The birds around here have been putting on a show. Red-bellied woodpeckers—mom, dad, and junior—have been going house to house pecking on roofs and siding. Their hearts aren’t in it, though, and the birds are gorgeous, so folks don’t mind. Our back yard is full of drama, both within and between species. Flickers, blue jays, starlings, doves, cowbirds, woodpeckers, robins. They swoop, they dive, they carry on at the bird bath. Also, I finally spotted a bird that our neighbor mentioned seeing. Neither one of us got a good look at it, but it’s smaller than a wren. Some other kind of wren? A juvenile? This bird is tiny.
Now that the dog’s injury is healing, he and I are taking longer walks. This morning’s perambulation took us past a pond in which stood a great blue heron surrounded by mallards. The ducks were feeding and chatting among themselves, which sounds like muttering. The bird that looked most likely to mutter, though, was the heron. There it was, trying to do a little quiet fishing, and would the ducks sit still and pipe down? No, they would not. The heron, unusually, held its ground as we walked past. Apparently, if it could put up with muttering mallards, it could put up with passersby.
Interaction between animal families is also intriguing. Our dog and the neighbors’ cat like each other well enough but don’t speak each other’s language. Yesterday, a purring Herbie approached Rascal and got ready to rub his head under Rascal’s chin. Rascal, unversed in the ways of cat affection, got interested in something else and walked away unrubbed. Herbie was surprised. Rascal was clueless. And still they get along.
And, speaking of getting along, another neighbor’s daughter just eloped. Her sweetheart, having received his PhD., was driving north from New Mexico to visit his family in Wisconsin. He’d gotten to his brother’s in Denver when he developed a health problem and learned that when he had completed his degree, his university had canceled his insurance. He called home to the neighbor’s daughter in New Mexico, who said. “You drive four hours south. I’ll drive four hours north. We’ll get married, and I’ll add you to my health insurance.”
So they did. “That’s our daughter,” the neighbor said. “Practical. They’d already shopped for rings. It didn’t surprise us that they were going to get married.” After the wedding, the bride drove back to her job in New Mexico, and the groom continued north to Wisconsin. “Some honeymoon,” I commented. “Oh, no,” the neighbor said, laughing, “I haven’t told you about the honeymoon. That was our family’s two-week sailing trip in Houghton. There were six of us.” As they plied the Keweenaw Waterway, the neighbor said, “I kept laughing and saying, ‘This is the best honeymoon I’ve ever been on.’”
We dined with our next-door neighbors last night, outside on a perfect September evening. Cory has harvested the hops he’s been growing and has already brewed with some of the crop. Yes, he said, in answer to my question, all beer uses hops. If it doesn’t use hops, it isn’t beer, it’s gruit. We savored the new word. Then he and Tanya gave us two more–krug and mass—which are different types of beer glasses. Three new words in one day. Hot ziggety.
Earlier in the week, we drove to the Dexter A&W drive-in, as we have for decades. After I’d ordered my usual–a hotdog bun with cheese, lettuce, tomato, and pickle—the carhop gave us the following warning. The A&W is seriously short-staffed and trying to be more efficient. Toward that end, they’re trying to keep workers from having to leave their work stations. Since what I order includes items from more than one station, the next time I order it, I may receive it in pieces and have to put it together myself. How’s that for efficiency?
On a happier note, fall is getting splendid around here. The golf course near us positively glows in goldenrod glory. The color blazes around the ponds. Soybean plants are turning harvest yellow in the fields. And the chrysanthemums I planted last fall have grown eightfold in size and are blooming. Purple, with a deep pink hydrangea behind that and pink turtleheads behind that. The flower bed just went in last year; this is the first we’ve seen it in autumn bloom. It’s wonderful. September colors are, as the ads say, Pure Michigan.
17 September 2021