ODE TO SPAIN

I'm having a nostalgic moment.  I'm missing Spain.  It doesn't help that its in the news daily for its financial woes.  When I hear the news that the bottom is falling out of the real estate market there, naturally, I feel bad for the Spanish people, but one craven piece of my heart rejoices because this increases (infinitesimally) the possibility that I might one day have a little piece of property high in the Asturian hills, to restore lovingly and to make my base for hiking holidays to come.  In my dreams, it is a place for my Camino pals and I to reconnect, and a way to share Spain with all my loved ones.  Did I mention the lottery win which would have to be part of this plan?

It doesn't help that Nick is having a motorcycle adventure for the next week or so. See what happened here! It's not that I'm jealous of his fun, (if you can call hundreds of miles on rough gravel roads through spruce bog, being chewed up by "bulldogs" and blackflies whenever you stop for more than five minutes, into the heart of nowhere fun) I just wish I were having some too.

In recognition of my incurable addiction in the face of all logic, and as a way of venting my frustration at wanderlust thwarted, I present my poem, written in Spain, with photographs from two Caminos.

(clears throat)

ODE TO SPAIN


O, Spain!

Land of skulking cats, too much perfume and every thing deep fried.
Where people sing on the buses and each day is celebrated with rich red wine
....at seven o'clock in the morning.

O, Spain!
 land of bored, tired dogs who bark at EVERYTHING
because there is nothing else for them to do.
Why do I love thee?

Is it because your women can negotiate cobble streets in stilettos?
Or because a grandee in kid leather boots
Riding his sweating gray down the street behind the bullring
paused to ask after my health?

Or is it the wagon ruts worn into stone on Roman roadways
Or any number of other reverberations of the past
That make me recognize the non-linear nature of time?

Perhaps it is the sturdy kind of common sense
that makes city fathers install escalators on the cliffs which pass for streets
in the seaside towns.

The "get on with it "spirit that rebuilt Gernika

Or the rich broth of comfort
that comes from millennia of human presence.

Whatever it is, I miss its taste.
Oh, Spain......

MULBERRYVISION

The mulberry tree which shades the southwest corner of our house has  begun its yearly transformation into a restaurant.  Its branches are now dragging on the ground, burdened with what must be a million pale green berries nearing ripeness.  The call has gone out into the forests and the creatures are coming in droves to munch on the sweet fruit.  The berries don't look that appetizing, and their texture leaves something to be desired as far as I'm concerned, but their juice is both fragrant and delicately sweet.

This morning, as we had that first lifegiving coffee on the deck at seven, before the world turned into a sauna, we spotted a pair of shy catbirds, and a group of waxwings in their geisha-like perfection.  They made the robins look lumpen and clumsy as they flitted from branch to branch doing their best to remain unseen.  In the distance, I could see the inevitable black squirrels hugging the trunk.  The hummingbirds, who believe that tree to be their property, gave the occasional buzz of annoyance and decided to use the feeder nearer our table instead of the one by the tree.  Its not that they couldn't take all comers with one wing tied behind their iridescent backs, its just that in their wisdom, they take the path of least resistance.  When you have a metabolism revving as fast as theirs does, you don't need any extra stress in your life.  This is fine by me, because next to crows and ravens, hummingbirds are my favourites and I like to see them up close.

At night, the raccoons will come.  We'll sometimes hear them squabbling, which sets the dog off. In the morning their leavings will wreathe the trunk of the tree.  Going barefoot is not an option at this time of year.  Occasionally, the adults will leave their babies in the tree for the evening while they go off hunting for something with a little more protein, confident in the tree's ability to babysit.  Sometimes, we're lucky enough to catch them on film (well, you know what I mean).

Red squirrels also favour the tree at this time of year, though our chipmunks don't seem to.  Too much competition, maybe?

For the birds and animals, the tree is food.  For us its like a great program we look forward to every summer. I prefer Mulberryvision to Television, any day of the week.  Stay tuned!

WEDDING PRESENT

My daughter was married on Friday.  This is the gift she made for her husband.  At his insistence, she posted it online.  I just HAVE to share it with you.  It's GREAT!

FLOWERING CRAB

It's blossom time.  The ornamental flowering crabapple trees are particularly lovely this year.
Serendipitously, I came across an old notebook with a piece extolling the virtues of my own flowering crabapple which stood next to our century and a half old post and beam house in a small canal village.  I wrote the passage as we were leaving that place, so I was feeling sentimental about the old tree, and giving thanks for the abundance it had given us during our time there.

  I appreciated how every inch of it was covered in fluttering pink blossoms, heady with the scent of cinnamon and cloves.  The blossom was followed by vast numbers of small, utterly round fruit, every year without fail; utterly round, cherry red, and hard as rocks. With the coming of frost, the fruit  turned cinnabar orange and softened,  becoming a perfect winter food for birds.  The cedar waxwing host arrived once every winter for a feast.  Their red and yellow bars and russet tails accorde perfectly with the fruit, for an effect that was deliciously ornamental.  One year a flock of passing evening grosbeaks stripped the whole tree in a matter of minutes, but most of the time, the fruit disappeared gradually, leaving enough for the returning starlings of spring to finish off.

This little tree, only about fifteen feet at the most, was strong enough to bear my  adult weight when I clambered through it stringing Christmas lights every year.  It was the tree which taught the kids how to climb.  The closely spaced branches meant that Tarzans-in-training had nothing to fear. The supreme test of strength for the tree came during the ice storm of 1996.  After five days and nights of ice raining from the sky, the tree became a visual expression of the definition of courage as grace under pressure.  The bole of the trunk, each cluster of brillian red fruit,  and each and every branch and twig, was coated in a layer of crystalline ice a full inch thick.   When the rain stopped and the sun came out, little birds sat in the frozen branches, and the tree glistened like the most fantastic crystal chandelier imaginable.  The light passing through the ice made it almost painful to look at.

All around us was chaos and destruction.  The crown of every maple in the village was split.  Driving to town was upsetting.  It looked like a war zone, and would continue to do so for years to come.  But our dear crabapple was complete; not one broken branch was to be found.  I suspect it was because of the bountiful crop it bore each year.  The branches were used to carrying a heavy load, and could bend resiliently under the extra weight, rather than snapping. Sweet are the uses of adversity!

FALSE AUTUMN

Last evening's weather was downright weird.  We must have been skirting the edge of a storm.   The sky was pink, but it was the dingy pink of a lingerie  hem soiled by too many wearings.  It cast an odd light on everything, making the budding trees across the lake look for all the world like it was October instead of May.  I stopped the car and took a picture.

Then I noticed the rainbow.  Like everything else it was a bit skewed by the filter of the pink light.  Only two bands were visible, the pink and the orange.  It was too ephemeral to photograph; but it had a kind of end of the world feel to it.  I found myself in a hurry to go inside!

THE ROBIN RESCUE SQUAD

I was putting out some recycling yesterday when I noticed a commotion in the big mulberry tree by the back door.  A robin was flapping about frantically.  I walked over and looked up, about twelve feet up.  I couldn't quite see how, but he was definitely caught by one foot.  Initially, as I got close, he panicked and started flailing around, but when I stood still, he relaxed and just hung there upside down.  While part of my brain worked on how to get up there and see if I could help, another part appreciated the elegant curve of his neck and beak.  I would have loved to take a picture of that, but it would have made me feel like a reporter in a disaster zone, talking rather than assisting.

He was out near the end of the branch, so there was no possibility of climbing out there.  I needed something tall to try to pull the branch down to a manageable height.  Somewhere in the chaos that is the garage there was a long handled pruning saw.  I called for Nick, explained the situation and asked him to get the saw.  (I don't go into the garage--if you could see it, you would know why).  He had a better idea.  He found a long aluminum pole under the deck, part of some previous contraption.  As luck would have it, it had a bent spike through one end.  He hooked that over the main branch on which the robin was trapped, and hauled downward.

As the bird came towards us, we could see that his foot was caught in some very fine string.  Evidently he'd been on a nest-building expedition that had gone wrong.   Handing the pole over to me, Nick went to the kitchen.  It took all my strength to hold that thing down.  The robin was terrified.  I could see his brick red chest rising and falling rapidly.  Nick came back with one of our longest kitchen knives, and with the surety of Alexander cutting the Gordion knot, he sliced through the strands.  In a flash of wings, the robin was gone.

Today, I keep checking all the birds in the yard to see if one is limping, but he seems to have made a full recovery.  All's well that ends well.

The robin picture came from Wikimedia Commons

CROW VS TURKEY VULTURE

I like crows.   I find everything they do, no matter how heinous, extremely interesting.  So today, as one flew low across my path as I was driving home, my eyes followed it.  I was amazed to see him slow down enough to bounce off the head of a turkey vulture roosting on a stump by the ditch.  That turkey vulture was one cool bird.  He just kind of hunched his shoulders as the crow's talons hit him and just kept  on roosting.  By then, the car was past them so I don't have any further information to help me figure out just what was going on.

It felt like a game to me; precision flying, ice-for-blood stoicism;  avian thrills and chills.Or was it a turf war over a piece of particularly choice offal in the ditch?   Did the crow wait for the car to come by for an added filip of adrenalin?