Instead of an even year, this is showing many characteristics of an odd one, right here in Dixon, let alone the rest of the world. Henry’s in short sleeves and a Hawaiian-style straw hat, without the orchids, alas, while I’m wrapped in wool and leather. Hummingbirds arrive ten days ahead of my schedule and stay. No scouting this year. Within seventy-two hours, five or six of the enslaving mites demand June’s ration of sugar water. I miss two beloveds’ birthdays and allow the cheat grass to mature because I’m lost in April.
What’s with this weather? Every day for the past week I dutifully hustled Loretta’s tomato queens to the portal for “hardening off”. Each day they immediately languished into whining and shivering princesses. ‘It’s too cold. This wind is mussing my leaves. Ooh ooh, heat stroke!’ Yeah yeah yeah. In they come to clutter the window sill again. Then this morning blooms with true May loveliness and I’m cautiously lured outside by the siren call of the newly opened survivors. Yikes! Look at those mature forbs and grasses I need to stuff into black plastic.
Nestled among the weeds, lies the beauty. Flax loved this past winter and gaily enhance the splendid blue floor show arrayed for my viewing pleasure, high dancers to the sedately huddled violets and proselytizing phlox. If I can teach my Manx kitty, Lince Felice, to hunt squirrel as well as she does gopher, I’ll have strawberries soon. I happily feed the two crows who help her manage pigeons.
A bank of glorious purple and white iris valiantly parade their wind-bruised petals to the three bird species that defy my brain’s classification system. Is it black-headed or black-hooded grosbeak and is that a female or a juvenile or a spotted towhee or a Bullock’s oriole or some delicate exotic blown off course by the conflagration in the Gulf? I sure do love those hot splashes of orange, whichever they may be. And my heart gladdens when I spy those tiny lazuli boys jumping into the fray for millet.
Did you catch a glimpse of the ruby-crowned kinglet on the bird count trek this year? How about this splendiferous magpie? Our here-and-there bird braniac seeks information on a cause of this coloration and I gasp at the wondrous serendipity of a hot pink magpie visitor gracing my yard, I who burst with happiness for the marvels of pink? I am so very lucky.