Hmm! Great view from up here.
Kind of windy though.
Yikes! That gust nearly unseated me.
I wonder if I should find a better place. A bit exposed here….
Help! Eeeeek! Eeeeek! Mom!
My feathers are getting all ruffled up.
Starting to rain too.
Here comes the rain. Tiny drops are gathering on my feathers. And then there’s that wind. I think I should find another place to hang out. Lots of trees out there with branches for a better grip.
As I wrote the title to this post, I thought it might be misleading, with all the local wildfires making ashes of some of our “mountains,” but it is the tree that I am referring to in this post.
Each spring, the mountain ash gets clusters of little white flowers. Later in the summer, those flowers turn into red berries that will supply food for birds that are still here in the late autumn. It’s a time of year when the birds are trying to get the last of the summer’s bounty to build up their strength to meet the coming winter, or to make any lengthy flights they might have planned.
On one of those cool autumn days, the flocks (usually robins) will come and occupy the tree like so many shivering ornaments on a Christmas tree. They gobble down as many of these berries as they can. Sometimes it is already late in the fall and the berries are getting a bit overripe. The birds have been known to get a bit tipsy from eating the wine-like berries. Beware the windows nearby, little birds, when you can’t fly straight.
They also visit the holly trees for their berries, but they eat more carefully. Holly leaves can be prickly.
These pears are one of my favourites. Firm and juicy and not so quick to bruise after you pick them.
They are red. Aren’t you?
Let me try that again. Put a little bit of French into the second part.
They are Red Anjou.
So delicious.
These pears are believed to have originated near the city of Angers, France, which was the seat of the Plantagenet dynasty. The pears showed up in the United States in 1842 and now represent 34 % of the U.S. pear market.
I’m not surprised they’re popular. They are so tasty.
This carpet python is not the same one as in the previous post, but the story happened nearby. My friend noticed the snake lying near the road and wondered if it had been run over. If not, it soon could be. She dropped a stick on it to see if it would move, and as you can see, it did not. In order to move it away from the roadside, she considered picking it up, but, as these snakes can be heavy and she is not a weightlifter, she called on a friend to come and help. (I chuckle when I imagine that these are her excuses for not feeling comfortable handling a snake. I wouldn’t be either.)
As you may know, snakes don’t hibernate in the sense that mammals do, but they will den up and cuddle for warmth. As the weather cools, the snakes tend to slow down if they can’t find a sunny spot to stay warm.
This particular fellow was stranded in a cool place and his already cool blood was not able to keep him active. He was pretty much stuck. You might say he was close to having “viperthermia.”
In the photo below, notice how the snake is just dangling there, not very active. He needed to be warmed up, and what better way to get his blood flowing again than with a nice cuddle. This is what the friend is doing, trying to warm up the cool guy. He walked with the snake to a sunny patch. With about ten minutes of cuddling and two minutes of sunshine, the snake was feeling better and became more lively.
He was squirming all over the place, and although the friend was in no danger of being swallowed, he didn’t want to get nipped either. See him holding the snake’s head away, just in case.
This carpet python in Australia is very well camouflaged. His head is just to the right of the farthest fern on the left. From there, if you follow his curves along to the end of his long body, you will notice that he gets fatter and fatter. I shudder to think what little animal has been swallowed whole.
Carpet Python, photo by Leslie
Imagine walking down the steps to the back yard to put something into the compost and then, on your return, noticing that you must have walked right over a python of over six feet in length.
Luckily, these pythons are not venomous. They eat small animals like mice and rats, birds, and lizards. They can open their jaws wider than we might think, judging by the size of the head, but after an initial bite, they wrap their body around the animal to constrict its blood flow, and once the animal is unconscious, it is usually swallowed whole.
My mouth is watering as I look at these blackberries. You can make desserts with them, but why go to so much trouble? Just pop them into your mouth. They are SO good!
They make the best jam too.
Unfortunately, they are not the easiest berries to pick. As much as I love to eat them, I hate to pick them.
On a small lake in northwestern Washington State, my friend Sonia was kayaking and had a close look at a pair of common loons. One of them is pictured here. I did some digging for information and found out that except for the difference in their size, it is not easy tell male from female at a glance. So whichever it is, he or she would like to chat you up with a poem. Beware! It may be a bit loony.
Just imagine what a thrill it would be to have one of these king parrots land on your back fence to ask for a snack. I would probably break a leg running for my camera. This photo was taken by my friend Leslie who lives in Australia. She assures me that she hasn’t broken a leg.
Maybe he’s getting ready for Christmas, wearing his best bright red and green finery.
He’s already looking for his presents in the form of a handout of seeds and any other fruit goodies that may come his way.
Back in 1953 when my family came to Canada from Germany, my dad had a job in a stationery store where they also sold and repaired typewriters. Remember those?
You can see the stationery store front in this photo (which happened to be taken on the day of the Fall Fair parade).
My dad was very good at fixing typewriters and small office machines. He worked hard at his job, and the company he worked for encouraged him to go to night classes to learn English, which he did. He was doing his best to learn the new language.
One day, his co-worker suggested that they go to the New Palace Hotel and Cafe for their coffee break. It was just at the end of the block where they worked, and would be quick.
In this old photo, also taken on the day of the Fall Fair parade, you can see the New Palace, the lighter building on the left.
I just noticed the people on top of the hotel building. They’re there to watch the parade.
“They make the best pies,” he said.
“Yes, but mein English…. I not know vaht to say.” My dad’s face scrunched up with worry.
“No problem,” said his buddy. “You just say, ‘Coffee and good pie’.”
“Okay.” My dad nodded. All the way to the coffee shop he practiced. “Kaffee and kood pie. Kaffee and kood pie. Kaffee and kood pie.” He was already imagining how good it would be.
In the New Palace Cafe, they sat in a booth, and when the waitress came over, my dad said, “Kaffee … and kood pie.”
A few moments later, she came back with the cup of coffee. She slammed it down on the table, and stuck her nose in the air as she spun around and flounced away.
My dad sat there, stunned. “Vaht heppen?” he asked.
His co-worker winced. “I think she thought you said, ‘Coffee! And goodbye!'”
Earlier this spring, I was bragging about how many blossoms were on our transparent apple tree.
Later, many of these blossoms turned into apples. If you’re not familiar with transparent apples, you might think it would be great to just take a big chomp of one of these apples and enjoy the juicy freshness. You would be disappointed. It would be juicy and fresh, but it would be mouth-puckering sour. The very ripe ones are okay for eating, but the best are the just barely ripe ones that are crying out to be turned into a pie.
Notice that the apples weigh a lot more than those pretty white fluffy flowers. We had to prop up the branches so they wouldn’t break under the weight of the apples and the tree is already leaning from the load.
I picked a bunch of the apples to lighten the load. In the house, I peeled and cut them and put them into a bowl with a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon and a couple of tablespoons of flour.
Then the food processor made the job of making a pie crust easy, and as they say the rest is history. Well, the pie was, anyway. I was lucky to get this photo before it all disappeared. Funny how apple pie just seems to evaporate whenever there’s a cup of tea or coffee around.
wordsfromanneli 