In Which Miss Ingu Settles In for Winter

Last day of November. It's been frosty up here on the farm. Part of my job here on the farm is to keep the well and the green house pumps from freezing. This is just a matter of checking the heat lamps in two of the greenhouses - usually switching them on in the evening and off in the morning. Also to check that the bulbs in the well and in the well house haven't burnt out. Blue likes the ritual trek out to the greenhouses. They are empty except for weeds that have grown around the edges, but there's often interesting things to be found - slugs, garter snakes, praying mantis, mice and birds that are smart enough to realize it's warmer inside than out.

This morning we walked out, still in pajamas to unplug the lights. The temp gage said 38 degrees, so we thought we were safe. But an hour later it started to snow. So back we hurried to plug them in again. No snow falling at the moment, but I think we'll leave them on for today. The forecast says snow is coming this way.

This morning I also performed the Biennial Birkenstock Ritual. This is done at the beginning of winter and part way into the summer. The straps have to be loosened to accomadate thicker socks; tightened to make bare feet fit. Slipping on two pairs of socks this morning, I realized it was time for the switch.

Right now I have some pin head oatmeal in the slow cooker and it smells about ready to eat. Yum! Settle back and think of Ireland.

Birds of a Feather

Now that winter is near I think most of the summer birds have left for warmer climates. I've noticed only a faithful few at the bird feeders. There's a group of chickadees that you can always count on to be here. It's an integrated group: black-capped and chestnut-backed chickadees and an occassional mountain chickadee (like the Eastern ones but with a white eyebrow). I don't say flock of chickadees, because I think these are just the same seven or eight birds that come to the feeder. There is one male red-breasted nuthatch that hangs out with the chickadees. They're called red-breasted, but they're really a buffy yellow color. This one has gotten darker chest feathers as winter has approached. They all look like a Christmas card!

There's also a pair of Stellar Jays. These are about twice as big as the Blue Jays in Ohio. They are dark, dark blue with black blue heads and the blue jay crest. They are wicked birds - very territorial and sound like high-pitched crows when they call. Still, I like to watch them. They let me know when a strange bird is around.

And because the Jays were off busy chasing hawks the other day, I got to see my very first ever red-breasted sapsucker. It is a robin sized woodpecker with a totally red head and chest. This one had black wings with just a thin white streak down his side, and his beak was yellow (not black like in the books). He was out on one of the back apple trees that I can see from my window. I've looked for woodpeckers back there often because this tree and one other are covered in little holes that look like someone took a paper puncher and punched a zillion evenly spaced, uniformly sized holes all up and down the trunk. I've been told these trees are over 100 years old. It's really strange to look at this tree up close. And the bird was such a beautiful red. I miss cardinals! Nothing like them out here!

In Which Miss Ingu Studies a Hibernating Hamster

The most recent member of our extended family is a black and white teddy bear hamster first named "Freemont Lake", then "Hop Scotch". He's more often called "Hammy". SEI loves this little critter and, unbelievably, the critter seems to love him, too. I say unbelievably only because the hamster plays with him like a real pet and will hold still on command, perched on a stool or in a plastic tea pot, etc. Yes, maybe the little guy is frozen in terror, but he doesn't let on.

Hammy travels back and forth between SEI's house and mine. At his house Hammy lives in a fancy, colorful, plastic hamster home. Here he lives in an old bird cage that's been specially adapted for him. Now that the weather is getting cold I worry about him staying warm. In spite of the paper towels, shredded papers, and soft cloths that we find for hamster bedding use, he seems to prefer balling up without a cover. I think this is unnatural. I've read that if hamsters get cold enough, they go into a state of semi-hibernation and are often taken for dead. I've taken to watching him until he breathes deeply enough to move and/or blowing on him until he looks up. I hope we can find a hamster veterinarian in case we ever need one!

Full Moon Rising

Driving into La Center yesterday around 3:00 in the afternoon, I came to a spot about 8 miles from the farm when the full moon appeared, huge and white, rising over Mt. St. Helen's. Mt. St. Helen's is white now, too, with gray creases veining down its sides. I wished I could rush home and grab my camera, but knew that by the time I returned to this spot the moon would have climbed beyond this moment.

In the middle of the night I woke up for a minute and looked outside to see if any deer were around. It was so bright. Almost like a new fallen snow. With hat on and coat over my pajamas, Blue and I went out for a walk. The moon was high and the sky was a pale blue with whisps of cloud that made me wonder if they were the northern lights. And there were stars, bright and clear despite the light. Orion stretched out right over the pasture. The moon light cast shadows and the air was soft and quiet. The ground was frozen, but not icy. Frozen just enough to feel like the ground was firm under your feet. Good thing because my head was enveloped in an alien breath. I hoped there would be deer down in the pasture but not a creature was stirring. My bed was still warm when we returned. We'd never even turned on a light.

Saints Among Us

Driving downtown Thanksgiving morning the streets were noticably empty. There were a few homeless people sleeping on the downtown sidewalks - always sad to see esp. when the weather is wet and cold. There was a long line in front of one of the Missions - maybe waiting for a Thanksgiving meal. It seemed like the only other people on the street were coming to Mass.

I was glad to be at the Downtown Chapel. It reminds me of Cincinnati's Drop Inn Center. Inside the chapel there are no windows. Except for 14 small plaques of the Stations along the back wall and simple seasonal decoration behind the altar, the walls are plain white. The pews are in a semi-circle around the altar with a piano/organ to the left. The altar is up a couple steps higher than the main floor, much like the podium and TV at the Drop Inn Center. You can see why I felt at home when I first came here 4 years ago.

The congregation was small. I counted 30 all together. But the people who attended are people that make you wonder about the existance of a "holy underground". There are a couple old men with walkers and a single mom with her 10 yr. old son. There were a couple homeless people with their bags containing all their possessions, sometimes sitting quietly alone, sometimes praying aloud in tongues. And there's one old woman, tall and lean, dressed always in black with ankle length skirts and what we used to call "nunny shoes". I've seen her often on the streets and at the cathedral, too. Where do they all live? What draws them here? Especially on this quiet morning with thanks in our hearts?

Trip to the Refuge

where: Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge, Ridgefield, Washington
date: Friday, November 16, 2007
time of day: late afternoon, 3 to 5 pm
weather: overcast, cloudy and dark, light rain

4 blue heron
2 great egret
4 northern harrier
3 red tailed hawk
1 pair cinnamon teal
large grazing flock canada geese
flock cackling geese flying in at dusk
2 flocks flying in trumpeter swan
3 female bufflehead
flock in water pied-billed grebe
1 double crested cormorant
several large flocks sandhill cranes flying in at dusk
several Nutria *
1 coyote **

* (they look just like beavers, but with rat-like tails)8 - 10 Nutria today in and out of the water
one was a huge old looking mom resting on a log while 3 pups 1/3 her size played in the water nearby

** the coyote was young, dark gray with a white patch on his back
watched as he trotter across a long span of field, disappeared into the brush near one of the ponds, and emerged carrying a black duck - carried it back across the field putting it down and shaking off his wet fur, then several times looking back nervously - trotted along a fence at edge of refuge until out of sight

A Year in a Fairy Garden

I started writing a book with that title several years ago. Someday it will be finished and become a classic of children's literature. This morning I noticed the fairies had been here in the night. There was a most magical glittery trail along the floor in the bathroom leading into the bedroom. When you live in the inner city, you learn that dark smudges along the baseboard are caused by rats scurrying along the walls. Now some might say this trail was obviously left by a slug; however, there is no slug to be found! A-ah! I've missed those fairies. I'm so glad they're back!

In Which Miss Ingu Talks to Spiders

Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth
Serve the Lord with gladness

Spiders live around me. They aren't my favorite creatures, but they lived in my shed before I did and I don't seem to be able to keep them out. Right now there is a banded garden spider living near the ceiling corner by the front door. They are orb spiders and their webs, sparkling with morning dew, are unbelievable. But they look ferocious. I took two of his relatives out to the pasture this summer, but because I'd have to get a chair to reach this one, we've agreed that he can stay as long as he stays up there.

There are also cellar spiders here - lots of them. At first I didn't like them. After several Great Spider Massacres I gave up. They multiply like crazy. Especially in my bathroom and along my windowsill you can see several generations of cellar spiders ranging in size from almost 3 inches (tiny bodies with mostly spindly legs) to smaller than an eyelash. I've gotten fond of the youngsters. I try not to disturb them when I'm reaching for my toothbrush. But I have a hard time with them in the shower. I hate to see one struggling to escape the drops which will eventually pull them down the drain. I try to give them fair warning, but sometimes I don't see them until it's too late.

My favorite thing about these cellar spiders is their startle reflex. If you bump their web (unlide the orb weavers, they weave your typical cobweb)their startle is so over the top, every limb quivering, that you have to laugh. I guess it is that startle that catches their food because when they quiver like that their web gets totally tangled up. I watched one night as one of the little guys slept in his web under the lightshade of my bedside lamp. A small moth flew into the web, waking the spider with a great amount of consternation. Once awake, this little spider professionally wrapped that moth in silk and began eating burrito style. You gotta love 'em!

I Spy ...

1. I have a dog, and her name is Blue; betcha 5 dollars she's a good dog, too.

2. pink sky at night, sailors' delight.

3. a thousand cranes for peace.

4. and Little Red Riding Hood ventures into the woods.

In Which Miss Ingu Opens the EST files

We got up this morning and looked out to see a rose colored sky to the East, the sun just beginning to rise. It was beautiful even though my first thought was, "red sky at morning, sailor take warning." I was planning to drive into Portland today, but woke up feeling yucky from the cold I picked up 10 days ago! I just wanted to crawl back into bed and vegitate. That's one of the worst feelings esp. if you've been hoping to get a ton of things done. But then, one of the best things happened. I got a call from a friend, Lady M. She called really early (10:00 AM her time). She was excited because she was able to find a new Kris Kristofferson CD at the library and played me parts of it. We had been talking about wanting a CD of his voice as it is now - rough and gravely. Recently I'd heard a song, Far Side Banks of Jordan, that made me wish for more. Yay, Lady M!

Later, after Blue bugged me with all the energy she could muster, I gave in and went for a walk down into the woods. It was 54 degrees out, but I felt really cold and had to go back to put on another sweater. Blue was running ahead, making motions that I should hurry. By the time we got across the pasture and started down the path to the woods, I was ready for a nice walk. But here comes Blue with a mole in her mouth determined to return home with it - right now! That was the end of the walk for her. After expending all that energy to getting me out. Blue didn't put the mole down - its feet and snout sticking out one side of her mouth and a pink tail out the other side - until burying at the base of an apple tree by our shed. I wished I'd just stayed in bed!

This evening we went out again. With the time change the dark came on sooner than expected. By the time we crossed the pasture it was dark enough that I couldn't see real well and I wasn't about to walk into the woods in the dark. We used a path around the pasture, past the neighbor's well to circle around back to our house. I've seen deer down there. It's one of the nicest things to see the deer crossing the pasture at dusk. I squinted trying to see into the field and behind us I saw a dark figure. I wasn't sure if it was just a piece of brush, but I stood still and looked at it thinking it might be a deer. The figure didn't move, but all of a sudden barked. Just one LOUD bark. I hope it was Champ or Zeus. Coyotes don't bark. But I jumped all the same and Blue, running ahead, never even seemed to notice. Then it was gone. I never saw it move.

With a blurry head I close this strangest day.

Miss Ingu Reflects on Yesterday

Yesterday at Mass the opening song was "Shall We Gather At The River". I haven't heard that one in a long time. It transported me back through the ages to a time of sparkling innocence. I promise to avoid too many of these memories in this blog. They are probably a wee too maudlin for general consumption. Anyway, the year was 1967 in late May. I was spending a couple weeks in Eastern Kentucky between Beauty and Lovely near the West Virginia border with a group I belonged to, Volunteers in Appalachia. We had spent the week picking strawberries and had just finished wallpapering a woman's kitchen using flour and water for wallpaper paste. I'd also driven out along the hollers with the clinic nurses to make a few home visits. Near the end of my stay, unexpectedly, my 1st true love drove down to offer me a ride back to Cincinnati and also to tell me something of great import. He showed up as we were finishing the wallpaper job and were all covered in flour glue and bits of old newspaper. I had a gooey feeling in the pit of my stomach. The "important thing" had to wait until the next morning when we could climb the mountain across Wolf Creek. It was "our" mountain, having climbed it earlier in the winter of that year. I wasn't comfortable with this guy showing up because my plan was to enter the convent that fall, and I knew I better tell him soon. On the mountain, after a you-go-first...no-you-go-first period of stalling, he confessed his love to me and I confessed the convent. He proposed, then hesitantly promised to marry me if I left the convent. Hesitantly because a question of his fear of interfering with God's plan came up. It was one of those "The Hills are Alive..." bittersweet moments. We were quiet as we climbed down the mountain. Nearing the bottom we could hear soft singing. Through a clearing we saw a baptism going on in the creek and stopped to watch. They were singing "As We Gather At The River". *Addendum* Sixteen years later we drove out to see our mountain once again and it had been completely plowed down by a strip mining company! He left the next month.

A Blustery Day

A storm hit the North West early this morning and today has been chilly, cloudy, windy and wet. I'm still getting over the cold SEI gave me last week so this is a good opportunity to stay snuggled up inside next to the heater. Blue was very put out at me this AM when I wouldn't go out for a walk. Later in the morning her friend, Champ came by to play and she poked her head out only long enough to say "hi". Champ was drenched.

Champ lives on the farm north of here. We call him Brownie, because we met him before we met his master. He was a pup when he showed up wanting to play last year, just a pinch smaller than Blue. Now he's huge - a big chocolate lab and still acts like a goofy teenager. Blue loves running with him and playing. She can out run him which is lucky because he is very oafish and clumsy. I fear for my life (not really, just for my hips) when I'm outside with them. He could just plow me down without a blink.

Champ lives with 2 other dogs, Zeus and Molly. I was told about them when I first came here because they like to block the road and look furocious. When I first encountered them I was able to speak to them by name and they've never given me any trouble. Zeus is an old black lab with a graying muzzle. He's never so much as barked at me, but he doesn't hang around much. I think he just comes over here to poop! Lucky us! Molly is a really old sweet dog - I don't know what breed she could be. She's big, and thick and brindle brown with a beige patch on her chest and four bright white socks. How those socks stay so bright white is very curious. She has a drooly smile and runny eyes and smells so-o-o-obad. The first time I petted her, my hands smelled for hours - couldn't wash off the stink. And she just longs to be petted. I keep thinking I should find a pair of gloves to wear when she comes over. Actually, that is SEI's idea. Isn't he smart?

The dogs have a path worn through the field between their farm and here. I can't see past the trees that edge the property. I'm not sure if they are kept outside, or in a mud room. Sometimes Blue goes over and comes back as if she can't find them. And often Champ or Molly come to our door and scratch. Blue hears them before they even scratch and sometimes she scares the bejeebers out of me by letting out a loud bark greeting them.

That's the action here today!

In Which Miss Ingu Looks at Her Bird Books

Thinking about those hawks yesterday prompted me to go through the bird books to try to identify them. It turns out they were all Northern Harriers. The male and female look so different! The female is a large, brindle-colored hawk. The young look like the female with a little more light specks on the chest. The male looks like a sleek falcon. He is a white color with black wing tips in flight. Someone told me the critters in the water were River Otters. I looked them up, too, and as I suspected, they aren't. I'm not sure what they are. They might be some animal called Nutria out here. They look like muskrats to me - but do muskrats hang out in the water?

Home Again

As if home was actually a space or a single place or a feeling...... Anyway, the kaliedoscope girl is back from India and Blue and I are back on the farm. I can never come back here without a period of nesting. First, we go for a brief walk to check out the greenhouses and fields, fill the birdfeeders, and make sure the bonsai are happy. Then Blue won't let me alone until we go for a walk down in the woods. She will follow me around with her nose to my left thigh until I give up and point toward the driveway. Then she's off! We have a couple familiar routes we take and this time we walked down the road and around the pasture. There's a path cut through the neighbor's woods that we follow to a fork which goes either down along a ridge or winds back up to the other side of the neighbor's house. We used to explore along the fence lines and down to the pond and the creek, but when I have other things to do, we just walk to the end of the lower fork and then back. We've cut a small openning in the fence to our field so that instead of following the road, we can cut through and up the hill to our shed. Sometimes we detour over behind the blackberry hedge to where the deer sleep. The early morning air was filled with a really thick mist. It reminded me of the Mount. Mount St. Joseph on the Ohio where I went to college. The road between the motherhouse and the classroom buildings would be tumbling with mist in the mornings. That mist would remind me of English moors like in Jane Eire or Wuthering Heights. This mist is just farm mist that you know will burn off soon, so it feels more welcoming. And it's luscious to inhale.
While we were away the spiders at the farm must have been decorating for Halloween! It's so impressive that I left their webs alone for now.
The final phase of my nesting in is to go to Ridgefield Refuge that is about 2 miles from here if you take the back roads. We left here around noon which is usually when all the wildlife is hidden away napping or something. It was gray and spitting sprinkles, and I guess the birds like that - their were so many different kinds of birds out! The Refuge is a wetlands area with a 4.2 mile road winding through it. Sometimes it doesn't look too wet except for one boggy area, one long lake, and two riverlets. But today it looked soaked. Lots of standing water. Lots of flocks migrating, crisscrossing everywhich way across the sky. There are always blue heron and still a few white egrets. Several kinds of hawks. Wish I could tell them apart. There must have been over a hundred swans on the lake. I'm not sure whether they are trumpeter or tundra swans. They're the ones with black beaks and black legs. And several muskrats or river otters - one a mom with two pups.
A cup of coffee from Giovanie's Pizza, and then my nesting is complete. Now I'm officially back!