The weather has been uncommonly warm lately, and those of us who are native to the state might prefer to use the expression, "too hot.” Eighty in April is unconscionable. Three consecutive days have been in mid-seventies or low eighties, a long summer in my estimation. I’m too old to wear shorts in public places, and too friendly with my neighbors to go in the suit I was born in lest one of them should knock.

Clerks in their nice, air conditioned buildings send clients out the door with wishes that they may enjoy the sunshine, and if turned on with a dour glance and asked if they were born here, the most likely response is, “No, I’m from California” or “Florida.”

This weather is unnatural, and brings the beastly side out of us who lavish in light drizzle and highs closer to sixty. The brilliance of the sunlight causes us to wince and squint, we perspire in torrents, our heads throb from heat, our dispositions sour and turn cranky. We seek the shade and bottled water and activities less strenuous than sitting, sweltering. Eat? Those Californians will be putting burgers on the barbeque tonight as the natural-born mossbacks turn to cold pork and beans and celery.

Our nighttime temperatures are our one salvation. They dip dramatically and hover at the freezing mark, making it imprudent to bed tender annuals in the garden spaces. Sunflower seed dropped by the jays and grosbeaks are sprouting where they fall, but many will die for their folly when Jack Frost returns for his curtain call. A killing freeze in June is odd, though hardly rare.

I find the dawns sweetest, when dew lingers on the grass and a nip lurks in the air. It lasts a few hours, ephemeral, a meteorological mayfly. By mid-morning, its wings are spent and it falls to the predator’s gape. Its faltering flight precedes my own only by a few small hours, and by afternoon, I too am fully expended and limp upon some handy surface.

April fools us, true to its inception, but whether joke or foretaste, no one knows. I think we’ve seen the toe of summer cross the threshold. Lion or tabby cat, we’re powerless to shut the door.

Last fall’s salmon season was nothing short of breathtaking, and most Northwest fishermen had full freezers before it closed, myself included, even though my time on the water was cut short by a chain of family crises. We were in a surfeit of fish, well and truly, and even the veterans began to complain of sore casting arms and burned-up reel bearings. Did all our ungrateful piss-and-moaning reach Mother Nature’s ear? She’s certainly levelling up the balance now.

The year began with the smelt run that never happened. A few piloted the river in January and again in March, and dippers worked hard for each sardine-sized fish. Game officials had expected better, and raised the limit to a sum many of us never saw. Just when hope begged to be abandoned, another minor flush of fish nosed upstream, but no more followed and the dippers laid aside their nets and went to their rods to pursue larger prey.

They are not finding it. Ask any incoming boater, any man in a canvas armchair, any fly-wielding master midstream in his waders, and you will hear the same reply: “It’s dead. It’s dead everyplace. There just aren’t any fish, and I don’t know why.” Two nearby lakes are stocked just prior to opening day for derbies, one for kids, one for serious adults. Sande fished the first one yesterday without a single bite. Today, we checked out the other. Even the stockers weren’t biting. We left without wetting a line to go further afield.

It took two lakes and a river before Sande had two pan-sized rainbows and I had a single which could have eaten his two for breakfast. Mine came straight from rapid current, a naturalized fish with a good bit of spunk and a bright streak of color along its muscular side, as opposed to the pasty-pale fresh plants my partner yanked from a dull brown pond twelve feet deep at maximum.

Nobody’s complaining, though. A fish is a fish, especially when you’re down and desperate, and after October’s plenitude, this paucity is doubly burdensome to bear.

The Bite is overdue.

In “Mi Primera Enciclopedia del Mundo” (“My First Encyclopedia of the World”), an illustration swept my mind away in a flood of recollections. Rivers of ice were the subject, occupying a two-page spread in all their glacial magnificence. The drawing showed a mountainside hewn vertical by geologic forces and its nearly parallel ridges flanking an expanse of tumbled, torn ice: a stylized rendering with caricatures of backpackers and wildlife and greenery at treeline, with upthrust peaks in the distance. A chill ran up my spine.

Like the back of my hand or better I knew that profile, from the rocks on the moraine to the mountain’s face and glacier. I have sketched it a dozen times or more, and can do so flawlessly from memory, something I am unable to say with respect to my car, my house or the objects within it. I know the voice of the blue ice river, complaining with the stress of age and weight, and the growl of avalanche as it flies down the sheer surface of the wall. I put my finger on the points one by one and named them reverently, as if saying the Stations of the Cross.

A child’s encyclopedia, originally a British publication, and in its pages were my mountain, my wall, my glacier come to find me and lift the burden of absence. I sing you, and your spirits are within! I am drawn home again, to family and friends. That you apprehend me in this way is not attributable to coincidence in my theology. My mental ear is open to your message and you know my heart.

Defeated again, I restart the game. I’ve made a few points, but I’ve missed topping my previous high score by a wide margin, and I’m no ways near qualifying for a rating in the top 500 players, nor even within a position to entertain the idea as a goal. My character runs around the screen for a few minutes, piloted by mouse or arrow keys, then runs spang-on into an enemy and is summarily devoured. I curse fluently. With a mere two lives left, the psychological projection of myself is doomed, and in short order.

As in a vast number of computer games (well over 50%, I’d guesstimate), I am going to die. There’s no two ways about it. Sooner or later, my attention will wander and I’ll miss some baddie coming in from the side of the screen, and the curtain will close on the hero with x’s resting like pennies on his eyes. If I worked in a shake mill, I’d be minus fingers for my lapse.

If I wanted to get all pithy here, it would be easy to posit that this futility serves as basic training for the indomitable human spirit, but I can’t quite get behind the supposition. What, then, is the attraction? What fun can there possibly be in getting tromped, squashed, flattened, eaten at the end of every single round? You know the outcome. Why test it? Why not play solitaire instead?

Well, for the months I’ve been asking myself that question, I haven’t got an answer. Almost every morning, I take a seat in front of the keyboard, and after answering my daily mail, I go to Neopets. I will fritter away the next hour or so in earning virtual points to spend on virtual items to ‘entertain’ or ‘feed’ to my three virtual pets, and I’ll die in surrogate ten or a dozen deaths on their behalves. Is my sacrifice appreciated? Only in the virtual world. Do I enjoy losing? No, not really. Despite the fact that I recognize this as an expansive waste of time, a pursuit completely frivolous and useless, will I be back tomorrow? You bet!

The trees are pollinating again. It seems incongruous that a forest ranger should be allergic to Doug fir, but such is my lot in life. In the carport, the car windshields are powdered with a fine yellow silt, each grain spiky and irritating as sand in a shoe. Claritin helps, but not much, and I’m glad I got the yardwork done yesterday, because this is just the beginning.

They tell me that this is a function of age and hormonal changes, that allergies come and go, and what we’re violently allergic to this year may not have the slightest effect on us five years hence. I say they’re full of hops (and I understand the pollen of the vine is an allergen of some note, so joy be unto them and theirs). Not one of my complement has disappeared or diminished. Instead, they seem to shoot off from one another, twig from bough from limb from trunk, each part of the fruiting branch laden with a burden of minuscule golden caltrops.

Sniffling I can regulate, Kleenex boxes arranged artfully in every room of the house. Sneezing is a minor inconvenience unless, perhaps, one is snacking on dry cereal at the moment of parturition. The feverish facial flush might be redeemed as becoming. These are tolerable symptoms, even the sandy eyes which remind me all too much of days in recovery from snow blindness.

The ultimate anguished reaction is in that unreachable itching which can be neither scratched nor laved away with water, like thousands of cat hairs trapped just beneath the surface of the skin. Beneath the filmy sheath of epidermis, the fine mycelium of the circulatory system is enflamed. As the heart beats and forces blood through the network of capillaries, every corpuscle and platelet roughs against delicate membrane, dry peas beneath the mattress of the royal nerves. It is an exquisite cellular tickle, unquenchable and undeniable, and potent in its subtlety. I long to claw my face bloody with hayhooks, shark’s teeth, obsidian shards, anything to stop the itch.

Were Edgar Allen Poe’s senses so dulled by drugs that he could not envision this one human horror? It would seem to be barking directly at the foot of his literary tree. Perhaps, in those days of cleaner air, he had developed no abnormal sensitivities or, on the other hand, maybe he just didn’t have a Doug fir growing outside his bedroom window.

Swallow activity is at a peak today. The sunny, pleasant air is flecked with dozens of birds swooping and diving in pursuit of insects. All but one of the nesting boxes on carport and garage are being visited repeatedly, and one polygamous chap seems to have staked out two separate but adjacent dwellings for his pair of ladies.

I arranged the first four birdhouses on the card table beside the road and went back for the remaining three. I couldn’t have had my back turned for more than thirty seconds, but when I turned around, a prospective client was waiting. There beside the rush and noise of sporadic Sunday traffic, a swallow was perched at a doorway, peering into the dark interior. He was certainly intent in his investigation and allowed me to come within six feet before he flew off, peeved at my intrusion. No sooner than I had set the rest of the houses out, he and two companions returned.

Soon a flock of a dozen or more was circling the card table. East and south facing property commanded more attention than that of north and west, and on the sunward side, one fellow wanted a closer look. He cautiously checked for threats several times, then quick as a wink, in he went. From the side, I saw his tailfeathers disappear.

“Well, that’s good press,” I mused. Imagine driving down a highway, spotting a roadside stand of birdhouses with swallows hanging at the doors. There could certainly be no better testimonial than that!

The houses have already paid for themselves with profit in the purse, so the temptation to remit these to personal use is strong. The problem lies in lack of appropriate hanging space. Despite card-table evidence of colonial nesting, violet-greens prefer twenty or twenty-five feet of property between themselves and their nearest neighbor, and I’m running out of buildings. Of foodstuffs, there would be no shortage if all of Capistrano’s swallows took a notion to relocate, since our forests and my yard have mosquitoes and to spare. That is another factor which weighs heavily in the balance: more swallows in residence, fewer mosquitoes.

It is a question asking a prompt response, since nesting season is upon us. I think perhaps the answer lies in striking a compromise, and two less houses on the roadside. Now to find spots to hang them…

A group of women stood in the murky river, threshing dull brownish water through pieces of cloth, three beaters to each brilliantly dyed rectangular length. They chanted as they worked, pausing occasionally to banter happily among themselves, the day risen to full noon and the sweet coolness of the river mitigating the growing heat of the bright African sun. This was no common wash-day, but ritual preceding a marriage, and their laughter blessed the absent bride.

An outsider with tanned, light skin stepped among them and took up an edge of cloth as the chant resumed. Her intrusion set an irregular counterpoint against the rhythm, all too obviously out of place and clumsy, and the magic of the moment threatened to shatter, its jeopardy apparent even to her. She let the hard-woven hem fall to the water shamefacedly, and then with downcast eyes, dragged her legs through the easy current, edging toward the bank. Egress was not to be had, for her companions could not allow the turn of mood. One of the older women guided her aside by the elbow and placed her amid the novitiate. She chuckled at herself for being categorized with the girls not yet in puberty, all the while her heart swelled with being accepted even in this small degree.

The ceremonial washing done, the dancing commenced. The women, young and old, child and dowager, leapt and cavorted around the marriage bower-bed, swinging wildly beneath its boughs and casting seeds of grain into its grass-sheltered interior. They danced until the moon rose in the evening sky and slept. Exhausted, of bride and groom they knew no more.

For years, the light-skinned woman laboured with the others as was her accepted duty. She built huts and fences, tended cattle, gathered seed and fruit, saw to washing and partook in many ceremonies as a member of the tribe. They were her people, her family, regardless of her skin.

This thought filled her mind as she walked casually along the margin of a small bluff overlooking the village. She could see the round tops of huts on the plain, hear voices borne by the prevailing wind. Her heart was filled with love for those who had accepted her so openly, asking nothing in return. Accidentally, she turned sunward, and the bright rays touched her eyes harshly. Instinctively, she averted her face and in doing so, noticed a disturbance on the pediment below. Like molehills rising, it was, and in a heartbeat, she recognized a danger out of legend.

She jumped from the brink, no more than fifteen feet, and ran through the tall grass with unspoken demons on her heels. “Nagadindi!” she cried in panic. “Nagadindi! Nagadindi!”

Her alarm met laughter at the first hut she passed. Young folk lived there, too young to remember when Nagadindi had last terrorized the village. He was an old wives’ tale, no more. The young people laughed and waved her on. She had no time to waste convincing them that legend had come to life. The terror was at her back, and gaining.

Nagadindi! Anybody care to hazard a guess how a man-eating dinosaur got into my dream?

There is rumour of a goldfinch sighting. “Something that flies like a swag,” my mother described it, “flew into one of Clyde’s chopped-off trees.” The behaviour and choice of the squat blue spruce as a hiding place fit the known data, although my mother’s observations are frequently suspect. She is aware of her failings, and will often tell me she’s seen an “anhinga” again, leaving me to perch at the window with binoculars in hand until I can identify the white-crowned sparrow, cowbird or juvenal robin to which she refers.

On the whole of it, the mother is a more reliable birdwatcher than many other folks in my acquaintance, and the abundant lack of skill which Sande and his wife exhibit is a source of much amusement and frustration to me. Despite having a photo of a violet-green swallow thrust under their noses, they will insist that the bird occupying the house beneath the back eaves is a chickadee. “We had chickadees when we were in California,” they insist and, as if on cue, a sleek dark bird with a snow-white tummy and throat emerges from the house and takes flight on slender, pointed wings.

Observation of minute differences is critical to telling one female sparrow from another for the serious birdwatcher, but being able to note enough salient features to tell a starling from a cowbird should not be beyond an average human’s ability. If a person can tell parsnips from carrots, peas in a pod from beans in the shell, that same person should have the visual acuity to determine if a bird is a goldfinch or an evening grosbeak, a thrush or a robin.

Jones or Smith, John or Jane, you know your neighbours’ names, and who is grey-crowned, who dark-eyed. You may have made some mistakes in identification at some time, but eventually, you got it straight. It wasn’t hard to learn, was it?

Now somebody’s home from a long vacation over Clyde’s direction, so I’m going to break out the binoculars and take up a vigil. Goldfinch or anhinga, the swaggy flier is still in the blue spruce, and it’s my appointed duty to set the neighbourhood gossip right.

Review yesterday’s blog, and you might understand my motivation for today’s wacky exercise. Exercise, did I say? Yeah, and then some!

Accessing the paved bike path at McMillin (a whistle stop without benefit of a post office or even a zip code), I set out with the finest of intentions: to ride to the next town, get myself a cup of espresso, do a 180 and go back to visit Sande.

You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. It wasn’t as far to civilization as I’d remembered, and the lovely, nearly level trail bore me there in excellent time and physical condition. Over the years, I have developed a keen sense for the state of my endurance, and once in town, I knew I wasn’t “half tired” yet, despite having done seven miles previously this same day while the car was being serviced. The weather was fine, the day was jubilant, and how much further could the salmon hatchery be, anyway?

Very soon, I arrived at familiar territory, a fishing spot Sande finds daunting for the swiftness of the river and its popularity with the “big boys” of the piscatorial art. Here, the pavement of the six-foot wide path was smooth and relatively untrafficked, and stopping simply seemed unthinkable. I rode on until I found a quiet spot beside a bridge, and a bench positioned that a weary traveller might enjoy the river galloping by.

Easing weary muscles for a few minutes revived a curiosity. How far did this delightful trail extend, and where did pavement end? I chowed down on the little food I was carrying, drank half the water. I hadn’t equipped myself for quite this ambitious a journey, but town was not far behind me with its grocery stores and espresso bars. An older gentleman walking his dog informed me that the end of the constructed path lay only half a mile ahead. “It’s pretty rough after that,” he offered, “for about four miles before you come to the next town.”

Counting miles is part of the game I play with my motivation. It’s been a few years since I bicycled seriously, and my longest trip in the last fifteen was a mere twenty-two miles done last summer. If I turned around here, I’d still exceed that by the time I got back to the car, and that might be asking a bit much of muscles I mainly use for holding down a chair. “Aw, you can do it,” I chided myself, and off I set again. The half mile behind me, the trail devolved to dirt. In another mile, it was flanked with canary grass. The handwriting was apparent on the wall, but I refused to read it. Inevitably, I came to a mud puddle, then a slick, another puddle and a ditch. The foot-wide track was potholed, greasy. I tried to jump a bogged trench, crashed my front tire against the bank, pitched sideways into mud. Undeterred, I continued gamely until I reached my goal, with one tennis shoe beyond all hope of redemption. Time for a break, and it lasted less than ten minutes, as they often do when I’m on the move.

Coming back was easier than climbing up, for climbing I was doing, however slightly, on the renovated railroad grade. I could relax a bit from steady pedalling and coast to rest my aching thighs one at a time. Pavement never looked so good as when I found it waiting for me and, determined as I was to work my body, except for one stop, I struck for town without a pause.

Easy? No, and I was famished. I pulled in to Safeway, bought a cup of yogurt and some fat-free fig bars, and sat on the bench outside, making a pig of myself while talking to three other bicyclists who had done the whole damn thing, all eighty miles of it, for their lark of the day. Now those are serious bicyclists! As a little old lady, I’ll be content with thirty, my score for the day. If I can get up tomorrow morning, it’ll be a miracle.

Oh, my aching…what? It all aches, all. It was a good day.

The weather is throwing fits today, one minute sunny and the next, spitting hail or pouring down in torrents. The sky is leaden to the west, blue to the east and piled with cloud. Small wonder spring drives creatures slightly mad.

The elk are browsing the new growth in the freshly upturned pasture across the street, their blond rumps bright in the evening sun. The air is clear and still but for mists rising from clefts in the hills, and against the grey sky, the trees fairly resound with a cacophony of greens. It is a young day, despite its hour.

In a melancholy mood, I retire from this exuberance of youth and take to my bed for an uncommon afternoon nap. I rise again, lethargic. I ponder: is my personal autumn weighing on my shoulders so heavily? The sophomores seem much younger this year, after all.

Spring fever! It makes dotards of all without the energy to leap and bound beside the season. As I watch it romping, tumbling and cavorting, I exert myself to reconsider. Perhaps for us not-so-old folks, a simple dose of salts might do the trick.

I carry a driver’s permit, a fishing permit, a saltwater fishing permit, a shellfish and seaweed permit, a gold-panning permit, a concealed weapon permit, a National Park access permit, a National Forest access permit, a game department parking permit, a fire permit and probably several others I can’t recall. When I go backpacking, I am also required to have a camping permit, and will need to pay a per-night fee in some areas for my visit. I may want a mushrooming permit as well, or a berry-picking permit, depending on the area I’m in. If I plan to cut wood on public land, I’ll need a wood-cutting permit. If I’m going to cut a Christmas tree, that’s a different permit. Seasonally, I may be required to have a Sno-Park permit, or a climbing permit if I’m planning to go above a certain elevation.

If I want to build, I’ll need a permit from the county, and also a permit from the Department of Ecology, a septic permit and a permit to sink a well. There will be a permit required for electrical wiring to be installed.

I am informed by various agencies that I can’t keep fish of certain types, or of certain sizes, that I must erect my tent in a campground or in the tiny section of backcountry which is a given number of feet from a body of water or a trail. I am told that my sheep shed must be framed on 16-inch centers, that I may only burn on a westerly wind less than five miles per hour, that I may only harvest one gallon of berries, and that I may not, without a permit, stop alongside the road to pee behind a state or federally owned bush.

To an old Aborigine such as myself, this is an unconscionable state of affairs.

I hit the wall with the gold-panning permit. In a dim light, I could see the Federal Government restricting use of its parks, and the necessity for building codes and, although I didn’t do it graciously, I accepted their dominion as part of my lot in life. As an upstanding citizen, I dutifully obtained a gold-panner’s license, and then sat down to read the regulations.

Now I’m not planning to set up a sluice or to hydraulic my concentrates. I simply want to crouch on my haunches by the crick and slosh a little black sand around in a pan. Ooops! There’s my first offense: you can’t rinse concentrate in the stream. You must cart it at least 200 feet from the normal reach of high water. All right, so I’ll carry a five-gallon bucket with me and lug water up to the woods. Once I’ve rinsed it and picked out the colours, I’ll take my little shovel back down to the crick and get another scoop.

The game warden appears from behind the screen of shrubbery at this juncture and asks, “Whatever are you doing? You can’t take aggregate directly out of the stream! That’ll be a $750 fine. Here you are,” and hands me a ticket. It seems that I must also do my digging well away from the creek, perhaps up on a likely bench of land adjacent to a feeder stream.

There are seasons for panning, and the rule book must be kept on site. Water from rinsing concentrates must not be permitted to re-enter the stream. Oi! My aching head! I’m dizzy from permits and rules, and I’m fast reaching the point of serious rebellion.

I walk the Earth as do the bear and bobcat. Her waters give me life, her bounty gives me sustenance. I breathe her air and, for the moment at least, I do it without needing a permit.

The lawn mower’s second pass revealed something unexpected in Mother Nature’s pantry: brown tops of morel mushrooms! The blade had neatly sheared the grass and missed the tender caps, so I ground to a halt and dismounted beside three excellent specimens. Plucking only the tops to leave the base and mycelium (‘roots’) unharmed, into the jacket pocket these treasures went. A quick scan of the surroundings turned up a few more. Soup tonight!

I confine my mushrooming to beginners’ species: chanterelles, shaggy manes, boletas, puffballs, morels. The parameters for which varieties are edible and which are not are fairly straightforward, and even Blind Freddie would find the species unmistakable. Our regional Mycological Society holds a “survivors’ banquet” each year, and I don’t care to have my name prefaced with “In Memoriam” because I mistook Galerina autumnalis for Lactarius deliciosus (I know the difference, really).

Edible, choice mushrooms are one of the benefits of living in the hinterlands with mosquitoes, mice, cougars and timber ants. Despite logging and intrusion by ATV’s, our wild lands could still feed Euell Gibbons three square meals a day at any time of year, although he might be hard pressed to find enough pine nuts for dessert. After all, the native peoples had no agriculture, per se, and thrived on Nature’s provender.

A friend once remarked that for me, fishing is work, i.e. a job. “Ah, the hunter-gatherer thing,” her companion agreed. While I do not subsist solely on wild foodstuffs by any means, I certainly supplement my diet rather lavishly with Gaia’s bounty. I catch fish year ‘round, preserving it by various means for times when the catchin’ is poor, and I dry fruits, berries and herbs with a contemporary electric dehydrator to put by for the months when I can’t pick directly from the plant. I don’t hunt or trap, largely because conscience would not permit, seconded by the fact that I don’t particularly care for the meat of mammals, and bird-hunting is entirely beyond the scope of my moral code, and to be regarded as criminal. Nor do I take from Nature more than is my due.

Spring mushrooms are a treat, a surprise. I do not seek them, as I do autumn chanterelles. They find me, and offer themselves as a savoury. I accept them graciously, a thank-you gift from the Earth for my pledge to use her benevolences kindly and with wisdom.

No webpage would be complete without at least one recipe, so here’s my best one. It’s simple, cheap to make, and absolutely yummy. I buy frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts in four pound bags. One breast is all you need (one side of the chicken, like).

Wonton Soup – makes 40 wontons
1 package Sun Luck wonton skins (other brands don’t stay stuck together as well)
1 thawed chicken breast
2 large or 3 medium stalks of bok choy
2 14 oz. cans Swanson’s 99% or 100% fat-free chicken broth
some little green onions
salt and pepper

Trim the green part from the stalk and central vein of the bok choy and set it aside. Cut the stalks into several pieces and chop fine in a food processor or by hand. If using a food processor, you will want to squeeze out some of the liquid. Don’t overprocess, or you’ll have bok slush. Put the processed bok choy in a bowl.

Now grind the chicken fine using a food processor or the finest blade on your meat grinder. You want it to be a finer grind than the stuff you’d get at the grocery store labelled “ground chicken.” Throw the ground meat in the bowl with the bok choy, add salt and pepper and stir it all up together. Slice the bok choy greens into strips about an inch long and a quarter inch wide and put them aside. Chop up the little green onions with the scissors and add them to the bok choy greens.

Divide the chicken mix into four equal parts. You’re going to make ten blobs of filling out of each one. Scoop ‘em up with a fork and put them on a cookie sheet. They should be about a rounded teaspoon’s worth. Too much, and you won’t be able to close the wontons up.

There are as many ways of folding wontons as there are Chinese last names, but this was how I learned to do it. Lay out six or so wonton skins. Moisten two adjacent sides with water. Put a gob of filling in the center of each square. Repeat for the other skins you’ve laid out. When you have all of them ready, start folding and sealing. The goal is to make triangles. Flip the bottom point of the square up and align the edges with the upper half. Press down along the edges to seal. Do all the ones you have laid out, and then moisten one corner at the end of the long edge of each one.

Flip the top of the triangle down, flip the unmoistened corner in and keep your finger underneath it. Then flip the damp corner over it and pinch them together. The top corner should stay tucked in of its own accord. Put your finished wonton on a very lightly floured or oiled cookie sheet. Repeat the steps of this process until you have all 40 wontons ready to boil. (Now if you were going to make fried wontons instead, you wouldn’t tuck in the top corner. You’d want that extra flap so you could scoop up more orange sauce!)

In a 4 ½ quart saucepan, add two cans of water to the two cans of soup. Yeah, I know the can says to use it undiluted. Forget that. Bring the thinned broth to a boil. Throw in the greens, and start adding wontons. They’ll sink to the bottom and sometimes they stick, so give ‘em a stir if they don’t rise to the top in a minute or so. Once the last of them has risen, keep at a low boil for three or four minutes. You can check for doneness by cutting one in two, but don’t overcook them or the wonton skins will get too soft.

That’s all it takes! Serve ‘em up and enjoy! If you've got leftovers, this soup freezes very well.

“When John Henry was a little baby,” -whack!- “Sittin’ on his daddy’s knee,” -whack!- “He picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel,” -whack!- “And said ‘Hammer’s gonna be the death of me, lord, lord!’” -whack!- “”Hammer’s gonna be the death of me.’” -Whack! Shatter!- Got that rock. Whew!

Little old ladies have no business wielding sledge hammers. Nevertheless, the rockery had outlived its usefulness, and there wasn’t anybody around to call on to do the job. John Henry and I r’ared back and whacked the next rock, a whopping big chunk of basalt. It didn’t budge. Forget the pry bar. I’d already bent it into a parabola. It made me wonder just how sound are concrete buildings reinforced with rods of structural steel.

There are two songs which accompany my labours. “John Henry” is good for rail-splitting, maul swinging, wedge-and-sledge wood splitting, trenching with a pulaski. The other, “Molly Malone,” is a bread-kneading tune, the music of my feminine side. It serves equally well for such tasks as hand-washing heavy sweaters or mopping the kitchen. “In Dub-lin’s fair city, where girls are so pretty, it was there that I first met sweet Mol-ly Malone,” the accent falling more frequently and with a gentler stroke. I can’t whistle, so I sing, and with no regard for the voice training I had as a young woman. Finesse would be wasted in their functionality, like hand-stitched buttonholes in a work shirt or raised detail on a grocery bag.

I hauled back with the sledge, mindful of the fact that I wasn’t wearing safety glasses over my plastic prescription lenses. I’d installed a basalt chip in my lower lip busting amethyst crystals out of a mountainside once, and the surgery to remove it was done by myself, alternately peering at the bloody wreck of my face in the bathroom mirror or sitting down on the stool to regain my aplomb. I know about flying rocks firsthand. The sledge swung down. The basalt shuddered, but didn’t move. Good mortar, that. -whack!-

It took several hours to demolish a six-foot circle of rocks no more than eighteen inches tall. The smaller fragments went to the woods in buckets, the salvageable pieces ranging from grapefruit to small watermelon size accumulated just outside the fence to be picked up by a neighbor. I am done with rocks for the moment, and John Henry can lie down and die, hammer in his hand.

The digital camera is still at the repair shop, so this was a lousy time for an atypical porch parrot to show up. This feller (a male) looks like he might be a hybrid between Coccothraustes vespertinus (evening grosbeak) and Pheucticus chrysopeplus (yellow grosbeak), although the latter has a very small range and is largely confined to Mexico and Arizona, according to Sibley. He could also be a genetic sport.

The head is almost entirely yellow, although at first glance, the bird appears to have a “fan” of intense yellow covering the ears. On closer observation, you can see that the eye is completely surrounded by yellow and the customary brighter eye stripe is present, but although the “eyebrow” would be the most vivid yellow marking on a normal evening grosbeak, it is hardly noticeable when compared to the triangular ear patch on this oddball. The body is more yellow as well, and the wings are blotched with white rather than having a distinct single patch. I was not able to observe the tailfeathers. If the outer three are white, it would be evidence to support the hybridization theory.

I’m a casual birdwatcher, despite the Latin terms I may throw around from time to time. I’ll admit I don’t know my sparrows well, for one thing, but I do know what identifying features to make note of when I see something out of the ordinary. I keep books on birds for the entire US, not only the west coast, and I’ve needed them occasionally. Clyde and I both observed an Eastern oriole in his driveway and made independent identifications, and I’ve seen a Western bluebird not far from here.

The high point of my birding career occurred last year. I was hiking in an experimental forest, where the University’s forestry program conducts studies in conifer reforestation, and was walking along a gravel road at the end of the day through a section of reprod. Ahead, my eye was caught by motion. I froze. In a few seconds, what appeared to be a piece of bark began a spiralling journey up a hemlock, pausing now and then. I was too far away to see it clearly, so I delved into the depths of my woods lore and spent a cautious fifteen minutes in travelling the next few yards to a point where I could see a strongly downcurved bill being inserted beneath scales of bark in search of insects. I took mental note of the pale eye stripe, the markings on the back and wings, the behaviour, and then without disturbing my small companion, I moved on, brain churning.

“’Creeper’ is the word that comes to mind,” I said aloud. “’Creeper.” I was turning pages in Roger Tory Peterson in my eidetic memory as I walked. A quarter of a mile later, I found the bookmark. “Brown creeper,” I exulted. “That’s what that little guy was! A brown creeper! Guess my brain’s still good for something after all.”

When I got home, I opened Roger Tory to back up my supposition, and there was my little bird, brown creeper and unmistakably so. Nevertheless, I cross-checked with Sibley, which I was only then learning to use. In his description, I found the interesting datum that the brown creeper is a denizen of old-growth forests, not reprod, a characteristic it shares with the infamous spotted owl. Aha! I would have to call the University and tell them what I had seen.

To shorten the tale, when I did manage to speak with their biologist, he was satisfied with my identification. I didn’t expect his next remark. “That’s the first sighting of a brown creeper we’ve had,” he told me. “Thanks for your observation! I’ll make a note in our files, and I’m also going to call the Audubon Society to let them know.”

I would hate to think that I had contributed to a study that might lead to the destruction of more old growth, since it appears that the brown creeper is learning to adapt to man’s abuse of his homelands, but there you have it. Documenting a brown creeper is one thing, but I can hardly see the harm in snapping a photo of an aberrant porch parrot. In between paragraphs, I went hunting for the 35mm. and the telephoto lens. If that yellow buzzard comes back, I’ll nail him.

Highly recommended: "The Sibley Guide to Birds," David Allen Sibley, National Audubon Society, Chanticleer Press, Inc., 2000 (also available in some regional editions)

A humble plant ushers in the first in a loose, seasonal pattern of colour changes. Our dandelions blossom concurrently with scotch broom and at the tag end of skunk cabbage: yellow. Later, royal blue camas flowers alongside paler blue-eyed grass, honeysuckle with Columbia lily and orange hawkweed, wild sweet pea with magenta fireweed, the principle colour predominating the landscape for a period of time, then giving way gently to the next hue.

Let’s hear it for dandelions! I am looking out at Clyde’s yard, thinking what a lovely sight they are now that they’re fully in the flowering phase, and beneficial, too, because on the heels of the vibrantly coloured blooms will come a flush of slightly greener yellow birds to pick at the seed heads. As swiftly as the dandelions change into powder puffs, goldfinches will appear in dozens to reap the harvest as if governed by the Doctrine of Signatures.

So what is it that people find offensive about the dandelion? I’d happily have them crowd out the grass. One, their tops seldom exceed six inches and thus don’t need mowing; two, the basal rosette remains green even into autumn; three, the seeds they produce provide valuable feed for many species of birds, goldfinches being rather noticeably at the head of the list. Dandelions are even pretty in their blooming season, which lasts longer than that of peonies or Oriental poppies, for example.

If I were to wax scientific about the subject of colour, I might postulate that this seasonal tendency was due to some value in the ambient light, a certain Ångstrom unit that stimulates a particular gene. Nevertheless, it would take a chancy leap in logic to factor goldfinches into the hypothesis as it applies to dandelions, although visual evidence might suggest such a link.

A weed? Perhaps, but dandelions paint our rural environment with the most vivid of spring’s colours. For some odd reason, though, they lack the tourist appeal of Vermont’s maples or the birch forests of Maine in the winter. Your loss if you can’t appreciate them! I’ll enjoy them for you, and the goldfinches, too.

I’m reading another good book in Spanish, presumably one aimed at high school level kids. Either our American educational system is sorely lacking, or I picked the book off the wrong shelf. Unfortunately, I think it’s the former reason.

When I was in high school, we dissected frogs in biology, identifying the major organs and bones, and we were taught what makes an amphibian different from a reptile, at least superficially. We went so far as to classify frogs as Rana and toads as Bufo, although I don’t recall that it was ever a test question, presumably because it wasn’t knowledge we’d particularly need in later life, or if we did, we could take a refresher in college.

In reading the first twelve text pages of “Anfibios,” I have learned at least one thing per page. That’s a shameful statement, especially considering that I have an abiding interest in the natural world.

I hardly think that your average American high school student would recognize the words “transverse process,” “polymorphism” (unless it related to a computer game), “supraciliar arch” or “neotenia” (coming to sexual maturity in the larval form). Fortunately, these terms looked pretty much like their English counterparts, or I might have been scrabbling for the dictionary. Nor would a twelfth-grader in the US be intrigued in the fact that green frogs aren’t colored green by pigment, but rather they take on the hue due to the way their yellow skins reflect the blue component of white light.

There are fifty-seven pages of highly informative text in this volume which is #41 in a series which includes titles covering mummies, rocks and minerals, ancient Greece and flying machines among others. Regrettably, most are out of print, so your best bet would be a used book seller. Oh, yes! They were originally printed in Great Britain where, I would imagine, the youth are somewhat better educated than many of our own almost-senior citizens like myself.

Suggested reading: “Anfibios,” Dr. Barry Clarke, Biblioteca Visual Altea, 1993 (“Eyewitness Guides: Amphibian,” by Dr. Barry Clarke, Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 1993)

In a very few days, the bachelor’s buttons will make their first appearance. You might have to be as old as I am to recognize the name because most people refer to them as cornflowers nowadays. The fading nomenclature tolls a sad knell for a bygone era when the single gentleman stuck a flower in his lapel when he went a-courtin’, and often as not, his boutonniere was plucked from someone’s garden in passing as he strolled toward his lady’s home.

We also called the flower “ragged robin” when I was a child, although I now know that the true ragged robin is another species of plant entirely (Lychnis). There are a number of artefacts in my lexicon which are inaccurate and, despite having corrected my mental database so that I may correctly name them in public, I frequently call them by their “family” identities. “Turk’s cap” is another, an error fostered first by my grandfather who came from the mid-west where the true lily grows wild, then perpetuated by my mother who mis-educated me. Columbia lilies bloom here in July, and their trumpets are more orange than those of their eastern cousins, but their incorrect naming persists between my mother and myself.

During the years of my youth, I believed that the berries of salal were poisonous, although I did not know the name of the plant. Mountain ash was also reputed to have toxic constituents, and it puzzled me that the birds delighted in it when I could not. “Birds’ metabolism is different,” my mother explained, which made perfect sense, especially since I had had an unfortunate experience involving alfalfa, a substance a cow’s rumen can process quite efficiently, but a four-year old human’s tummy cannot. I strove to impress my little friends with my erudition and succeeded admirably until the day when Sydie gobbled down half a cup of salal over my protests and still showed up for school the following morning. I was terribly disappointed, not only that she didn’t die the predicted agonizing death, but that my mother had ‘lied’ to me about something which might have meant my survival in the wilderness (I was a ranger in the making even then).

How easily erroneous “knowledge” is passed along! We generally accept without question that which our parents teach us deliberately or incidentally, so when Dad says, “What he don’t know won’t hurt him,” he’s wrong on at least two counts.

With our backs to a cool westerly wind, Sande and I whiled away two hours before a young man happened by our spot and stopped to chat about the fish he’d taken on the fly at the other end of the city fish pond. The conversation was as close to a fish as we’d come, and I saw potential, since in my tackle box is a small selection of flies, just for emergencies. It’s possible to fish flies with a bait rod, just as it is possible to fish bait with your Loomis, although the maneuvers one must perform are a few degrees less stylish than dancing the Macarena and equally unnatural. I only keep plebian flies in the pack alongside the Power Bait: some woolly buggers, BWO’s to use with a casting bubble, prince nymphs and my old standard, the grey hackle peacock, which can be fished either wet or dry depending on treatment. From the menu of four, your average proletarian trout generally finds something appealing to its palate. If not, well, then it’s time to go back to the car and rig up the Loomis after all.

It’s a small, pleasant stroll to the far end where you leave the paved trail and wend your way through brushy trees along a fishermen’s path. A small blue sign announces that you are in a wetland, as if you hadn’t noticed the slimy mud collecting on your trouser cuffs. The path tends toward the lake shore and crosses over a drainage culvert before ending on a short peninsula where casting far is fairly easy. Faced with that tempting prospect, few people notice the backwater at the other end of the culvert where it drains out of the lake into a marsh. There is a small pool just beyond the pipe, guarded by small, tangled alders. At one end, the water lilies mat and frogs jump gaily across them. The water in this pool is murky, rust-hued and greasy-looking, and the bottom is invisible, although it is quite shallow and submerged branches can be dimly seen below the surface. It has the appearance of a cess pool, more or less, and I would certainly never eat anything that came out of its depth, but sport is sport and I was determined to frolic with a fish on this rather chilly afternoon.

I fastened on a brown woolly bugger, size 10. It was hard to find a place to twitch the rod tip, but after hanging myself in the fork of two side-by-side alders, I was able to thread the pole between branches. Sande was having nothing of it, no way. This was not his kind of fishing. He stood aside to watch. A few trial casts demonstrated that I was not going to be able to flick that fly ten feet without a bit of weight, but any amount of lead would double or triple the risk of getting snagged. I mooched a micro-shot from my fishing partner and hitched it on the line a foot above the fly. Hugging the tree trunk again, I cast to the lily pads and retrieved. Nothing. I cast again and again. On the third or fourth cast, I met resistance as I reeled. Stick? I gave a quick jerk. The resistance ceased abruptly and a fish leapt up from the opaque water in a flash of green.

Less than ten feet of line led from rod tip to gaping mouth, so I quickly spun the reel’s handle and brought my prize to shore with a tree trunk between me and it. It was firmly hooked at the corner of the mouth, a fact for which I credit Gamakatsu’s Octopus Circle Hooks. They’re everything they’re said to be and then some. They rotate slightly as you set the hook, and nearly always result in a tidy, solid set-up at the mouth’s corner, from the inside to the outside, neat as you could want. I reached around the tree, pulled the nine-inch fish up by the line, unhooked it and set it free with a toss. As it left my hand, I had time to think, “Gee, that was dumb! When it hits, it’s going to spook every fish in the puddle.”

I was right, and we didn’t catch any trout either, but I will always remember today as the day I caught the accidental bass.

Decent weather can be a scarce commodity around here at times, and when a spell of it arrives, it is greatly to be esteemed. I chose to celebrate this feast day of sun and warmth with observation in labour, my tithe repaying in part the boon of a glorious day to be out of doors. Despite drawing disapproving glances from several carloads of tourists en route to fancy dinners in their Easter finery, it seems to me that no man or woman should rest on such a day as this, regardless of their creed.

Clyde pruned and sawed, and I carted and stacked the uppermost six feet of yew hedge in a convenient spot for later burning. This was a task long overdue, and the snow had often threatened to do it for me, raggedly and artlessly, without regard for the shrubs themselves. I had let it get out of hand, however, and the wrist-sized branches were beyond my strength to sever. Clyde incised an access with the lopping shears, then shaved the tops more or less level with the chainsaw. He offered to return with a manual trimmer, but what’s the use? It’s the growing season now, and new shoots will spring up like stubble in a matter of days. Next year is soon enough, and we might make the whole thing about a foot shorter then.

I am grateful for two good neighbours and a third who lives a bit further down past an unpopulated stretch. We call on each other for favours, and have performed a fairly even exchange of services over the years we’ve lived cheek by jowl. We’ve come to the comfortable point where no one is afraid to ask and no one dreads having to say, “No, I can’t,” for some reason or other.

Yesterday, Dennis set me up in his workshop to saw birdhouse boards. He showed me how to run the radial arm saw and the drill press and then simply turned me loose. By the time I was done with eight one-by-sixes, I’d generated quite a bit of sawdust and wood shavings, so I tidied up after myself and as an afterthought, cleaned up around the table saw as well.

Today as I began assembling the first of a dozen houses, I discovered I’d forgotten to cut the backs. One of my pieces of lumber had been an off size, rendering it useless for this project, but I still had one to spare. It was only long enough for seven pieces, though, so my mentor volunteered some of his spare lumber. He also gave me a Phillips head screwdriver bit to mount in my power drill. “I’ve got lots of them,” he said. “Keep it.”

Good people, good weather: while not rare by definition, neither are they thick upon the ground.

Neither David Allen Sibley nor Roger Tory Peterson will support this claim, and certainly not James Audubon. There are porch parrots in the yard, several dozen of them, stopping by as casually as your favourite aunt, and just as determined to spend the entire summer.

Theoretically a migratory species, this lot failed to read the book. Augmented by an abundant and constantly replenished supply of black oil sunflower seeds close at hand, the Douglas firs of the neighborhood qualify as a destination resort for these gregarious birds. Although the flock normally arrives in mid-May, some trigger in the environment has sent them abroad several weeks early.

Prior to last year, it was their custom to stay long enough to raise their brood before moving on to the next spot on the agenda approximately a month and a half from their arrival. In 2003, that changed. The bird feeders were packed with porch parrots until late July, with a few stragglers sticking close to the easy groceries into mid-August. They know a good thing when they see it, and seem to know that I’d go without food myself to keep them well supplied. In fact, during their six-week tenure, the group once consumed 425 pounds of seed. Their voracious appetites would justify a legend.

What is a porch parrot, that its species is not listed in Peterson, Audubon or Sibley? Coccothraustes vespertinus is actually quite common in coniferous forest zones. Approximating a robin in size, it is slightly heavier in the body and stands on shorter legs. The males somewhat resemble an overgrown goldfinch in colouration, being a bright greenish-yellow on the chest and back, with black wings marked by a large area of white. The face is distinguished by a yellow “eyebrow” on an otherwise black head. The female is greyish green, except for a black patch surrounding the eye and black flight feathers on the white-patched wing. Both sexes sport large finch-like beaks which turn a garish chartreuse during mating season. The voice is a liquid single note, melancholy in a way, declining at the end: “Churp!” rather than a perky “Chirp!” or “Tweet!”

Some fluke of etymology or biology places the evening grosbeak in a separate family from its Pheucticus relatives, a group that includes among others the black-headed species which comes here rarely. That these taxonomic outcasts are forevermore “porch parrots,” my ex-husband can be thanked. It’s the one decent thing he ever did to the English language and thus deserves preservation for posterity. Porch parrots is what they are, all right, and Mr. Sibley can go stuff himself if he says otherwise, despite his lavish, lovely illustrations. If you’ll excuse me now, I hear the flock complaining that the feeders are getting a little low.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, tonight’s blog will be short and somewhat less than a literary masterpiece. There are certain hazards associated with caring for the elderly, and although most of the disaster has been set to rights, some portions of it require a period of time. Trust me, you don’t want to know more than that!

Instead, let me tell you of my first public utterance of words in Spanish.

I had a bit of time on my hands between home and the bookstore, you see, and I thought I’d go visit a lilac farm en route to the Big City. It’s the season of lilacs, and this particular facility has a lovely display garden you can amble through at your leisure. As I wound through the side streets, I happened to pass a Latino tienda that looked as if it might have Spanish magazines suitable for an 8- to 12-year old, which is my present reading level. Unfortunately, the little shop didn’t carry books, magazines or periodicals, but the young man behind the counter directed me to a street further on where he said there were many such stores.

Yes, there were several, and I picked out one that looked larger than the rest and very well-kept. It had a taquería attached, and the proprietor was serving customers at a table when I walked in. He greeted me with a smile and a wave.

I approached him and explained my plight in English. He mulled my request over for a minute or two, then asked the seated customer if he could think of anything. That gentleman stood up, and the three of us went to the front of the store and the magazine rack. Sadly, there was only one comic book, but happily, the shelf also held the latest issue of National Geographic, but en español. I decided to get both, and read the Geographic in parallel translation with the English copy I have here at home.

At the checkout, my mental wheels were turning. I had told both men that I was just learning Spanish, so they were prepared. I screwed up my courage, handed the proprietor my magazines and said, “Quiero comprar …” but the words for “these magazines” were not forthcoming.

He chuckled and supplied a bit of handy shorthand. “…Eso,” he suggested. I then explained what I’d been groping for, and he reminded me, “Revistas.”

“¡Gracias!” I thanked him, and paid “siete dólares” for my books.

There was a kindness in his treatment of me, a neighbourliness we see too little of. A brief encounter, a chance acquaintance, a few words of social interaction have left me with a cozy, comfortable feeling about my second language instead of shyness and reluctance to speak it aloud. I thank you for your patience, señor, and I’ll be back the next time I’m in town.

All right, I'll be nice if you're going to whine. Here's the "translation" of the April Fools' Day blog. You really should be ashamed of yourself, too, because one of my readers actually took the time to decode it by hand!

Today is April Fools’ Day, you see, and I have no one handy to pick on. I’m not much for practical jokes as a general rule, but this day always seemed to bring out the best/worst of me in my married years.

The foulest prank I ever manufactured victimized my second husband, an inveterate late sleeper and “night person.” He had recently been put on day shift, and since alarm clocks were regarded as something to be ignored after their initial intrusion, responsibility for waking the beast devolved to me. Ah, that was a task! For an hour or more, he would respond to my less-than-gentle demands with, “Ten more minutes, then I’ll get up,” a phrase which infuriated me even at the best of times since I rise early and promptly, and am alert and ready for the day before the coffee’s cooked.

Was that not ideal breeding ground on which to hatch revenge? Indeed it was!

Knowing that he would be up past two despite reveille at seven, I waited until morning to move the clocks ahead an hour. I changed the wall clock, stove, microwave, his watch, then looked around for any I had missed. Oops! I’d forgotten the most important one of all: the dashboard digital in the car. That done, I waited on the hour.

Here another issue surfaced. I knew that he knew that I couldn’t possibly forget the day of foolery and japes, so other decoying traps needed to be laid. I put food coloring in the shower head, alum in the toothpaste, sweetened his coffee with salt. In character for the part, I deliberately fell for some of HIS tricks (the kitty litter in the instant coffee jar, the glued-together toilet paper), although when I lifted up the can holding down the note he’d left and plastic “buckshot” flooded out into the room, he managed to score a point as well. In all, it looked like a normal April Fools’ Day when I woke him at six (or seven as he saw it).

The morning went famously. He readied himself for work, and left the house, predictably fifteen minutes late. I kept expecting a phone call, but none came…not until nearly four real-time, which he believed was five.

Oh, he was incensed! He’d given the company an hour of his precious time for free. I took the tongue-lashing gamely (“cruel” and “unfair” were two of the repeatable words he used), and I knew he’d exact revenge some day, but I was proud. He hadn’t even caught on when he’d gone to lunch an hour early, and had opened up his wallet to find it held only currency from a Monopoly set.

Well, now I’m in the soup. I bought ten boards. Since they’re a foot longer than the birdhouse plan calls for, I figure I can make at least 15 and maybe as many as 18 swallow houses to put out for sale at $5 apiece, and turn a $3 profit on each one. I won’t make a fortune, but what the heck? It’s better’n a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, and it’ll keep me off the street.

I have both the time and patience to make this business venture viable, if that was my primary goal. Birdhouses are in high demand, to hear Dennis tell it, and I’ve seen evidence to support the statement. The man who has supplied me with feeders and houses over the years is frequently sold out. He, too, runs a cottage industry with a humble sign alongside the highway, but no, he hasn’t quit his day job. Sure, it’s a pocket-change enterprise, but who couldn’t use a bit of jingly stuff in the linty bottom of the bag?

It’ll be a few days before I go into production. The cedar one-by-sixes are wringing wet, and I don’t feel right about putting them through Dennis’ saw, no matter how I may abuse my own tools. I’ve mentioned before that we have country ethics, here. I won’t get shot if Dennis comes home and finds me generating sawdust with his radial arm saw without preamble, or nosing around for a spade bit of appropriate size. In fact, he was sure to let me know where to find various sizes of nails to load into the nail gun.

That’s where I draw the line. By and large, I don’t like power tools. Woodworking should be a hands-on experience. In the interest of accurate cuts and speed in manufacturing, I’ll abandon my old, crooked combination saw for this project, but thank you, I’ll drill the holes, drive the nails and thread the screws manually. It would take nearly as much time to mount the wood pieces in the drill press in any event, and I would just rather get up close and personal with the chunk of lumber destined to bear my hallmark as a finished product.

Does it matter, all this hand assembly? Not to the birds, nor to the buyers who probably couldn’t tell a hand-driven nail from a machine-fired staple, but it matters to me. Regardless of the minor monetary profits I may realize, I will have pride in accomplishment to support me.

The plans for a very simple birdhouse have been in my files for these many years, purloined from a free issue of “Birds and Blooms,” and although the intent was noble, I could never seem to get around to putting them to use. They required no specialized equipment other than a hole saw of appropriate size, no particular skill at woodworking beyond the ability to saw a more or less straight cut, and hardly any expenditure of time. “I’ll get around to it some day,” I’d excuse myself each time I looked at the single page of instructions, and then I’d place it back on the shelf, although always on the top of the pile of things-to-do-eventually.

The swallows are in full spate at present, cascading through the morning light in a violet-green cataract of wings, enlivening the air with their chattering conversations as they search for dwelling space. I am fairly certain that two of our three houses are claimed, if not already occupied, and the third is not in a spot convenient to watch. There is much competition for living quarters, much probing under the eaves for holes or niches, so what better time to build a birdhouse than on this sunny afternoon?

My secret stash of salvaged lumber is presently inaccessible behind the welter of my mother’s household goods, so I struck out for Dennis’, having heard the sounds of sawing in his workshop. He’s building a log doghouse for a Great Dane right now, and it’s a thing of beauty. When I spied him in the yard, he was installing the interior plywood walls, “to make it weather-tight,” he said. Dennis is quite the woodworker, and can usually be counted on for scrap. Unfortunately, his stock of cedar 1” x 6” was fairly well depleted. He had a few 20” lengths, and I didn’t want to take it all.

A trip to town for a $1.29 board hardly seemed reasonable, so there was only one recourse. By moving half a dozen boxes of books, I could peer behind the trunks and puzzles to see (was it?) a piece of 1” x 6” leaning up against the wall. With skillful climbing, a self-belay from an upturned chair’s leg gave me just enough extension that my remaining hand could reach the wood. Aha!

At first, I looked at the knothole in disgust, a waste of a foot-long section of lumber. Then my appraising eye suggested, “That looks kinda like an inch and a quarter, dun’t it?” Just the size a violet-green prefers! The hole went off slantwise and was certainly off-center, but the rustic aspect appealed to my eccentric tastes. It measured out perfectly.

The rough-cut cedar provided front and sides according to the pattern. From Dennis, I claimed enough for back, floor and roof. His radial arm saw made short work of cutting, and I took all the parts home to assemble on the porch. A small job, quickly done, it only remained to place the finished project somewhere shady, sheltered and visible.

This quaint little birdhouse now hangs in the carport. Its plan lays on the kitchen table, food for thought. I have proven once again that when I say I’ll get around to it eventually, I do. I like this little swallow cottage well enough that I’ll make another one…some day, and probably soon.

As a general rule, I don’t enjoy yardwork. I don’t think anybody truly does. Nevertheless, there is something eminently gratifying about burning brush, making it the one springtime chore I actually look forward to.

The old Doug fir sheds worse than the cat. If it isn’t dropping cones, the least breath of wind tweaks twigs and small branches and sends them scattering to the ground. A fair blanket of them accrues before winter’s days are done, and as we progress into spring, the grass threads through the needles and stitches them snugly to the earth. A pitchfork is the weapon of choice for their removal, as a rake tends to gather more cones in its transit and rapidly renders itself useless for the task.

The larger downed branches ask implementation of the double-bitted axe, a tool which has no other use in this household, since I prefer a wedge and sledge for wood-splitting. This artifact, like its owner, is past its prime and rather dull, and needs firm encouragement to do its job.

With gathered piles of debris stationed well away from the fire pit, I take the few pieces of newsprint the fire district will allow, crumple it into loose balls, and pile a bit of dry tinder raggedly over its apex, careful not to crush the paper too badly, then ignite it with a match. I never use wax or gasoline for environmental reasons, although Dennis’ offer of pitch was tempting. The first attempt is rarely successful, resulting only in some smoke and enough soot to make handling the unburned boughs undesirable. The second try nearly always produces.

Once the blaze is going nicely, a balance must be kept between tinder and larger sticks because without tinder, the bigger wood can’t be kept burning. Alternating between axe and pitchfork, or snapping dry wood underfoot to emplace by hand, the three-foot by three-foot conflagration is nursed into a bed of red, hungry coals.

My back isn’t what it used to be, so my axe wielding is restricted to the necessary. Once a too-hefty branch has been chopped into eight-foot sections, it is scientifically half-lifed by burning the central section through, then re-stacking the two resultant four-foot lengths.

What makes this job of work extraordinary and enjoyable is the variety of exercise it entails. While weeding is to crouch on haunches in the flowerbed for long hours and mowing is to sit on a seat not much more uncomfortable than the car’s, or pruning is to flex the arms, brush burning is a total workout: walking, lifting, stretching, bending. It is sport, not labour, and were the park-like appearance of the yard not enough when all is done, it gives physical reward, and who knows? Maybe there’s a toasted marshmallow waiting at the finish line.

Like wrenches, some of us are open on the head end and others are adjustable, while yet others monkey with things and generally leave them a bit less functional than they were beforehand. This is not your average daylight saving time story, despite how it begins.

Daffy’s roommate went to work an hour early. Sande showed up for Sunday services, and not a soul was there.

Ed is well-meaning, if slightly premature, so directly after Saturday’s family dinner, he oversaw his father-in-law as they changed clocks throughout the house. A sign of technology, there were far too many, from the microwave to the oven, the VCR to the TV, the clock radio, several alarms, watches, the timer-controlled coffee maker, the Regulator hanging high in the entry hallway. This shirttail relative of Big Ben’s requires a step ladder to reach, and a steady hand to re-mount on its hook, but no simpler to set were the digitals whose manuals needed to be consulted, and no two of them alike.

Now Daffy has some memory problems, so when her parents called her, they carefully explained what needed to be done and waited while she performed the necessary operations. They’re like that: supportive and patient, a close family whose members look out for each other.

Satisfied, the three separate households went to their beds, and the clocks ticked merrily throughout the night.

Daffy’s roommate rose with the alarm and made ready for her day at work. Sande, dressed in his church-goin’ suit, drove to services. The rest of the world snoozed happily for another hour after the sun came up last Sunday.

“Begonia,” “geranium,” “hydrangea,” “forsythia,” “cosmoline” and “image orthicon.” What’s the connection, for indeed there is one. The first four are obviously plants, but what of the latter two? They seem unlikely to appear in a sentence together, let alone with flora. The answer is that all are words which at some point in my life have been almost irretrievably lost and required serious excavation of the mental sod to bring to the surface again. They comprise my “Weird Words List,” a little file to which nothing has been added except “synecdoche” in the last thirty years.

Leaving “cosmoline” aside (its story is contained in the files of the hospital which repaired my first husband’s head) and putting “synecdoche” away for future reference, the remaining five items were archived when I was still young and impressionable.

The first two plants were tricky for a four-year old. If one could be remembered, the other fled the scene. I discovered then the art of thinking prone, because most often, the second one would bloom as I lay awake at night, obsessed with its nomenclature. I would then recite a mantra of, “begonia, geranium, begonia, geranium” until the garden of sleep was filled with pretty flowers, red and pink, yellow, orange and white. “Begonia, geranium” was better far than counting fluffy sheep, although by morning, the petals would have fallen and I couldn’t tell from twigs to say both names together. The second two came singly and a few years later, along with an appreciation for different floral varieties. The chant expanded and was practiced, and if one word eluded me, I could recite the syllables of all four in order and let my tongue find the missing one by rote.

Then my uncle Gus gave me an image orthicon for my birthday. I was turning ten. He was working at a television transmitter and the long kaleidoscope-shaped silvery tube had outlived its useful days and would have been discarded. It was one of the best birthday presents I ever received: ornamental, even without that marvelously complicated name. I have always loved words, always.

All things pass, and in the process of leaving home when barely into puberty, the image orthicon disappeared. I did not know that its title had escaped as well until several years had passed, and I was strolling down a city street, incidentally passing a TV repair shop which had another such device in its window, two actually: one like mine and one much larger. I made to address it by name (you may recall that I am an animist) and found my mouth dry of the word.

Perhaps that was the beginning of a reconciliation with my mother. She was the only person I could turn to in my search for the proper term. In our separate corners of the state, we sought to find it, and she delivered. “Image orthicon,” she said, and after that, I’d often pass the repair shop for no other reason than to speak to the cousin of an old friend.

Image orthicon! For you, I made a physical list of my “Weird Words” to stow in a tiny cedar treasure box so I’d never again forget.

Half a mile from a mall and directly behind Wal-Mart is a lovely little man-made lake, open to the public, which is stocked by the city as a provision stipulated by the man who left the property to them in his will. In life, he had maintained it as a private fish pond for his friends and their guests, regularly planting a high grade of farm-raised trout for their pleasure: no fingerlings, these, nor trophies: just fine, big, healthy fish for plain, assorted sportsmen.

It’s hard to believe that such a jewel could go unnoticed for the most part, but such is certainly the case. The acreage has been turned into a park now, and the main attraction seems to be the paved trail which encircles the impounded water, drawing joggers, walkers, bicyclists, skaters and the like. Swimming and boats are prohibited, but opportunities for shoreline casting abound, and the species of fish are numerous: bass, perch, catfish and (of course) trout. On any given day, however, it’s easy to find a spot to park a chair and tackle box, because one long side of the lake is almost entirely free of trees.

“There’s a lake behind Wal-Mart?” I said in disbelief when first I heard of it. I was at some other fishing spot, hauling ‘em in without conscience on good ol’ Power Bait, and I suspected my nearest neighbor of wanting to entice me elsewhere so he could have my place. Nevertheless, I got directions and relayed them to Sande. “There’s a lake behind Wal-Mart?” he said, and he lives in the same city. Nothing would do but what we try it.

Well, there’s nothing like a 15-inch trout to make a believer out of you, and that’s what happened. I’d be lying if I said I’d caught it, although I’ve caught some larger ones since that day, and so has he. The big ones are unpredictable and can be hooked in any season; the pan-sized kind come in on the fish truck monthly, and are usually fished out by late July when stocking ends. We’ve fished most of the accesses, and have our favorites. Mine was the outlet end, and only the best of us could cast to the deep center where the whoppers hold.

Last fall, the city tore up the park to make improvements. Instead of porta-johns, we now have flush facilities at an easy distance. Instead of dust and gravel and tight quarters, we have a capacious paved parking area. I was admiring these “improvements” when my eye was caught by something distant, and I moved closer, not believing what I saw. There, projecting well out into the little southern bay of my prime fishing spot was a newly erected concrete dock.

It took me several minutes to define my feelings with (I’m proud to say) very light profanity. I approve their refinements to the site but for that one, the ugly concrete promontory that gives many more fishermen access to the turf I previously regarded as my own. Resentment? Yes, I do admit it shamelessly, but more, for rising to the surface like a dimpling trout is the nagging feeling that the old place will never be the same.

This is a genuine blog. E=mc² (you knew that) and it is the only character represented by more than one symbol. Punctuation marks really are punctuation marks. Those are the only hints you get. Good luck!

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