Only natural

There is very little point to this entry, I warn you, except that I love my house (not that it wouldn't be nicer with $50K massaged into the kitchen with a toothbrush and boiled linseed oil).

Nature. Not a pretty thing, but it has its moments. On the Fourth, Doug and I found two sets of moose tracks in the driveway. Great big ones like a sandwich plate (a saucer at least) and little demitasse-saucer sized. Moose and mosling. We never see them but they're here, like Fair Folk.

Yesterday I surprised a hen turkey and about seven little tiny chicks in the same part of the driveway. They proceeded into the brush with dignity.

The chickens now come and check out the courtyard garden as soon as Doug lets them out in the morning, and if you come home from work and sit there and say "Hey chickens," very softly, Auk and Buffy and Spike and Faith rush up and ask to be given sunflower seeds out of your hand, followed more discreetly by the others. Today I grabbed Spike and put her on my lap. "Help, murder! " she screeched. "Oh. Food." And ate out of my hand.
A couple days ago Asterix got so jealous he tried to eat sunflower seeds, but they just weren't his thing. He's still jealous. Today, as I had Spike on my lap, Buffy (who also gets jealous; chickens do have expressions) fluttered onto my lap to crowd Spike. And then Joyce got crazy and flew up onto my lap, too, only there wasn't room, so she veered onto the firepit and knocked over the can of sunflower seeds. A very popular move.

I love the chickens. I also love the baby greenfrogs, about the size to sit on a fifty-cent piece (a little bigger than a dollar coin for you youths out there). There are four or five or six living in the courtyard Rubbermaid pond, and maybe thirty in the back puddle. Only there's one less than there used to be somewhere, because Cordelia was playing with a stiff little froggy corpse and eventually ate it. I guess you gotta be fast. And I guess it's good the frogs lay a lot of eggs.

Rather faint from horror after this, I went and sat in the hottub as it got darker. The hummingbird is usually around sitting on the TV antenna of an evening. No hummingbird. I did see many bright yellow goldfinches, the redwings from across the road, the rosebreasted grosbeak couple, the purple finches, the song sparrows -- and I would HEAR the hummingbird, but he wasn't in any of his usual spots. I heard him pass seven times and glimpsed him drinking from the feeder once. I found out that since there were canaille like the damn huge sparrows on his aerial, he was sitting on the porch swing about eight feet away, watching me. He was very calm about the whole thing, actually as hunkered down and relaxed as I have ever seen him, occasionally streching his wings or going for a quick trip around the house. We watched each other comfortably till the finches and the sparrows left and the cardinal couple flew in, and then the aerial was empty and the hummingbird could go sit there, as was only proper.