Interspersing Creativity

It was brought to my attention today by my good friend Karen that I needed to put pictures or videos or "something" in my text to break it up. Apparently my blogs are long...and need to be "broken up."

OK. I'm down with that -- as they'd say in the hip circles. Yo.

"What should I put in?" I asked.

"I don't know," Karen said. "Like a picture of a plant or something. Anything."

I suggested some stop action pictures of me chasing off squirrels, and she said that would work, too. Anything to break up the long passages.

All righty. I can handle that -- plus it allows me to be more creative. And so I offer you these.

I can't give you a filmstrip or video of me chasing of A. B. Squirrel, but I can give you this in its stead:



It was the best I could come up with at the moment.

I do have some photos to put in of my garden, but, at the moment, I'm too lazy to get up and attach my camera to my laptop...I will do so soon, I promise. Plus I may just wait to get things a bit more robust out there...or perhaps some pictures to show progress would be wanted.

And since I don't have -- well I do have...I just don't want to get up -- a picture of my terrace to share, I give you this, something that sums up my feelings exactly of always trying to eat right...sometimes I'm with this guy, wanting to just have junk to eat. But, then...I suppose my waistline wouldn't really appreciate that all that much.



I totally agree with him. I'd much rather have cookies. Especially chocolate fudge chocolate chip cookies. Dark chocolate. Mmm...chocolate. (Sorry, Jane!)

Why...in taking Karen's advice (and no, I am not making fun with this blog -- I actually really do like the idea of putting in more pictures and videos!) I could be informative, a la Monty Python, and teach you how to recognize trees at great distances. And so I present to you --

THE LARRRCH!



Though...I supposed that's more of a near distance.

Anyhoo. I will see about "interspersing" some "creativity" throughout my blogs more often; I agree that it does make it a bit more interesting. I won't go so far as to start programming in Java scripts or Flash. At least -- not yet. Though I do know my brother, Andrew, is somewhat anti-Flash. Or perhaps even very much so. I know it, at one time, drove him crazy. May still.

Though that wasn't what drove him crazy in the first place. Having known him since I was eight (oh, those eight wonderful years of being an only child...an only child....*sigh*) , I can attest there's long been that personality trait.

And, yes, Andrew -- I suppose it takes one to know one.

Birds of a feather and all that!

(Though I'm sure Andrew would rather have it be opposites attracting...he still swears he's adopted. To that -- my father once said, "Okay -- either you're adopted and Heather's your sisiter, or you're my son." Andrew looked rather cornered at that choice. Ha!)

So...I will see about how I can spruce up my entries. I do enjoy the creative writing side of it, but I think I can also add in some illustrations....

I do suppose this way I can also share funny pictures I come across -- like this one:



And so, to appease Karen -- I now give you a picture of "a plant or something":



Later, all.

-- H

P.S. Was this sort of what you were thinking, Karen -- ?

Good Morning! Good Morning! Good Morninggg-ah!

Thank you, Beatles! Or, as said in Help!, Bee-ah-tles.

Right now I'm out on my "lanai" as my mother (and my dad, too) love to call my terrace. Birds are singing, and there's a rather jovial goldfinch announcing to all within earshot that he's arrived. It's funny to watch the birds at my feeder -- they each have their own personalities, as individuals and as species. The finches are rambunctious, but they seem to have ettiquette, while the chickadees are very polite; they will sit on a branch patiently and wait for whoever it is that's feeding to finish, and then they'll flutter up and munch away.

There is one kind of bird, however (I get the feeling it's this one little fellow, as others that look like him don't do this) who, when he (I suppose it could be a "she") lands he flicks the seeds about in a flailing kind of way with his beak. You can hear the seeds flying off and pattering down on the barbeque cover and the pavement. He really makes a mess.

I've also watched an unusually-polite scrub jay figure out how to eat from my suet feeder (I have two feeders -- a suet and a loose seed one). Normally scrub jays squawk at you in an attempt to elbow in on your property, given it's theirs, after all! But this one has never done that consistently; in fact, none of the scrub jays around here really do that. No, I take that back -- there were some over by my old apartment that did, but the ones over here seem to be of a different breed...so to speak!

I watched him, when I was home, over a period of several days trying to figure out how to first get to the loose seed feeder; he would usually just eat the loose seeds on the ground, but he would often pause and eye the feeders intently -- then try to eat from them. At first he'd try to flap his wings really fast and mimic a hummingbird so he could stay in one place. That didn't work all that well, of course.

He tried all sorts of things -- sitting on the wrought iron hook from which the feeders hung and then bend down -- but that was clearly awkward as well. Eventually, he learned that he could grasp the wire for the loose seed feeder with his feet and, while hanging perpendicular to it, bend up and munch from the feeder. Then, he discovered that he could also hold onto the criss-cross of thin metal pieces that create a kind of square latticework and eat from it that way.

So far, there's been no intimidation from him; he seems to neither care nor notice that other birds use it, or when I'm out there.

This past winter, I watched a crow try to figure out how to eat from that same suet feeder. He landed on a very "bendy" branch of the tree nearest it, and, after a few attempts and calculations, he figured out exactly where to stand on the branch, how wide his feet needed to be and what to do with his wings so that he could make the branch start boiging back and forth with momentum, so that he could grab a bite to eat from the suet feeder each time he got near it.

Smart little critters.

I haven't had as manny hummingbirds as of late, but when I do, I've seen another species coming around called Rufous. They look similar to the Anna's Hummingbird that was hanging around so much last year (and during that awful, awful storm). This little Rufous that comes around is quite curious; he loves to zip in, take a sip from each of the little "flowers" on the feeder several times, then he zips up to my terrace door and peers in -- first up high, then down towards a corner, then to the center, then over a bit, afterwhich he'll zip up to the bird feeders and examine those (you never know where some tasty nectar might be!) -- and then off he'll go.

The first few times I saw him flit up to the glass door, I was worried he'd fly into it, and, not wanting a dead hummingbird on my conscience, I found myself saying aloud, "No, birdie, no!" But he seemd to know what he was doing (his keen eyesight and all that), and would then fly off. (Last summer, I had on a brightly-patterened dress for work and, as I stood on the other side of my screen door and brushed my teeth while looking out, a little hummingbird surprised me by zooming up to the door -- their wings are really loud! -- clearly examining my dress with great interest -- and then, realizing he couldn't get in, or that it wasn't actually flowers -- off he went.)

They like red, and two of my windchimes have a mahogany-colored piece of wood hanging down as the wind-catcher that makes them chime; I'll watch a hummingbird sometimes examine the reddish wood with curiosity -- and then try to take a taste from it.

I did also have a squirrel I finally got to stop coming up on my terrace. I like squirrels, don't get me wrong. (Although we seem to have the "Geico Squirrels" here as well -- you know, the ones that purposely and gleefully dash out in front of your car to try to make you careen off course and crash). I did have a cute red squirrel coming around who was very polite; he'd (or she, but I'm just going to say "he") nose around without digging and would eat some of the loose seed I used to have in a pottery dish that goes under plants.

He disappeared after awhile, I believe chased off by the squirrel I named A.B. (short for Arrogant B-----d), so named because he would not only nose around in my plants, but dig things up, and one day when I was home sick, I watched him sit and gorge himself for forty minutes on the loose seed. I was worried he'd dig up my then-newly-planted sugar snap peas and my lettuce seets, so I covered them with bubble wrap in a way so that it was tight enough so he couldn't get under it, but loose enough so that air could flow.

I came home from lunch one day to find three puddles of what I realized was squirrel pee in indentations on the top of the plastic.

Eventually, I figured out that if I moved my BBQ way over to the left so that my extra can of gas was flush against the gas can attached to the grill, then shoved my planter with the lettuce flush against the can (thus making a kind of "Γ" shape) he couldn't jump from the tree onto my terrace.

I miss the red squirrel; I remember thinking he had a very amused, bright kind of cleverness in his eyes -- like he saw getting to my terrace as a challenge, and that he was the kind of fellow who, if he were a person, liked to play well-planned, but still "polite", practical jokes on people -- or at least would have an arsenal of really good jokes and terribly bad, stinky puns that would leave you groaning in both pain and laughter.

The gray squirrel just had this big-gallooty, lead-footed, "Mine for the takin', if yer stupid enough to put it out," kind of look in his eye. I swear if he'd actually laughed, it would have been somewhat like, "Huyuck-huyuck-huhyuck!"

It was like having Chip and Dale scurrying around out there; one quite smart, the other rather far over to the not-so-smart end of intelligence.

(Did I mention my jamsime smells sublime?)

I think next year I may look into getting a gardenia plant (oh, stop your laughing, Dad! You won't need that machete just yet. You will when I decide to plant the jungle vines for privacy, however) as they apparently like the same kind of sunshine that the jasmine plants do.

I stopped in at Cornell Farms again yesterday to grab two more things, and I really spent some time loooking at all of the herbs they have -- they have a wonderful selection; I picked up what I thought was rosemary, but then, with the scent, I realized it wasn't. I looked at the tag and saw it was yellow curry. I think next year I'm going to go there for all my Herbal Needs and get some really interesting things, in addition to the "standard" things like basil, thyme, rosemary, sage.

And what I can't use up, I can just give away. That was my plan, anyway, with my "vegertababbles" as my dad's called them in jest.

Hmm...looking at my two little bamboo plants in the pottery pots, I think I'm going to need to split them again and repot them. If I don't, they'll break the pots, and I'd rather not have that happen. Perhaps I will have to order that panda my dad keeps asking about. Or the wallaby.

The thing is it's a reall pain in the ol' gluteous maximus to do so; you can't just split them like you would any other plant -- you have to saw them apart. I have a saw, and I think I know how to do it, but, bleah.

(Oh, speak of the devil! Here's A.B;. right now! He found a new way onto my terrace! The twerp! Hmm...perhaps I shall have to go to Home Depot and see if they have some kind of ... something I can use to block off the space between the concrete and the railing.)

It's promising to be an absolutely gorgeous day and weekend; I'm going over to my dad's house for dinner tonight and to see my grandmother, and it's always nice to sit out on his deck and talk and have a beer or two.

(Oh, no mourning doves as of late, but the other morning they did wake me up at 4:57 in the morning! And no Kermit since that last night of energetic ribbiting).

OK -- I need to go get something to eat. A cup of coffee can only carry you so far in the morning.

-- H

Le Garden

Well...it's finally done (I think...). I may put in a few more herbs, like rosemary, if the "sproutlets" I bought at the nursery don't multiply.

I did start some herbs from seeds quite some time ago, but some haven't bothered to wake up and perform as needed, while others are just now peeking out, and some are starting to roll along. But at the pace they're going, I wouldn't have had anything until late summer.

I've been going to a nursery called Cornell Farms that's near my home; it's a beautiful, fun place to go. They have lots and lots and lots of everything your little heart could think to plant (well...except maybe for skunk cabbage or crab grass -- if you were the kind of person that wanted to have that in your yard!), and all of the people there are friendly and clearly know what they're doing.

I went to go get my tomato and bell pepper plant (the guy who helped me was very knowledgeable, and I got great advice for the care of all my "sprootlets" as my dad and I call them).

I now have out there:

--Walla Walla Sweet Onions (I found a bound bunch to plant at Cornell Farms, and thought that would be fun, as it said you could plant them closely and get "salad-sized" onions)
-- Two different kinds of leeks
-- Several different kinds of lettuce
-- Spinach
-- Sugar Snap peas (planted from seeds; they exploded with a two inch growth inside a week or so after planting!)
-- Bell Peppers
-- Tomatoes
-- Strawberries
-- Chard (the guy at Cornell Farms talked me into it, and the recipes I've seen sound good; I've never had it, as far as I know. But I like new foods, and with my wide taste, I can't see why I wouldn't like it)
-- Cuban Oregano
-- Greek Oregano
-- Thyme
-- Oregano Thyme (it's quite tasty and has a spiciness to it)
-- Cuban Basil (sweeter taste, but I have more Thai and Italian basil growing in my starter pots)
-- Two different kinds of sage
-- Parsley
-- Sweet Marjoram
-- Rosemary
-- Lavender
-- Tarragon
-- Mint
-- Pineapple Mint (pretty yellow and green leaves, and it does have a pineapple-y taste)

I'd only planned to just get the bell pepper plant and the tomato plant, but I got...inspired...but the amazing variety that was at the nursery; I already had some of the herbs, but there's a bigger variety at Cornell Farms than at Fred Meyer, so I decided to...augment my choices. I decided to get two jasmine plants as well to replace the ones that went in the storm we had; turns out I wasn't watering them correctly and, despite what the man told me at the other nursery where I bought them, I couldn't do two in a pot to have four...so I just got two, and put them each in one pot. I'm also going to be much better about watering them correctly (less often).

I also got a pretty jade plant for my little table that's next to my chair, a splurge of an addition to my pots of geraniums, petunias and marigolds.

I didn't plant ALL of that in one day, of course; Saturday was the last round of about 6 weeks of planting (on weekends).

It sounds like there's a lot out there (well...there is), but it's not crowded. The lettuces, onions, leeks and peas got planted in long planter boxes that sit on the terrace floor, flush with the railing; the herbs are in flowerpots; and the strawberries are in a pot that sits on my railing (as do the planters where I have my flowers).

My dad keeps asking me if he needs to bring over a machete when he visits, and I've told him no...my invisible pandas are doing just fine, especially in keeping my bamboo in check. And if that doesn't work, I could always do what some people are doing in England: buy a wallaby to keep things trim (yes, wallabies).

It's really nice out out there now, and it will be even like, tewtally awesomer in the summer as my dad came over and hung two rolling shades I bought to block out the rather intense afternoon sunshine that was blazing in like a mini-kiln. My apartment now faces South, so it would get the sunshine all...after...noon. It would be okay out there with a fan, but it was still hard when the sun is blazing against your left cheek and arm, giving you rather lopsided tan.

This way I can also pull them down during the day (they're set back enough so that they unroll behind the railing planters) and keep my apartment from getting warm. I tried closing my deck doors (with the curtains closed and without), but my apartment just got stuffy. So I tried opening the deck doors, but pulling the curtains closed and it seemed to get even stuffier.

So the answer became shades.

Next up will be hanging my cute strings of the cut-metal pineapple lights, then setting up my water fountains (small). It sounds like you might have to suck in your gut and walk down the terrace on your tiptoes, but it's quite wide, and it all fits nicely.

We've also seemed to become a wildlife conservatory; both Saturday morning and this morning I was awakened at 5:17 (yes, that time exactly) by a pair of mourning doves who have moved into the plum tree that's right by my bedroom door (they also like to sit on the branches of the locust tree right out side of my bedroom door; I've seen them there in the evening).

It's a lovely, sweet sound -- but it's still five friggin' seventeen in the morning!!!

Sheesh.

On Saturday evening a frog began ribbeting, kind of tentatively in a ribbit-ribbit-ribbit (pause) ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit (pause pause pause................................pause pause pause) ribbit-ribbit-ribbit (pause) ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit pattern all night and into the morning (I know this because I woke up needing to use the bathroom around 4 am or so on Sunday and he was still going).

Then, Sunday evening, he really got into a groove; instead of the lazy-ish way he'd been going the night before, it became ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit (pause) ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit (pause) ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit (pause) ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit-ribbit (pause) ---

(The pause seemed to be just long enough for him to catch his breath).

All. Night. Long.

He was silent last night (too cool, I think). He apparently lives somewhere in the bushes on the other side of the pool, so the two apartment houses apparently create a nice amphitheater effect.

Double sheesh!

Damn nature.

Hee hee.

But...I can say that's far more preferable than the "wake up call" I had the previous Saturday at about 4:20 am.

I was awakened by sirens -- I sometimes am, given that there's a firestation right down the road from me, and they often wail down this street to get to Cedar Hills Boulevard, as it's the fastest route to it. I began thinking, Gee they're getting awfully close.... But when I've had that thought before, they've usually zipped right past.

But as I lay there, getting less groggy, the thought returned, with an additional, "...that's...REALLY close...!" And then my thought was, "Holy [cow], they're right under my window!!!" It was right at that moment I smelled smoke.

I popped out of bed like someone had lit a fire under me. So to speak.

My first thought was, "Is it my place?!" But then I realized no, of course not; if it were, I'd have been awake a lot earlier and faster by my own smoke alarm going off. Then I got the brilliant idea to share the excitement with my dad, as he's frequently awake at that hour. Turns out that's the one time he was actually sound asleep (sorry, Dad!)

I noticed people were clustering under the cover by the office door, so I realized it was like being in a dorm -- everyone had to evacuate until they could go back in. So I pulled out my earplugs (I always sleep with them in, so that means the doves were loud enough to wake me up through them!) and that was when I heard the hallway alarms going.

I noticed it was cool, so I pulled on my slippers and a sweatshirt over the large t-shirt I'd worn to bed...but when I got to my door I thought, "Oh. Pants. Pants would be good -- !" In my sleep-addled brain state, I'd completely missed the fact my legs were bare, despite pulling on slippers and a sweatshirt. So, after making myself decent, I went down with everybody else.

We were let back in after about 20 minutes or so. There were three trucks that came -- a water truck, a "regular" one and a ladder truck -- and at one point when four firemen walked past, it was like watching a children's book coming to life:

This fireman is carrying an extinguisher.
This fireman is carrying a fire ax.
This fireman is carrying a pick.
This fireman is carrying a large exhaust fan to pump out the smoke.

At that point a curious / sort of worried murmur of, "Uh oh!" rippled through the crowd; I knew it couldn't be too bad, given no flames were licking the sky and we hadn't been evacuated to the park that's a half a mile away.

I went around to the back of the building (I'd heard the fire had been on the other side of the building and down a floor) and discovered the damage: the wooden wall between the two terraces was fully burned away, the wall where the door was had been fully scorched, and the ceiling had been whacked away to reveal insulation -- which was also strewn around the ground below. There wasn't a BBQ, so my thought was a cigarette that had somehow started it (this was the same thought the manager had when I asked her when I turned in my rent check).

Not quite the blazing experience Andrew witnessed a few months ago when the top level of a house two lots down from him went the way of a sacrifice to the Fire Gods. From what I hear, it was pretty spectacular.

So...if I had to choose between doves and a frog and sirens ushering in the portent of possible doom -- I'll take the doves and the frog.

And...that's all she wrote for now!

-- H