Waxwings and More

Out of anything bad there is usually a "good". How often have we heard this and still it is true. We have ivy on the side of the house. Now ivy is a "bad plant", nonnative and invasive. Invasive, did I say invasive? Well that is sure true. We got it off the trees last year and now after the rains it is half way up the trunks again. It makes a wonderful hiding place for all those little four footed lifeforms that we don't like to talk about. What could be wonderful about this plant? I will show you some pictures of what can be wonderful about ivy.

The last week we have had flocks of Cedar Waxwings enjoying the ivy berries!!! I have pyricantha planted for them to eat but they would rather have the ivy berries. For anyone that loves these beautiful birds I would say Ivy is a Great plant!!! Two years ago we had a flock of Western and Cassin's Kingbirds, at least 40, eating the ivy. We also have Starlings coming though dining on our specials.

The pictures aren't all that great but I haven't had the camera out when I have been sitting closer to them. They are in the trees next to the house and then they come down and line up for the fountain on the pine or this tree.

They come down, sometimes 15 at a time and take a drink and then go back up into the ivy for more lunch. I must admit the fountains are getting pretty messy with ivy seeds that are running through these wonderful birds!

I was sitting out on the back patio yesterday morning eating breakfast when
the whole flock came down into the trees and fountain. I was only 5 feet away. Of course I had my coffee and not my camera so you will just have to picture it in your head!! It was a quite a sight.

Here are two of them. Click on the pictures to see a little better.

The yard has been very busy the past couple of weeks. Here is a lady goldfinch waiting her turn at one of the feeders.

Mr Goldfinch looking as handsome as he can. There have been lots of babies in the yard. Mainly House Sparrows so far but a few House Finch and one set of Lesser Goldfinch that I have seen. I think the funniest sight is the parents bringing the babies to the feeders and the babies will be sitting in the feeder right in all the food and they are begging to be fed. They catch on pretty fast though.

***

Other birds that have been here over the past two weeks:

Spotted Towhee
California Towhee

Brown headed Cowbirds
Brewer Blackbirds

Western Kingbird

Cooper's Hawk

House Sparrow
House Finch

Lesser Goldfinch

American Goldfinch

Bushtits

Hooded Oriole

Downy Woodpecker

Nuttall's Woodpecker

Oak Titmouse

American Crow

Scrub Jay

Anna's Hummingbird

Allen Hummingbird

Blackchinned Hummingbird

Blackheaded Grosbeak

Mourning Dove

Ringed Turtle Dove

European Starlings

Mockingbirds
Turkey Vulture flying over the house.

Redtail Hawk flying over

Mallard Ducks flying over

Think that is all but I might be missing something.

The flowers are bursting out with all the wonderfully warm weather. I replanted the rose garden last fall and it is showing off some beautiful flowers. I was going to make sure I wrote down all the names before the plants grew too much to get to the tags but guess what I didn't do. You will have to do with the pictures without the names!!! Maybe next year.....

This is a minature rose

Jerusalem Sage looking good.

Martha Washington Geranuim flowering and a few more pots of stuff.

Thanks to the Crows we also have some "fun" thing in the fountains. I had to clean one of them the other week as there was something dead in it. I couldn't tell what it was as they had just brought a part of the fur down to eat. I might have been part of skunk that they found. Something like that. Disgusting anyway. They like to bring all their found treasures down to a water source and get it wet before they eat it. If I didn't like the crows so much I would be very, very unhappy!!! I guess it is one more of those good things with the bad. Here is what is normally in the birdbath. Some kind of chicken bone.

I do try and get out in the morning to check out what they have left because if I don't guess who likes to get out there to get something to eat!!! Luckily he can't get into this birdbath but if they drop in on the ground when they are done it can be a problem. They say chicken bones are bad for the dog and I don't want any more Vet bills!!! He hasn't been stung by a bee or anymore foxtails in his eye yet this year so that is good!!

Taft Gardens

(click on pictures to enlarge so you can really see them)

****

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to be able to visit the Taft Gardens in Ojai. The Organic Garden and Herb Society had planned a field trip with the help of one of their past speakers, Mike Tardif of Plant Picasso. He is friends with the owner, John Taft so was able to let us into the grounds.
I had heard about Taft Gardens several months ago from someone who had been there in the past. She sang it's praises so highly I wanted to go so I checked on the Internet for information about it. I was very sad to read that the gardens had been closed to the public. When I got the email telling about the field trip I was So Excited!!!
Well, now that I have been there I will have to tell you it was way better than I even thought it would be. Tuesday was one of those very special days. The weather was perfect, the company was great and the garden was out of this world.

I don't know a lot of the names of these flowers but I will put the up here for the enjoyment of all.

Large patches of these were breathtaking.







When John Taft started these gardens he put in two different types of plants. One from South Africa and one from Australia . There are also California natives. We were told it has one of the largest collections of proteas from South Africa.

This gives a feeling of how peaceful the area is.

The Organic Garden and Herb Society.

Our host and guide, Mike is in the front kneeling down. He had a wealth of information and willingly shared it with us.

This is one of the pavilion facilities that are in the garden. When Mr. Taft started the gardens they went under the name "International Center for Earth Concerns". Mr.Taft said that, for a time, many groups used the land for educational purposes, including Boy Scouts, school groups and organizations such as the Sierra Club. "It was extremely popular with teachers," said Taft. "Over 15,000 kids came from all over the county."

The colors were beautiful.

Art work on the outside of one of the buildings.

If anyone wants to know what I want for Xmas look no further!! What's not to love about this chair!!! I'm sure I could find room for it at Plymouth Gardens!Outside stage area. A little music, a play, some poetry or even that old standby a Wedding! Oh yes, this is nice.

Along a lot of the paths were these dry stone walls.

On the outside of the garden is all the beauty of Southern California hills. That is a Red Tail Hawk flying high.

Statues everywhere, adding grace and charm.

Of course I loved the etched Cranes in the door.

Cactus Garden.

Lizard carved from a large rock. (That could be another Xmas gift!!)

Groomed paths between the flower beds.

John Taft giving us a history of the gardens. I was surprised that most of the plants were started from seed brought over from Africa or Australia. I think he said they did most of the planting starting in 1982. Just over 20 years and it seems like it was there forever. He took time out of his busy schedule to make us comfortable and knowledgeable. You could tell how much he loved the area. He called it "John's Folly" but I don't think it is a folly at all.

He had to close the place because of problems with the neighbors. They didn't want all the people coming up into the area. It didn't help that they had to come across the neighbor's land to get to the gardens!! There were court hearings and so many problems that he had to shut down the gardens. Sometimes it just gets to be too much to deal with.

Leave it to the Garden Club to find the Veggie Garden and get Mr. Taft's kind permission to pick some of the veggies there. Huge cabbages, snap peas, several different kinds lettuce and onions.

Herb Garden

Makes you want to walk forever!!

A little pond with lots of tadpoles.

A perfect day!!

Poem

"Shelter"
by Kim Addonizio

It's noisy here. The kids run around, screaming, their mothers slap them and
they cry. I have the bottom bunk, I hang a blanket from the bed above me for
privacy. In the middle of the night it's finally quiet. I lie awake and think
about goals. Sheryl, the worker, says I need some. She says What do you want
Rita? and I say peace and quiet, maybe someplace sunnier than here. I say I'd
like to have a dog. A big one, a retriever or shepherd with long soft fur. What
else? she says. I remember my dad's garden, how I used to like sitting
with him while he weeded, putting my toes in the dirt. He grew tomatoes, corn, peas.
There was a rosebush, too, once he let me pick a big rose and there was a spider
in it, I got scared and shook it and the petals went all over me and he laughed.
He showed me how to put my thumb over the hoze nozzle so it sprayed. Sheryl
says I could garden. I think about the coleus Jimmy and I had, how I would take
cuttings, put them in water and they'd grow more flowers. But then they all
died. At night I listen to everybody sleep around me, some people snoring,
some
starting to say something and then stopping. It's pitch-dark behind the
blanket. I try to see it sunny, a yard with a dog lying down under a tree. I
try to smell warm tomatoes. Curl my toes in the sheets. Try to sleep.

Shelter" by Kim Addonizio, from Jimmy & Rita. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 1997. Reprinted without permission but with graditude. (buy now)

Cooper's Visit

There has been a lot of Hawk activity around the yard the past week. Don't know if it is more than normal or if I have just been seeing more than I do normally. The other day I watched a Sharp Shin sitting in the tree watching for dinner for several minutes. I didn't see him get anything that time. The Red Tail is around every morning.

Today at lunch time I saw the Cooper's fly onto the patio and grab a finch from the feeder and take off with it. Later that day there was either the same Cooper's or another one in the yard for at least an hour. He was out on the rail fence by the roses watching and trying to catch a White Crowned. I wonder if he has injured it before I saw him as the Sparrow was staying on the ground trying to hide in the roses. Cooper finally gave up on him after 20 minutes or so and flew over to the maple tree area.

I thought he would be gone by the time I came out into the other room but there he was just sitting on a old chair that it by the feeder. He just sat there looking around. I thought, Okay, he is there now but by the time I get the camera, change the lense and put the card I had out back in he will be gone. When I finished all that he was still there. I took several shots though the door and then he was still there and so I figured I might as well open the door. I opened the door and Beardsley went out and still that bird sat. I walked out onto the patio and he still sat.

The light was very low so I didn't get really great pictures but it was fun talking to him while he just sat and looked at me.

Cooper's Hawk in back yard.

For everyone in Snow country.

Snow

Snow,

blessed snow,

comes out of the sky

like bleached flies.

The ground is no longer naked.

The ground has on its clothes.

The trees poke out of sheets

and each branch wears the sock of God.

There is hope.

There is hope everywhere.

I bite it.

Someone once said:

Don't bite till you know

if it's bread or stone.

What I bite is all bread,

rising, yeasty as a cloud.

There is hope.

There is hope everywhere.

Today God gives milk

and I have the pail.

by Anne Sexton, from The Awful Rowing Toward God. © Houghton Mifflin, 1975.

Just a different way of looking at snow then I have!!!

Vistor hanging out lately

We have had a Red Tail hanging out around the neighborhood the past week or two. The other morning he was sitting on the telephone pole for at least a hour. Just sitting checking me out when I was walking under him and not bothered at all. Quite often I notice him when I hear the crows making more noice than normal. They are cawing away trying to get him out of their neighborhood! Pretty bird and nice to have him around so close.

I was standing under him looking up the telephone pole so it isn't a great picture but does show his markings on his chest.

Poem "Beside the Point"

Beside the Point

***

The sky has never won a prize.

The clouds have no careers.

The rainbow doesn't say my work,thank goodness.

The rock in the creek's not so productive.

The mud on the bank's not too pragmatic.

There's nothing useful in the noise

the wind makes in the leaves.

Buck up now, my fellow superfluity,

and let's both be of that worthless ilk,

self-indulgent as shooting stars,

self-absorbed as sunsets.

Who cares if we're inconsequential?

At least we can revel,

two good-for-nothings,

in our irrelevance; at least come and make

no difference with me.

****

By Stephen Cushman

Morning Coffee

I had planned to sleep in this morning but the thought of cool outside weather drove me from the bed magnets. Unfortunately the weather didn't feel the same way and it was already 79 at 7:30am. I know for Arizona that would be normal but we are so spoiled here!!

Oh well, I was already up so I might as well sit outside for awhile. I was really feeling fresh air deprived from the last few hot, hot days. I don't like having to spend so much time inside!

As I was sitting reading the paper all the birds scattered. Now quite often that just means that maybe a dove or a scrub jay flew in fast and scared everyone but once in awhile it means Hawk. Most of the time I will look around in the trees to see if someone came in to check out the feeders.
This morning it was a Cooper's Hawk in the ash trees on the side of the yard. He sat there for 10 minutes waiting for the birds to come back to the feeders. He just sat and watched and watched and finally they did start to come back to the trees around the feeders. I got up and went in to get the camera and came back out and walked almost right up under him before he finally got tired of me messing up his breakfast and took off. I had the short lens on, of course, but here is a cropped picture of him sitting in the tree waiting for branch service.


(Click on picture to enlarge)

Earl - A Poem

Earl

In Sitka, because they are fond of them,

People have named the seals. Every seal

is named Earl because they are killed one

after another by the orca, the killer

whale; seal bodies tossed left and right

into the air. "At least he didn't get

Earl," someone says. And sure enough,

after a time, that same friendly,

bewhiskered face bobs to the surface.

It's Earl again. Well, how else are you

to live except by denial, by some

palatable fiction, some little song to

sing while the inevitable, the black and

white blindsiding fact, comes hurtling

toward you out of the deep?

"Earl" by Louis Jenkins, from North of the Cities. © Will o' the Wisp Books, 2007. (buy now)

Naked Sunflowers

As I was laying in bed one morning I was watching the Lesser Goldfinches in the yard. There have been more Goldfinches this year then we have ever had. There will be 30 of them on or around one feeder at a time!! We have three thistle feeders, you do the math! Now this morning they would be on the feeder and then they would move off onto the two Sunflowers that were growing in one of the flower beds. Jessy and I had planted this bed with Coneflowers and Daises the beginning of summer. Sometime along the way the birds decided that they wanted a couple of sunflowers in there also and they went ahead and planted them. I figured why not and left them to grow. They were getting pretty big with their normal huge leaves and beginning of a flower starting.

As you can see from this picture of a sunflower that I took a couple of years ago the leaves are nice and large and there are lots of them.
Well, that morning as I watched the Goldfinches something happened to those poor old sunflowers. At first I thought they were just eating the ants off the plants. There are always lots of ants everywhere and I know the birds do eat them so I thought good, the birds get something to eat and I'll get the ant population reduced for a couple of days. The more I watched the weirder it became. This is how the sunflower ended up:

In flocks of thirty or so the Goldfinches ate every leaf off those two sunflowers!! I had never seen behavior like this although I'm sure it is quite common. Steve said that he noticed the same thing happening in his yard. That is one of the advantages of having a backyard habitat, you get to see things you wouldn't notice in the wild.

The good news is that this picture was taken a couple of weeks after they ate the leaves off and you can see it didn't stop the sunflower from growing and blooming.

Vacuuming Spiders - A Poem

Vacuuming Spiders

...

I admire their geometrical patience,

the tidy way they wrap up leftovers,

their willingness to be the earth's

most diligent consumers of small bitternesses.

Sometimes at night I hear them

casting silk threads, clicking their spinnerets,

plucking their webs like blind Irish harpists.

I can almost taste the fruit of the fly

like sucking the pulp from a grape.

But when their webs on the ceiling

begin to converge, and the floor

glitters with shards of insect wings

I drag out the vacuum

and poke its terrible snout under the sofa,

behind the radio—everywhere,

for this is the home of a human being

and I must act like one

or the whole picture goes haywire.

...

"Vacuuming Spiders" by Charles Goodrich,

from Insects of South Corvallis.

© Cloudbank Books, 2003. Reprinted without permission but with gratitude . (buy now)

New Title for Blog

As you can see from the new title of this blog I am going to start adding pictures and stories about our backyard. The new plants, the old plants and the dieing plants! I will also be adding pictures from our trips out to different Botanic Gardens.
I am now a member of the Conejo Valley Garden Club so I guess I should work on the yard a little more!! The other day while looking at the dead plants inside the house & the mess in the backyard I figured my being a member of the Garden Club is almost as silly as me joining a cooking club. Okay, not anywhere near as silly as putting my name and Cooking in the same sentence but you know what I mean!! I am hoping to learn lots and lots about what I should be doing and what I am doing that I should stop doing!!

Click picture to enlarge

Blogger seems very slow tonight or else I have no patience either way I will leave you with just one picture. It is the Lady Banks Rose taken in February. It only blooms once a year but it is so beautiful I love it anyway.

"Close to Home" Comic

Should be fun!!

Poem "The Calf-Path" by Sam Walter Foss

The Calf-Path

One day through the primeval wood

A calf walked home as good calves should;

But made a trail all bent askew,

A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,

And I infer the calf is dead.

But still he left behind his trail,

And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day

By a lone dog that passed that way;

And then a wise bell–wether sheep

Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,

And drew the flock behind him, too,

As good bell–wethers always do.

And from that day, o'er hill and glade,

Through those old woods a path was made.

And many men wound in and out,

And dodged and turned and bent about,

And uttered words of righteous wrath

Because 'twas such a crooked path;

But still they followed – do not laugh -

The first migrations of that calf,

And though this winding wood-way stalked

Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane

That bent and turned and turned again;

This crooked lane became a road,

Where many a poor horse with his load

Toiled on beneath the burning sun,

and traveled some three miles in one.

And thus a century and a half

They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,

The road became a village street;

And this, before men were aware,

A city's crowded thoroughfare.

And soon the central street was this

Of a renowned metropolis;

And men two centuries and a half

Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout

Followed this zigzag calf about

And o'er his crooked journey went

The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led

By one calf near three centuries dead.

They followed still his crooked way.

And lost one hundred years a day,

For thus such reverence is lent

To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach

Were I ordained and called to preach;

For men are prone to go it blind

Along the calf-paths of the mind,

And work away from sun to sun

To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,

And out and in, and forth and back,

And still their devious course pursue,

To keep the path that others do.

They keep the path a sacred groove,

Along which all their lives they move;

But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,

Who saw the first primeval calf.

Ah, many things this tale might teach —

But I am not ordained to preach.

Monty The Comic

(Click to enlarge)