Monthly Archives: May 2018

Parade of rainbows

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The remnants of the first named storm of the hurricane season, Alberto, passed to our west on Tuesday, bringing periodic showers. We had already had a lot of rain a few days ago that was not associated with the storm, but with the tropical air mass we have had for some time.

Tuesday evening, there were small, isolated showers passing all around us. We looked out the front door and saw rain falling over town, plus a rainbow. The rainbow dissipated as the shower moved to the north, but it was followed by another shower, and another rainbow. This is a series of images I took as the showers and rainbows paraded by over town.


The rain was falling in bands, so the rainbows themselves were banded.

Although the weather forecasters expected a lot of rain from the storm, we got very little. Fortunately, with the earlier, heavy rain from a few days ago, we have pretty much caught up on precipitation for a while. I have been trying to prepare the furthest reaches of our front yard for planting grass. Now the ground will be far too muddy to work for several days. That’s OK, because I need to do some more work in the house anyway.

The mockingbird’s inventory

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“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

There is a mockingbird that claims a good portion of our yard. It starts singing early in the morning and goes on all day. It switches between a couple of large oaks on the far side of our driveway and the twisted maple at the edge of our front yard. I recorded a minute or so of its song.

mockingbird

The bird is at the top of the maple, only a speck in this movie. It’s amazing that such a small bird can make such a big song. There is also another songbird singing its own song at the same time. I recognize a a lot of the mockingbird’s songs, but I can identify only a few of the birds being mocked.

Although I didn’t catch it in this clip, this mockingbird includes a whip-poor-will’s song as well as a blue jay’s. I wonder if they ever sing the pileated woodpecker’s song.

The quote from To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t really right about what mockingbirds do; their singing happens to please us, but of course it’s not singing for our pleasure. It’s actually a way to attract mates and claim territory. According to birders, only bachelor mockingbirds sing at night. That means the mockingbird that was singing outside the ICU the night my father died was a bachelor. It was a warm night, even though it was late winter. A window was open, so we could hear the mockingbird. It sounded like it was right next to the window. You might imagine that hearing a mockingbird’s song on the night my father died would spoil their singing for me, but it didn’t work that way. There’s not a sound in nature much better than a mockingbird’s song.

 

Thursday Sky

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We had a nice shower Thursday evening, the first rain we’ve had in, well, I can’t remember. A long time. The temperature dropped 20 degrees to 64F in just a few minutes. We had a high of 89F on Thursday, according to our thermometer. It’s supposed to reach into the mid-90s by the weekend.

We ended up with a half an inch of rain, and a rainbow.

The fainter, secondary bow was visible. I zoomed to try to get a better shot.

 

Got cat?

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It’s about time for some cute cat pictures. Here’s the first, but after, there’s more!

Here’s little Molly sitting in a drawer.

Something’s on the floor!

Basking halfway in the sun, that makes four.Basking in the sun at the front door.
Molly and Zeke, they’ve been here before.Molly and Sam, she adore.

That makes eight, no encore!

Which one of these …

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…is not like the others?

No, it’s not the red one(s), although is is (they are) not like most of the others.

And no, it’s not the little round one that’s white with black spots — a Dalmation rock, although it is not like most of the others.

OK, it’s the green one behind the round rock, and it’s not a rock at all, it’s an avocado.

I was washing out a dish when it hit me that not all the rocks on the window stool were actually rocks. Leah wanted something to put there, so we picked out some of the petrified wood I had collected over the years, mainly from Utah. I am still kicking myself for leaving a large collection of amethyst that my father had found in my parents’ travels.

Please don’t look at the window. It’s still not trimmed out. I seem to find something to do other than trimming the windows. I have managed to get two done, or almost done, and they look like this:

This window is complete except that I need to paint it again to cover the caulk I used on the nail holes and to hide the few, very few, very, very tiny cracks resulting from my less than professional carpentry.

I occasionally amuse myself by counting the number of windows and doors I still need to finishing trimming out, and trying to calculate how long it will take. I have found that it takes much longer if I never actually start working, and much less time when I actually do start working. But right now I am mainly working in the yard. I have some plants to plant, and then a fairly large area to prepare for planting grass seed. It’s weedy, mainly bare dirt with ruts and humps that I have to clear of weeds and smooth as much as I can with a shovel. I expect not to get back to inside work for a while.