Thoughts on this Fourth

So the Fourth of July, the American Independence Day, has come again. We have a new president for this one. In fact, for the first time in history, the United States of America will celebrate the fact that we don't speak with English accents with a black man serving as our chief. Oh, how the times have changed. Our country is still in a helluva a lot of trouble. It took eight years of idiocy, greed, shortsightedness and neo-conservative tunnel vision to get us into this mess. So it will naturally take more than half a year to get us out of it. I would like to think, as I'm sure we all would, that things will get better. I imagine they will. Real steps have recently been taken to get us the hell out of Iraq, which can be nothing but good in my opinion. The economy is still in the toilet but I know it won't stay there. Recessions have come and gone many times before and this one will eventually run its course. And while politics are always politics as usual, i.e. more bullshit than substance, I do have some hope for our future. Say what you will about Obama but at least he seems to have a genuinely intellectual brain as opposed to one nearly reduced to mush by cocaine, booze and a lifetime of indoctrination by Christian Conservatives.

I once said the Fourth of July is The Great American Fire Festival and I still hold to that. It is our celebration of freedom won by fire, by bullets and cannons. It is a celebration of fiery bravery, audacity and pure grit. It is a celebration of a momentous win achieved during the hottest, fieriest time of the year in this country. The Fourth may fall two weeks after the Summer Solstice but the heat, fire and strength of the sun is still plenty strong enough to heat up the air, the mind and the soul. Now, as then, its strength and power can help us overcome apparently insurmountable odds. It's only fitting that we mark the day with barbecues filled with sizzling and sumptuous foods. It makes perfect sense that as our forefathers fired guns and set off cannons we today create our own deafening explosions accompanied by brilliant flashes of sparkling, shining colors.

But let's not forget those who have no such cause for celebration. While we're grilling food over the fire or blowing up expensive pyrotechnics and generally enjoying good times with friends and family let's take time to remember those who are still fighting for freedom from tyranny, oppression and cruelty. Let's say a prayer for those wounded and dying, but still brave, student protesters in Iran. Let's ask our respective gods, spirits, guides, etc., to lend some of their support to those fighting for freedom all over the world. Let's give something of ourselves to help those folks who are fighting for independence right now. If we can't send money to support a cause, let's spread the message of their struggles. If we feel we can't reach anyone with our words let's work magic to help them continue the fight. If we can't help them in time let's pray that their passing was quick and painless. If their oppressors killed them slowly and brutally let's pray that their souls can move on from their most recent horrible deaths and perhaps enjoy better times in a future life. While we celebrate our freedom let's not forget those who don't have it.

I wish you a safe, happy, informed and aware holiday.

Image from the Flickrstream of Camera Slayer, licensed by Creative Commons.

Atrocities in Iran

The hideous image above is an untouched photo of a student protester in Iran. This brave young man is in a coma as a result of being beaten by the demons of the current Iranian government. If anyone ever wanted proof that Islamic folks can be just as good, passionate and decent as anyone else this is it. These people are facing what many call the worst atrocities since the Nazis because they feel their country has been illegally hijacked by hardliners.

In case you've been under a rock lately and haven't been following the news the recent election results in Iran were, to say the very, very least, questionable. They were reported and announced in an unprecedentedly strange way and, even after many questions were peacefully asked by powerful as well as regular folks no answers were given. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in numbers not seen since the 1979 revolution. The largely peaceful protests, mostly by university students, became violent when the governmental forces began killing people out of hand.

To stay abreast of the happenings in Iran visit the Free Iran Facebook page.

P.S. Be sure to check out the comments; Mrs. B. points the way to a Twitter page about this very thing.

Here, Have Some Beck

I know I haven't been posting, or commenting, all that much lately but you're just gonna have to cut me some slack. It's hot as hell and I've got some (hopefully minor) health concerns to deal with right now. So, here, have some Beck. He mentions pagans in this song but, as with most Beck tunes, I have no idea what the fuck he's talking about. Feel free to cuss and discuss. This is a live version of Jack Ass. The original, from Odelay, is much more mellow and trippy but this is great too. Enjoy.



I been drifting along
In the same stale shoes
Loose ends tying a noose
In the back of my mind
If you thought that you were making your way
To where the puzzles and pagans lay
I'll put it together:
It's a strange invitation
When I wake up
Someone will sweep up my lazy bones
And we will rise in the cool of the evening
I remember the way that you smiled
When the gravity shackles were wild
And something is vacant
When I think it's all beginning

I been drifting along
In the same stale shoes
Loose ends tying the noose
In the back of my mind
If you thought that you were making your way
To where the puzzles and pagans lay
I'll put it together:
It's a strange invitation

Weather Weirdness

Have you ever had a moment, or moments, when something outside or otherwise nature-related that normally brought you joy not only gave you the willies but maybe scared the holy shit out of you? I had a moment like that last week during one of several storms systems that passed through our area. I call our little spot of land Windy Hill for obvious reasons. And we take full advantage of our often blustery weather i.e. we have zillions of wind chimes. Okay, maybe not zillions but dozens.

Almost every corner of all four buildings has a set of chimes hanging from it and the big covered back porch has at least a dozen of its own chimes. So, even when it's just a bit breezy we have the blessed, joyful, uplifting song of wind chimes filtering through the air and the trees. At any point on the property one can always hear wind chimes. The rare occasions when the air is completely still usually occur in the dead of winter. There's also a weird thing that happens just before, sometimes during, or after a thunderstorm hits: sometimes the wind abruptly dies. This is most likely to happen at the freaky time when cigar clouds are trying to stir up tornadoes.

This is what happened one evening last week. I was back by the barn, the front end, not the back end that our last tornado ripped up, and I was joyfully taking pictures of all the freaky, gorgeous and frightening clouds moving past. Say what you will about thunderstorms and tornadoes, and I have, but they make for great photography. Anyway, the wind had been picking up and the clouds were spiraling and turning and churning like they do sometimes before a tornado drops down when everything went dead.

Our near-constant breeze suddenly stopped. It was as if the local spirits, or fairies or Those Who Are in Charge of Air got a punch in the gut and lost their breath. For a few minutes the atmosphere stopped breathing. And just before everything went still and got stuffy the wind chime right behind me gave a small and sad little tinkling of sound as if trying to defy the danger of the storm. It was chilling. You ever have a moment like that?

The Great Mother Goddesses

Or, How Our Own Death Wish is Causing Many of Us to Return to the Old Ways.

Let me preface the following by saying I know nothing of genetics and very little of hardcore science in general. I'm probably going to use various, or many, terms incorrectly and miss the intended point of an important theory. So, if any of you science-y people out there spot errors I encourage you to correct me. Okay, on with the wild ramblings.

Have you heard of the Toba Catastrophe Theory? It states that roughly 70,000- 75,000 years ago a volcano on what is now Sumatra, in Indonesia, blew the Hel up and set in motion a series of environmental effects that caused a pretty drastic bottleneck in the human population. What's a bottleneck in population? That's when something pretty big, nasty and scary, like a plague, earthquake, ice age, volcanic eruption, etc., brings about the deaths of so many beings of a certain species that the descendants of the survivors are incredibly close genetically because so few were left to perpetuate the species. In the case of the Toba eruption it's estimated that perhaps as few as 1,000 breeding pairs of humans survived. There are also estimates that go as high as 10,000 pairs but either way, it was a pretty big damn drop in population. And it got me thinking.

It got me thinking about how many people look to religion and spirituality in hard times. Before I started learning about population bottlenecks, and the Toba disaster is just one of many, I had always wondered about the Great Mother Goddesses. Why were they so important to our ancestors? Why were they most likely the first to be crafted into statuettes? Why were they among the first divinities to be worshiped? Why were they, in many lands, cultures and times, the most loved? Why did they, above so many others, spread out from their homelands and find adherents over many continents? What's so special about them? And the most obvious, and somewhat unsatisfying, answer was that they were in charge of the continuance of human life. They were in charge of sexuality that led to conception, pregnancy, birth and growth leading eventually back to sexuality. They were the ultimate creators, the supreme progenitors, they were the mothers of us all.

Seems pretty simple, right? Why then, I ask you, did the worship of said Great Mother Goddesses die out and eventually become despised? What made them so important and then, at best, meaningless and, at worst, evil? I know, I know. It's the fault of the Judeo-Christians and their comparatively new religions. But things must have changed to allow for such a male-centric mythos to take hold. What could it have been? Answer: The population had long since stabilized and the need for Great Mother Goddesses had waned. Which means something major must have happened long, long before that to make the production of children an extremely high priority for nearly everyone alive. But what could that have been? Answer: An extraordinary drop in the population and the resultant desperation.

Now skip ahead a couple thousand years. People began returning to the old ways and the old gods about the time of the Industrial Revolution. Just about the time factories began spewing poison into the air, the water, earth and the bodies of every living creature on the planet a few folks here and there started looking back to the ancient religions. The Great Mother Goddesses become more and more important just as pollutants, pesticides and other chemicals started invading every aspect of life. It's not the same as a massive volcanic eruption, a meteor plowing into the Earth or the plague but we may be creating our next population bottleneck. As the human-made problems of global climate change, industry-induced cancer and infertility, and our own medicines poisoning our drinking water begin to weigh on us more people are turning back to the ancient ways. As our human situation grows ever more precarious the number of Great Mother Goddess, and other pagan, adherents has risen. Coincidence? I think not.

I don't think it's about simple fear either. If it were then many people would just turn to whatever religion is handy, whichever religion is acceptable i.e. the dominant religions, that of the Judeo-Christians. No. More and more people are turning to a form of religion and spirituality that is very much not acceptable to the majority of our fellow citizens. Why? Why would this current threat to our race cause such a thing? It's because the situation is radically different this time. It's something that hasn't happened ever before in the history of our race and our planet. Instead of a volcanic eruption or a plague or other disaster that we have no control over we are putting ourselves at risk. We are killing ourselves.

Our own technological advancement, our "progress" is putting our very existence as a race at risk. And because said progress involves a would-be domination of the Earth, untold and unnecessary cruelty, unparalleled waste and monumental greed many of us are not just turning away from the mainstream way of living, eating, consuming and working. We are returning to the ancient ways because we feel and know, at least subconsciously, that the ways of the Great Mother Goddesses, and their cohorts, are the only things that can save us. If we don't return to living in balance with the land and learn to embrace life, and all its joys and indignities, as sacred then we are doomed to destroy ourselves. If we don't return to the Great Mother Goddesses we are doomed to create the next human population bottleneck.

Plantings and More Plantings

We've spent an obscene amount of money at local greenhouses lately and have been very busy planting. To begin with, I got 3 dozen impatiens put in the front bed. I decided against reviving my old herb garden and, instead, will have a few potted herbs around my shiny new outdoor altar. So far, I've got two pots of sage, one eucalyptus, my 3-year-old San Pedro cactus and a few wave petunias and princess feathers around my altar. On the back porch there are two pots of basil, another eucalyptus, regular petunias and wave petunias and a brilliant purple ornamental globe amaranth. I also put together one washtub of marigolds and another of gold, confetti and lavender lantanas. Along the fence we've got four window boxes of wave petunias. I also put in a good start of spearmint along the fence well away from anything else so it can spread and grow to its little greedy hearts content. I put in a dozen or so dianthus in the bed way out to the left of the house. We've also got some scarlet begonias in three plastic hanging bags which I think looks tacky but everyone else outvoted me. Still to pot up is another big flat of wave petunias.

We also brought out our plants that overwintered under the grow lights in the back bedroom. The two Christmas cacti and the ten or so other cacti are in place and looking well. All three of the big sprengeri's need to be transplanted into bigger pots as does the schefflera, the peace lily, the tree philodendrum and the Norfolk Island pine. Unfortunately, all of the aforementioned plants are already huge and larger pots would run into many hundreds of dollars so I'm not sure what we're gonna do with them. We have a bunch of big old metal washtubs that we usually keep outside for flowers but I'm afraid we'll have to use some of them for the larger plants. Even so, they're not really big enough to accomodate these big plants, so I'm stymied.

Still to procure are another dozen or so impatiens to finish the front bed, two or three flats of begonias for our regularly begonia-filled washtubs, lavender, thyme, rosemary, dill and I'd like an aloe since kittens killed all of mine a couple of years ago. There was a nice, big aloe at one of the greenhouses we visited but they wanted $8 for it and I just couldn't go that high. If we had the money we've also got a dozen or so washtubs and hundreds of pots in all shapes and sizes. But as far as flowers and herbs go we've gotten almost everything we want.

As for the vegetables: our radishes are already done and our lettuce is gonna get eaten this week. We bought jalepenos and cayenne peppers and they're in the garden already. There are about a dozen tomato plants in the ground and a nice spot for the cucumbers to grow around as soon as they sprout. Still to plant are the okra seeds and we also hope to procure some banana peppers. We've taken advantage of the wreckage that the storm blew off the barn and now have a unique method of limiting weed growth. The big pieces of metal roofing now serve as an ugly, if useful, form of weed control. They completely block sunlight from reaching the ground between the rows. So, the storm may have scared the holy hell out of us and ripped up the barn and our roof but it's also helping us grow some veggies. It might not be an even trade but it's something, ain't it?

That's the gardening news from these hills, how are the green growing things doing in your neck of the woods?

Mystery Shrubbery: Solved!

Can you identify this mystery shrubbery? This was already here when we moved in over five years ago and has nearly doubled in size since then. If you don't know it could you ask Roger the Shrubber? Ni!

Thanks to Nettle, Maebius, Marion and Riverwolf I have learned that this shrubbery is a spirea. It's spirea douglasii to be exact. My mom and I have been arguing back and forth about this and, after much research, we've discovered that the spirea she knew as a child is the old-fashioned, traditional white "bridal wreath" spirea introduced in 1845, which is very different from our current flashy, purply-pink variety. There is somewhere between forty and eighty varieties, from multi-sized shrubs to ground cover plants. They grow pretty much all over, according to most websites, but are evergreen in warmer places like California and the deep south.

Thanks to everyone for chiming in and helping me solve this mystery!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Or, If You Still Aren't Recycling Here's a DAMN GOOD REASON to Start

What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you say? Well, it's a huge floating pile of trash all clobbered together in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. What is it? It's mostly plastics. Plastics like that water bottle you just threw in the trash. Plastics like that wrapper you just threw out the window. Plastics like that gallon jug you left by the creek at the camping area. It's estimated that only about 20% of the trash comes from ships. The other 80% comes from land sources, like through rivers, drainage, etc. And here's the kicker: it's big. How big, you say? It's ROUGHLY TWICE THE SIZE OF FUCKING TEXAS!

How does it stay in one general area? This article from the LA Times perhaps puts it best:

This is known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, part of a system of currents called the North Pacific subtropical gyre. Located halfway between San Francisco and Hawaii, the garbage patch is an area of slack winds and sluggish currents where flotsam collects from around the Pacific, much like foam piling up in the calm center of a hot tub.

Pretty scary, eh? And this is only the biggest patch! They exist in all the oceans all over the world!

If anyone ever needed a reason to start, and stick with, recycling this is a good one. Why aren't you recycling? Too much work, too much hassle? You have a busy life, you have lots of responsibilities, lots to see, do, learn, people to meet, etc., and you just don't have the time for it? It's not worth the effort? I wonder what the innocent animals who live in the water think of your rationalizations. Some animals, like this sea turtle, become trapped and deformed by the floating trash. Some ingest it and die either from starvation, suffocation or from the plastic painfully twisting their innards. Some get trapped in larger piles and simply can't get out, so they starve to death with a clear view of freedom and food. From the same LA Times article:

An estimated 1 million seabirds choke or get tangled in plastic nets or other debris every year. About 100,000 seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins, other marine mammals and sea turtles suffer the same fate.

And if that's not enough to get you off your ass consider this: the trash doesn't just hurt the animals within its immediate area.

Plastics are derived from petroleum. The heat of the sun, as well as ultraviolet rays, causes the plastics to break down into water and carbon dioxide thus adding to the problem of global climate change. While it's still floating the plastic blocks sunlight, interrupting the growth of algae, which also adds to the problem of global climate change. You see, algae eats carbon dioxide, loves the stuff. There are even experiments going on to feed iron to algae thus creating a boom in their growth and a lowering of carbon dioxide. It's not just the animals who are suffering. By refusing to recycle we are, in effect, killing ourselves.

If you aren't already recycling your plastics, numbers 1 and 2, start now! There's no time like the present! There are recycling centers all across this land and many, many larger towns and cities include recycling pickup with their regular trash service, often at no extra cost. What's stopping you? Yeah, it's a new routine but once you've gotten into it you will be amazed at how simple it is, how easy it is. Rinse things out, get rid of the lid and label and toss the item into a set aside recycling bin. Then, either put it on the curb or gather it all together every few months or so. You'll be doing your part to make sure the Garbage Patches of the world don't get any bigger. You'll make yourself feel good and you just might teach your kids something about environmental responsibility. Even if you don't give a shit about the animals of the oceans at least get to recycling for the sake of yourself, your own children and your race.

Damage

There's been a few new facts come to light regarding our recent severe weather here in these hills. For one thing, after spending several hours picking up many, many limbs and branches I realized that the tornado had freed our trees of their excess baggage. The Great Ice Storm of January 2007 caused incredible damage to every tree within several hundred miles of our house. There isn't a tree around here that didn't lose at least a few limbs. And even with our best efforts we just couldn't get all of them down after the weather warmed. That's been over two years ago and we were still working on getting all of those old limbs down. The tornado took care of a lot of those in one morning. So I guess one good thing came from the terror of May 8.

We've had one insurance adjuster do his thing recently, but not for the barn. Rather, this fella looked at the roof of the house, something we hadn't even really thought about considering the major structural damage to the barn. It turns out though that we had at least 75 mile an hour winds and hail that was at least as big as golf balls. So the greater part of the roof will have to be replaced. I imagine our insurance company just loves us as the only part of the roof that doesn't need replacing is the part that was replaced after the ice storm. So, two years, two storms, two huge roof jobs. I also discovered today, after pulling back the drapes, that my sliding glass doors are just about to fall to bits. They've always been ugly, with the outsides covered in white water stains, but the hail of this last storm really did a number on them. Looking back, I do remember hearing things hit them when I was waking up that day but the wind was so scary that I guess I forgot about the hail. It all adds up to a bunch of work for the insurance folks and hopefully a big enough check to repair all of the damage.

On a more introspective note, I do understand that violent weather serves many purposes. The most obvious reason, alluded to above, is just the simple idea of washing away the old thus allowing the new to come forth. Our trees don't look quite as shaggy now that most of the dead stuff has been blown off. Severe weather also goes a long way to proving to us mere, and yet endlessly arrogant humans, that we are but small parts of creation. Yes, we are sentient, we are conscious, we are mighty. We can create great things and we have a great capacity for destruction as well. But nothing beats Mama Nature, nothing! We can invest millions of dollars in research and development, we can put our best and brightest to work on new ideas and new concepts and we can build with the strongest, most advanced materials. But if she wants to do some damage one swift swipe of her arm or even a sidelong glance can unmake our greatest achievements and unbuild our greatest structures. There's no contest. We are mighty enough to make this planet dangerous to ourselves and other living beings but we can't even approach the power of She Who is In Charge.

Springborn Altar

I got a new keyboard, yay!!

The above image is my first outdoor altar that I've put together just for myself. The table top is actually marble that a good friend brought over from his place of work; it was left over after an older building was torn down or renovated, I can't remember which. The wood is from our sycamore tree that The Great Ice Storm of January 2007 took out. Since sycamore is a soft wood these blocks won't last more than a couple of years but there are always trees coming down around these parts somewhere and I have an "in" with someone who has access to trees removed by city cleanup folks. So, it's not going to be an everlasting altar but is semi-permanent. It's hard to tell from this image but most of the rocks on the ground have little, or lots, of quartz or gypsum, or both. These are rocks I took from the little stand of trees down the hill from house; it was hard work but worth it! There are also some rocks with interesting fossil imprints, a few holey river rocks and a couple of (to me) unusual rocks from Minnesota. Since I'm such a rock hound I will, of course, be adding more as time goes by. The little black thing that kinda looks like a knife is actually an old railroad tie that I saved with rustproof black paint. Ever since I found it I thought it would make a great ritual tool perhaps as a stand in for a knife or wand. However, I don't really use either in my workings so I don't know what I'll use the tie for. Maybe I'll leave it there to add to the rustic look.

I don't know why it took me so long to finally put together an outdoor altar. I've been thinking about it for year and years. I've mentioned before my disinclination, or inability, to use fancy, store bought ritual items and it still holds true. I just don't care much for the expensive, or even expensive looking, ritual tools. All of that sterling silver and brightly polished stuff usually leaves me magically cold. Yeah, it looks nice and if someone gifted me something like that I would be eternally grateful. But I just prefer old, weathered things I find along the way. The rail road tie came from the bottom of box of auction items. And many of my magical items have come from an old pickup truck that was left to rot way back behind our house. It's a really old funky truck that's at least 70 years old and chock full of treasures. Inside it was a veritable shitload of horse shoes and the remains of a big 'ol glass thermometer which I plan to dig out and add to the outdoor altar.

The vase holds a few of our roses and a bit of honeysuckle and it's just a small sampling of the wonderful blooms and blossoms to be found in these hills. I simply love how all of our neighborhood flowers are opening up. Our compost roses are going wild and our other rose bush will be covered with blooms in another week. There's pretty, but scentless, honeysuckle next to the chimney and delicious wild honeysuckle along the driveway. The peonies, planted several years ago, have finally put forth two large and intoxicating blossoms over the grave of our dear, departed Dalmatian Missy. The multi-flora wild white roses are popping out too. I love them so much and still can't believe it when people go to great lengths to kill them. They have pretty foliage, gorgeous, copious white flowers and they seem very resistant to mold and bugs. And, as if that weren't enough, they smell heavenly! Once bush can perfume an entire country yard!

Since we were nearly drowning for a few weeks everything is growing by wild leaps and bounds. We just finished mowing the other day and will have to start again this weekend. Now that we've had some dryer days folks are cutting hay like mad. All of the grasses and trees and foliage paint the landscape with a multitude of gorgeous greens. There are deep, forest greens, and vivid emeralds along with bright, yellowy-greens and every shade in between! And the sky is so brilliantly blue that just stepping outside is like falling into a painter's palette replete with the freshest scents. It's absolutely heavenly. I'm so glad spring has finally taken hold; it's healing my battered and bruised heart and psyche. Spring; it does a body, mind and soul good!

P.S. We now have bats and lightning bugs, double yay!!

A Close Call

This is the back of the barn, or what's left of it after the thunderstorm of this morning. I woke up about 7 a.m. to the sound of thunder and the feel of my Spikey dog shaking in fear. The poor guy is terrified of thunder so I put my arms around him and spoke soothing words to help him get through the storm. But the storm didn't abate as was expected. It got a lot worse really fast and the wind intensified a great deal. A great deal.
On an intellectual level I knew I needed to get moving and get the dogs downstairs and unplug the computer and see to the windows and whatnot. But I have to confess something: for a very brief moment the wind was so strong that I thought there was no point in getting out of bed because I was going to die before I could make it down the stairs. That's how strong the winds were.
Here's a picture of a block ripped out of its concrete home.

Let me put this in perspective. I've lived in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri all of my nearly 32 years and I've had a lot of scares. We've had lightning strike 10 feet behind our house. We've had lightning run in on our phone line and blow up our computer. Granted, the computer just made a little pop and a puff of smoke but the simultaneous huge crash of thunder scared the holy hell out of all of us. We've had an ice storm that turned our homeland into a disaster area. There was a time when we had so much water running through our driveway that we couldn't get a car through it. And we've had tornadoes jump from street to street and just narrowly miss our house. But I have never seen or felt anything like this. The jury is out as to whether or not we had an actual tornado do this damage or if it was just strong winds. I honestly don't know if I care.

Tornado or not it did some pretty serious damage and it could have killed us. If this force had hit our house instead of the very back of the barn things could have been a lot worse. I've already said it several times today and I'll say it again: if I had been given a choice as to where the damage would be done that's the spot I would have chosen. The barn is the least important of our buildings and it sits the farthest away from the house. The back of the barn is a good 200 yards or so from the house and there's a big ass three car garage between it and the house. There's also a bunch of trees and a short fence between the house and the barn which somehow managed to keep a lot of the wreckage from reaching the house.

The winds were so strong for so long I was expecting the big front windows to get blown out at any second. I was waiting for windows all over the house to burst apart with load crashes. I was hoping the roof of the house would stay attached. After it was finally over I was expecting to find numerous dead critters when I stepped outside. As it was we did have one dead tree frog on the back porch. Amazingly enough it doesn't seem like any of the barn cats were hurt. I don't know exactly how many live back there as they rarely show themselves but I walked all over the area and found no bodies. You see that smashed up metal fence? That was a nearly 8 foot wide circle that surrounded our compost pile. You can just make out the roses this wreckage is smashing. But we can't move anything until the insurance adjuster shows up sometime in the next few days. It won't be quick as there have been so many claims called in to our local office. And while I'm not looking forward to the $1000 deductible I am very thankful that the damage wasn't any worse.

In the above image you can just make out part of the 80 feet of wiring that was pulled out.

I'm not entirely sure the depth of the situation has set in. I'm not ready for philosophical musings. The facts are too close to me right now. I am unable to clearly express myself about this. I haven't had time to gain perspective as I'm still kinda freaked out. I probably won't sleep for a while for fear of a similar rude awakening. Perhaps in the coming days, or months, I'll have something profound to say about the happenings of today. For now though, all I can come up with is "holy shit!" and "praise the gods!"

Clash of the Song Titans

Last night as the sun was going down, but well before it was actually dark, our friendly neighborhood mockingbird made it abundantly clear that he had returned to said neighborhood. In fact, he was belting out the tunes and putting on quite a show at the edge of the garden. I happened to be within 40 feet of him, as I was taking pictures of the sunset, and got an earful. I love mockingbirds. I understand that some people don't care for them and all I can say about that is that there's no accounting for taste. Mockingbirds are the radio stations of the bird world. If you don't care for a certain song just wait a minute and a different song will start up. They are excellent indicators of which birds are in a particular area and they're just plain funny and entertaining. I was so glad to hear him singing.

While I was enjoying the sunset and mockingbird show suddenly a lone coyote started belting out the usual high, piercing, woman-screaming-with-a-knife-in-her-back call. What was unusual was the timing. Our local coyotes have never, to my knowledge, made such calls during the daytime. Granted, I did see an apparently pregnant female cross the highway just a couple hours after dawn the other day so maybe that's related. But it was still weird to hear a coyote call at that time of day. Usually I don't hear them until well after dark, sometimes not until well after midnight.

At any rate, the mockingbird and the coyote seemed to be aware of each other and gradually became even louder and more insistent. I'm not sure if the coyote could actually hear the mockingbird as it was likely too far away. But it was obvious the mockingbird could hear the coyote. And, wow, was the mockingbird miffed that his song was being interrupted. His singing got louder and even more energetic and I basked in the joy of the moment.

I've had other joyful bird sightings and hearings lately. Yesterday I saw a pair of scarlet tanagers which are a beautiful, brilliant red. They were flitting around the back yard and around the garden and, while the sighting was brief, I got a kick out of it. Our local bat has been sighted, but not yet by me, so I'm still looking forward to it. Some sparrows are building a nest in one of our birdhouse hanging from the garage and gradually all of our bird friends are returning. And, joy of joys, I heard a whip-poor-will yesterday just before dawn.

At our old house we had one who spent all night moving around our house. It was heavenly hearing him sing all night, every night all through the spring and summer months. We've only very occasionally heard a whip-poor-will around here and I've missed it terribly. I've been known to express pity for those who have never heard the song of the whip-poor-will and I had a thought about it while cruising YouTube. So, here ya go!

Here's hoping our local whip-poor-will sticks around! And here's hoping we all have a happy spring! (Or a happy autumn for those down under!)