Funny Things Pearsons Say

A little bit of back story, as all good authors of serial publications will give:

Charlie once asked me why I am not ticklish. I have a secret. My secret is that I am ticklish, but I won't tell him where No, I won't tell you either. I always just tell him that to be ticklish, one must possess some level of innocence, and I have grown too evil to be ticklish any more.

So, today I am starting to get a nasty headache.

I exclaimto the ceiling tiles, "I do not need a migraine today! Why does the Universe hate me!?"

Charlie, with impeccable comic timing, as usual, replies, "Because you're evil not ticklish, that's why."

Well played, boy. I'll get you next time.

In a conversation during morning snuggles one day:

Charlie was lying to the right of me, and Abe to the left. Charlie sneaked away while I was talking to Abe, but I noticed. 

Me: Where did Charlie go? Did Spider Monkeys come and carry him away to be their king?

Abe: Fider Monkeys don't have a cro-own!

Me: They make one out of thorny vines.

Abe: Then they paint it!

Me: They don't have any paint! But they put berries on it for color.

Abe: That's why they wanted Shawlie; so he could teach them how to paint!

Yellow has always been my favorite color, at least so far as concerns the lifetime of the individual in question. Yet Abe has, for some reason, become convinced that I used to like purple best and have thrown it over for another color like some kind of unfaithful painter. After breakfast, Abraham clearly had this weighty matter on his mind:

Abe: Mommy, do you like purple?
Me: Yes, but yellow is my favorite.

Abe: Why don't you like purple best anymore?

Me: I don't know. Yellow is just so happy all the time.

Abe: No it isn't! I'll show you!

He procures markers and draws picture of a frowny yellow sun. The frowny face is drawn on with purple marker. The child has a sense of dramatic presentation that has decidedly advanced beyond his years.

Clearly, my argument is invalid.

This is the Way the Winter Ends...

Not with a whimper, but a bang.

I don't know if winter is done. Everyone seems to be hoping it is, but I like the snow and ice. When winter consists of mud, chill, and damp, pervading grayness, that is when I can't wait for it to end. A snowy morning is somewhat like church: you cross its threshold and reverence and introspection just seem natural. An icy morning is like New Year: everything is lustrous and a little bit explosive. True winter is always just a bit at war with itself. It can't decide whether to be quiescent or boisterous, muted or brilliant, soft or hard. In Kentucky, it can't even decide whether to be winter or spring, which is why I say I don't really know if it’s over. Last year, we got six inches of snow in April that lasted all of one day before reverting to mud. In similar style, we had a lovely, blanketing snow Sunday last and now my yard has reached its mass moisture capacity and is contemplating swampdom. Everyone in Northern Indiana can just stop whining already. At least they can still walk on top of the ground without miraculous intervention.

I took a walk alone on Sunday afternoon. I wanted to see the snow on everything without any interruption. One of the best things about a walk alone in the snow is that birds come out to investigate you if you're quiet. A downy woodpecker played hide and seek with me around the trunks of some trees. He inspired my alone-ness. When I heard a car coming up the road, I played hide and seek with it around the snowed bulk of a small cedar. I would like to think that, just like the woodpecker, I was a telltale flash of red in the corner of the driver's eye. I don't know why I didn't want to be seen; just that I didn't. 

After the walk alone, I took a walk with children. One of the best things about a walk with children is that everything is twice as tactile with them. You can't just walk in snow, but must lay in it. You can't just lie in snow, but must eat it. You can't just admire an icicle, but must sword fight with it. And no matter how many times it has been proven that your snow boots are not water proof above the ankle, you must, at all costs, walk in the run-off stream. Feet aren't truly cold until they're frozen, after all. When I walk with kids, I don't see wildlife. I see Wild Life. I see kids. So if winter isn't done yet, that's okay with me. I don't have to drive in it anyway. Neaner, neaner, boo-boo...

Honey Locust don't care....

Wild Chipmunk sighting

Texture

Jailbait

  

Who lives here?

Getting Away From It All... Right Behind It All

I am not even going to bother trying to excuse or explain the absence of entries on this blog since summer. I've tried in the past. Made New Years resolutions or Faustian deals or promised myself treats I clearly did not want badly enough to keep me blogging steadily throughout the course of the year. The fact is that there are apparently not enough caffeine molecules in the universe to create wit in my brain 52 weeks of the year, and I otherwise lack the discipline. That said, after a long absence that you can all just forgive already because I used the word "Faustian" in this opening paragraph, here I am again!

And what I am contemplating is this:  

In general, we try to be good parents. Like we try to make sure the kids eat vegetable at least once a week and we don't condone WWE maneuvers wherein one child jumps onto the other child's lower back from the height of the couch. We try to say things like, "Will you please go watch a movie so I can get this done!?!?" only once a day or so. I even drag myself away from the riveting pastimes of "cleaning" and "taxes" to spend time whupping them at Monopoly. I use the term "I" there because the man of the house doesn't "do" board games. And I use the term, "Monopoly" because my nine year old has actually surpassed my skills at chess. You're only allowed to mock me about that if you know what the castle shaped players on a chess board are actually called. 

Anyway, part of being good parents is getting the kids out of the house on occasion. But when the man of the house gets home after a week working away from the house, he doesn't particularly want to leave the house. Who can blame him? I spend all week in the house and I still don't particularly want to leave the house. But the kids are another matter. They would likely set fire to the house if they were sure it meant getting out of it for a while. So we had to find a solution as well as an outlet for that budding pyromania where no one would get hurt. The long and short (but mostly long) is that we have had to find ways to get ourselves out of the house on weekends without actually having to leave home behind. Going out into the yard doesn't work. It's too easy to look around there and see things that ought to be done. Chores-- Bah! Humbug!



The Hill (otherwise known as  most of our yard) is good for a few minutes of entertainment, especially now, when we've had snow, followed by ice, followed by snow. That creates the perfect sledding environment for severe injury and possible dismemberment. The problem is that lugging the sleds back up the hill quickly tires us. It's like waiting in line for the Mean Streak at Cedar Point for an hour and half only to have the ride over in four minutes. Cost-benefit analysis fails to impress.

So, being creative folks, we've taken up the time honored hobby of traipsing off into the woods and starting fires. Why are you looking at me like that?

There are always things to see in the woods after an ice storm. There are icy trees, and icy grasses, and icy rocks, and icy moss, and icy... ice? There are also probably deer and rabbits, but two boys make too much noise to see any of them. That's okay. Really it is, because boys are meant to make noise and climb things and eat the icy ice. Sort of like monkeys, really, except I don't know how monkeys feel about ice.

Traipsing and ice munching turn out to be a cold business. That's where lighting things on fire comes in. Well, that and really how do you know you're having fun if fire isn't involved? So after we hiked to Where the Moderately Untame Things Are, we started a little camp fire in the snow. This involved dry cedar sticks, leaves, magnesium, a Swedish neck knife of some sort, sparks, and a great deal less swearing than you might expect given that there were two children present. Also, a butane lighter when the kids weren't looking, because a real Bushman knows that the first rule of survival is "Always cheat."

In all sincerity, it wasn't that long of a walk. Just back through the fields behind our house and into a twenty acre wood, barely more than would qualify as a copse. A hilly walk, with lots of variety. A walk with birds, and tiny streams, and sparkly sunlight on ice. And a tiny campfire by a cedar tree with thick grape vines and lots of character. It wasn't far away, but it was away from it all. The sort of place you can forget that bills and body aches and defunct car batteries and b.m.i.'s exist and just relax with a cold butt in the snow and warm heart by the fire. It's more relaxing than you'd think. At least, it works for us. Now if only the phrase "freezing our butts off" was more literal and less euphemistic...

Just Wanna Have Fu-un

Oh, Joy! 

Oh, Rapture! 

Joe took an actual vacation! That is to say, he took a week off of work on purpose, and not because he had to fix a transmission or build a chimney or whatever else he usually has to do during extended absences from work. Not that we went off to Belize or anything. I don't even know where that is. And who would want to go to Belize if they could vacation the way that we do? We started the week with cleaning up all the accumulated junk that has been around our house. If that sounds like work, it's because I haven't gotten to the payoff. Old logs too hard to split, and all the cardboard we could find made for a couple of very impressive bonfires. It had been so long since I'd sat by a bonfire in the dark that I had forgotten how it can melt tension off of you. It was the old adage about the cleansing nature of fire given a whole new meaning. Also, miniature marshmallows (which were all that we had) roast in about 1.7 seconds flat and are much less messy than the big ones. I may never go back. The second night we so perfect that we almost all fell asleep on the blanket in the yard. We might have had it not been for the mental image of waking with ticks in our ears.

Burning things isn't the only way that we know how to have fun and it also isn't the only way we know how to pick up ticks. We also took a trip over to our favorite new Poison Ivy Paradise. I don't mean to be sarcastic, except about the state of Kentucky's total lack of care-taking of the place, because I really do like Quiet Trails Nature Preserve. It boasts at least one (because I saw it!) Scarlet Tanager and a field full of very pale yellow Sweet Pea vines. There are also a couple of ponds with some unnaturally non-skittish bullfrogs, a couple of fungi that I got to look up in my dandy field guide, and a box turtle. Not only that, but it's only about three miles away! For people as hodophobic as Joe and I, that's a major plus. (That's "morbid fear of travel" to anyone who doesn't want to Google it, which is how I found out the word.) And for me, any chance to use my cool military surplus hiking pack qualifies as "major fun."

Unnaturally bold bullfrog...

Stalked Scarlet Cup and old Sulfur Shelf or "Chicken Mushroom"

Sweet Pea and Daisies at Quiet Trails

Ghetto telephoto of what I think is a female Widow Skimmer

Juvenile Northern Water Snake

Our vacation week involved more than a little bit of not cleaning anything up that normally gets cleaned up and watching The Hobbit and Captain Jack Sparrow for the umpteenth time. (By the way, even people who don't have kids should see Wreck It Ralph because it's just really clever.) But the real coup de vacances was that we got Joe to go to our favorite swimming place at the river. Funny how fire and water can both have the same effect on me. Nothing that was wrong seems wrong any more when I am at the river. The river has shiny shells and cliff swallows with a mud nest colony under the bridge. It has Killdeers and tree roots and dragonflies. It has tiny fish and huge fish and crawdads that bump into your feet when they go zooming backwards to escape. It even has the occasional tiny snake, empty turtle shell, or giant grub thingie that turns out to be a larval Dobsonfly. I know you'll be crushed that I didn't take a picture of that one. Mostly, the river has flowing water, blowing breeze, and all my men with smiles on their faces at the same time. And that, my friends, is really something... something that it seems is only ever accomplished by fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies on a normal day. We're simple people.

I wrapped up the vacation by trying to kill Joe. That is to say that we finished building, shoveling dirt into, and planting our box garden all in one day. Before I forget, I really should thank KYDOT for all that loose chip-n-seal gravel that they cover our road with every year before snow plow season. They dump it out just in time for the plows to throw it into my front yard where I cheerfully harvest it for many uses, including a drainage base for a 50 square foot box garden. Who says they don't put our tax dollars to good use? I digress. A box garden really is kind of the most awesome way to go. I have two small raised bed gardens totalling probably somewhere around 75 square feet. That's really not much space. That's less than a 10 foot by 10 foot bedroom. And in that space, I have 8 strawberry plants, 14 tomatoes of different kinds, 9 pepper plants, 4 rows of beans, 1 row each of tennis ball lettuce (definitely recommend!) and spinach, and more carrots than Bugs Bunny could crunch in all his years of animated life. Oh, and some marigolds. I weed, hoe, water, prune, and harvest by hand, fertilize once a month, and decorate excessively. Seriously, I think I need to go back on my meds. Since we put the thing in, I painted two gourds to hang by it, made bead flowers to attract hummingbirds to my feeder there, and made a wind chime for it with old keys and dog tags. Between that and all my bird feeders and houses, I'm going to turn into the world's dumbest looking lawn gnome from all the time I spend standing out in my yard with a goofy smile on my face.

 

 

If all that doesn't sound like a vacation to you, I can only conclude that 1) you're probably more normal than I am and 2) I don't get out much. Still, I was well content. Bring on canning season!

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!