Sunday Serenity

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ Wendell Berry

~~~

xoabb

Daffodils! Raccoons! Grapefruit!

When Spring seems to be forever in the wings

The daffodils act like they'll never bloom

And then, suddenly, they do!

"You lookin' at me??"

Racoon on the down spout

Just thrilled to

Have her photo taken

When citrus is shipped on December 16, 2010

And delivered April 5, 2o11

The quality of the fruit

Decidedly suffers

~

And how is your week going?

~~~

xoabb

expecting asparagus and morels!

and soon!

A Verdant Old Vaccary Void of...

Deer & most other Varmints...

Photo taken today @ 3:10pm

Thankfully the deer are finding good thing to eat other than the plants in my yellowing (too much rain) Victory (or not) garden and those of my neighbors. Of course, that 12 foot fence certainly doesn't hurt keeping them on the ~right~ side of the fence - and is obviously most necessary! Notice at the bottom there's also 2 or so feet of chicken wire to keep the smaller vermin out as well. And yes, this community garden is in the middle of the lower pasture* of the old Fodor Farm. 

Quite verdant, as you can see, this old *vaccary, 

(i.e. ~cow pasture~ in Old English).  

~~~

xoabb

expect anything!

ABC Wednesday - It's V!

(as if you couldn't tell.)

Do join us!

What do you get...

...when wild ducks and domestic ducks "get together" (if you know what I mean) and make baby ducks?

Aside from some obvious pompadorable,

you also get a whole lot of strange and unusual! 

~~~

xoabb

POST UPDATE:  The above are Manky Mallards!  If you hop on over to Charlie's post he wrote about these ducks on 10000 Birds, you'll find a wonderful explanation of these wonderful ducks.  Thanks to Charlie (& Louise who led me there). Oh, and Mike, another writer of 10000 Birds also posted about the ducks - and I'm really not sure mine are Manky's after reading all of this!

Gone Fishin'

As some of you know, we live on a pond.  There are four families that share this wondrous piece of water and it's shores, and we have worked diligently to make this a living, breathing, healthy entity.  As a collective foursome, we decided to "save" this water hole, and for our efforts, we've been told what we can do to further our pond's life, by our local governent, though we four pond owners had that very same intent in the first place.  Ah well, at least on this very minor of levels, there wasn't a huge disagreement on how things should be done! Government...local or country-wide...what a crock!!

Anywho - the above fish is a healthy bass caught in our pond.  It's a testimony to the well-being of the balance of this very dear body of water.  (Oh, and below are some of the 25, not counting all the little ones we threw back, bluegill/sunnys we caught.) 

Whatever - freshwater fish???  Good Eatin'!!!

BTW - I cleaned 'em all - my dad taught me well!

~~~

xoabb

Hey You! Is it Safe Yet??

Fun on the golf course...well...not for everyone:

Last week Jules, Mental Mama, a good friend of ours and I played a round of golf. Quite poorly, all of us, but that's entirely another story. (And nothin' that a nice Margarita at the end of the round didn't take care of, thank you!) In the middle of the round, we watched the above fellow (a young groundhog) slowly waddle across the fairway in front of us, seemingly without a care in the world, until, all of a sudden, a young hawk (I think, but could have been a young osprey) swooped down heading straight at groundhog! Groundhog was quite close to the tree and had the good sense to run as quickly as he could to it. Then hawk, because he was only looking at groundhog and not where he was flying, promptly managed to somehow run into the tree trunk.  Thank God for that, or there would have been carnage, and I don't like my golf game disturbed by carnage, thank you very much! After he got himself together, hawk flew to a low branch on another tree close by, but all the while staring at groundhog, who was not moving a muscle. 

We were close enough to see hawk getting ready to once again try to make groundhog his lunch when, out of nowhere, mocking bird flew in and started attacking hawk! That mocking bird pestered hawk so thoroughly, he finally gave up and flew away.  Groundhog stayed frozen right where he was, looking all around for a good five minutes before he finally skedaddled fast across the next fairway and into the brush.  That little old mockingbird saved the day as far as I'm concerned! (Yeah, yeah I know, that old circle of life thing...PLEASE, just not in front of me!) NICE!

P. S. - I was sure I'd also taken a most ~fabulous~ picture of mocking bird attacking hawk on the tree branch, but when I got home, I discovered I had taken a picture of an empty tree branch. That's what happens when you're old and forget your reading glasses at home, the outcome of which is you don't have a snowball's chance in you-know-where of seeing your camera monitor clearly. Hey! I guess was lucky I got ground hog's picture!  

~~~

xoabb

P.P.S. - Regarding that first picture of the hand of cards for yesterday's Y post:  A yarborough in bridge (or whist) is a hand that has no card higher than a 9, i.e., no honors cards.  Nope, that is not a good thing.

My Favorite Flower EVER! Really!

The Hydrangeas are out in their full regalia and I've fallen in love!  

Have you ever seen any flower more beautiful???  

(Please do not go here or here....or here, or..darn...again!)  

(It wouldn't be good!)

We have hoya bushes - sculpted at that - lining our front walk-way.  

They're old, huge, out of control and ugly.  

I've decided it would be just the thing to do to rip

 them out and then plant hydrangeas like the ones pictured above.

Wouldn't that be lovely?  Think GB'll see things my way??

Two blossoms on the same plant - one blue....

...and one decidedly lavender

Did you know you can change the color of your hydrangeas?

Yes, it's a banner bloomin' year!  

~~~

The Squirrel Wars revisited:  

You may remember I've been at war with the above fellow for the last year now.  He's one smart squirrel and has "out-foxed" me no matter what I've tried to come up with to keep him out of the birdfeeders.  Well, I was at The Wild Bird center and overheard a gal talking about how she's gone strictly to safflower seeds as grackles and squirrels won't eat them.  Hmmm, I thought, give me some of that!! What you see is a safflower "cake" that fits handily in the feeder. See the expression on Smartie's face?  I don't think he looks very happy, do you?  He jumped off right after I took this and hasn't been back!  Yippee!  (The picture isn't the greatest as the feeder was swinging wildly and I took it through the kitchen window.)

Sometimes the Circle of Life...

Is abruptly interrupted...

And ended...

~~~

I was eagerly looking forward to the end of the day so I could take new photos of the robin's nest. I had really been expecting to find a fifth egg in the nest or mama robin sitting on her eggs. You can imagine my dismay when I looked in the nest and saw that it was bare. Not an egg to be seen. All that's left is just the tiniest speck of blue in the middle of it. I looked around the base of the tree and found just one of the four eggs, and as you can see, it had become some predator's meal. The yolk was "fresh" so whoever did this, it was recent. Since the nest is in an enclosed courtyard that no mammal or snake has access to, it must have been a bird - maybe a crow - I think.

It's a rainy, chilly, dismal, depressing day here.

Fits my mood perfectly.

~~~

xoabb

The Facts of Life...QUACK QUACK

I'm at work. My cell phone rings. It's my son, Bly, and he sounds more than a little worried.

Bly: "Mom! I'm on the deck and there are these two mallards on the pond. The male has just climbed on the back of the female, he's grabbed her neck with his beak and now is holding her head underwater! He's trying to kill her! He's not letting her up!"

Me: "Um, well, not really, that's just the way ducks make more duckies, Bly."

Bly, sounding relieved: "Wow! I really thought he was trying to murder her. Man, that's violent!"

Me: "Exactly what would you have done if this wasn't a case of mallard hanky-panky?"

Bly: "Thrown rocks at him until he stopped trying to kill her."

My son...such a gallant...even to girl duckies.

~~~

Happy 1st birthday to our very own
Little Miss Magic!xoxoxoauntie&unclegbxoxoxoxo

~~~

xoabb

Turkeys in the Tree (Branches)

Someone please explain to me how big big turkeys

manage to hold tight to tiny tiny tree branches....
...all night long

~~~

xoabb

The Vineyards Above San Jose

Today GB and I went on a little adventure to visit, among other things, one of my very favorite places in the whole wide world - and here in California there are so many of these wonderful places, it would take many many days to see every one of them. Can you guess what it is?

Some of the grape vines at the Savannah-Chanelle Vineyard.The Santa Clara Valley (and San Jose) is in the distance.

Vineyards, baby, we're talkin' vineyards!
We visited this vineyard on the recommendation of my both my brother and seester. Aside from the Napa Valley, it's Care's and brother Bbum and his wife Chrissy's local favorite. I think the views might have something to do with this as well as the fine wine they produce.

We drove to the top of the mountain first to see the sights - and sights we did see! When we rounded one corner our friend pictured there was peeing away on the tree, just like any good old male domestic dog. I stopped in the middle of the road - never a particularly wise thing to do on a curvy, narrow mountain road - to take this. Wish I could have captured his insolent face of just seconds before this was taken. Mr. Coyote (I'm assuming female coyote's do not lift their legs to pee, thus that is a male) had just given me his equivalent of a human flipping someone off. He then turned to lope off to do those things coyotes do.

This next picture is the view from the top of the mountain. We went up Big Basin Way. When we got to the top we had a choice of Skyline Drive toward San Francisco, or down a road to Santa Cruz. Hmmm...maybe tomorrow we'll venture there, but today? We're turnin' around and going to the winery. I see a tasting in my future!

While we have snow back east, here it's spring!

Another vine field at Savannah-Chanelle. It was incredibly beautiful. 
Tho February and March is the rainy season here, 
there is still so much beauty!

We came, we tasted and, as you can see, we stocked up!
If you can find Savannah-Chanelle wines, they're good!

The pinot noir is my favorite. GB's is the syrah port.


~~~
xoabb