January is the best month, hands down. Christmas is over, but there are still plenty of treats around. The skies are grey and easy on the eyes. Leafless trees mean the birds are easy to spot. Cooler temperatures mean tea, blankies, candles and deep sleep every night. I love it all. I wish it was like this all year.
There was some minor, annoying excitement last week when Anna came out of work to a completely flat tire. After CAA put on her spare, we swapped cars so she could drive without worry to work the next day and surprise! Our car had an aggressively leaky tire, too. Sigh. Both vehicles have now been to the garage for new tires and other repairs (why are brake pads seemingly made of tissue paper?) so it was time for the dishwasher to break down two days ago.
I’ve been…
baking sheet-pan banana pancakes
knitting another hooded scarf
making yogurt
reading Dorie’s Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan, Flora Nouveaux by Carla Wingett and A Mind to Murder by PD James
watching The Marlow Murder Club and Unforgotten, season 6
Every year I swear next December will be different. Shopping, making, wrapping, baking, cooking, cleaning – I’ll start all of it earlier and cruise into Christmas Day serenely on top of everything. Ha.
I do get a little more organized with every passing year, it’s true. The Christmas Binder™ of plans, lists, recipes and games helps a lot. Not having a whole month of Christmas concerts, class parties, Secret Santas and so on for three kids on top of all the other stuff helps even more.
And yet, by December 24 every year, I want to lie down and sleep for a week. After a few festive days of breaking up animal fights, endless dishwasher loads and non-stop eating, everyone gathers their loot and goes home and it takes a week to clean up again. I like Christmas, I do, but I like not-Christmas more.
Two of my guests, Nadja and Simon:
This guest was not allowed indoors:
Before the pressure got to be too much, there were walks with Anna and Evie.
Woohoo, it’s cosy season: flannel shirts, woollen shawls and socks, hot cocoa, beeswax candles and long, dark evenings. I miss these sensory comforts so much during the summer.
Anna, Evie and I have been walking quite a bit while the weather is perfect:
I’ve been reading The Allingham Case-Book and Sorrow and Bliss, watching Dalgleish and Walking with Dinosaurs, knitting a hooded scarf thing (we’ll see), and baking brownies (oh yes), yogurt poppy seed cake (meh) and pear cake (okay, but I’ll make improvements next time).
Ah, October. And with it, the return of my will to live. I get an energy surge every year once autumn really hits and a desire to DO. ALL. THE. THINGS. I can’t even begin to express how glad I am summer is over for another year.
One thing I’ve spent a lot of time doing is downloading and sifting through the thousands of photos I’ve taken since June, some of which I’d like to share here. I really need to develop a better system for this because letting them pile up until it’s a completely overwhelming week-long project isn’t the most fun I’ve ever had. Lesson learned.
After a Thanksgiving lunch at Anna’s, we all went out to pick apples in her small orchard, much to the annoyance of this beauty:
A starling also had something to say about all the dumb people cluttering up the yard:
Now that it isn’t too hot and sunny to leave the house occasionally, we have started a weekly supper get-together at Anna’s. I bring the food and Anna supplies the view:
The neighbours want to know what’s going on:
At home, I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time admiring cloudy skies and celebrating every drop of rain, after a summer of practically no rain at all. Stormy sky + red leaves = perfection.
On one of our after-lunch walks last week, Foster and I passed a field with hundreds of Canada Geese, all seated and facing north, as if they were at a drive-in. You can almost see them in this poor cellphone photo:
Ah, June. *blows raspberry* My eleventh favourite month. It’s hot. It’s buggy. It’s sunny all the godforsaken time. And always at the back of my mind is the thought that it will only get worse from here. I am not a pleasure to be around these days, I’m sure, and won’t be for a long time. Every year, I’m already over summer before it even officially arrives.
The only good things about late May are Foster’s birthday (takeout Chinese food and homemade chocolate cake for #25) and lots of interesting birds in the backyard. Merlin hears dozens of species every day and I’d spend more time on the deck watching for them if it weren’t so hot and buggy and pollen-y. We seemed to specialize in Warblers this past week: Merlin heard Bay-breasted, Blackburnian, Blackpoll, Canada, Chestnut-sided, Magnolia, Wilson’s, Yellow and Yellow-rumped Warblers, in addition to Red-eyed Vireos, White-crowned and White-throated Sparrows, Barn, Bank and Tree Swallows, Canada Jays, Bobolinks, American Redstarts, Veeries, Red-eyed Vireos, Grey Catbirds, Northern Mockingbirds, Purple Finches, Barred Owls and Common Yellowthroats.
I got a few snapshots:
That last photo is a grackle youngster patiently waiting for mum and dad to come back.
The lilacs and flowering almond are on their way out:
On Saturday, Anna and I transplanted a million bean, tomato, zucchini, cucumber, watermelon and pepper seedlings and Charlotte dug not one but two whole new garden beds to accommodate her transplants and all the ones I’ve run out of room for. I overdid the seed starting, as usual.
This girl is the garden supervisor:
She does not tolerate laziness.
We’ve been watching more episodes of The Brokenwood Mysteries in the evenings and I’ve been reading Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh and The Complete Father Brown Stories by GK Chesterton.
At this time of year, I’m always tempted to stay up reading really late, which would allow me to avoid more of the next day’s sun, but it’s hard to be nocturnal and still operate in our sunlight-obsessed society. I saw this the other day and it made me laugh:
May 19 was the 15th birthday of The World’s Cutest and Best Boy:
When you’re that old you get to stand on the table for photos.
We’ve been lucky enough to have a cool, wet spring so far, which means I’ve been willing to do more in the garden (weeding, transplanting leeks, lettuce and nasturtiums) and all the blooms have lasted longer:
Merlin is propped in the window pretty much all day long and is hearing some super cool birds, like Bobolinks, Dickcissels, Chimney Swifts, Soras, Eastern Wood-Pewees, Canada Warblers, Magnolia Warblers, Indigo Buntings, Northern Mockingbirds, Killdeer, Chipping Sparrows, American Redstarts, Great Blue Herons and too many others to list. There are Baltimore Orioles nesting in the copper beech, Song Sparrows nesting in the raspberries, American Robins nesting under the deck, and those are just the ones we’ve stumbled across.
It hasn’t been a brilliant week for photos of anyone or anything because of the rain and grey skies, but I’ve tried:
Every single one of those bird photos was taken in the pouring rain so they aren’t the clearest, but what can you do.
I’m continuing to plough through the Phryne Fisher novels (The Green Mill Murder this week), which are good bedtime fare, and have been skimming Turning to Birds by Lili Taylor. I usually like reading about other people’s interest in birdwatching, but her frequent humblebrags about being A Famous Actress make me roll my eyes a bit.
Anna and I spent part of the weekend bingeing two of the three seasons of Motherland on BritBox – and have plans to finish the third and final season tonight. What a great show. Hilarious.
I always feel like spring days need to be 30 hours long to even have a chance at getting everything done, but especially this year. Errands, appointments, the installation of a new router and cable box with a steep learning curve, our wedding anniversary (#28), the gardens in their springtime frenzy, and, most importantly, Anna’s nerve-wracking push to complete the conditions required to finalize her house offer, which is now officially completed. Exciting times, but I miss the slow, quiet days of winter.
I’ve been starting seeds (cucumber, zucchini, various beans, melons, winter squash) and weeding and transplanting seedlings (lettuce, beans, strawflowers, calendula) and harvesting kale, chives, chard and lots of asparagus, in addition to many vases’ worth of tulips and daffodils. I don’t enjoy planting bulbs in November, but boy am I glad come spring.
This is also a great time for bird-watching and -listening. Merlin is hearing so many species that are just passing through or are here for the summer: American Redstart; Least Flycatcher; Wilson’s, Magnolia, Yellow, Yellow-rumped and Palm Warblers; Dickcissel; Chimney Swift; Ovenbird; Willet; Bank, Tree and Northern Rough-winged Swallows; American Pipit; Killdeer; Grey Catbird; Least Sandpiper; Rose-breasted Grosbeak; and, in great abundance this year, Baltimore Oriole.
There must be other nests, but here’s one they’re building in the copper beech tree:
Anna and I sat on the deck for a bit on a couple of afternoons and watched Orioles fly back and forth across the yard dozens of times, yelling their heads off the whole way.
I haven’t had a lot of photo opportunities, but I did nab a Yellow Warbler (albeit a bit blurry, like all my Yellow Warbler shots) and a less exciting, but still beautiful European starling:
I also captured Evie mulling over her ability to leap 20 feet into the air to catch one of these noisy things in her mouth:
At night, I’ve been reading Death at Victoria Dock by Kerry Greenwood and The World According to Cunk by Philomena Cunk. With an empty cable box, I’ve had time to get back to watching library DVDs of The Brokenwood Mysteries, an enjoyable series from New Zealand.
Just this past week, all the trees have fully leafed out and the serviceberries are blooming and the gardens are taking off. Spring has sproinged. I’ve been picking lots of asparagus, daffodils and tulips:
Anna’s house-buying preparations continue and wow, is there a lot to keep track of. Mortgage brokers, insurance brokers, house inspectors, septic inspectors, appraisers, lawyers, real estate agents – emailing people and attending appointments has been almost a full-time job for her for more than a week now. It has completely cured me of any desire to move. What a hassle.
Buying a house has also been instructive for her (and me and our immediate family) when it comes to what we all thought were reasonably good relationships. There’s nothing like taking a big, scary step to show you which people in your life are supportive and excited for you and which people can only criticize or, almost worse, can’t be bothered to say a thing. It will never fail to amaze me how certain people who are more than old enough to know better do not in fact know better.
On a less infuriating note, it was a pretty good week for wildlife:
While I’m always watching the trees, Charlotte spotted this handsome devil in the grass:
Evie was a capable assistant in the garden on Friday afternoon, shredding weeds for the compost and breaking down old corn stalks and trying to eat bumblebees and barking at birds and following along behind me to remove little twigs I inserted to help identify where I’d sown seeds.
Sunday was Mother’s Day and we had a nice lunch here with the kids and my mother. I spent the afternoon on the couch with my feet up, watching the ball game and taking no responsibility for meal plans and it was great.
With so much to discuss in the evenings, I still haven’t been reading or watching as much as usual, but that’s okay because there will be more than enough time for that all too soon. In the few minutes before bed each night, I’ve been enjoying Murder on the Ballarat Train by Kerry Greenwood. On Saturday and Sunday, Anna and I binged on several episodes of Stath Lets Flats, which I adore. It’s brilliant.
