One last kiss

Freckles 2001 - 11/18/2011

I had Freckles put to sleep this afternoon. I'd watched her fade and struggle for the last year or so... ten and a half years take their toll on a bunny even though she was always very healthy. She'd been unable to move around very much and in the last two weeks had begun to lose her balance and not be able to get herself upright once she tumbled over. She had a couple seizures, too, which was just too much for me to bear. A local vet suspected E. cuniculi based on her symptoms, so we treated her for that for a while, but there wasn't any improvement.

Anyway...

It's so hard to make that decision, but it was easy for her. She had an incredibly long life for a bunny and she knew nothing but love. She was the kissiest bunny I've ever known and was kissing me still this morning as we shared a couple last moments of love and comfort. This is my favorite photo of her from many moons ago.

 As pet owners, we are so fortunate, I think, to have the option of that final kindness for our pets.

1/365

New coffee pot, new camera, new life... why not a new photo project, too?!?

I'm trying out the 365 Days Project to take a photo a day for the next year. Sounds pretty easy for someone as camera addicted as me, right? I figure it'll be a sweet way to chronicle this first year in a new place. I also have a new camera - the new iPhone 4S - and it combined with Hipstamatic is the perfect toy!

I'm not sure how often I'll share pics from the project here, but considering the difficulty I'm having with writing regular posts to this blog, if nothing else, a photo a day will at least give me something to blog about. The truth is, I have plenty to blog about, but the difficulty lies in how much to share and what to keep close to my heart. I imagine I'll work that out with time and practice. For now it still feels like too much, as if too many people are reading over my shoulder...

Anyway, about the new coffee pot...

; )

The cheapo Mr. Coffee died yesterday when I was just desperate for a cup...

Coffee this way reminds me of my dad and of camping. I love the smell of it cooking on the stove. It's especially yummy this way, I think, but it takes forever to be ready. So today I snapped a pic while I waited.

Anyone else out there prefer perked coffee over drip-brewed? Any hints for getting the basket contraption out of the pot without burning my fingers or should I go to the garage for that camping tool?

: )

Right brain (fridge) poetry

I don't know the language, but that shouldn't stop me from playing, right?

; )

I'm sure one of the French grammarians around here will correct me...

I'm feeling inspired by this article... thanks for sending along the link Endment!

Mid-week cat fix

Everyone else is doing cat-blogging, so why can't I join in the silliness? 

; )

This is Belle. She's a pretty cat. She runs to sit in my lap at every opportunity. She kneads my soft belly with her claws. She looks at my bunnies like they're dangerous and might infect her with some terrible cuteness. Her breath smells like fish, usually.

How do cat people stand that?

I'm such a dog person by nature and by choice. I had cats as a kid and as an adult had taken to saying that cats were okay so long as they were other people's cats.

; )

There's a dog park down the street and I'm sort of haunting it in my pining for Luka and some doggy-love. I steal kisses from strange dogs I meet when out hiking. I'm developing a friendship with a lady who has four, hoping she'll let me borrow one from time to time. I carry biscuits in my pockets and am considering a career change to professional dog-walker.

Honestly, don't you think dog and cat people are wired differently, somehow?

Is there some book I can consult to help me understand the strange mincing about on tippy-toes they like to do first thing in the morning? Why the black one chooses to sleep curled up on the dark steps where I can easily trip on her? Why they invite me to pet their furry bellies and then attack my hand with teeth and claws? Why Belle stops mid-step and glares at me from across the room? Why they prowl around in the dark, yowling?

Parting glances

Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park is ~the~ place to see confusing fall warblers... the trees are young and small so, in theory, you can see the birds easily, down low.

I've had parts of 14 species of warblers there in the last couple weeks:

Most all of this young Common Yellowthroat...

The water-tossed mantle of the Black-Throated Green in last week's post...

The pale supercilliums of many Tennessee Warblers...

The briefest of looks at the yellowish wing bars of a Chestnut-Sided Warbler...

The white "handkerchiefs" on a handsome Black-Throated Blue...

The indistinct dull olive of a young Blackpoll...

(You get the idea!)

Are warblers still passing thru where you are or is it winter already?

Bad bird photo of the week

Confusing fall warbler edition... happy guessing!

Up close with a Black and White

I spent a couple hours one morning last week at the Jekyll Island Banding Station; it's Georgia's oldest continually operated station. There's always a nice variety of birds and the folks who run the station, for a couple weeks each fall, are happy for visitors.

This particular warbler, a Black and White, was quite feisty!

And handsome, of course...

Note the "target" penned on the bander's finger... he says it gives the birds somewhere to aim their bites!

; )

Weekend bunny fix

Peeper has a cat.

(Two, actually.)

Both are mostly afraid of her.

(But they are not above drinking the water in her cage!)

Where the sea lends large

St. Simons Island is one of the coolest places to spend the low tide hours... the sea retreats almost a half mile and leaves in its place endless tidepools and sandbars for exploring...

There are joys in every moment. Some, like the Black Skimmers that fly past, hold a little tease and leave a wake of longing...

When I'm finished looking for seashells, there's always birds to entertain me...

like these Boat-tailed Grackles playing King of the (sand)Castle

: )

(I forget how noisy they are when I'm away from the coast for too long!)

Royal Terns are grown, but still begging from their parents.

(endlessly entertaining!)

A walk among the birds at low tide teaches me to measure happiness by nothing I can hold... nothing I can catch.

; )

I sneak close on my belly, camera in hand, for a better look at the spot of mustard on a Sandwich Tern's bill...

and squat low over the water with a Willet.

The beach is stretched out as far as it can go as I pause to consider a young Piping Plover feeding at the far end of a tidepool...

Can my imagination make this bird a familiar?

(Could be... though its banded companion was hatched in the Great Lakes area this past summer.)

I keep walking and exploring the quiet changes the outgoing tide has left; entire oceans are moved one inch at a time...

Olema

It is not drawn on any map; true places never are.  ~Herman Melville

We're off to the coast for a couple days; mostly for the required beach fix...

 I wonder if this can work out to be a monthly thing, maybe? 

: )

I'm sharing a pic from where we stayed on the outskirts of Point Reyes National Seashore last month... a quirky sort of place with hummingbirds and chickens and even a view of horses out the bedroom window...

: )

I'll be back with more from California.

6000 miles*

There were two days following behind a rental truck that had all my worldly belongings inside. Then a quick trip to the left coast (finally!) to dip my toes in that other (very cold!) ocean.

Baseball games, garden tours, marching band competitions...

(who'da guessed it?)

: )

I'm not settled quite yet; still there are boxes left to unpack.

We're figuring this out... this necessary blending together of disparate lives.

I'm loving the light that pours in the windows here in the afternoons; it lulls me into a nap with a cat beside me.

(A cat?)

(Two, actually.)

Right. Exactly.

; )

I have everywhere still to go.

*give or take a few detours for coffee.

: )

Sorry to have been away for so long...

My mother's cookie jar

My dad's health had declined so suddenly early in 2004 that he couldn't live alone any longer and my brothers and I were left scrambling to make arrangements for his care. We also had to figure out what to do with his house and all the stuff in it.

The short story is that we shared dad and cared for him as best we could amongst us while we set about cleaning out and selling his house. I don't remember how many 20-yard dumpsters we'd paid for, but still... my attic ended up filled with dad's books, mom's dresses and lots of assorted "stuff" from numerous generations of our family.

I never really dealt with any of that stuff properly. I'm awful about purging my own things, let alone all this sentimental crap... my dad's high school ring, a letter he wrote from France to my mom while they were engaged, her wedding dress preserved in a fancy cardboard box...

What am I to do with any of this?

Life has found me in a place now that I'm sorting through the collections of a childhood and a marriage: my lifetime so far. Some things are easy to keep and others... pfft! It seems impossible to do anything other than cart them around with me until sometime when I can think more clearly about their meaning and real merit in my future.

I've been washing and boxing up my mother's china and sorting through ridiculous amounts of bird-related-kitsch the last couple weeks. I've no idea what to do with the perfectly-preserved wedding dresses worn for two failed marriages, but...

(sad sigh)

This cookie jar, as awful-looking as it is... I know I want to keep it!

: )

Of course it would be meaningless to anyone else, but I remember it there on the counter above the breadbox in the house I grew up in. It's one remnant of my childhood... innocent of any guilty feelings and sense of obligation... I see it and think of Scooter Pies and Pecan Sandies.

: )

In the last couple years I'd used this as a treat jar for my bunnies... appropriate, no? It broke at some point recently and my sweet DexH glued it back together for me.

- - - - - - - - - - -

"My mom" is just an empty title to most people in my life. I have just one friend who remembers her, in fact. It's 30 years since she passed away when I was 11. I can look at pictures of her and still smell her perfumed hug or remember days at the beach as a kid. There is little in my life, now, to make her a real person. This ugly cookie jar was probably meaningless to her... an empty household piece that once belonged to the most important person in my life.

Despite my inclinations to the contrary, I still hold on tightly sometimes. I still think her stuff is as sacred as my memory of her.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I wonder what it is that you all have been carting around with you to remember the people that once loved you? A pink trunk full of tattered love letters? A collection of tools? That set of crystal hi-ball glasses you can't bear to part with, tho you don't even really know what a hi-ball is?

: )

Do tell, please. Lend me some comfort in my state of overwhelmedness.

Plover party

We had a little potluck party this evening to celebrate a successful nesting season for "our" Piping Plovers at Seven President's Park... there was beer and pizza and homegrown tomatoes with basil and mozarella and homemade wine...

We plover monitors had logged better than 1500 volunteer hours (75~ of them myself) and babysat 4 healthy chicks throughout the beach season.

Wow!

I didn't take very many people pix while out on the beach, but this random beach-goer typifies the amused sort of tolerance of our antics we've trained the public into...

Can't you just see him wondering what all the fuss is about?

Endangered birds... what birds? Where?

: )

Linda is a veteran at this... she and I spent many an evening together at opposite ends of the beach shepherding people away from the chicks.

Click and look closely for two tiny young chicks feeding at her feet!

Marie is another volunteer that I spent a lot of time with... study her posture... she was fierce with young surfers who didn't think they had to follow everyone else's rules on "their" beach...

I had to include this pic of a plover chick running across my beach towel, just because...

: )

Someone on FB linked to an article in just the last couple days that almost suggested that Piping Plovers might do better on very peopled beaches... I wonder if that might not be true...

Public education can be our greatest advantage if we leverage it properly...

Anyway...

The party tonight was fun, but I think we all left wondering what we'll do with ourselves all winter...

: )

Going, going, gone

The photos I took on 30 July will likely be the last of the baby Piping Plovers...

; (

All 4 babies and their dad were still at the beach on 4 August, but my camera battery was dead...

; (

That evening, while we watched, 3 of them took a very serious-looking flight straight out over the ocean. It was the first prolonged flight I'd witnessed and it looked to me like they meant to head straight for the Bahamas.

; )

They came back, but I've heard since that dad and two of the babies have left for points south. 2 chicks were still around as of yesterday... I hope to get back for a couple last shots, but...

Seven President's Park is the only place in Monmouth County, besides Sandy Hook, that had Piping Plovers this season... and the season was a huge success for our pair!

; )

Bad bird photo of the week

Swallow song

Swallows are starting to gang up on the wires here in the mornings... I love to listen to their conversations while I wake up with coffee.

I haven't heard a Katydid yet, but I can feel the natural world turning towards Fall.

What about you in your part of the world? Can you see Fall despite the summer heat?

Tell me how you know it's coming...

Suddenly

Adolescence is, perhaps, nature's way of preparing parents to welcome the empty nest.

~Karen Savage and Patricia Adams, The Good Stepmother

Teenagers!

A little awkward and gawky... they don't mind boundaries well, anymore, or their parent's alarm call... and they're as likely to amble unawares into a group of Greater Black-Backs as to snuggle sweetly under dad's wing... they nap together during the hottest part of the afternoon and then scatter to the wind to feed as the sun sets.

It's getting harder to keep track of them... harder to tell them apart from their dad at a distance.

It's been a full week since I've seen them... and suddenly they have wings... suddenly they're plovers.

(g)

I will not cry

There was an evening last week, before the heat wave descended, when the beach was cool and thick with fog, like it is when the Piping Plovers first return in March.

I had to search hard to find my little charges, so completely gray was their world; the sky, sea and sand blending into nothingness.

I've come to know these birds for the little flashes of light that precede them. Their movement, on the periphery of my awareness, is the only thing that gives them away.

They seemed suddenly fearful that evening, aware of my presence and the camera pointed their way. They approached, hesitant in their feeding along the waterline, and skittered past me quickly.

This, too, is a part of their growing up, I guess.

Mama Plover has been gone for almost two weeks now, leaving them in the care of their father. He is even more vigilant since, calling the alarm at my approach and distracting me away from his chicks with a game of hide and seek in the sand.

A part of me wants to play that game with him, to see just where, exactly, he might distract me away to...

Instead I step back and stay away and try to remain separate. These four chicks are not mine. I'm not totally in love with them. I will not miss them, already, before they've learned to fly and are gone as the goldenrod sweeps over the dunes.

I will not cry at their growing up.

Shade x 4

I was only able to stand a couple hours on the beach in yesterday's ridiculously hot temps, but was glad to see the plover chicks had managed to find some respite from the sun.

: )

Anyone know how much heat is radiated off of beach sand in full sun when air temps are 100+ degrees?

Watch me grow!

If I'm not careful, I'm going to have to change the name of this blog to "The Daily Plover".

: )

These are some of my favorite pix from the past week. Understand that nearly every photo is a favorite and I take upwards of 100 photos of these babies each time I'm out with them. I'm considering wallpapering my place with them I have so many!

We're still watching over 4 chicks; we try not to hover and worry too close, but if you sit still enough they'll scuttle right past your toes. This afternoon I was sure one was going to invite itself into someone's beach bag!

They're 3 weeks old now and have the funniest tail feathers... little duck butts! I saw the largest of the 4 testing its wings a bit this afternoon in the high dunes... it won't be long before they're flying.

Gulls continue to be a source of anxiety for us all... you need only see one carry away a tern chick one time to understand how quickly a gull can act when the opportunity presents itself. The public is still mostly supportive and cooperative, save for the occasional gang of teenage boys or the dopes on cell phones who think the rules don't apply to them. I've had to use my teacher voice a lot in the last couple days!

At a premium

This past weekend marked the point in the chicks' growth where all four of them no longer fit so easily under mom/dad plover... so they had to find shade elsewhere!

Here they're hunkered down in the sand at the base of the ropes demarcating the closed area of the beach... in front of them is the 25 foot "buffer zone" we roped off once the chicks hatched. Beyond that is open beach and the blazing sun.