Quail Death

Today while sitting in my favorite chair, reading a suspenseful novel, just at the crescendo of excitement, with my nose buried in the book (Mule - at the heart of harvest season, a book on moving pot!) a loud thud levitated me off my seat by a few inches. Just behind my head, I realized a bird had hit the window. After just having taken down my summer shades, white panels that hang with suction cups, I wasn't ready for such an immediate kamikaze. Normally it's a finch. This was obviously much bigger. I grabbed my Arnica spray from the bathroom and rush out barefoot. There just off the back step, a quail moved a bit, then lay still. I picked her up, her eyes still open. Before I could spray her, her eyes closed, and she died.

Everything I need - and the fateful glass door behind me.

I wasn't ready for this. This was my first casualty. The finches always sat on my open hand for a few moments after a spray, and after fluffing their feathers, and would flit off. She was the size of a softball, round and soft and now dead. Her neck was broken. I didn't need this after yesterday. It was too much. I gently set her down in the only place I saw; a planter at my feet, white and clean and safe. I went back inside, and just sat there, my sadness growing. Normally death and dying doesn't bother me, but I had held this life while it passed, and somehow it made it different. Maybe it was the underlying sadness of losing a friend.

After standing over the planter for awhile, I realized I needed to do something. Normally if I find a dead animal, whether on the road or off, I put it somewhere that is conducive to being returned to the earth. Once my son, at maybe 5 or 6, went to the airport with me. On the lonely road to the airport, there was a dead jackrabbit in the road. We got out and looked at him. There was no blood or apparent injury, so I talked to my son about death, something he didn't understand when his grandmother passed recently. I explained the rabbit's body stayed behind, and it's spirit had gone. I set him carefully off the road, so no other animal would get run over. I thought I did a rather good job of it. One the way back, as we approached the spot we'd found him in, he got agitated, 'Maybe he's alright now!' I realized, he just wasn't ready. Maybe it was because there was no blood. Not on the rabbit, not on my bird.

As I left to walk with my neighbors (a first mushroom forage) a short time later, still contemplating how to care for this dead thing, I wandered out front to look around. There, not 4' from the front door, was a large hole. Not a gopher, probably the ground squirrel that ate all my grapes and grapevines, the calendula and hollyhock flowers. I decided here was a perfect burial spot. I tucked her gently into the hole, and apologized for not marking my windows.  RIP, my soft chubby quail, may your next life be better.

Don't Hide

When did I get so reactionary? I don't know, maybe it was my latest birthday. Taking stock of what I have and what I don't. I am immensely grateful for all my friends. But there is one issue with a friend I feel strongly about, and if you know me, I don't sit still until I've said my piece.

So these aren't people, but you get the general idea.

We all need people. It doesn't matter how long it takes, we all have that 'discharge' when we connect with another - like a capacitor that suddenly lets it all hang out. Skinner did those horrible tests on real kids 50 years ago (including his own daughter, poor thing) and we came to realize that when humans aren't touched or stroked (physically or mentally), they become stunted or blocked. Their higher purpose is thwarted.

You can't just decide not to connect. It's like denying your humanity. If we look at people that are really happy, what is it that makes them this way; is there a common theme with these people? I think there is, it's strong ties to one or more people. Maybe it's not love, maybe it's desire, or hate, or community. It's a connection.

Suppression is the worst way to be unhealthy. Everyone has needs. We don't live isolated in our own little boxes for a reason. To think you can do so is courting trouble; it's denying and punishing yourself.  This is especially true if you have passion. When you have a fire in your soul, it should be allowed to burn, not to be hidden or snuffed out. Opening one's heart is hard, I know. It can cause immense suffering, but also immense joy. Don't hide, come out into the world.

What We Feed Our Kids

When my son was in second grade, he managed to get a spiral fracture of his femur. The indescribable need for young boys to jump. On skis. Over nothing, over a bump, over a person, it doesn’t matter. They’ll jump just thinking about it. Needless to say, an external fixator (like a towel bar) was drilled into his remaining bone, and mom got to carry him from class to class till we finally (out of disgust) bought our own crutches for him.

Lucien doesn't need to be encouraged to eat dessert.

During this time, I was advised to carry him into the lunchroom prior to the bell ringing, or we’d be trampled. It was a boys’ school, after all. Every man for himself. It wasn’t like there wasn’t enough food, and they got a choice of anything they wanted. But these were hungry growing children, and don’t get between the fork and the mouth, for risk of losing limb.

The first few times I sat at his lunch table, I was amused. This quickly turned to concern. I sat next to an overweight child that downed 2 apple juice cans and the cream cheese off a bagel. Not the bagel, mind you, just the top. Not that the bagel would have been much better, but the apple juice sugar and yeast was enough to make me wonder how he was able to do any school work. The third or fourth day was even worse. It was ‘burrito’ day. They had wrapped Taco Bell tacos on their plates, those that chose to eat. I picked up the wrapper and read off the ingredients. The kids were all scrunching up their noses, and I think it was the first time they realized they could read the ingredients of what they ate. This was such an eye-opener for me.

At first, I was in shock. I confessed to other mothers I was not at all happy with our childrens’ lunch menu, not the least of which was the cheapest food possible, but the fact that they could choose anything they wanted (only dessert, only cookies, etc) was really upsetting. The more I looked, the worse it got. While it’s true the teachers and other moms would walk around and advise, most kids would choose a healthy looking tray, then toss anything they didn’t want before anyone was the wiser.

Not only did our children eat whatever they wanted, but they ate as much as they wanted. No one said no seconds on potato chips or cookies. Eventually the problem was rectified, but after many months (almost a year) of parents professing disbelief. The class was about 25% overweight, and we moms actually counted the kids we thought overweight as they jogged around the gym perimeter. We came up with 10 out of 40. It was a horrible feeling.

Here we were paying an astronomical figure for a year of  private school, dressing them in expensive clothes, driving them to school in expensive cars, tutoring them in languages of our choosing, raising money for special programs, and dumping the most hideous foods into their bodies. Our precious children, eating so poorly turned my stomach.

After making an appointment with the headmaster, I made up a list of things I wanted to talk to him about, among them the need to teach these boys about nutrition. I mentioned the East Bay school district (PUBLIC school!) doing a great job with Alice Waters - why couldn’t we do that? After all, our kids were worth it too. All I got was a blank look. "Where do you think I could put that in the curriculum?" he asked. "There isn’t any time to teach that." He was obviously obstructionist. He wanted no part of the dialog. I was shut down from the moment I walked in. I had even mentioned the girls' schools teach this stuff in third grade, why couldn't we teach it too? And about how the roof, it would be perfect for growing some plants - lettuce and science experiments, and art class drawing the delicate leaves…there were so many options besides just eating the healthy produce!

Fresh from the garden

As I rose to leave, he asked me to leave my notes. I wondered, ‘why bother?’ He seemed to be completely closed off the idea. Now my son is finishing his second year at college, and I got a call last fall from another mom. She said she just thought I might want to know that the school did end up setting up a healthy system, but they waited till our kids were gone. It’s sad people aren’t more open minded, it really doesn’t matter to me who came up with the idea, it benefits everyone. We are all connected.

Some ways we thought would be better:
1. Grow plants to eat: Start simple, with fast growing foods. Lettuce, arugula, flowers (edible?). There are so many ways to use them as a learning tool. Have the science class germinate them in different conditions. Give them different light sources. Let the art class draw them in different stages of growth. Outside light, inside light. Paint, pencil, charcoal. Talk about soil and it’s importance to the plant, much like fuel in the human being food. How the quality of food makes a difference to the plant.

2. Have a system of dots on the food: Green dots mean you can have as many as you like, yellow means just one or two. Red means you get only one of these, and that’s it. You can’t have 2 red dots on your tray, but you can have 2 yellow. Potato chips and cookies are examples of red dots. This way kids get to know what food is unhealthy in large quantities from kindergarten.

3. Teach the kids in the first 3 years what nutrition means. Calories, protein, fat, carbs. Sugar and its problems, disease you might get from eating poorly. What a healthy body looks like. Activity and why it’s good for you, and what fuels it. Most schools probably already do something like this, but to have the girls’ schools do it and not ours, you have to wonder about sexism!

4. Have a person assigned, possible surreptitiously, to keep an eye on the eating habits of the kids. If they take a healthy tray, it doesn’t mean they’re eating it. Watch for kids that consume other kids’ leftovers, throw away good food, and don’t eat well, and I guarantee you’ll find a child with attention problems, performance problems, or social problems in school. We don’t eat in a vacuum, it reflects in everything we do.

Twenty years ago doctors didn’t believe food made a difference in our health. How wrong they were!

Sitting With Being Down

What do you do when you're down? What brings you back, a smile on your face? I'm still looking today. Maybe it's the temperature reaching 100 as well as all the other myriad problems. If I can't find some solace here in this Eden, I don't think I'll find it anywhere. A sadness has taken hold, and I'll just have to sit with it.

The Moon's Bellybutton

The last few nights, I've been experimenting with photographing the moon with my camera, through the viewfinder of my telescope. It's amazing how much detail is there. I am intrigued with the ridge. I've named it 'The Moon's Bellybutton.' It cheered me up for a little while. I shared it with some friends.

Splash is hurt. He limped past my door sometime in August, and a few days ago, in the near 100 degree heat, he was standing in full sun, in the middle of the road. He's a beautiful horse, and it was sad to see him inching off the road, as if to say, 'is this far enough?' This morning I met another neighbor from down the ridge. She was out walking like me (but only one of us was in pajama shorts). I was on my way home from dogsit feeding. Feeding sat dogs? Feeding sit dogs? I fed the darn dogs this morning and was on my way home with a few lemon cucumbers that jumped off the vine at me while I was checking the vegetable beds. I figured they could be my lunch, along with the kale salad I made yesterday. Where was I? Oh, yes. She said she and her husband had seen him (she calls him Oreo, very appropriate as well) coming up the hill to their house, and had the same experience.

Splash

They hadn't noticed his limp, but they wouldn't have looked. It took him a long time to move off the road, since there wasn't any room on either side. I did see him a few nights ago, but had Rio in the car. Rio would have harassed him, so I didn't stop; he was like a ghost, I wasn't really sure it was him anyhow, it may have been Raven.

This morning I packed an apple full of homeopathic remedies, stuffed into the core, and replaced the piece I'd dug out. I set it on the tree stump close to the top of my neighbor's driveway on the way down to feed the dogs, around 8:30am. There's a ridge where they often catch the breeze when it's hot. They're not usually there in the morning. But in the evenings, it's like you've seen in the movies, the way you usually imagine wild horses; there are the 5 boys standing with the breeze blowing through their manes and tails, while they face the sunset, it's very beautiful. But he wasn't there, none of them were there.

 I just came back to feed the dogs at 6pm and it's still there. Bright red pink lady. At least the deer and squirrels haven't taken it. Hope he finds it and eats it. They don't eat from us, and I think they give me a wide berth since I tried to give them arugula. I have since tried to make it up with apples and carrots, but the carrots stay put, and only the apples disappear. Don't know what animal ate them, I can only hope Splash gets his medicine. Thanks to all the friends that helped me figure it out. Splash doesn't know how lucky he is.

Halfway down my driveway

My Meyer lemon tree in the green house has leaves the size of my hand and larger. I let the clover get out of hand, and now the thing isn't producing any blossoms. Today I see ants all over it, and realize it's got bugs. As if that weren't bad enough, there are tent caterpillars everywhere this year. Really ugly looking blights, and if you get close, there are more than a few hungry munching machines inside that tent. It must be a periodic thing - hopefully only once in my lifetime. Thankfully the gophers have given up. I was getting tired of peeing in the holes when it's so hot outside.

Out at the bird feeder there was a lot of commotion this evening. I heard it for over 30 minutes. Couldn't figure out what it was all about; there were only 3 birds at the feeder, and one of them, from my upstairs loft, appeared to be either stuck to the tape on the screw substituting for a perch, or had some kind of wing problem. Hauling myself off my yoga mat (I was just staring out the window, I have to be honest), I went down there and the finches flew into the oak tree above. The darn thing was still chirping away insistently, sticking next to another finch that had been at the feeder. I asked what seemed to be the problem, but the finch just kept flapping away making a loud racket. Finally I saw what was going on - it was a fledgling wanting food from its parent. I never will understand how the fledgling gets bigger than the parent and still gets food. Oh, wait...I have one of those!

Still morose, and not feeling like cleaning up, I did some reading and took a shower. Didn't help. Maybe I'll find something to do tomorrow that will cheer me up. Yes, I know...Caddyshack. Maybe it will make me laugh. Maybe it will make me cry. 

STR Drive

What can you say? This is halfway up the 1/2 mile driveway. I always stop and look.

Eat Your Veggies!

EAT YOUR VEGGIES!

There is just about nothing in veggies that isn’t good for you. Raw, that is. If you have digestive trouble, it may be caused by myriad things, or just one. It doesn’t matter. Get out the cutting board and a knife or mandolin. Start with fresh cucumbers and tomatoes. Add some basil or cilantro or parsley (all three would be best). A little sea salt and maybe a pinch of pepper. Dash of oil and vinegar, or just vinegar if you’re feeling like you need a little zing.

Fresh food from the garden! Bowl by Paula Moran

When you shop in the grocery store, remember what you went in to get. Don’t buy the stuff in boxes with all the packaging and additives. Think about it. You’re paying for garbage. You don’t want the cardboard, and you don’t want your insides to look like cardboard. Get fresh. You’ll feel so much better. If you need energy for exercise, or energy for mental tasks, your body works best on things that give you clean energy, vital fluids, and organic live enzymes.

If you’re buying food grown in poor soil, or food that comes from plants grown in sterile ground, you don’t get trace minerals if they aren’t there in the first place. There’s no fusion there, so if it doesn’t have those minerals, there is no way to magically get them into the veggie without them being in the soil. Think about it. Plants can be fed to fruit – to flower and thus be harvested. But that’s like putting gas in a diesel engine. Like putting dirty clothes in the washer with no soap and expecting them to come out clean. OK, you got me there, I have done that.

If you are going to eat, you should make every bite count. Make it healthy. Make it vital.

Although I like to buy everything organic, I can’t find organic sometimes. If I can’t, and it’s on the Clean Fifteen list, I will buy it. Not so with the Dirty Dozen. I change the menu. Here’s the list (from EWG – Environmental Working Group):

Dirty Dozen:

1.       Celery

2.       Peaches

3.       Strawberries

4.       Apples

5.       Blueberries

6.       Nectarines

7.       Bell peppers

8.       Spinach

9.       Cherries

10.   Kale/collard greens

11.   Potatoes

12.   Grapes (imported)

Clean Fifteen:

1.       Onions

2.       Avocado

3.       Sweet corn

4.       Pineapple

5.       Mangoes

6.       Sweet peas

7.       Asparagus

8.       Kiwifruit

9.       Cabbage

10.   Eggplant

11.   Cantaloupe

12.   Watermelon

13.   Grapefruit

14.   Sweet potatoes

15.   Honeydew melon

So why would I buy something organic from the list below? Because I also want to consider the workers and the soil they’re grown in. Do we harm others with growing with pesticides? Yes, it’s not always about what I’m putting in my mouth. It’s what else was impacted by my buying the item. Do the banana bags laden with pesticides end up in the river? Do the growers have to wear masks? Then it’s organic for me. We all should be thinking about the consequences of our actions as much as we can.

Eating seasonally and locally helps that too. Imagine planting a lovely sage in your backyard. It’s cold and wet. Sage doesn’t like it. It doesn’t grow well. It wants more sun and less water. It’s not happy, it’s not healthy. It gets bugs. It rots, and dies.  Eat food that’s happy where it’s grown, and not picked before it is ripe and trucked or flown hundreds or thousands of miles.  It’s more vital, and it will feel better when you eat it. I won’t go into the idea of planting when the moon is waxing and harvesting when it wanes, but cycles are important to our bodies, in the same way we wake in the morning and sleep at night.

Taken with my camera through the telescope!

Sorry, shift workers, you tend to have your own special problems that are not just physical. Shift working (Nurses Study) showed that working opposite this impacted people far more than just having your body working opposite the normal cycle. It also affects socialization, communication, depression, and a whole host of other processes, not just metabolism.

When I get up at my cabin north of Willits, I walk outside and pick fresh blueberries. Then I saunter (depending on what I’m wearing) down to the vegetable beds and check for any fresh strawberries. If there aren’t any, I may have a cherry tomato or two. Lunch can be a cucumber salad, or tabouli, with fresh parsley and tomato, with lemon juice from freshly picked lemons. With weather in the 90’s lately, I rarely turn on the stove (I may grill something outside), so an enormous salad with feta cheese and kalamata olives hits the spot. I walk around the house visiting various herbs for a snip of this or that. Parsley, cilantro, fennel, sage, marjoram, thyme, sorrel (yum) all go into my salads. I think tonight it'll be kale salad with lemon and feta and pine nuts. I find that there is no slowing me down when I eat like this.   

Wildlife in Mendocino County

Taking in the wildlife here has always been my favorite thing to do. There is always some animal, vegetable, or mineral that fascinates me. Here is a collection of some wildlife and...'dead' things too.                                                        

This is a salmonid (sal-MON-id). We have the last wild run of coho salmon in the state. We've tried to help them recover by shading the river to keep the water temp down by planting willow. The biggest problem is water hauling, where trucks back up to the river and load up their trucks. The flows decline and water gets warmer. Then there are the bullfrog tadpoles. They're like hungry black tennis balls. But slimy.

This monster is the biggest praying mantis I've ever seen. Godzilla size. It was as big as a Cadillac. OK, maybe 6"? It sat on the ground just over the edge of the porch, and at the entrance to a hive of ground-dwelling bees. As the bees came up from the hole, this mantis would grab them quickly with a front limb, and bite its head off. Maybe grab two, eating one while the other one struggled. Creepy. 

These guys were just jumping for joy, what can you say? They just are so happy to be alive. Actually, it's a mini-trampoline I built for them, and they jump on it all day long.

Again, lies! They love to sit on the screen when the door's open and catch a breeze, it's so lovely. Sometimes I tickle their toes. I love the blue bellies. Sometimes they chase each other but it's too hot and eventually they just stop and catch the breeze.

I also wonder if maybe they're up there to avoid being eaten by Mr. Kingsnake. 

The boys hangin' out. There are 5 in this picture, but one took off. We don't know where, but he came back for a bit, everyone was happy to see him, and then he took off again. Geldings, so don't go there. Rio will sit peaceably with them until someone catches him doing so. Then he'll bark at them as if they're a threat. He doesn't fool us. Last week two of them crossed in front of my open doors at 6:30am and scared me half to death. I thought it was a bear. If I had made any noise, they would have bolted. I wish there was some clover for them, but it's all dried up. They go down to the pond for water.

This is my boy Rio. Not mine, really, but mine anyway. I love him. He's so sweet. He's wearing the sweater I knit for him. He said he really likes it. But only when it's really cold out. He also said it's a little itchy but he likes it 'cause I made it. And maybe also because I always give him biscuits. He rolls over for me whenever he wants one. Also for salmon skin, leftover meat, salad, veggies, just about anything edible. Or inedible. Occasionally I'll be working outside and have caught him chewing on a deer leg. The hoof will be sticking up in the air over his head. He didn't kill the deer, they're really old bones, but he likes them anyway. He doesn't get to kiss me after that. 

He's had some arthur-itis lately. May be Lyme Disease. He's gotten a remedy or two, we'll see how he does.

These two little babies were found hopping around the back of the house, almost were dinner for Mr. Kingsnake. The moms were very upset. But maybe it was a dad and mom, and they were siblings. I couldn't tell, but every time I put one of them in the nest I concocted, the other would flop out, a 10' drop. Eventually I settled on my wooden salad bowl, and the sides are too slippery, they couldn't get out. I left them on top of the ladder on the porch (so no other critters could get to them). I left a note in case CalFire came to check my fire abatement work. When I came back, they'd fledged. They were so cute. 

They'd screech if I picked them up, but once I closed my hand around them, they were happy. I sprayed this one with Arnica because I thought she must have fallen out of the nest. Then I found the nest on the ground, and realized both babies probably fell from some height. 

The parents get lots of bird food. I wonder if I'm not messing with the population, feeding them all the nijer seed. Finch-pigs. Pig-finches? They are ravenous, but I love to hear their little tiffs about who gets what perch.

I think these are Swifts. Not sure. They've got a crest across their chests, and come to check out the insect population on my front meadow. I don't see them very often. I've seen Mergansers, though, playing with the bullfrog tadpoles. Now that I'd love to get on video. It's like a cat playing with a mouse. Then all of the sudden, it throws the tadpole in the air and swallows it, like a kid catching peanuts. 

This poor baby had a run-in with the garage. Not sure how. Maybe trying to get in the small windows? Such pretty colors. The ants hadn't come to deconstruct yet. Every once in awhile I hear a thud and check for birds outside the house, with my trusty Arnica spray in hand. Often they're fine and I don't even see them. 

Not sure how I got so many quail in one picture without one head showing. I guess they got some good eats. They're like little round footballs. They certainly look well fed. Maybe it's all the compost I bury. I bury it in the open so the bear won't get it. Someday in a few decades, I may have better soil, but now it's mostly clay.

These toms really are teenagers. They act just like kids at recess. In this picture, though, they saw a hen coming their way. They perked up immediately and stopped the shenanigans. She paid no attention, and went on her way. 

I hope these weren't the guys that slept in my lavender and oregano. They really destroyed my plants. It wasn't all bad, they left some fertilizer.

This baby is just amazing. It's wingspan was about 5" and it has a face that will give you nightmares. It's called  Cecropia moth, normal range is only west to the Rockies, certainly not all the way out in California. Hyalophora cecropia. What a beauty. 

Well, that's it for now. I have to find my camera again. So many things at which to marvel.