Wanton Musings

Spring approaches here in Houston, even though it is still deep winter in many other places around the country. Alas, I have no garden to plant, so I am not pouring over seed catalogues or plotting out what will go next to what on graph paper or trying to make things sprout between moist paper towels under grow lights indoors in preparation. Someday though.

I do listen to gardening podcasts, buy way too many books about homesteading and devour magazines like Mother Earth, to make up for what I'd be learning if I were gardening all this time. If how stunningly I've failed in my efforts to keep the most basic container plants on my porch (I've even watched those bamboo shoots that require only a little water, no sun, no soil expire under my care) is any prediction of my abilities as a real gardener, then I would be among the pilgrims to die in the first winter in New England. I figure I will give myself 5 years once I get my hands in some soil to discover if I have what it takes or if I'm doomed to go to my grave a hopeless black thumb. So I need all the pre-study and experience that I can get.

It's not just gardening I'm interested in learning, but canning and preserving, bread baking, and other lost arts. There is a resurgence of interest in these things so I am hardly unique. But I claim to be apart from the hoards of former Yuppie urbanites who have cashed in their stilettos and nightclubs in search of a retro existence. They are mostly motivated by their babies, which certainly rips the needle off the record of the world that had been their formerly delicious, city life.

While my world may have consisted more of sparkly earrings, champagne and tall buildings, I have long been fascinated by people like the late Tasha Tudor, who had enough success to live as she wanted. She created her own world on her sprawling estate living with little or no electricity, cooking over a wood stove, sleeping in a cap, walking barefoot -- self sufficient well into her 90's.

And I am of the generation who read Little House on the Prairie and felt something shift when I read about their preparations for the winter: smoking, drying, cold storage, metering supplies to make it until the Spring came again. Those few long trips to the store in a town far away. Coming back with precious flour, sugar, coffee, a measure of fabric, and a few pieces of peppermint candy, among other treasures. Building fires that would burn all night, saving embers to start the stove in the morning. I still pull it out late in the Fall, between Thanksgiving and Christmas and read those parts and get completely lost in the pages.

Some people stick things in the ground, tend to it and harvest for the table, without much else to tell. I know several of these aliens. Their gardens burst forth with color and abundance. Everything they try - cumquats, persimmons, even cantaloup and corn by the walk - thrives. But I hear far more stories of the difficulties -- chronic destruction of tender shoots or worse -- of prized meager successes that are decimated just before harvest -- by one or another critter, bug or disease. Those with the best of intention to deal with these organically or by companion planting at the start end up in spraying the shit out of the everything with the strongest chemicals sold this side of the war or find themselves sitting in trees with night vision goggles and a rifle to finally kill the damn thing that ate all the corn/tomatoes/beans the night before picking.

Which, I wonder, will I be?

It's Baby Bird Time!

Baby birds start out as small as this. The first time I saw one -- with such thin skin you could see all their blood moving through their veins, with eyes undeveloped, and the tiniest little half limbs -- I didn't believe it could possibly eat or live.

But even in such a vulnerable state, that little rim of bright school bus yellow opens wide as soon as food it put near and every morsel delivered is consumed with great vigor. It's flabbergasting, and only reinforces what miracles of nature go on every day, all around us, all the time.

As they grow, the little half-limbs I mention become strong and feathered wings, their eyes mature and finally open, their little legs get strong enough to shoot their growing bodies straight up when I walk by because I MEAN FOOD (and they want it every 15 minutes it seems, except at night, when birds settle in for sleep) and their little yellow beaks open to reveal the brightest pink and red mouths. Here's what I see when I walk by a tank:

Now once the bird gets to a beginning fledgeling, we move them to bigger tanks and put them in a room that's enclosed in netting, as when you open the lid, often a hungry baby now can flit up and out. Here is one who did just that but simply perched close to me on the lid of the tank next to it. Generally speaking, it's often the babies who are most aggressive get the most food in the nest -- though some experienced mothers make sure everyone gets enough. But this little guy kept hopping out to beat out his or her two siblings who stayed in the tank.

Fledgelings add flapping their wings and making much noise, squawking "SEE ME, FEED ME, ME ME ME mom!!!!" Now when I'm out in late springtime I can make out fledgling squawkings. If I take a second or two to look, and indeed I do, I manage to find a nest and a mother nearby.

At some point, that turns into the babies taking their first tentative steps out of the nest, so you may see them actually sitting on a branch next to it, looking all fluffy and even a little like their molting as bigger feathers begin to replace their baby fuzz. Soon they begin flying lessons I think, since I've seen them trying to hop to nearby twigs following the mother who hops ahead of them -- I assume she's showing them how it's done.

I think grackles must be like those kids who never stop going to college, or come home to live after... they look fully grown and still hop after their mothers flapping their perfectly competent wings, insisting loudly that their mother give them half of whatever she's got. The more you observe, them more you realize that animals are really not that much different than us in so many ways!

Blue Moon

The night before New Years Eve, I stole out into the frigid temps to take this snap of the breathtaking full moon. I stood there in the blackness and looked through the bare branches at the glow that was radiating from it, in awe. It was almost like the moon was exhaling all around and you could see the breath, like I could see my own as I was standing there shivering in my slippers and pj's under my down coat.

There was supposed to be a Blue Moon on the big night, but it was so cloudy then I couldn't see a thing. I still went out and tilted my face skyward and made my new year wishes on it, a tradition I started many moons ago.

Did you see it where you were? Did you take any pictures? Tell me in the comments what it looked like to you...