Category Archives: my garden

Owls bring the night in.

birds, my garden, poetry, , , , ,

In the late fall I was sitting here at my desktop after dark when I heard an owl in my back yard. I knew it was an owl because he sounded just like the ones in the movies. I don’t think I had encountered one in person ever.

But I didn’t know what species he might be. I spent a good hour listening to various owls on Cornell University’s site All About Birds, and the owl cooperated by demonstrating his distinctive call many times. He came another night not long afterward. For a while that first night I thought perhaps he was a Barred Owl, but eventually I knew for sure that he was a Great Horned Owl.

In my research I found advice about how to build a platform for this owl to nest on, how high up to attach it, and that it should go up in November so that the owls might find it when they go looking for good nesting sites in February. I did wish that I could start on one more project like that, but it was obviously not the right thing for me this year.

Probably everyone has more familiarity with owls than I do, but if you’d like to hear the calls of five owls this is a helpful Audubon page that limits itself to just that many: Identify Five Owls

You can guess how honored I felt that such a creature had visited me, even if he couldn’t be seen. His voice seemed full of romance, and let me in on the secret drama of the night. Of the five owls on the linked page, his call is surely the most pleasing, low and soft. So many owls are screechy.

Richard Wilbur wrote a poem about an owl’s voice. His own voice is more pleasant to me than that of the Barred Owl that he writes about; maybe that’s why someone came up with the explanation for a child, and why I like his poem so much. You can listen to him reading it: here.

A BARRED OWL

The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

-Richard Wilbur,  from Mayflies: New Poems and Translations. © 2000

The seeds dropped out.

my garden, wildflowers, , ,

When my Landscape Lady suggested Delta Sunflowers for my front garden, she said they would reseed themselves year after year. Those in her own garden have done that, and she gave me my original plants from her excess of volunteers when they came up in May of 2017. My plants did make their own starts in succeeding springtimes, but not very many, which I think has something to do with the thick bark mulch. The seedlings that did emerge were not in the right places, so I had to transplant them.

Here I will insert three pictures I took on the dry east side of California’s Central Valley before I ever knew what these sunflowers were, or dreamed that this species would end up in my own garden. These shots show how well they do with no water at all, in temperatures often well above 100°, all summer long. They just keep going.

Last fall and this, I saved some flower heads from my plants, but I could not see any seeds in them. They are very stiff and prickly by the time they are dry enough to be certain the seeds will have matured. This year my second picking of them I set on the workbench as I was going into the house, and there they sat for a couple of weeks, where I walked past many times a day.

One day I noticed seeds under them – the hidden seeds had simply fallen out. I knocked each bristle brush flower hard against the wood and more seeds came out, so now I have a good collection. I can start them myself in the greenhouse and have some sturdy seedlings to plant in exactly the right spots next spring. 🙂

 

Dancers in the wind.

birds, my garden, nature, ,

My reward for eating breakfast in a civilized manner was a first-row seat at the birds’ impromptu gala. Every species of little bird I’ve ever seen was in my garden at once, even the titmouse and bluebird, and the Bewick’s wren, those three that I rarely see. In whatever direction I looked, one was hopping around a tree or a path or in transit across the garden.

Instead of carrying my bowl to the computer in the corner, I sat at the table looking straight through the glass across the patio where I could take in the chapel feeder rocking more violently than usual in the wind, and the wisteria vine above it, gently dropping long yellow leaves to pirouette all the way down. The birds who like seeds flitted and flew from their chapel to their fountain spa and made up their aerial choreography on the fly, riding the current of every sudden gust and gale.

Sparrows and juncos, house finches and goldfinches, scribbled wild and invisible designs in the air as they swooped from the plum tree down to the birdbath, and to pots under the fountain to peck around for a few seconds among the hens and chicks, and or newly-planted violas.

It seemed that even their pushing each other off their perches was part of the joy of the morning, and occasionally two or three would do a synchronized pattern of fancy footwork that carried them a distance around the fountain’s rim in a chorus line. One sparrow hopped off a pot down to the ground, but made the trip by means of a high arch — maybe just to feel the lift under his wings. Because it’s fun.

Enjoy the weather!

Gifts from earth and oven.

church, my garden, other gardens, , , , ,

I’ve never seen this before, a tomato that looks good enough to eat, but when you cut it open, its seeds are sprouting new tomato plants! This one was grown by my neighbor, one of my favorite orange varieties, and why I didn’t try to eat it sooner I don’t know… I left it on the counter, saving it, I guess, for a special lunch…? But then I stopped really seeing it, until yesterday morning I decided to eat it for breakfast. Whoa! What a surprise.

This morning a friend saw the picture and said, “Plant it inside, quick!” and I realized that that is exactly what I wanted to do, so I dug it out of the trash and planted the whole thing just under the soil.

Neighbor Kim took me on a walk this morning to a house where she wanted to pick persimmons, with permission, the Fuyu variety that I’ve mentioned before.

And yesterday I visited Mr. Greenjeans’ place to see the updated garden and how his trees have been pruned. I gave him some Painted Lady Runner Bean seeds, and when we were looking at his Chaste Tree, he gave me seeds right off it. I didn’t know about this tree, but his has been living in a 5-gallon pot for many years and is perfectly happy. Where I found this picture just now it says they don’t like their roots to stay wet, so that sounds ideal for my garden! I will plant them this month.

He also has a new apple tree, a Winterstein, developed by Luther Burbank. It bears its fruit in December! That’s why it’s still looking fresh and green, though it seems to be a little young yet for fruit-bearing.


In my own garden I have fresh and green ornamental cabbage just planted, bok choy sprouts coming up between the rows of peas, and the Painted Lady bean that will not give up until the frost kills it. Being stripped of all its foliage and ripened fruit (dry bean pods) and cut back nearly to the ground does not take the urge to grow out of this perennial runner bean; it just starts climbing up again. The white flies like the new leaves it is putting out.

Back to yesterday – I was happy to be in the church kitchen and to get my hands in the dough, as another parishioner and I baked Communion bread. I also made these five loaves that are traditionally eaten during the Vigil service we have in the evening the night before any of the Twelve Great Feasts.

We often end up with several sets which we keep in the freezer to have on hand, but this week we spared only enough dough (4 oz. each) for one set of five, because we were focusing on the holy bread for the Eucharist. While we are shaping and baking the dough we do not chat but always try to keep in mind Jesus Christ, Who is the Bread of Life…

…and Who feeds us soul and body by many gifts every day,
which He has blessed the earth to give.
Thank you, our loving Father!