It’s 61 degrees outside and drizzly. The trees are in fairly full leaf, that impossible to paint very green, too much yellow color. Mourning doves nest under the back porch. A cardinal couple flit around the house. Goldfinches dart to and from our neighbor’s thistle feeder. Robin males sing their love-struck hearts out.
Dirt comes alive with creatures, smelling like the dirt of childhood, and pollen dusts everything yellow.
The annual batch of dandelion wine bubbles lazily on the counter, along with an exotic experiment, violet wine. The dandy is solid, slightly sweet, herbal stuff, in a wonderful bright yellow. A country bumpkin brew. The violet is a fragile, heady, sweet wine, with a pinky amber tint. An ancient drink of Caesars.
Our garden is in, and properly fenced. Beans pop through the soft earth. Tomato plants dig in and reach up. Potatoes unfurl their dark green leaves. Narry a glimmer of carrots or spinach, and the basil stands limply. But we’ll see. With a black thumb, any positive result is a gift.
A ring necked rabbit longs for her way in, as she nibbles yard greenery. I talk to her every morning, touting the nutritional advantages of dandelion leaves. No dice. It’s like suggesting Attila the Hun show mercy. The markings nail her as a fifth generation descendant of the carrot and bean desecrator, Bunzilla. Cute, but sneaky. Very, very sneaky.
Other new beginnings. Our first born graduated college this week and hopes to plunge into the real world. A job. A car. Jazz drum lessons. A new kit. Surprise! You’re off the dole kiddo, onto responsibility, time to pitch into the household. The younger one dabbles with the idea of summer work now that he's 15, but hasn’t moved an inch. If he doesn’t get cracking, we know people who’d be more than happy to hire him for yard work. Besides keeping him flush, manual labor is a perfect remedy to “I’m bored.”
Everything indicates spring has arrived in the mid-state. What about your neck of the woods?
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Gift From the Sky
For the longest time I couldn’t understand Dad’s work. His birds looked like fishes and his fishes, birds. Both flowed, drifted, swam, soared in their respective spaces. I just couldn’t figure out which was what. It was like Lucy Van Pelt asking for Schroeder’s rendition of “Happy Birthday”. Make it simple, or I don’t get it.
It’s not that Dad couldn’t draw or sculpt realistically. Just he was trying to show something different. It’s inside on the outside. The animal’s essence. It didn’t help he was a quiet man and never explained himself. Or when he worked, he entered such impenetrable concentration the house could have blown up around him and he wouldn’t have noticed. Not one bit.
He was in his world, and I was in mine.
The first breakthrough came when I showed him my portfolio for Parsons’ admissions interview. “Hey Dad, what should I bring?”
He flipped through and said, “All of it.”
He suggested I apply to Philadelphia College of Art as it would involve a commute instead of dorm costs. I told him I was considering a double major and Parsons was the only school to offer both subjects. He said nothing more. When the acceptance letter came, Dad smiled. That meant he was deliriously happy.
Being young and naive I carried a really heavy course load, and working involved a lot of odd paying gigs. I returned home that first summer. When Dad found out I hadn’t visited museums because there was no spare time, he was horrified. “They’re free on Tuesday nights!” He promptly booked two seats on a chartered bus trip with a bunch of white haired rich ladies to see the Constable show at the Whitney.
It was amazing. Sure, Dad knew sculpture, and hung out with artists all the time, but as we drifted from painting to painting, he described what Constable was trying to accomplish, contemporary artists, and what set Constable apart. It was revelatory. Dad was smart, eloquent and passionate about anything visual. His mind sucked up huge amounts of information and processed it. But he never talked before. Until then he had always just been my dad. The guy that pounded rocks in the cellar. At that point he became a mentor.
Once back in school Dad sent clippings of articles he thought would interest me. We even had short conversations on the phone. Nothing major, but it was a start. This continued through my working years and after I married.
Arthur and I had just moved to South Dakota, (what Mom considered slightly beyond the civilized world). While looking out the window of our new digs, I saw a bird land in the front yard with a violent red mark on the back of it’s head. It gleamed like nail polish. “What a rotten thing to do to a bird", I thought. Then in a flash of yellow underwings, another alighted next to it. I immediately called Dad. He’d know.
“It sounds like a flicker”, he said. So it was.
Art and I continued on in that rural pastorate. It wasn’t a good fit. It ground us into the dust. We’d escape on our day off. While driving south from a day in Pierre, I spotted something hovering in the sky. It suddenly plummeted into a gully. Fifteen feet from the car. With a couple massive wing sweeps it disappeared back into the blue. Though the markings weren’t distinct, it’s wingspan was unmistakable. We had encountered an immature Bald Eagle.
As soon as we hit home, I grabbed the phone and told Dad. He said, “I saw a Golden Eagle once. All reddish brown. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen”. The silence following spoke clearly. I knew what he meant. I finally understood.
It’s not that Dad couldn’t draw or sculpt realistically. Just he was trying to show something different. It’s inside on the outside. The animal’s essence. It didn’t help he was a quiet man and never explained himself. Or when he worked, he entered such impenetrable concentration the house could have blown up around him and he wouldn’t have noticed. Not one bit.
He was in his world, and I was in mine.
The first breakthrough came when I showed him my portfolio for Parsons’ admissions interview. “Hey Dad, what should I bring?”
He flipped through and said, “All of it.”
He suggested I apply to Philadelphia College of Art as it would involve a commute instead of dorm costs. I told him I was considering a double major and Parsons was the only school to offer both subjects. He said nothing more. When the acceptance letter came, Dad smiled. That meant he was deliriously happy.
Being young and naive I carried a really heavy course load, and working involved a lot of odd paying gigs. I returned home that first summer. When Dad found out I hadn’t visited museums because there was no spare time, he was horrified. “They’re free on Tuesday nights!” He promptly booked two seats on a chartered bus trip with a bunch of white haired rich ladies to see the Constable show at the Whitney.
It was amazing. Sure, Dad knew sculpture, and hung out with artists all the time, but as we drifted from painting to painting, he described what Constable was trying to accomplish, contemporary artists, and what set Constable apart. It was revelatory. Dad was smart, eloquent and passionate about anything visual. His mind sucked up huge amounts of information and processed it. But he never talked before. Until then he had always just been my dad. The guy that pounded rocks in the cellar. At that point he became a mentor.
Once back in school Dad sent clippings of articles he thought would interest me. We even had short conversations on the phone. Nothing major, but it was a start. This continued through my working years and after I married.
Arthur and I had just moved to South Dakota, (what Mom considered slightly beyond the civilized world). While looking out the window of our new digs, I saw a bird land in the front yard with a violent red mark on the back of it’s head. It gleamed like nail polish. “What a rotten thing to do to a bird", I thought. Then in a flash of yellow underwings, another alighted next to it. I immediately called Dad. He’d know.
“It sounds like a flicker”, he said. So it was.
Art and I continued on in that rural pastorate. It wasn’t a good fit. It ground us into the dust. We’d escape on our day off. While driving south from a day in Pierre, I spotted something hovering in the sky. It suddenly plummeted into a gully. Fifteen feet from the car. With a couple massive wing sweeps it disappeared back into the blue. Though the markings weren’t distinct, it’s wingspan was unmistakable. We had encountered an immature Bald Eagle.
As soon as we hit home, I grabbed the phone and told Dad. He said, “I saw a Golden Eagle once. All reddish brown. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen”. The silence following spoke clearly. I knew what he meant. I finally understood.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Flickers
We just moved into the manse in Winner. The furniture hadn’t arrived yet, and I was looking out a picture window onto the front lawn. A bird fluttered to the ground and hopped around awkwardly. It was bigger than a Robin, a buffy grey brown color, darker on top than underneath, with a speckled chest, a black crescent at it’s neck, and black cheek markings. Someone had painted the back of it’s head with a slash of insanely red nail polish. A disconcerting bit of living vandalism. In a glimmer of yellow underwings another bird landed next to it, bearing the same red mark. Whoa! What have we here? I dashed to the phone and called my favorite expert, Dad. He said, "Oh, it must be a Flicker".That short interchange sparked an ongoing fascination with birds.
One unusual thing about the Prairie, was the wild life. Nestled between two regions, we’d encounter birds from the east and west. A Western Tanager in the Black Hills, both the Eastern and Western Kingbirds on my clothesline out back, a Baltimore Oriole playing in puddles on our driveway, and a solid yellow Warbler with a slightly aberrant song perched on our neighbor’s car door handle. Unexpected sightings became an encouragement that God was there during trying times, when people had backed off. A kind of love letter in a feathered envelope. During a particularly rough time, we saw an immature Bald Eagle plummet into a gully right next to our car as we drove. With two great, silent wing flaps it floated back into the sky. Awesome.
We moved back east, and for the most part it’s been pleasant. Several years ago a family pulled up stakes and left our lives. No explanation. I was sitting at a picnic table near a wooded area, thinking about it, when a huge form flew across the top of my vision and attached itself to the side of a tall tree. It’s crest was unmistakable. To that was added the singular deep drumming of a Pileated Woodpecker. It flew off, and returned, drummed a bit more, and then was gone.
So one afternoon last week, I spent a solid ten minutes enjoying a Yellow Shafted Flicker in our side yard pecking bugs out of the earth. After all these years, it’s still my favorite bird.
One unusual thing about the Prairie, was the wild life. Nestled between two regions, we’d encounter birds from the east and west. A Western Tanager in the Black Hills, both the Eastern and Western Kingbirds on my clothesline out back, a Baltimore Oriole playing in puddles on our driveway, and a solid yellow Warbler with a slightly aberrant song perched on our neighbor’s car door handle. Unexpected sightings became an encouragement that God was there during trying times, when people had backed off. A kind of love letter in a feathered envelope. During a particularly rough time, we saw an immature Bald Eagle plummet into a gully right next to our car as we drove. With two great, silent wing flaps it floated back into the sky. Awesome.
We moved back east, and for the most part it’s been pleasant. Several years ago a family pulled up stakes and left our lives. No explanation. I was sitting at a picnic table near a wooded area, thinking about it, when a huge form flew across the top of my vision and attached itself to the side of a tall tree. It’s crest was unmistakable. To that was added the singular deep drumming of a Pileated Woodpecker. It flew off, and returned, drummed a bit more, and then was gone.
So one afternoon last week, I spent a solid ten minutes enjoying a Yellow Shafted Flicker in our side yard pecking bugs out of the earth. After all these years, it’s still my favorite bird.
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