Project Oriole

Have you noticed how, whenever any group wants their initiative to sound cutting-edge, they drop the article and change the juxtaposition of the words "project" and whatever the project is about? I think the government started it. If that's the case, then the cutting-edginess is really laughable. I mean, when was the last time the government was on the cutting edge of anything? And anyway, what does everyone have against the "the?" Not the band. Never mind.

Well, I am on the cutting edge of birding. Oh, yes. Not because I am any kind of record holding birder (see movie The Big Year) or because I have any kind of really special equipment. As a matter of fact, my equipment is laughable. I took this picture of the heron who fishes at our pond by holding my digital camera up to one side of my binoculars. No, I'm on the cutting edge because in pursuit of birds, I have been doing a lot of cutting up of string. It started like this: I kept seeing something to large to be a Goldfinch and too orange to be a Western Meadowlark. I never got a solid enough glimpse of it to figure out what it was, and it was driving me bazonkers, as we say around here. There were several possibilities in my bird field guide, but I never got a long enough, close enough look to be sure. I even took to wearing binoculars everywhere I went. Washing dishes without dipping ones binoculars is a real acrobatic act, by the way. 

Then last weekend, we were working on digging the post holes for our raised bed garden and I caught sight of it in the nearby pine tree tugging at a piece of twine the boys had left tied there. Was it a Kentucky Warbler? No, too yellow. A Yellow Warbler? Not yellow enough. ARG! The next day, I was in the laundry room, when I noticed out the window the same bird landing at our construction site, tugging at the guide strings we had placed. I got a good look at it when it flew over to the swing set to tug on a string left tied there by some crazy scheme of the boys' and mine. Ah-ha moment! 

Checking me out while I check her out...

Being coy on the side of the pine....

This was a female Northern "Baltimore" Oriole, gathering string for her nest. I was delighted. In the past, I have seen only one Oriole around my yard. All attempts to attract them failed. Only hummingbirds came to my "oriole feeder." Only ants came when I nailed an orange to a tree. Nothing but raccoons and opossums came when  I left out dried fruit pieces; and since I think opossums are the creepiest animal to walk the earth, I gave up. But now, with renewed hope, I started leaving bits of twine about 12-18 inches long stuck to trees all over my yard. It worked like magic. Like. Magic. Suddenly I had not one, but about three separate pairs of orioles regularly visiting to tug on my strings and flit away again. I found that the males will come if the females do, much to my great delight, and I have spent the last week being distracted by a whole new, living set of shiny (orange!) objects. 

During this process, other lovely discoveries have come about. For one thing, my lovely Mockingbird friend has two fuzzy babies in her nest now instead of brown speckled blue green eggs. She had three eggs, but one seems to have been a dud. I was going to collect it and preserve it until I read that I could get fined $500 just for having it. If I'm going to pay $500 for the privilege of having an egg, it'll be made of gold or perhaps Faberge. Right... those things are priceless... 

Also, I have seen four Zebra Swallowtail butterflies this spring when, in the last six years altogether of living here, I had only ever seen one.

And while battening down the hatches for a storm that was blowing in, I found this little fellow who, after meeting us, will never mistake a roll of bird netting for a good log hiding place again. While I'm glad we found him and put him safely in a tree, I will miss his really loud, close trills whenever I am outside working under the canopy of our porch. Last, but far from least, I've found that our decrepit old marten house has been taken up, not by martens, but by a sweet little family of Eastern Bluebirds. Whether or not I'm setting any records, this has been a Big Year so far for me.

 Happy May from this tiny viola that volunteers in my yard....

Head over to http://aimlessmindpoemlesslines.blogspot.com to read a May poem or two!

Battling the Evil Forces of Rhus Toxicodendron

For starters, I feel it only right to update you on our family's urushiol induced dermatitis. There seems to be unlimited lore about how to deal with poison ivy if one is not content to sit on the couch all summer or to venture outside only in a full body contamination suit. Myself, I am a firm believer in Ajax, Epsom Salts, and Tecnu. While Abe recovered nicely with the help of corticosteroids, I got rid of all my little patches from the battle with the hydra (i.e. the fence row) by washing several times a day with the above combination. The most annoying spot, which was between two fingers on my right hand, required an Epsom Salt/Tecnu paste held in place by bandages. That one seems to be thinking about leaving a scar. But I WIN THE PRIZE! I got a poison ivy rash on my face from, best that I can figure, urushiol oil on clothes I was putting in the laundry. Where's my cookie!? No, I meant the cookie I don't have to bake myself. Where's that cookie?

Most of my experience with poison ivy has been how to deal with it after the fact. Baking soda paste. Oatmeal paste. Tecnu. Epsom Salts. Meditation. Sacrifice of a young goat under the full moon. You know the drill. But my Brilliant and Venerable Father (official title) told me of a preventative method passed down to him by his grandfather. For this approach you will need water, Ivory bar soap, and probably some serious lotion for afterward. When you know you're going to be venturing into the rhus toxicodendron danger zone, you lather any skin you intend to leave exposed with Ivory soap and don't rinse. Make the lather heavy and let it dry. Multiple layers of lathering will ensure no missed spots on the skin. Once you have let your Ivory shield dry you can go to Toxicodendrontown with no worries. After you're done for the day, take a shower, and any urushiol oil that has stuck to the soap layer on your skin will rinse away without effect. I haven't had a chance to test this one myself, but I will theorize that 1) the Ivory shield itself will be irritating at first, and 2) may dry your skin after you've rinsed it off. Thus the lotion. I'll report back once I've tried it.

Polyphemus, Voletaire, and the Hydra

What an exciting time Spring is; everything bursting into life! If you really think about it, that's a very weird expression: bursting into life. Usually, things that burst are either explosive or rotten; but I digress. So... flowers and baby animals are positively everywhere! Butterflies and moths are testing their wings. And everyone in my family is sampling the delights of urushiol oil. We know how to have a good time in Kentucky.

The first person to kick off poison ivy season was Abe, and he did it in style. We went for a walk in the back twenty, which is  not technically a back twenty at all since it doesn't belong to us. It's okay, though, because this time I didn't trespass. We actually have permission to do as we please on this neighbor's property, which includes the pond, field, and woods often shown in the background of my pictures. Honestly, the lawfulness of the jaunt just takes some of the fun out of it. Anyway, we were walking in the woods, and I was having a fine time spotting different species of violets. There are an absurd number of violet species, so I won't name them. I'm sure you'd quit reading if you haven't already...  While I was ground-gazing, Abe must've performed the trifecta of woodland walk no-no's. 1) Do not walk straight into brambles. 2) Do not take revenge on the brambles if you do walk into them. See former entry. 3) Do not rub poison ivy leaves over the scratches you receive from the brambles. Okay, so that's probably not how it happened, but somehow Abe ended up with a nice, long scratch neatly outlined with poison ivy rash. Yay, Prednisolone!!

On the way back from the poison ivy--I mean the woods--we saw the Canada geese who seem to have made a nest somewhere around the pond. They boys went off to catch them, which totally worked--no, it didn't--and I followed at a much more sedate mosey. When I rounded the end of the pond, Abe was trying to stomp on something just a the edge of the water. Upon closer inspection, I found that what he thought deserved to die was actually a million tadpoles. Once I explained to him that these were baby frogs and not mutant bugs, he changed his plan from amphibicide to PETS! The result is that we have about three hundred tadpoles in a tiny terrarium. Every day, Charlie asks me, "How long does it take tadpoles to turn into frogs?" Every day, I try not to completely lose my cool, answering, "As I told you yesterday, assuming we don't kill them, we will see how long it takes." We haven't killed them yet, I think.

On Saturday, the weather was perfectly cool, breezy, and overcast--just the right weather for slaying the Hydra. "Slaying the Hydra" is the name I have given to our ongoing battle with "seedlings" and brambles in the fence row. Call me overly dramatic if you like, but you didn't see the scratches, bruises, and rashes the rest of us had after only six hours of ripping woody vegetation out of the fence row. After a while it did begin to seem like a monster that grew more heads after each one was cut. The seedlings were more like young trees, and you can see in this picture the size of the thorny bushes we had to cut out. Not only that, but a mouse that was literally the size of a chipmunk ran out of the hedge and yelled at me twice for screwing up its habitat. Being myself, I tried to catch it. No luck.

Charlie has decided his favorite activity is mowing the lawn. I have decided not to tell him that this is what most people call work. As he was finishing his mowing, and I was burning out the dead grass along the fence, I came upon another rodent that wasn't, for whatever reason, fast enough to escape me. I thought it was a dead adolescent mouse, but when I picked it up--of course I picked it up; haven't you been paying attention these last six years?-- it squeaked. Then, obviously, I had to put it in an old fish tank and show it to the boys and feed it until I could figure out what it was, because once I picked it up, I saw it couldn't be a mouse. Its ears were flat to its head, and its tail looked chopped off. Its nose wasn't the right shape either. It was a vole! You should know by now that the total inability to avoid puns is genetically ingrained in the Crum side of my heritage. Thus the name: Voletaire. Sadly, Voletaire's luck hasn't been as good as the tadpoles'. Either I poisoned him by feeding him apples, or the boys hugged him too hard, or maybe he was already hurt. He was only with us two days before going to grub for worms in the Great Lawn in the Sky. Thus our rodent friend was not a robust as his French sort-of-forefather, who lived to be 83.

And today, nursing our itchies and scratchies, we decided to annoy Mama Robin to see how her little family is coming along. She has two naked aliens, one cracked egg, and one whole egg in her nest now. She seems quite fiercely committed to them. She flitted about her net like a ninja, screeching at us so much that the daddy robin joined in, and then plopped back down on her babies the moment we vacated the tree. If my children were that ugly, I'd probably sit on them too.

While Charlie and I were performing our clown act otherwise known as "yard-schooling," Abe was digging for buried treasure in the front yard. His optimism seems to have paid off, as he found this fellow:

A beautiful Polyphemus moth the size of my open palm, which I have never before had the luck to photograph in the daytime. Hurrah, my tiny explorers!

I will leave you with a parting thought, just in case you aren't as glib about poison ivy as we seem to be: when hiking, carry a small bottle of Ajax dish soap. If you know you've just brushed up against our urushiol-wielding friends, promptly wash the spot with Ajax and rinse well. Ajax is cheap and designed to remove oils from dishes. It will also remove the oil from your skin if you don't let it sit too long.

I myself have tested this theory in several ways. First, while canning jalapeno peppers last summer, I thought it would be fun to wipe their oils into my eyes! I told you we Kentuckians know how to party. Blind and saying words my mother would have liked to treat with Ajax, I stumbled to the shower. Charlie brought me the dish soap with which I washed my face quite thoroughly. Oil removed! Then, just yesterday, while foraging for pretty perennial bulbs in the waste across the road, I blithely pulled aside a vine which, upon closer examination had those telltale "leaves of three." With my bare hand. You can take it to the bank when I tell you I fairly teleported into the kitchen to access the Ajax. Today, no blisters. It works, my fellow outdoorspeople! And in my experience, it's either that or a full body contamination suit. If you're going to set foot off the beaten path, there's no avoiding the ivy. Viva la Ajax! (I'll be expecting my ad money from your company within the week, thank you...)

The Missing Months

So, I was supposed to be cleaning the bathroom today. We'll pretend I did. Okay, that's settled. Now...

A quick warning about this post. If you are seriously arachnophobic, you do not want to scroll all the way down to the last picture. Seriously. I cannot be held responsible for any heart palpitations or soiled shorts that may result if you ignore this warning.

So, the last time I posted anything was in February. Shame on me. In my defense, I have been writing a lot of poems... which might not actually be much of a defense to you. Philistines.

We had more of a winter in 2012-13 than the prior one, and Winter's last hurrah was a pretty impressive. It waited until the third week of March, gave us a lovely sixty-something degree day, and then the next day... HA HA HA! Here are six inches of snow, SUCKERS! The daffodils were unfazed, however, and the boys and I tried to build an igloo. It didn't work. They got too wet and cold before we got more than two layers high. Well, there's always next March. I'm onto Winter's tricks now.

After that, mud and gloom kept us living roomed (which is like being closeted, only with a bit more space) for a couple more weeks until April showed itself with a sudden leap into the 80s. Degrees, not high tops, horrible neon clothing, big hair, and shoulder pads. I quickly planted all of my "cold weather" plants, hoping that that would result in a return of sixty degree weather. Got forty degrees instead, then eighty again. Apparently this Spring is delivering desired temperatures by median. Regardless of reasoning, it made quick work of the spring flowers, and the boys and I have already been to and in the river once this year, gleaning even more shells that will eventually be jewelry. I think I even found a flower I haven't catalogued yet. It looks like an anemone, but what exact kind, I can't be sure. My flower book doesn't have one just like it and now that I don't work at the library any more, I can't sneak off during work and identify plants.

The bonny weather brought a fit of high spirits amongst us Pearsons, so we decided to go hiking. Joe bid me find a place to go, and behold, a discovery! Quiet Trails Nature Preserve, nestled in a quiet corner of Harrison County, KY... three miles from our house. This spit of land was donated to the state in 1990, and made into a nature preserve with hiking trails and little nature-observation shacks... and an old tobacco barn. Kentucky--go figure. The things you never know are there if you don't enjoy getting lost on narrow, windy Kentucky back roads! Actually, I do enjoy getting lost on back roads, and have even gotten lost on this very road, but still somehow never realized Pugh's Ferry housed a hiking destination. Rawr!

Why, Rawr? No idea.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been very Amish. I turned the soil in my little garden by hand and made a pea trellis. I planted greens, carrots, peas, and flowers, and started tomatoes and peppers in a flat. I even planted trees! I'm so green! Now I spend a lot of time staring hard at dirt, which leads to the discovery unplanned of bugs. I think this is a dung beetle of some kind, which makes me worry about the efficacy of my septic tank right next to my garden. And who knew dung beetles were pretty?

Besides dung beetles and wood anemones, I have also seen the second ever Zebra Swallowtail to visit my yard, and seen and identified what I believe to be a fine specimen of a Western Meadowlark. Yes, Western.... They range this far, according to my book.

Charlie has been begging to mow for weeks now. On Saturday, while Daddy was fixing the mower (which prompted more poetry, but that's for another day) Charlie was literally climbing the trees in anticipation. Good thing, because he found this:

.
She was not very pleased, but the kids and I thought it was cool.

While Charlie looks skyward, and I look dirtward, Abe looks at the swing set and finds... this is the part where arachnophobes will want to stop... Phidippus Mystaceus! This was the best picture I could get, but he/she was very pretty, with iridescent blue fangs and fluffy, white thingies that he seemed to use to clean his eyes. I studied this critter for quite a while, and decided that spiders in jars are charming. He really looked hard for a way out, the clever little fellow, testing the magnifying glass I had atop the jar. He would poke, poke, then clean his eyes with his fuzzy things as if to say, "What is this hard air!? I can't be seeing this... Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that really shiny bug... I seem to be hallucinating." Yes, spiders in jars, I can dig. When I let him out of the jar, he jumped at me and I screamed like a little girly and ran away, though; So spiders outside of jars, I can still do without... 

Funny Things Pearsons Say

I've about collected enough of my boys' witticisms for another of these.

I was trying to shove Charlie's snow boot on. This never works very well when he isn't making an effort to apply counter thrust. His boot sort of flew off and almost landed on his other leg, just above the heel. "Hey!" he said, "You almost hit me in the intestine!" (Doubtless, he meant Achilles.)

The boys were "eating" their dinner, which involves, as with most little boys, a lot of pushing food around their plates. Joe had finished, and was going in and out the door carrying loads of firewood, (Yes, we live in Kentucky. Contain yourselves.) so he was far enough from the table that he didn't hear me correctly when I said, "Would you eat, you goobers!?"
He turned to me and inquired, quite dryly, "Did you just tell them to eat their boogers?"

Abraham was running around the living room, jumping from couch to couch, which obviously resulted in my yelling that "This house is not a jungle gym!"
Leaping into the kitchen, he replied, "But I'm a jinja!"

Charlie was watching "Lilo and Stitch," and he apparently has a tenuous grasp on reality, because he turned to me and quite sincerely declared, "Everyone in Hawaii looks like a moron!"

Poemless

Don't get too excited. This post does contain a poem.

Now that I have forever destroyed your ability to trust, I can get on with my story. Over the weekend, I organized my sock drawer. I can see you reaching for the red X in the top right hand corner, but it had to be done. I couldn't find any matching socks or any underwear. Too much information. Moving on. I organized my whole dresser, actually. And since I know you're wondering; yes, my closet is hung by color and clothing type. My 200 disc CD wallet is alphabetized, as are the DVD shelves. My book case is organized thematically and also by book type, which is to say, hardcover, trade paper, mass market, odd sized... You get the idea. I am completely unhinged. I build cities out of Duplo blocks where the main criterion is that each building be all. One. COLOR!!!!!

I really don't understand how the separate entities that are "me" can coexist in one brain. Not comfortably, let me tell you. Once I start cleaning, I find it almost literally impossible to sit down until I fall down. Cleaning, for me, is a feast or famine thing. Daily maintenance, my derriere. Wait until it looks like there was an avalanche, and then go at it like a ninja. What? This is a blog. I'm perfectly within my rights to mix metaphors.

What I'm getting at is that I don't really like being this way. I try to be organized, but some demented inner part of me rebels, like the Gollum within. And that is the part that says, "Break all the dishes! I'm going for a hike!" Then, while Gollum and I are hiking happily, catching raw fish, and writing poems, Smeagol pops its melanin deficient little nose up in the air and says, "Kids! There's no need to actually roll in the mud!" But Gollum thinks there is.

Gollum also sees no need to file the paid bills in the filing cabinet. Ever. Smeagol gets violent when it can't find proof that it did, in fact, pay last month's phone bill, my precccciousssss. This is the duality that I live with. Anyway, I think that Smeagol thinks that Gollum has been winning of late, what with all the poetry and all. That's why Smeagol needed to organize the sock drawer. And the tee drawer, the jammy drawer, the tank top drawer, the husband's closet, and the guest bedroom. Freakin' Smeagol! Go annoy a Hobbit, already! Gollum and I are flipping out because we want to write some gosh. Darned. POEMS! (Or make some jewelry or design greeting cards out of paint swatches or build with Legos or go for a hike or......)

 So... this is the result of that...

Poemless

At home

my aimless mind

writes poemless lines.

Homeless, under

trees or sky,

my lines take aim

to fly.

(my preccciousssss....)

(P.S. Elaine, you can call Jon to translate that for you. I never have to know. :D )

Answer to My High School Self

Sometimes it's fun to look back through old photos and writings and see who you used to be, half your lifetime ago. And sometimes, you just think, "Wow! How did I live this long being so stupid and arrogant?" Lucky you! I'm going to take you on the Odyssey with me!

when i grow up

when i grow up
i'm going to live alone
in an immaculate little apartment
with very sparse furniture.
i only want a bed for sleeping,
a table for eating,
a chair for reading,
and a shelf for books.
i will hang my own drawings
and collect only the best books,
which include classics,
and those written by my friends.
i will eat pasta often
and broccoli when i like
and drink a lot of caffeinated beverages.
i won't keep any pets
except maybe a small reptile
in case i get lonely.
i'm going to listen to whatever music
however loudly i like at odd hours.
there will candles on the floor
and no tv.
i will go out to movies alone--
maybe even twice if i like them.
i'll write letters home
and go on holidays
but not if dad is in a bad mood.
i will live this way when i grow up.

Dear Self, Now That You Have Grown Up

Dear Self,
               Now that you've grown up,
you've decided that you like capital letters.
You've also found that you often wonder
when you "officially" became a grown up.

Living alone proves impossible
when you have two kids.
Kids don't even like to let you be
alone in the bathroom.

"Immaculate" also only applies to
"conception" when you have four
people making messes and
one point five of them cleaning. Just saying.

Husbands also tend to want you
to live in the same house and share
a bed. Four people seem
to require rather a lot of furniture.

Your husband seems to require
rather a lot of books.
His are mostly nonfiction.
The only classics

you own are the ones you found
you actually enjoyed in college.
Sorry, I guess I'm not as much
of an intellectual as you were.

Also, I hate to break it to you,
but you did, in fact, read
the Twilight Saga.
Not that you will admit that in public.

But hey, we do tend to eat a lot
of pasta. And occasional broccoli.
But not the kids.
Not even under extreme duress.

Oh, and by the way,
I discovered in college
that caffeinated beverages
turn us into a raving lunatic

so that part of the dietary plan
is out. But hey, avocados
are really really good.
And you never knew that until now!

For company, lizards really
kind of suck. Not that I don't still
like them. They're cool...
well, actually, cold. Blooded. Get it!?

Anyway....I've found that dogs are much
better friends when you're lonely. Unfortunately
though, I've kind of lost count of the cats
we've gone through since moving

to the country. Yes, you moved to
the country. You found out you like
quiet and actually
kind of hate loud music

or any music of any kind. Ever.
Because kids are loud
and adding a sound track
just gives you vertigo.

No TV... Well, I still
agree with you on that one but,
ashamed to say, sometimes the only
time you get to wash dishes

is when those two unexpected kids
are "stupefying themselves." But at least
you've trained them to call the TV
the "dumb box." So, ten points

to Ravenclaw! Oh, you disdained the first
book of the Harry Potter series when
you were in high school. But they're seven
of the books you have on your

(more than one) shelves now.
Movies, for the most part,
are out. For one thing
most of them are a waste

of two good hours of your life.
For another, you have to watch
what you play in front of those kids.
Avengers was good, though.

I don't want to spoil it for you
but the best part was when Hulk
punched Thor. Or maybe
when he trashed Loki.

But I digress.
Where was I?
You don't write letters home.
That's why you have a blog!

That, and to share this crappy poetry.

Oh, and Dad? Sorry for the
teenaged commentary on
your moods. I was one to talk

wasn't I?