Poison ivy

Most of us as children knew this plant, either by unfortunate encounters or because we listened to our mothers when they warned us about it. Or because some adult quoted the little jingle “Leaves of three, let it be”. However we came to know it, we did not want the result of brushing against it.

I had a childhood friend, rather a daughter of a friend of my mother’s I was often told I had to play with. This was one of those friends who, no matter what you did or could do or say you could not out-do or out-say her. Truly the “anything you can do, I can do better” type of kid. Bitsy’s house was almost directly behind mine on the same block in my neighborhood. So one summer afternoon, probably tired of my bored whining I was told to go over to ol’ Bits’s house and play. She was in her backyard doing impossible things on what was then called a jungle-gym or play set. I had no interest in trying to race her in chin-ups or the hand-over-hand bar so I occupied myself in the vinca looking for clover patches, maybe I could find a 4-leafed clover.

Bitsy jumped down from whatever calisthenic she’d just completed and came over to see what I was doing.

“Bits,” I warned, “there’s poison ivy right over there.”

“Oh, I’m not allergic,” she smugly replied.

“Bitsy, practically everybody is allergic to poison ivy.”

Undaunted, facing a bald-faced challenge she reached down, grabbed a hefty patch of the weed and proceeded to rub it all over herself, face, arms, legs, every exposed piece of skin. I watched, disbelieving, seeing somebody more foolish than even I was.

“See?” she said. “I’m not afraid of it.”

Well, we went into the house to find her mother so I could tell what had happened, Bitsy jeering, “Tattle-tale, tattle-tale,” until her mother, sitting in a chair quietly reading a book, now completely engaged, grabbed Bitsy by the arm and dragged her to the kitchen sink where she scrubbed her head to toe with hot soapy water and a scrub brush. I was dismissed to my home.

A few days later my mother took me to the hospital so I could visit Bitsy and wish her a speedy recovery. The nurses said they had never seen such a dreadful reaction to poison ivy.

To this day I give this little innocuous looking plant wide berth.

Dogs

So yesterday I was putzing around in my garden in the backyard, Lily, my husky-mix rescue supervising idly while the bees buzzed and the birds sang in the spring sunshine when behind me it sounded as if a kennel had opened its doors. I turned around to see a tripod pitbull tangling with Lily right behind me, and two atomic streaks going by just beyond them. So my first concern was to get Lily off the tripod, which I did only after he went up on the porch, had a drink from Lily’s water bowl and explored a moment. With Lily shut in the porch, frenzied barking, I turned to the task at hand.

It looked like dogs were everywhere. When my eyes and brain finally focused I could see 3 distinct dogs, tearing all over the place. The tripod went back into his yard easily next door, then a nondescript grizzled black dog followed and the last was what looked like a Benji-Yorkie mix busily peeing on the Shasta daisies I’d just planted.

He turned to see me about to start for him and, ears back dashed over to me as though he’d been looking for me his entire life and *finally!* found me. He stopped just at my feet and I slowly bent down to pick him up.

What a cuddle bug! He nuzzled into my shoulder and it was all I could do to put him in the yard with his buddies. I so wanted to keep this little dog!

His persons apparently were none the wiser. I resumed my digging and planting. Lily returned to her watch over her domain. About half an hour later the back door opened next door and the dogs were called inside.

Private drama.

Weather

I so enjoyed an early Mother’s Day visit from my son. He’s completely booked with his dad’s family’s goings-on and work travel, so I am glad I had a glimpse of him amidst his active life. And his visit was blessed with pristine spring weather– no humidity, bright sunshine, cool breezes.

I should have known.

So hurricane season “officially” begins in the summer, June 1. Instead of following the rules, Mother Nature decides, 4 days after my son’s departure, to sling a messy tropical storm at us. And landfall is right here, the coastline where I live. We began seeing the first rain bands yesterday, more today, much more grey, humidity that soaks your socks inside your shoes and some pretty hefty winds. Though the center of the storm is not expected to come in till tomorrow morning the storm introduces itself to us in its wet and windy chaos long before.

This does not interfere with my rescue dog Lily’s morning constitution. We still go to the park, still ran our 2 + miles around the lake. We then drove to the beach through off-on spitting/deluging rains, gusty winds to see what the surf looked like.

Pretty wild. Nobody in the 70 degree water, either surfing or swimming. I learned that rip currents happen because the winds are pushing the water currents in all directions so though the waves crash like normal on shore underneath them all hell is breaking loose. Not somewhere anyone wants to be. The rescue vehicles patrolled the beaches ensuring nobody was dumb enough to try to outdo nature, which they were not.

But the surf. Wispy froth flying away from waves that crested maybe 30-40 yards offshore. Six-8 foot high, the waves crashed in arcing foam scouring the shoreline of any shells or sea life. My son and I had marveled at the number of periwinkles (tiny mollusks, a delicacy for gulls and other shore birds) washed up with each gentle wave as we ambled along the shoreline.

No periwinkles today.

And after a few days when the storm has turned back to the northeast and begun again in earnest to seek out the warm gulfstream waters the sun will shine, the winds and waves will calm.

Shell

So Lily, my rescue dog and I were having our morning jog around the loop near the beach. It’s been unusually cool with low to no humidity these early spring days, more rain than not, but this morning was sparklingly clear. My son is coming for a few days’ visit (yay!), and I overslept, so with our a.m. constitution, last-minute errands and a few other things I knew we’d be a little pushed.

But we enjoyed the run and as we came up through the town office buildings and walked across the Saturday-empty parking spaces, I spotted it. A tiny fragment of an eggshell. Not sure what kind of bird’s, it was white, faintly dotted brown. Sparrow maybe, or woodthrush.

In my own backyard the former owners had put up a blue bird box with a snake baffle. I hoped there would be occupants this spring but of course no way to know.

Late February I looked over my morning coffee to see a small beaked face peering out of the box. A week or so later, more activity, with nesting materials and much flying in and out. Yesterday afternoon I went out to fill the feeders and as a small, bright blue blur darted past I suddenly heard chaotic tiny cheeps and cries emitting. A family!

So that shell I noticed on our walk. In a few hours’ time it would be crushed by many passers-by’s footsteps to indeterminate powder, blended with the sand.

But I saw it!

Deer-in-headlights moment

Sometimes the unexpected happens.

So this morning after I did my volunteering I drove to the plant nursery where I spend a lot of time and money to return some flats boxes they could reuse. After that I decided to go ahead and mail my brother’s birthday package, so my dog Lily and I drove to the post office.

I got out of my car, took the package out of the trunk, turned to let Lily know I would be right back when all hell broke loose behind me. I was afraid there had been a car wreck in the parking lot only I hadn’t heard a crash, but 4 people were out of their vehicles, one a 4-door compact car, white, and perpendicular behind that was a pickup truck. There was a man behind the pickup truck brandishing something long and lethal looking, and he and the woman in the truck were yelling at the top of their lungs language I wouldn’t repeat anywhere at the 2 young men in the white car. Then everybody started yelling, same language, and I simply froze, clutching my little box in front of me. When the man with the long-stick thing crashed it down in the bed of his truck I turned back to my car but remembered I did not have my cell phone. There would be no calling the police, but they didn’t know this. So I turned back to watch without actually looking at anyone so they wouldn’t come after me, and something in me got me started praying. That they would calm down, that nobody gets hurt, that everybody would get back in their cars and leave.

And that is what happened. One last crashing of the long-stick thing in the truck bed, they got back into the vehicles. As the truck drove by, the woman flung a rather unkind expletive at me, which in the moment seemed so ridiculous it made me laugh, and when the 2 young men in the white car drove by I asked were they all right? They said they were, but they thought it was funny the other guy couldn’t fight like a big boy, that he was threatening them with an axe! I replied I had thought to call the police, there ought to be no axe threatening at the post office which made them laugh. Glad somebody found something funny!

I took my brother’s birthday present in to mail. Nobody raised an eyebrow. Maybe they have sound-proof windows. Axe-proof, too, I hope.

And I thought this was a sleepy little beach town.

My son thought this incident was blog-worthy. I told him ok, but probably any readers I might have would just think I’d made it up.

You can’t make this stuff up folks.

Random thoughts

This is one of those days a friend of mine used to describe as when your forces are scattered. To me it’s just being scatterbrained.

It started off ok, well, sort of. I woke up at around 3 a.m. and could not go back to sleep so when it was about 5 I got up, fed Lily and we went for our run. The thing about this time of year is there is heavy dew on the grass, almost like it rained, so when we run on the road (with our reflective vests) Lily comes in with gritty gray flecks all over her lower legs, paws and underside. We get her wet day towel and dry her off which she loves because she likes nothing better than a good rub down or massage. Then I ate and got ready to volunteer for Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, an emergency food pantry here for in-between food emergencies for people who are on a regular schedule with the other food pantries.

Then we drove to the park near the beach to walk the loop because it was predicted to rain only it did rain so we cut the walk short over the intracoastal.

I decided to do laundry because my son is coming to visit in a week or so and I have piles of clutter so I need something to help me procrastinate going through these and putting stuff away. I really wish I could live by my godmother’s motto: “A place for everything and everything in its place.” It is still grey and on-off rainy so I can’t put this off by going outside and playing in the garden. There is nothing for it I guess. I have to bite the bullet and put this stuff away.

After lunch.

Birdcams, or how to lose track of huge chunks of time

I had never watched a cam of any kind (engine, traffic, shoreline) until I came across a link in a newsletter one day. It was an eagle cam on a farm someplace in Iowa, and they’d been watching this nest for years. In fact the same eagle pair returned every year. I tuned in after the first eaglet had hatched and watching the mom eagle feed the baby had me hooked. Every day I watched this nest and, though I did not know enough to chime in with the chat on the site enjoyed “listening” to their conversations. A chat voyeur I suppose, but I learned extremely important terms for understanding what was going on: when it rained the mother eagle turned herself into “mombrella”. When either parent was on the nest and not feeding the young and maybe got bored with nothing else to do they made “nestorations.”

Then the other babies came along. There was much vying for food at this point. A lot of knocking each other down and out of the way. And it was certainly true that the more aggressive one got whatever tasty morsel of fish, squirrel or some other unfortunate rodent was torn from the carcass. The little legs could not yet support their growing bodies so they sat on their little bums with their legs sticking out in front of them, their soon-to-be lethal talons as yet useless.

Then the babies became stronger and we had much “wingercizing”. This, too could prove a problem if another eaglet was in the way and got knocked over, or worse knocked clear out of the nest. That did not happen much but it did happen to a pretty grim outcome.

Some of these cams are funded by Cornell University and those who love to watch the growing up of the babies and their care along the way, and so are on 24 hours. You’d think the night cam would be pretty boring, nothing to see but a pile of eaglets with their mom or dad, all having their heads under their wings. Well, mostly you’d be right but every so often some idiot racoon gets the idea he might savor a tasty eaglet morsel and ventures up to the nest, only to be met by a fierce mom or dad eagle, beating the life out of the racoon with their wings.

My favorite cam right now is an osprey pair in Missoula, Montana. They call them the Hellgate Ospreys. They haven’t laid any eggs yet but the nest is building.

You should try it, if you’ve got many hours of idle time. Or not.

ATVs, ORVs and motorbikes

So I bumped into an architect on one of my walks with Lily who said the town I have moved to is about 98% built out. Lily has found the 2%, which likely will be claimed by some developer someday. But for now there are no power lines, utility feeders or any other encumbrances except a few surveyors posts with those little pink or orange flags on them. These trails are idyllic places where I can take Lily’s leash off and let her run or explore to her heart’s content. She found one where we used to live, too, with such red clay that in the dry heat of summer it became impenetrable dust that no detergent has been invented to remove it from clothing.

But for now it is a white sandy trail cut through by someone’s thoughtful ATV riding behind some developments. And unless they are riding Lily goes happily along sniffing each small tree and blade of grass.

If they are riding we avoid the trails. Lily does not care for these motor vehicles. Maybe it’s the noise they make. In fact, she “attacks” them if we are riding in the car and she sees one. She begins with a high-pitched yelping that becomes deeper and more meaningful as it approaches, culminating in a salivating snarl-bark as it passes by. Sometimes they honk back in salute to her bravery or annoyance.

This is a mission for Lily. She sits on alert in the back seat, sometimes stepping her front legs on the console between the front seats where she can search them out in earnest. Should one appear the frenzied barking starts as she leaps into the back seat to gain purchase at the window, screaming her barks in my right ear. The ringing generally overtakes the barking. Eventually it subsides, about the same time the offending vehicle has passed us and the barking stops.

Then the cycle begins again. Soon it will be too warm to bring Lily along for rides, only when we drive to her parks for her walks or runs.

It is what she lives for.

Happy Easter

Vagabond Travels - A Man and His Dogs

In honor of Easter Sunday, I thought I’d share a Bible passage from Luke. It’s been on my mind quite a bit over the past couple of weeks. This particular passage is from the “other” Gospel record of the Sermon on the Mount …. I think Matthew’s version is the more popular, but this one from Luke has stuck with me since I was a young man, battling the hate and anger that rises up in me from time to time:

Luke 6:27-38

27) “But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
28)  bless those who curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you.
29)  To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.
30)  Give to everyone who asks of…

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Finally warm?

After one more dip into Jack Frost’s icy chill last night maybe we are finally in warmer temperatures for the duration. Hard to tell. I remember one Easter weekend seeing snowflakes almost as big as the dogwood petals. April. I hope the cold is over. I have more baby plants than I have dish towels to put over them if it freezes again.

And my avocado tree. I promised it that whenever I moved (this being 3 years ago, in the same pot it’s been in) I would put it in the ground. I know they are happier in more tropical temperatures but I promised. Last year it actually had a few blooms but they did not become avocados. As did my pink lemon but they did not become lemons either. Although this year the lemon tree has a lot more buds on it than before. Maybe I will have a lemon or two. But I don’t know about planting it here. Maybe.

I keep telling myself with each spring planting catalog, or everytime I go to a nursery or Lowe’s that I do not have to replace everything I left at my former house right away. So far I think I’ve found just about everything I had, from hummingbird plants to lamb’s ears to butterfly weed to foxglove. And then some but I won’t put in another Russian sage, probably not a vitex either. Too much pruning, too much work.

I planted the blueberries, too and I know they will do well because I have seen wild blueberries on some of my walks with Lily. Mainly for the birds, though. They ate most of them last year. I brought two fig trees with me but gave one away. I don’t think they need two plants to have figs. I guess I’ll find out.

Anyway, I am sore now. I think I’ll go sit in a more comfortable chair, preferably with a comfortable glass of wine.