Hi friends,
I wrote before about the little family of robins that I could watch from my kitchen window. It turned out that there were three little robins in the nest.The mother robin began to have a difficult time adjusting herself to sit on them all. When the father or mother came to feed them their heads poked up higher and higher, as they got progressively bigger, and while Jeannie and Grant, Jesse, Ali and Jenny were here for my birthday we saw the strongest little one trying to get up enough courage to leave the nest. It put out its wing, and later tried to hop over as we watched, but it didn't happen that day. Maybe it happened the next morning after all our own family left for their home at the coast. I found the little nest was empty then, and saw the parents from time to time. Later I noticed a big, round fluffed up robin baby in the little magnolia tree. He sat very still and looked upward in different directions occasionally, maybe looking for a parent to bring him some tasty worm. When I looked about a half hour later he was gone, and I haven't seen any of the family snce, so I think the little birds successfully left their nest.
There was quite a squacking from the big Douglas fir tree yesterday, and I was convinced the little robins were hiding out there and calling to their parents, but later Ben and I saw the beautiful little reddish squirrel with the white lines around its eyes and the white chest. It lives in our woodpile, at least all winter. He was making the very same sqeaky squacking sounds I thought were a robin baby, but later we saw him leaping around gracefully and quickly from tree to tree, and chasing a sleek, little lithe lady squirrel. I told Uncle Ben that I would like caps on both chimneys, both to keep in the sparks from the cedar shake roof, and also to keep out the squirrels. We had a litter of baby squirrels in our small kitchen chimney a few years ago. It is very strange to hear them in the chimney when you are inside the house. I'm convinced that there were some in our big stone family room chimney last year. There was quite a lot of scrabbling around in there for a little while. We haven't used either chimney for a few years, and before we use them I think we will have to make sure they are clean of nesting materials.
The quail are doing well. They don't have any little ones yet. I think they live in our big Douglas Fir all the time. Probably we'll see the parents out with ten or thirteen or seventeen little balls of fluff following behind them one of these days. The little ones are tiny. Very tiny. They soon get big, though and we get to watch them grow as they parade through the garden on a regular basis. A beautiful quail flew into our big glass deck door. I saw it lying dead there the other morning. Dear Ben quietly took it away and won't tell me where it is. He is always so kind to me.
The lilacs are in bloom, and we will soon have wild roses coming into bloom. I want to plant some tame roses on the hillside with the wild ones. The presense of the wild ones proves that it is a very good spot for roses and I would like some that last longer and smell sweeter than the lovely wild roses do. There are two large native to this area, wild bushes with long white flowers on them in the back, too. The long flowers are three or four inches long, but when you look closely you can see that they are really made up of very many tiny flowers. We also have had graceful wild Saskatoon bushes in bloom. They are finished now, but soon there will be dark Saskatoon berries can be used in pies. I never do it, but other people do, and the berries are loved by birds, too.
We don't allow any poisons or herbicides on our property. It all drains into the lake eventually, anyway, and we don't want to contribute to that, but we also want to keep it safe here for birds and little animals. If we ever need to make a vegetable garden to feed ourselves we will not have damaged the soil. We think that nature knows how to balance ecology and that ants and spiders, lady bugs, and aphids and all kinds of other larger and also tiny bug-animals all have their important places in the web of life.
Ben has had a very sore back for the past week. I have been giving him massages with a German product, and a Chines product, and also he has been putting ice packs on it as advised by his chiropractor. She has an office in the same building where he has his own office, so it is easy for him to get to his appointments. This chiropractor also treats animals, even big ones like horses.
Today we went to lunch at Harry and Giselles. They live nearby. There are beautiful riding horses in a field near where they live, and the little ones are beautiful as they chase each other around. The horses are being boarded there for owners who don't have land.
The lunch invitation was the occasion of a rare visit with Carol and David, whom we used to know almost fifty yers ago in Ontario, as did Giselle and Harry, so it was like "old home week", and we had a wonderful time together, because when people are really your friends it seems as though you can just pick up where you left off, even if many years have passed since you've been together. Things are still as comfortable as ever. Carol is a skilled quilter, and they had come in their motor home so that she could attend a big quilter's exhibition where she is also displaying her work. I would like to go tomorrow or Sunday to see all the displays. Carol gave me a little wall hanging a few years ago, and the colours and design are very beautiful. It is a regulr piece of art on our wall. Harry took some photographs on his deck of all of us after the luncheon, and I have them already in my computer, although he took them only this afternoon. Too bad I don't know how to send them along to the forum for you to see us all together.
The forum has been extremely slow to download all day and this evening. It really wasted a lot of my time, but I think I have pretty well caught up now with today and also with the posts when I was away. Ben is in bed and now I'm going too, because it is well after midnight. I hope you all have a very fine day. It is already 3:20 pm in the afternoon of tomorrow for you now. Here it was warm and a little overcast today, with very high cloud. It is supposed to get progressively warmer over the next few days, and the weather is supposed to stabilize to sunny and bright. I intend to plant some seeds and flowers tomorrow, on Saturday. After I read the Globe and Mail over breakfast, of course!
I hope this wasn't too long, and that you learned some new words and enjoyed hearing about life here.
Warm greetings to all, Mary
