pond.  I'm still hoping that a monster storm or two or three roars in by the end of the month.  It could happen.