rites of spring, continued

Another of mother's daffodils

I took this photo while at my mom and dad’s house this morning. The first daffodils are starting to fade, but there is still plenty in bloom. Their Forcythia is especially pretty this year, guess from the mild winter.

I have been neglecting the blog to participate in Holy Week and Easter activities as much as possible while trying to fight off a cold and nasty sore throat. I found a use for my custom made (by Tom Boehm in Madison WI) Baroque low pitch alto recorder. Both pianists were off on Good Friday, so I played it for a Tenebrae service. The hymns were all early chorales (e.g. Hans Leo Hassler’s “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” which Bach featured in the St. Matthew Passion) except for two African American spirituals. Went to Easter Sunrise services at Keystone Lake, then crashed for the day.

Yesterday morning I got up to feed the critters then had a light breakfast and went back to bed. I slept soundly until noon, when someone phoned and hung up just as I reached for it. That amount of rest helped a lot though. It is difficult to nap when we have been having a series of almost perfectly clear spring days, light frost in the morning then quickly warming up to the 60s and 70s F during the day.

It was quite hot in the sun this afternoon, but the birch tree has leafed out enough to provide welcome shade.

The marigold, parsley, alyssm, lobelia, and chive seeds that I planted indoors to transplant later have all produced seedlings. The marigolds are getting their second set of leaves. Outdoors the black seeded Simpson and buttercrunch lettuce, onion sets, spinach, and radishes are all up. Still waiting for the peas. I set in three dahlia roots from my mom — dwarf orange and yellow dahlia and a standard red one.

Plowing a field with a tractor

Tim ploughed the pasture across the road this afternoon. Some trees are starting to leaf out, the maples have red tips on their branches and there are some trees with white flowers, but most of the hardwoods are still bare. The grass is greening up nicely though. The dandelions are out in the yard. They made yellow spots in Bode’s fur when he rolled over them. There are little wild violets, Johnny jump ups, out in the grass too.

After my parents got their old apple tree felled, chopped in pieces, and hauled away in one day last Monday, it took until yesterday to get the stump out. Today they had a hexagonal wood edging and a flower bed ready to be planted. They said the next day after they felled the tree the starlings which they had been trying to discourage from nesting in the tree kept flying around looking for it. In a sadder note, their “Woody” — a woodpecker that had been coming for years — was just as disappointed.

I have a woodpecker showing up at the bird feeder, decided it is a red bellied woodpecker. It had a red cap on its head and black and white striped wings with cream on its neck and what I could see of the chest. I spotted an Eastern towhee at the bird feeder too, first time I had seen one. A pair of swallows circled around me yesterday afternoon while I was out in the yard and then a chickadee pecked his sunflower seed just beyond arm’s reach in the tree when I was hanging out a blanket to dry.

Birds perched on porch rail

Birds, especially that insistant robin, looking in the window is the kind of thing that drives Bode nuts. This pair of cardinals just perched and didn’t try to enter.

With all the bird action, decided to do some research, navigated to the Cornell Ornithology site. Discovered they had Real Player files of songs, so I downloaded an update. Then the fun started. The calls instantly got Bode and Ling Ling’s attention. Bode kept barking at the door and windows because that is where he saw birds before. Ling Ling followed the sound, first trying the electric piano, then walking across the table to the computer. After a while Bode picked up on what Ling Ling was doing and he listened to the computer too. I guess there meaning in that for the difference between dogs and cats, but both my critters are well appreciated.

About Kathy

Perl, MySQL, CGI scripting, web design, graphics following careers as an analytical chemist and educator, then in IT as a database administrator (DBA), programmer, and server administrator. Diagnosed with Mitochondrial Myopathy in 1997.
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