The quince is not quite blooming yet, but I needed a picture of it for this post, so I took one from a couple of years ago.
This poor lonely quail is looking for a mate. Not sure there is one in the neighbourhood for him to find, but I made one up for him.
I quail at the thought of the poem I am going to inflict on you today.
“I could hardly wait for my breakfast of sunflower seeds this morning, folks. It was darned chilly overnight and I needed a few heat calories.”
“While Lincoln takes a break to go chase Della around the woodshed, I’m going to sneak a few sunflower seeds. But oh my goodness, they’re big. I wonder if I bit off more than I can chew.”
“Did you see that sneaky thief getting into my stash? I only turned my back for a few seconds to go tell Della that breakfast is served, and that foxy sparrow was into my food. I’m going to have to put some of these away for a rainy day.”
“Not too far away, and still under the roof. That will keep it dry.”
“Now stay! — I’ve seen Anneli do this with Emma. She points her fingers at her and says, ‘Stay!’ I’ll do what she does. Cool, eh?”
“Silly Lincoln. Every time he goes to bury a sunflower seed, I can zip right in here and help myself to his breakfast. Oh well, survival of the fittest (and smartest – that’s me). There’s a reason they call me a fox sparrow.”
Sharing shelter, that’s okay,
Sometimes it works out that way,
Sharing food’s another thing,
Since it can starvation bring.
Oh, all right, I get fed well,
But when seeds are in their shell,
It takes time to eat them up,
In my hands shaped like a cup.
Then along comes foxy sparrow,
Sitting on the jar rim narrow,
Helps himself to food that’s mine,
No permission here to dine.
Go ahead then, help yourself,
Sitting there upon my shelf,
I will have to be more wary,
Sunflower seeds I now must bury.
“Will ya look at that?” Emma says. “Branches all over the yard are bad enough, but that one that smashed into Lincoln’s house is huge. And it’s still up there!”
“I know! I saw the whole thing from inside my cedar hedge home when it happened.”
The Captain pulled the treetop off the woodshed roof with his old beater truck while the Admiral ran for the tape measure. Thirty feet snapped right off the top of a tree to the left of the woodshed.
And another long branch is still up there – it got hung up on the way down.
“Good grief!” wails Lincoln. “That was my lookout tree. The whole top is gone. And I had plans for all those cones left on the tree.”
“I feel just sick!”
The forces of nature make changes on Earth,
They make creatures realize what life is worth,
The wind can move trees and the branches around,
It howls and it yowls with a frightening sound,
The birds and the squirrels take cover and hide,
They shiver and shake while the storm they outride,
But after a night that they spent curled up tight,
They creep out and check in the bright morning light,
To see if their home world is standing there still,
It’s been slightly changed, but survive it they will.
It’s not a turkey that needs to be carved, but Fletcher the Flicker is getting creative as he dines on a snack of suet at the feeder.
“I’m going to carve you into a little duckling. Who knows? It might improve the flavour.”
“Oops! What was I thinking? I’ve eaten your bill, my little duckling.”
“Hmm! You’ve got a problem there, Fletch.”
“Well don’t just sit there and criticize, Orson. Do you have any bright ideas?”
“I guess not. Unless he’s gone to think about it….”
“Well, Fletch, I … er … let’s see …. For one thing, his bum’s too fat.”
Fletcher closes his eyes and counts to ten. “Lord give me strength.”
But then Orson has an idea.
“You pick away under his chin – that will help – and I’ll pick away at his fat tush. And by the way, it’s great working with you, Fletch. That snarky starling is not nearly as nice as you are.”
“I’m keeping my distance when he’s around. Get a load of that spearing beak and those mean, beady eyes. Not to mention that grabbing set of claws he’s got. No, Sir! I’m not doing anything to draw attention to myself. No sneaking a bite while he’s there.”
Fletcher carves a duck of suet, Asks his friend for help to do it. Orson's happy to oblige him Least he knows he won't get bludgeoned. Snarky starling, meanest birdy, Doesn't share, and oft plays dirty. Orson spends his time with Fletcher, Both are happy, yep, you betcha.
“Eh? Orson? What’s that you said?” That Oregon junco knows everything that’s going on around here.
It's a chilly wind today, My fur coat is on to stay, I'm so happy to be warm, With the temps below the norm.
“If you’d pay attention, Lincoln, you’d know there’s been a big change in the weather.” Him and his big fur coat. He probably hasn’t even noticed. But just look at Emma. She’s still trying to figure it out too.
Look now, Lincoln! See the ground, See the flakes fall all around? Food will be more precious though, Covered as it is with snow.
“Sheesh! This is just like in the movies where Bambi says, ‘Mother, what’s all that white stuff?’ and she says, with her soft, stunned voice, like some naive housewife out of a 50s sitcom, ‘Why … it’s snow!'”
Emma snarfs in deep, long sniffs, White stuff gives off special whiffs, Did a raccoon pass by here? Did a rabbit scratch his ear? Licking, tasting flakes of snow. Tries to bite it, where'd it go? Funny flakes of wetness fall, On her head and over all. Emma gives her coat a shake, Leaving just one lonely flake, Sitting on her pointy nose, Then into the house she goes.
No, it’s not an autoharp, but it looks like one and is played similarly. You might notice that the strings on the left half of the instrument are thicker (thus deeper-sounding). These are the chords that would be strummed as the harmony to the melody which is played on the thinner strings on the right half of the zither.
I remember my father playing these chord strings, often in an oom-pah-pah rhythm, but not necessarily always so. Using his thumb, he’d play a thicker light-coloured string once for “Oom” and stroke the three strings to the left of it twice for the “pah-pah.”
This would be timed to go with the notes of the melody played with his right-hand thumb which wore the “pick” you see beside the zither, just above the big tuning key.
This zither came with us to Canada in 1953, packed in its box, along with music sheets printed especially for the zither. The music sheet would be inserted under the strings and lined up so the heavy line lay under the C-string. That way it was easy to pluck the strings marked by a dot on the paper.
You would start at the top of the page and basically follow the line to the next dot and play each dot as you came to it. In this way, even a beginner could play a passably good version of the song. Of course, you could play tunes without the crutch of these music sheets, or even make up your own sheets if you had a favourite song.
But what about the accompanying chords? Even those are made easy. Each of the five chord sections are numbered, as you can see in the first photo, the numbers going from the middle to the left side from 1 – 5, and with the letters of the chords listed as well. Those same numbers show on the music sheet, so you can know which chord to strum with which notes on the melody.
This zither has a lot of history. It had a lot to do with how my father met my mother. Basically he serenaded her with it. Later when they married and had children, the zither was still a part of the family.
I have such fond memories of evenings when I lay in bed and (before the days of TV), my dad would bring out the zither and he and my mother softly sang their old folk songs in the semi-darkened living room. It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard and I still hear it in my mind, mixed with those tender emotions of love for my parents.
I borrowed the story of how they met, and the role the zither played, in my novel Julia’s Violinist. It is a fictional book but I wanted to include the zither in the story, so you can find it there is you ever choose to read that novel. Just click on the image of the book cover at the side of this page.
I wonder if there’s a restaurant up there. They dropped some food here on the floor, but maybe there’s fresher stuff up top.
Ah … this is more like it. A real borgasschmord of meaty worms and grains. Looks like a zinnia dropped some seeds here, and a bunch of other weedy things left promises of more weeds in the spring. I could help Anneli out by eating the weed seeds. But it might be easier to go dine at The Suet Block today.
Uh-oh! Looks like Mr. Darling Starling is already tucking in.
“Hey, Star! Don’t you know Anneli doesn’t want you here?”
“And why might that be, you little piece of Junc-o?”
“Well … she says you gobble too much food and don’t share, and anyway, she doesn’t like feeding baby killers. You know you’re a nest robber.”
“Harrumpf! Watch it, Twirp, or I’ll peck your eye out. And anyway, you’re not social distancing.”
“OMG! OMG!” said Harry, the hairy woodpecker. “I’d like to go down there, but – sheesh! That starling is star-k raving mad! … and-and-and he’s m-m-mean too.”
“I’m being good, Mr. Starling. See? I’ll keep my distance. I’ll just sit here and watch until you’re done.”
“Well, Twirp, you should have brought a chair. I’m gonna be a while.”
“Heh, heh, heh. Here comes Anneli. Look at that coward fly. He’s a “star” at running away. Coward! Heh-heh-heh. Wish Anneli would sit out here in the rain with us … sigh….”
You’ve seen pictures of my woodshed before, but take a closer look at the wood. It is dotted with birds, most of them Oregon juncos and pine siskins all trying to find shelter and food to keep enough warmth in their little bodies to survive until the fury of the storm has passed.
The rain lashed out in torrents and blew into all shelters sideways. The feeder is blurry, in constant motion, blown by the howling wind. The Captain and I made up a hanging cage for yet another suet block and moved two birdfeeders farther into the woodshed under cover. As we worked in that screaming wind we noticed more than one tiny bedraggled siskin huddling under pieces of firewood, feathers soaked, desperate to get out of the piercing wind that slapped icy water onto their wee little bodies. I could have cried. But we did what we could and had to let “good ole Mother Nature” do what she does best – kill off the weak. Survival of the fittest is hard to watch sometimes.
I took two quick videos of the storm from the deck of our house. In the onslaught of the wind and rain, I kept pressing the wrong button to stop the video and as I lowered the camera I caught an ugly picture of my slippers and an empty flowerpot. Not Academy Award film quality, but you’ll get an idea of the force of the storm. What you won’t see are some of the gusts that were way more violent than what I captured here.
If you turn on the sound, you’ll hear only the music of nature.
Today the birdfeeders are empty again. I’m refilling them a lot but if it will help some birds survive, I will keep on filling them as often as needed.
These little birds make me happy all year, so I want to do what I can to help them out when they need it.
No poem today. I’m too unhappy about watching them suffering yesterday.
When I was a child I really liked a song by Cole Porter. It was called “True Love,” sung by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. I was too young in 1956 to be a fan of these oldies, but the song was around much later and I always liked it.
It goes like this:
Sun-tanned, windblown, Honeymooners at last alone, Feeling far above par, Oh, how lucky we are. While I give to you And you give to me, True love, true love. So on and on it will always be, True love, true love. For you and I Have a guardian angel on high With nothing to do, But to give to you And to give to me, Love forever true.
If you don’t want to watch the 50s style banter of the movie, “High Society,” just advance the video to about 1:06 to hear the beautiful old love song, “True Love.”
You don’t have to be Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly to be in love. Just look at these pigeon guillemots, resting on the bow of the MV Eden Lake off the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands. They are also in love, just resting for a while, and whispering “sweet nothin’s” to each other.
Fast forward to Anneli’s place on Vancouver Island. The last of 2020 is going out “big and ugly.” One of the trees outside my window is leaning and would have fallen except that a bigger tree-friend caught it.
It’s a winter storm to match the one we had in mid-November. Blinding rain blowing sideways.
But, like Covid, it can’t go on forever. Better times await us in 2021.
All the best to you my blogging friends. May we all have a great year ahead.
And love will prevail.
My effort at a double acrostic forced me to forego the rhyme factor, but I’ve tried to put together a Christmas message, using the first and last letters, read downwards. If we keep these things in mind, maybe we’ll help to improve someone’s life just a little bit.
And before you ask, no, it didn’t snow here, except up in the hills. This varied thrush visited the feeder a couple of years ago, but he looked so pretty on the snow, I wanted to put him in this post.
Knowing Yule is cominG, It's time to trim the treE, Now that I am senior, and the claN, Depends on mE. Need to fill the lardeR, Extra goodie-food will be, sO, Special in the coming dayS, So smile and so will I. (Yikes! Where's the rhyme? Gone to the North Pole.) And when it comes to Christmas nighT, No stores will open staY, Done with shopping, all's class A, Good times at home remaiN. If Christmas music fills our minD, Vast troubles leave us alL, In giving freely, as we dO No need for price on luV. Good will's enough and that is freE. Ta-dah-dahdah-deedee.
Y’all have a wonderful Christmas time, y’hear?
And don’t pay too much attention to what those birds say. Their jabbering is for the birds.
