Author: admin

My house is empty, mostly, unused boxes, dust bunnies. You remember the rabbit that attacked Jimmy Carter any of you? That’s my kinda’ dust bunny.
The movers finished a couple of hours ago and after I found M’Weec, who had shadowed into the darkest corner of the bathroom closet and refused to answer me until I found him. He’s been freaked out for a month with all the disruption and just now, strange people and radical changes in the landscape. I haven’t told him much about what’s to come, I don’t intend to give him a say in the matter so why make him fret any earlier than necessary?

It’s pouring here, but we got my things under cover before it started. Better luck than one past move that took place during a hurricane. I have boxes to break down, trash to sweep up and my Shaker Johnnies to dig up and package. I’ll be finishing up here for the next two days.
The house is infested with mosquitoes since the doors were open most of the past 2 days and I’m delighted to say M’Weec finds them tempting prey.
I seem to have dodged the ticks when I dove into the weeds to gleen my skulls. And suffered several more small lacerations in doing so. My arms look like I’ve been beaten.

We will take off late morning on Sun and turn in the rental and catch a train to Boston, taxi to Logan and book into a hotel, let M’Weec out to refresh himself and use the litter box that will get left behind in the trash. Then we go to the airport early afternoon and hop a ride out to OR.
I like that. I’m sure I’m not the first to use the abbreviation for the word it makes, not after living in ME for the past 20 years.
We land at 8 PM, missing the family barbecue by the pond by scant hours, drat. And home to OR city, OR I feel the need for an ellipsis here.

My car should arrive soon, probably Wed. My furniture, not so much, they said it will arrive on “the 5th or 6th” when I asked they not wait until July 8th, my first day on the job at fair. But of course, will they?

Well, if you’ve read all this way, I’ve saved the best, fingers crossed, news for last. The couple who want to buy my house have obtained a preapproved mortgage contingent on selling their house. They even lowered the price after a couple of weeks. Yesterday they accepted an offer for a closing on July 16th. Now the only hurdle is to get past the inspection of my buyer’s house. They want to close on my house the same day. What joy to own only 2 residences again! Even Ah-er, to own one, but that will come.

That was the headline in the local section of the paper. The statement is generally true, but a bit late, it’s been in full swing since April. I’m grateful the mosquitoes aren’t very numerous yet, I had my first bite, but they’ll be in full swing themselves in a week. I’m also grateful there are no deer flies out there, I’m hoping to be outa town before they arrive. I am grateful that the black flies plaguing my every outdoor moment will be gone in another week or two although all it means for me is that they won’t tend to fly into my eyes, nose and mouth. How can I possibly leave this outdoor paradise?

I’m making recordings of the birds in the back yard. I picked Sunday because there is less shooting. Not none, just less. On the other hand as spring progresses, the rooster next door is in full voice. A thundershower came through and then the birds came back, it should be a nice one. The trees, as they fill out ,allow the birdsong to bounce around a bit, sounding like we are in a gigantic concert hall. Still no evening veeries. I do hope to record some before I move, they don’t frequent the pacific northwest.

June 17 or T minus 7
So the latest is that my neighbors have been mowing my yard and then my high school age lawn mower and house sitter neglects to mention she’s only done it once because someone else (my neighbors) is doing it.  She stopped responding when I suggested that I’d apparently been paying the wrong person.Anyway now I have a guy named Dave Parker who will do it until my own mower gets there. I have to mow here once more than Guy comes over and siphons out the liquids so it’s road worthy.  I can’t really imagine what my place looks like.  Dave stopped by last night.  He asked if he should mow at the shed and all the high grass, and I told him just mow whatever has already been mowed.  But then he asked where my garden was, he couldn’t find it.  He was clearly skeptical that I really had one but giving me the vbenifit of the doubt.  Even after I mentioned the large wisteria vine growing, hanging over, the garden gate, he still seemed bewildered.  I understand the man doesn’t know wisteria, probably far fewer than 50% of folks do, but he missed the “huge vine covering the fence with a gate under it” so my imagination is running wild about how overgrown everything else is, that someone should miss that wisteria.  
It will be so interesting learning how the seasons treat my place over the next year, and decade.  I want to get the fence fixed by the creek and I’m still thinking goats but I found an ecologist who has focused his study for several years on the Abernathy Creek watershed area that my Tour Creek flows into.  My heart palpitates (non-symptomatically) at the idea.  The things he can tell me!!!Apparently the Oregon City watershed folk say the blockage in my creek is on or near my property.  It’s either a beaver dam or a slide.  I’m not sure how it can be so close and still indistinguishable but they put me in touch with an ecologist who is going to come and look at the situation.  Also he’ll give me some advice on how to deal with the canyon sides.  As you know there are areas that are practically vertical.  I’m so excited to find someone who is an expert in my particular backyard ecosystem before I make any bad decisions about the property.  Wouldn’t it be cool if there were river otters in the creek?????

This is an evening view to my north, it reminds me of the eastern view from Ram in the sunset

I watch a bunch of British TV and often use the subtitles because I have trouble hearing a word here or there.  I have becxome a fan of british captioning, although I’ave seen some good ones elsewhere.  My most recent, I’m watching the British mystery, Father Brown.  Several times while watching a scene with Father Brown officiating at Mass, the caption reads “Father Brown talking in a foreign language.”  Why not “Father Brown talking in a dead language?”
Faint sound, caption “whimpering” one character, “What was that”  The other, “That was whimpering.”
Another one I admired was “Birds singing, crows cawing.”   Lots of inging going on.  

The latest news on my section of canyon:
Rita Baker from the Greater Oregon City Watershed Council and some other folks went to look at the creek down in the canyon in my yard to see why it’s not flowing.  They said they think there was a landslide or beaver dam and it might be on my property. She said someone needs to explore it from the water.  I mentioned my kayak and she said she was thinking of waders.  Anyway, she told me about a man who is a watershed ecologist who can not only give me more information about the creek, but also about the canyon walls, that in one place are practically vertical.  

HERE ‘TIS FOR ANYONE WHO WADED THROUGH THE ABOVE:
I don’t know if you heard the single tolling of a huge bell on the 24^th, but The Move is now set and it and looks like I will actually hit the Oregon Trail before the end of the year. 
My move is becoming real, tediously, slowly, but getting there.  And getting more complicated of course, especially vehicularly.  I have to get my car on a truck in Portland, ME, rent a car, the movers will pack me up on June 21^stand take all my possessions away. I will get back to Portland with the rental car so I can hop on the train down to Boston where I get the plane the next day.   I have tickets for me and M’Weec to fly out on June 24^th. 

I have no idea if my family have any appreciation of how much clearing out I am doing.

Home is where the cat is.

I don’t bother to read other people’s sappy reminiscences about their mothers, and I can’t put into words other than one, soulmate, for mine. The rest is between us. But to mothers all, I stand up and salute you. The sun shines for you today.

I’m grateful that I can make long recordings on my phone.  For the longest time I used a set of nature sound CDs, one of frogs, one of rain, one of waves, birds.  I still have them but I also wanted to make my own.  Mine aren’t quite studio quality, but they are an accurate recording of the sounds around my house.  Including road noises.  I especially like the morning and evening songs.  We don’t have the veerys and hermit thrushes here yet which sing my favorite songs, along with the cat bird.  But the brown headed cow bird has arrived, which has a call like two large drops of water and then a screeee.  I’m including the link to the Cornell website, listen to the flock sounds, like a babbling brook!

The poor cow bird gets a lot of grief because they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and the cowbird chicks kick out the others.  It’s caused significant harm to song bird populations.  They probably evolved following buffalo  as the herds traveled, hence the inability to have their own fixed nest location.  Still, I enjoy listening to them.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Brown-headed_Cowbird/sounds#

May 10th.
My 4th and 5th tick, this season, I must be grateful for the 4 months, Dec thru March when I didn’t worry about ticks at all 😉
And I am not doing a lot of outdoor activities!
So far all I’ve found are dog ticks, not a vector of disease but the dangerous ones, the deer ticks are now in the nymph stage, I despair of ever finding one of those, they are the size of a pin. Also we got ticks here now that cause disease right away, not politely waiting 24 hours like the deer ticks to infect you. I mowed for the first time and that evening felt a slight tickling at my hairline in back. I was able to grab her but when I tried to flick her off into the toilet bowl, she flew to the floor and I spent several tension ladened moments searching for her.
Flushed.
May 12, 2 more ticks, Orkin will be out here tomorrow!!!
It’s interesting, lots of people up here blame Conn. for the ticks because a lot of the first turkey reintroductions came from there and they say the turkeys brought ’em. I had a guy at the transfer station, he’s from Conn. no less, say it. I reminded him that we hardly ever had ticks in Conn when we were kids, just like up in Maine at that time.
Of course we weren’t in Lyme.

They came and emptied the dumpster, so I have a whole new gaping maw to toss stuff into. Only this one last maw, I hope.