the sound of spring: snap crackle ping

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Once upon a time there was a very pretty wisteria vine. It was May and things were fine and fragrant and there was nothing to fear.

By July the purple petals had fallen onto the patio and were swept away by the people who lived there. The vine had grown leafy and become a shady place under which the people sipped chardonnay and nibbled sandwiches all summer long. 

Then came October with its spooky witchy ways and blustery habits, dislodging the leaves of the lovelyy wisteria, turning it into something resembling a launch pad of ten thousand alien pods, each of which threatened to disengage the eyes of innocent stargazers.

All winter the people watched the pods dangle menacingly outside their window, fearing for their noggins every time they stepped through their door.

How will we ever remove those ten thousand pods from our wonderufl vine?? they wondered as they gazed at starry solstice skies through swimming goggles.

Then one day in March a great snapping and cracking filled the air. Tiny round missiles hurled themselves at the windows and Jake the Cat meowed something that sounded like: wtf? as he took refuge under the kitchen table.

No, wait. That was me.

The cacophony of cracking continued for a couple of days. And while the sound initially unsettled the people something wicked, they soon realized—around hour 42—what was happening. The pods, it seems, dry into sticks over winter, then twist open—that was the cracking—each releasing four or five penny-sized seeds. That was the pinging against the window.

As soon as it dawned on them that the world was not, in fact, ending, the people relaxed, poured some pinot and began to enjoy the show.

Of course, by then it was almost over.

These people, they’re bright(ish), but nothing stellar.


Mother Nature on the other hand—that’s one smart dame.

Ready for May flowers.

made me smile

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Opening my library copy of Sarah Selecky’s This Cake is for the Party I found a nicely printed, glossy card telling me the name of the game is ‘experiments in kindness’ and that I’m now “it”. Funny how such a tiny inconsequential thing by a mysterious no one in particular, can brighten a day.

Will be passing it on tomorrow…
“The fragrance always remains on the hand that gives the rose.”—Ghandi

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how to help wildlife in spring

~ carin ~ Leave a comment
Here’s a cut and paste from the recent Toronto Wildlife Centre  newsletter. Lots of good info on how to help urban wildlife this spring.
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TWC Hotline is already receiving calls about wild babies!

baby fox

While we’re still bundling up against
the cold, animals are starting to have spring babies. Baby animals may look helpless but mom is usually close by.

If you do find a baby animal that you think needs help, please refer to TWC’s website for guidance or call the Hotline at 416-631-0662.

 
How you can support wild animal families.
 
1. Check for nests before renovating or boarding up holes on your property. Raccoons and squirrels for example, find that attics, crawl spaces, chimneys and sheds are safe, comfortable spaces to have their babies. If an access hole is closed and the mother is kept away from her babies, the mother will do all she can to get back inside often causing significant damage in her attempts to reach her young. If she fails, the babies will die.
 
2. Do not trap and relocate animals.  It is illegal to trap and release animals outside of their home territory. Releasing animals outside of their territory can spread disease and the animal does not usually survive the relocation. When introduced to a new and unfamiliar area, a relocated animal has no idea where to find food, water or shelter, and has to contend with other wildlife defending the territory they already occupy. There is also a high risk that wild babies will be left behind. Defenceless without the care of their parents, orphaned babies will die.
 
3. Keep your cat indoors during the warmer months, particularly between April-September. Hundreds of wild animals are raising their young in your neighbourhood during this time, and wild babies are completely defenceless against cats on the prowl.

Many baby birds spend 1-2 weeks hopping around on the ground after they have left their nest, BEFORE they are able to fly. This is a part of their normal “fledgling” period, and though parent birds are still feeding and caring for their babies during this stage, they cannot protect them from cats.

May 9-08 379 3Many mammal species also nest on the ground or in places cats can easily access. Cottontail rabbits stash their babies in a ground nest (which are frequently built in urban and suburban backyards) and for 3 weeks will leave them unattended except when feeding them. The babies are unable to run or hop away if discovered by a cat.

Can’t keep your cat indoors?
Here are some alternatives.

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Note: I’m guessing the above piece refers mostly to an urban environment.

Still, the cat issue is a tough one, arguments for both sides. Once upon a time I wouldn’t have considered keeping my cat inside, then circumstances forced the decision (I moved into an apartment that was perfect in all aspects other than in/out access for my cat). She adapted and we lived happily ever after, acquiring other cats, which, because she was, became indoor ones also.

And though I’m in a house now, with a yard, I choose to keep them inside because we’re surrounded by roads and I don’t want to see them squashed beside one. Were we surrounded instead by boundless meadows where they could run about eating up mice and other elements of the food chain (all the while taking a risk at becoming part of the foodchain themselves) I may consider letting them out.

Or not.

things i saw

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Geraniums blooming in the window of a gas station that’s been owned by two brothers for twenty-five years. The kind of place where they pump your gas and chat about the weather and tell you there’s been a gas station on that site since the 1920’s; they clean your windshield and check your oil and have hydraulic lifts and tools and if you drive in with a flat, they can fix it.

Workers in orange overalls taking down an orange snow fence along the cornfield I pass every day, which has recently become a temporary pond—so realistic it’s attracted a family of geese and a few vacationing swans.

I see that the early morning fisherman who park under the overpass near the creek are back and I wonder what it is they fish for and I try to catch a glimpse of them, which I have never done, and then I see a giant new pot hole in the road… too late.

we’ve got compartments

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

I hope this doesn’t come off like bragging but I know exactly where my S-hooks are.

Finally cleared out the basement workshoppy area—such a hopeless tangle of semi useful debris it didn’t even have a name.

One of us has wanted to do this for yonks. The other, more meh, got his way, way too long. (Please note: this wasn’t a job one of us could have done alone given that much debris was of mysterious parentage, needing ‘the other’ to classify.)

So, for eighteen years, if you needed, say, a rope, you had to fight your way through a jumble of paint tins, sacks of multi-coloured wall plugs, rubber tipped springy things that stop doors hitting walls, vacuum cleaner bags for long deceased vacuums, a plastic barrel of shims (used to slide under things to make them level I was told—apparently everyone needs five hundred); you’d have to move aside a trillion tins of assorted nuts and bolts, electrical stuff, hinges, plumbing bits, dried up drywall compound, tubes of caulking, a toolbelt (never worn), paint brushes, dozens of pencils, fuses, batteries, wood filler and individual cartons kept for the sole purpose of housing individual sheets of instructions no one ever reads; you’d find at least one broken hack-saw (kept because we didn’t know we also had an unbroken hack-saw) before you found any sign of rope. Unless of course you were looking for the hack-saw, in which case you’d find the rope first.

—Anyone still awake?

The point is… whatever you were looking for, it was just easiser to get in the car and drive to Rona.

Ah, but not so now, she said drunk on organization after a few glorious hours in the furnace room over the weekend!

Go ahead. Ask me for an S-hook.

Or a patch to fix an inner tube. Nails? Are you kidding me? What size? What colour? We have compartments. Sandpaper? Fine or coarse? Rope? There’s a drawer for that. Maybe you’d prefer a bungee cord (red or blue?), plastic coated fencing wire or two kinds of ordinary garden twine? Could your Theraband ball stand to be inflated… maybe just a titch? If so, come on over to our house toute de suite, I know where the pump is.

Even the reluctant other is impressed.

And hell, it’s hard not to be. For the first time in eighteen years we sleep at night, filled with contented smugness, knowing the exact location of stuff we almost never use.

passing it on

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to to whoever gave away these books (found on discard/share shelves at my public library).

What My Father Gave Me, anthology edited by Melanie Little, with work by Lisa Moore, Melanie LIttle, Susan Olding, Saleema Nawaz, Cathy Stonehouse, Shannon McFerran, Jessica Raya

Belle, by Florence Gibson

In Green, by Robin Blackburn

“In my hands I’ve got a jar. A large one, the kind my grandma uses for canning. I’m here to fill it. Then I’ll stuff it in my knapsack. And tomorrow morning I’ll cart it to the woods, where, with forty giggling, hiccupping, and wise cracking petty thieves just like me, I will chug its contents before my first class of the day, arriving at school glassy-eyed, rubber-kneed, and instantly popular.

“My best friend, Brenda, has agreed to bring orange juice for the mix.

“I stare at the bottles. The bottles stare back. From the rec room downstairs, my parents’ voices rise and fall in staccato bursts, punctuated by the clink of ice cubes as they set down their tumblers or raise them for the next sip. I need to time this perfectly, before my mom comes upstairs to start supper, before the doorbell rings, and one of them comes to answer it, before their next refill. The time is now.

“I reach for the vodka. Goes better with orange juice, I tell myself. Vodka’s so much better for the morning.

“But the truth is different. In fact, I’d never be able to go through with this plan if I stole the rum. Rum is my dad’s drink. Rum and Coke. Sticky and sweet. It hardly tastes like alcohol at all. It’s a liar’s potion. A denier’s potion. The smell of it makes me vomit. A few years from now, when my friends and I start going to bars with fake ID, they’ll suck back the Daiquiris and the Pina Coladas—bright, like liquid cotton candy. But I won’t order those. Give me Campari and soda or a gin and tocnic. Something bitter. So I remember what I’m doing.”

—from ‘Thirteen Answers for Alateen’ by Susan Olding, from the anthology What my Father Gave Me, edited by Melanie Little, Annick Press, 2010

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