This year's kitten

The kitten noise underneath the front porch has turned out to be an only kitten. It's a bit on the wild side yet, and quite stand-offish as far as dealing with people, but we're working on that. It thinks it owns the back yard, and its poor mother keeps having to call it off from trying to take on the mule deer. I am presuming that, given enough time, it will figure out that deer are dangerous, and we're not. But for now I usually see it in flashes, running for its life when it sees me. (And never mind that the grown cats it hangs out with are affectionate to the point of being pests. While it trusts them on other matters of judgment, I guess it's decided they're deluded when it comes to humans.)

Seen out the window this morning...

Usually we only get two mule deer fawns at a time (and sometimes only one), but sometimes we have three, as you can see. They're getting pretty big (that's a full size doe they're with), but they still have spots.

The beginning of spring around here...

... is generally a 'two steps forward, one step back' sort of affair. This week was a steps forward week, on the whole. I saw the first wood violet in bloom in the lawn. Just one. The bird song is different, louder, more populated. The tree in the neighbor's back yard is in bud. The apple tree out back here is in what I call pre-bud. You can't quite classify the changes as buds yet, and sometimes you can't quite be sure you're seeing changes, but my spring hungry heart grasps at every swelling and texture change that might turn into a bud, and sometimes is rewarded with something approaching certainty. Today, to my astonishment, I found a live caterpillar in the lawn, under the barren, dead-looking plum trees. I picked it up and it curled into as tight a curl as it could manage. I carried it inside to prove its existence, before carrying it carefully back to where I'd found it.

The grass is greening up in places, and growing, not gangbusters, but growing. The air is taking on new smells. We're not to full spring yet, by any means, but we've been handed the early signs.

A pair of Canada geese flying overhead cracked me up with their honks. I don't know what they were trying to tell each other, but no two honks seemed the same, and they kept up a constant back and forth the whole time I could keep tabs on them. It definitely seemed to be a conversation, and if you'd told me that the gander was protesting that he wasn't lost, I'm not sure but that I'd be willing to believe it. Their flight was straight and strong, though, gobbling up the miles.

It's supposed to rain tonight, and then drop below freezing. How anything survives weather like this beats me, but spring after spring, new life gets tossed into conditions like this. Calves. Colts. Seedlings. The first soft leaves of perennials taking another go at it. The first flowers of the year, which have a tendency to look more fragile than summer flowers. Go figure.

You just never know...

Saturday I heard peculiar noises out back. Peeking out the window I saw, I kid you not, a hot air balloon taking off from the vacant lot that adjoins our back yard.

Ah, ha, says I, I've heard those sounds many times before, on television, on footage showing hot air balloons. I've even heard those noises in person a time or two, while watching hot air balloons getting filled or replenished with hot air at one event or another. Silly me, that I couldn't figure out I had a hot air balloon in my back yard without seeing it. Those distinctive bursts of whooshing could have told me, all by themselves - if I'd merely been able to imagine that I'd have a hot air balloon out back.

Which I couldn't. Not without seeing it.

That sort of thing has simply never happened around here. The old brain couldn't make the leap, I guess. (At any rate, it didn't.)

The balloon was tethered, and was giving rides as part of some celebration associated with the opening of the new Chamber of Commerce office, or so I'm told. Somehow I'd missed the PR run-up to it. (On the whole, the small town grapevine is highly overrated, folks.)

I didn't go for a ride. I saved my money and stayed on the ground, enjoying the spectacle for free, and laughing over the fact that a birds-eye view of our little ramshackle house was temporarily part of a tourist attraction.

I took some short walks, too, going up and down the way to give myself the good fun of seeing other people noticing the balloon for the first time. For my small trouble, I was treated to kids jumping up and down. Balloons seem to do that to kids. OK, I saw some mighty cheerful and delighted adults. Balloons seem to turn a goodly percentage of adults into kids, somehow. Me included. Ahem.

They gave rides Sunday, too. So I had two mornings full of unexpected fun brought practically to my doorstep. Such a deal.

Alas, poor Yorick: Mule deer edition

People who lived here before us left behind some animal skulls as yard decorations. Not my thing.

But the deer that come through our yard from time to time are taking care of it. They are eating the skulls, bit by bit.

This is not a dainty procedure. When they want a better angle, they roll the skull around. They also whack it mightily with their hooves to crack it and break bits off.

I guess they want the minerals.

The first time I saw the fawn eating on it, it struck me as a bit strange, even creepy. I'm not sure why that is. I'm used to it now. More or less. Kind of.

I can't help wondering how many of our fossil finds were chewed out of all resemblance to their original state before they were fossilized. I presume paleontologists take this sort of thing into account? (I'm presuming ancient animals also needed minerals, and got them where they could.)

Picture note: Taken mid-July of this year, out a back window of our house.

Gardening notes: Growing self-bagging melons, etc.

The deer have come into town again (they trade off between town living and farm and forest living off and on through the year), and are doing a fairly good imitation of goats as far as my flowers go. And something is chewing on my tomato plants as well. I keep holding off and holding off putting up fences and netting, like most people do in this town. I'd rather try to find something mule deer don't like to eat. (Cue music for "The Impossible Dream"...)

This is not to mention that I tried several types of flowers I'd never grown before this year. With not very good results. Make that rather bad results.

All in all, the garden in its present state is nothing to write home about, unless you count one volunteer hollyhock plant way off away from everything, nearly lost in a sea of weeds in the transition zone into the vacant lot. This plant is only about three feet high but is blooming its fool head off, in the prettiest single-bloom hollyhocks you could ever hope to see. Sometimes the deer eat every bloom on my fancier hollyhocks that I planted near the house from nursery stock last year, but leave one or two of three of the primitive blooms on this one way off in no man's land. Sigh. Sometimes it gets crazy with blooms before they get to it, though. We enjoy it as we can.

On the upside, the deer feel so much at home in my yard now that a few nights ago a doe brought her very young fawn by to browse out back. How can you hold a grudge against an animal that brings her baby by, all legs and wobbles and appetite, and lets you watch out a back window, not more than ten or fifteen or twenty feet away? OK, so the light was fading fast and we could barely see the baby, except for its silhouette, but that was a treat.

On the further upside, I only bought the "fancy" hybrid hollyhocks at the nursery because I gave up trying to find the old-fashioned kind that I like best. I was hoping that the hybrids would produce seed that might revert, sooner or later, to single blooms -- exactly like I have on the plant out in no man's land. If the deer leave me any blooms long enough to go to seed, I'm going to have a heyday with that seed. And perhaps I will go to fences of some sort, at least for whatever part of the yard I designate for a cottage garden, thick with hollyhocks. Not to mention whatever area I give over to trying to raise vegetables. I don't mind sharing a few flowers with gourmet-minded deer, but this being wiped out over and over is getting real old.

Speaking of edibles, I have to admit I get a kick out of this idea for self-bagging melons left in a comment at a post over at The Common Room.

The first wave of spring

The first wave of solid spring hit about last Thursday, I think it was, and lasted through yesterday. Today doesn't seem to be quite sure which season to join. I'm sitting here wondering how long I can hold out in my cotton skirt with sandals. A more-sensible person would have opted for warmer clothes by now, but... but... I don't want to go back to warmer clothes. I. am. so. ready. for. spring.

It amazes me how quickly life springs in spring. The first day of really spring-like weather we had butterflies. I never saw a caterpillar. Just, boom, here were butterflies. Yesterday I saw a ladybug (aka ladybird beetle), full-grown and bright. We've had swarms of small bugs, names unknown to me, that seem to have come out of nowhere. Violets bloomed all over the yard, all of a morning. I can look out in the morning and again in the evening and see a difference in plants all over the yard. Sometimes, in spring, the saying "just watching the grass grow" isn't altogether a joke. Especially if you watch the shrubs and trees and bulbs and perennials letting loose, sometimes by inches a day.

So, of course, I'm outside as much as possible, "just watching the grass grow" and playing with - changing - garden plans I made in the winter. Gardening in my mind.

I. am. so. ready. for. spring.

Tuesday update: A bit windy, cold and stormy today, off and on. Rain. Then snow. Then...

Did I mention that our seasons around here tend to come in waves, advancing and receding, advancing and receding?

Or that I'm ready for spring? Spring that stays a while? Not that winter doesn't have its charms, but...

Color feast entry (or would that be entree?)

Does the green outweigh the grey, do you think? (In other words, is it colorful enough for a color feast? Possibly not, but I hope it'll sneak in as warm, heartening, or cheery.)

This shot was taken from inside the house, through a window, the end of October. There were two or three other deer in the back yard, but this trio looked especially at home. We keep the back semi-wild for the fun of it, and are repaid with scenes like this. (Actually, they sometimes also bed down in the more-manicured front lawn, too. Deer around here aren't terribly shy.)

For those of you not up on wildlife of Oregon, those are mule deer. The ears should explain the name.

Previous related post: On color feasts, dog years, and Leap Day, etc