All the Young Dudes

It's spring, and in spring a young turkey's fancy turns to thoughts of...well, you know.

For the past few days, a group of Toms have been working the back meadow like cutting horses, rounding up the hens into harems. Fanning their tails, dropping their wings, puffing up their feathers, blood-gorged blue heads and red wattles, they strut back and forth, left, right, straight ahead, keeping their conquests in line. Until today, it's been a pretty orderly process.

This morning two Toms in "fancy dress" were driving about eight hens up the driveway past our house, when three Toms approached from the opposite direction. Quickly, the established Toms shooed the hens off to the fence line and turned up-driveway like Jets on a New York City playground, fluffing and puffing, trying to intimidate a bunch of Sharks. No bats, no knives, just beaks and spurs.

The battle was a short flurry. The newcomers flew at the defenders, but the attackers were driven off in short order and headed back up the driveway. The victorious Toms summoned their hens, and together they wandered back to the meadow to...well, you know.

Bluebirds of Spring

When I was a kid, I picked up an old 78 rpm record at St. Vincent de Paul's thrift store in Spokane of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys singing "Take Me Back to Tulsa."  On side B was "There's a Bluebird on Your Windowsill."  And that's the song that's been going through my head today - well, at least the tune has been repeating because I can't get beyond the second line.

Today we saw four pair of western bluebirds in the pasture behind the house.  Of the 56 photos I shot with Jay's heavy camera with the telephoto lens, only one was mostly in focus.  And here it is.  I always thought any bluebirds we saw out here were mountain bluebirds (that's what Mom always called them), but in comparing my photo with the ones on the Internet, they are more-than-likely the western bluebird (Sialia mexicana).  They winter in Mexico or southern California.  These may be only passing through, on their way to somewhere more exciting like Canada or Alaska.  Or, they may have decided that they like our valley - maybe even permanent summer residents I have yet to make an acquaintance with -- and are looking about for an old woodpecker's hole or a  rotting pine snag to build a nest in.  I was charmed to see so many together, but I read that when not mating, they will travel together.  I think they mate for life, but haven't found anything to support that.  Of course, the male is a "love me, I'm beautiful" blue with rufus (that's orange-brown) on its breast and between its wings. The petite female has a subdued, impeccably tasteful look that will never go out of style (though an ornithologist, obviously a man, called her a "faded version of the male"); she has a white eye-ring - a sublime adornment - that the male lacks. 

It's been raining and sleeting for days. I do so want spring to come. I do. I do.

"There's a bluebird on your windowsill;

There's a rainbow in your sky. da, di, da, di do."

Apples and Deer and Wild Turkeys

 Snow has finally come to our valley - 3 snowfalls in a week so far. a bit late in the season, but any snow in the mountains is welcome to maintain the drainage and keep the timber from drying out during the summer.

The deer have come down from the hills and I am tossing out lots of withered apples to them.  And I have to include the flocks of wild turkeys that camp in the yard until late afternoon when it's time to go find a nice big pine tree to fly up into. They have become pests, those turkeys.  I open the front door and they make a beeline for me, assuming they're going to be fed.  So, I have to retreat and return with apples, so they can chase one another about the snow-covered yard, trying to steal apples from their kin. They have very strong beaks and can run fast while carrying an apple.

Jay took this photo of the deer with a red apple in its mouth - note how long its tongue is. They can get proprietary about the apples, too.



When the snow melts this time, the wildflowers will begin to bloom.  When I was small, Mom and I would vie with one another to see who could find the first buttercup. She would always win because I had to go to school while she would keep her eyes to the ground while trudging over the hill to the barn to feed the cattle and my horse.  She could hardly wait until I came through the door in muddy galoshes, empty lunch pail in hand, to shout out, as though I was her rival younger sister instead of her daughter, "I found the first buttercup today!"  If I could go back for only that moment.

But, here comes Jay, down from a trek on snowshoes. I'll make him  a hot mug of tea.

Moose in the Yard

A delightful shock to see a big cow moose and her calf pass close by the window today, heading directly to the large weeping willow in the front yard. A cow moose typically weighs 200–360 kg (440–790 lb). When I was growing up here, we never saw moose, but with the regrowth of forests in the area, among other environmental improvements, they're back. Being solitary creatures, the strongest bond is between the mother and her calf. She won't chase this one away until she's ready to give birth again. Although generally slow-moving, this moose would most likely become aggressive and quick-moving if one of us came between mother and child, so we photographed them from the safety of the house. If a moose becomes habituated to being fed by people, it may act aggressively when denied food. So, no point in tossing out last autumn's shriveled apples - I might start something unpleasant. Like other wild animals up here, we give them plenty of space. In the 19th century in Sweden there was a debate regarding the national value of using the moose as a domestic animal. Among other things, the moose was proposed to be used in postal distribution, and there was a suggestion to develop a moose-mounted cavalry. But, hunting the moose gave more gratification, nearly driving it to extinction, so those ideas were short-lived. Not much you can do with moose, except eat 'em or admire 'em.

In the Bleak Midwinter

Mom & my son Donovan 1984

It is in the bleak midwinter as I look out on shades of browns and gray of sleeping foliage and dead grasses (for we still await the blue and white hues of snow), my thoughts turn to summer flowers.  The photo above is of Mom and my son Donovan in 1984.  Mom had beautiful flower gardens on the place, one in the front yard and another across the creek; but time and the  local wild species – the thimbleberries, the wild pink rose – have supplanted them and reclaimed their rightful place.  It is a good thing that she planted a few hardy perennials, which remain, because, though I appreciate flowers, I am not a cultivator of them.  Here are photos I took last summer.

Mom waged war with the Oriental poppy (Papaver orientale), though she herself had introduced it into her garden, for it always threatened to displace her irises, which, alas, have not survive the years. Now the poppies battle with grass for their corner of the old garden and, so far, have held fast to their territory.  They are native to the Caucasus, northeastern Turkey and northern Iran, not the Orient as the name implies.

For years Mother wanted to hack out the brush across the creek and plant a flower garden there, for she knew the soil next to the creek was black and rich, a legacy of millennia of beaver dams flooding the valley and building up rich sediment.  And finally, in her fifties, she paid to have it done. It’s still an interesting secret space, for an apple tree blooms there in the spring, and white and purple lilac bushes like it very much. But of the flowers she planted, none is left except a recently discovered gathering of deep-red primroses hiding in tall grass.  The Primula is a genus of 400-500 species of low-growing herbs of the family Primulaceae, and rather prefer alpine climates and filtered sunlight.

This old yellow rose bush grows outside what was for over 50 years Mom’s bedroom window, facing the rising sun; and if I came for my yearly visit at the right time, she would have a large bouquet waiting for me in my old bedroom.  She’d received a cutting from Grandma Ferry, the ancient dame who had homesteaded across the narrow valley around 1900. Every farm house had a large bush of these most fragrant of roses.  Whether it is the Persian Yellow rose or the Harison Rose, I don’t know. They resemble each other in the photos on the Internet and both are traced back to the 1830s on the east coast. They were brought west on the Oregon Trail and women shared them down through the years; they grow lots of suckers and are easy to propagate.   My son, a few years ago, in a manly effort to tidy up around the outside of the old house, cut most of the enormous bush down to the ground.  “Don’t worry,” said a neighbor, as I related the blasphemy, “it will grow right back.”  And it has.

And so, I'll end this longing for a warmer and a more colorful landscape with another photo of Mom’s garden –  a different year, a different aspect.

Balky Winter

A Facebook friend from Laramie posted today that she was going cross-country skiing today at the Happy Jack recreation area just east of town. I'd spent a fair amount of time there during Laramie winters, first learning to ski, then gliding over the well-packed trails, sometime with Kerry, usually alone.

When we moved to northern Idaho, we took up snowshoeing for winter activity. We've been looking forward to some time on the logging trails that cross our 66 acres, especially since some good friends have just decided to get some gear and try snowshoeing this year. But there's been no snow. Just a hard frost every night, coating the cars, the fields, the road, and the trees. some areas are so shaded from sun that the first frost is still on the ground.

The cats don't seem to mind. They're still hunting mice, crouched perfectly still on the cold, white grass, concentrating on the catch, more successfully than not. And the neighbor's chickens don't seem to care. The neighbors went away for the day and asked me to put the birds to bed at night and let them out of their roosting box in the morning. The rooster let me know in no uncertain crows that he'd expected to be let out earlier than I did (well, it did take me 15 minutes to defrost the car this morning). The rooster and his six-hen harem were out of their heated box and wired run as soon as I opened them. I think I'd rather have stayed in the box a while longer.

It's been overcast much of the week, with a weather inversion that's engendered a ban on outdoor burning. So, I've been spending time on our second hill felling trees Kerry marked earlier in the year, and cutting them up for firewood. Now the hill is littered with branches that I need to haul to the several burn piles we've built. But, who knows when the ban comes off. I check The Weather Channel Web site daily, looking for sunny days when I can get back on my road bike (armed with warmer cycling gloves) and when I'll need to mount the snow blade on my ATV. Expecting one sunny day this week; no appreciable snow.

Winter remains balky.

Past Times Books: Historical Fiction E-Books

Back in October I was flattered to be asked by Wendy Bertsch, the founder of the website Past Times Books, to join its cadre of historical fiction authors and list my historical novels, The Wolf's Sun and A Devil Singing Small  It's a very particular website and vets applicants' novels for writing quality and, I assume, the ability to tell a good story.

The authors who reside on the site are nice, too, and have led interesting lives, which they write about. Best of all, you can peruse their works of historical fiction, which have direct links to Kindle and other ebook sites for purchase.

I read Dodging Shells, by Bertsch, a novelization of her father's World War II military experience as a Canadian soldier during the invasion of Sicily and the push up the boot of Italy.  It was poignant (he was so young) and it was humorous (if you can't find humor in war, you'll go mad).  Not a lot has been written about the Canadian forces during World War II, but they fought alongside the British from the beginning of the war in 1939.

I feel quite at home on Past Times Books, as though I've become a member of an exclusive club.  If you're in search of some good historical fiction, I hope you take a look at this website and the literary riches it displays.