the Each Week, One Beast project: week 16

Two little cynical saw-whet owls. I'm totally breaking my own One Beast rule, again. Oh well, you know what they say about rules.

Spring sprang sprung

Spring is warming incrementally here, which I don't mind a bit. I filled up the birdbaths for the first time last week, and since then they've been in constant rotation. If the sun is shining, they are usually both full at once. The robins have turned the more favorite of the two into a mixing vat for their proprietary blend of nest mud (grass, roots, compost and poop? I'm just guessing).

I pretty much never stop at yard sales, but on our way through town yesterday we spied The Watering Can of My Dreams (Matt's words), so we pulled over and did a through-the-passenger-window deal. $3! That experience took exactly the amount of time and money I like to spend when I go shopping. And today whenever my watering can called, I jumped up from my desk and scampered out to the garden to water something. I should take a video so you can see its sweet watering action. It will definitely show up in future photos here, on account of how handsome in the landscape it is. That might not be a well worn phrase - handsome in the landscape - but it is the best way to describe my watering can.

And that's that! Otherwise I've just been madly scribbling away with my pencil. I'm working on a bigger drawing than usual, which I hope turns out, because the last big drawing didn't turn out at all and I didn't even know it until the very end, which made for a dismal discovery. And we're going to Vermont to visit my mom and dad, and camp out on our land, and I can't wait.

the Each Week, One Beast project: week 15

Meadow jumping mouse with wheat. This week's beast, like last week's, is not someone I'm personally familiar with. My little city garden is sadly spare on the rodent side of things... We do have a rat or two, of course, and there is someone small and secretive who tunnels between the house foundation and the hemlock tree... So I had to resort to youtube videos to get to know my subject a bit. Meadow jumping mice are cute, as I suspected, and their long, narrow feet are capable of flipping them airborne, like pancakes, in order to cover some distance.

Desk o' owls...

...with a little spot for me, in the middle.

the Each Week, One Beast project: week 14

Barn owl on a post. More owls in the weeks to come, because I have a bigger owl project in mind... Bigger, badder owls! Not really. Just more owls, of all varieties. And who doesn't love an owl?

Spring

Does anyone else feel headless, or at least senseless, this time of year? Lengthening daylight and building summer plans make me unfocused. So much to do! Sometimes I jump up from my desk to attend to some just-remembered something, and without thinking I put my pencil someplace stupid and completely unlikely, and there it hides for the next 15 minutes while I try to retrace my brain-addled steps. And then finally I find my pencil, and it's like, what am I? One of those woodpeckers that stashes acorns for a time when there won't be any more acorns anymore? Except those woodpeckers probably remember just where they put their acorns, so never mind.

the Each Week, One Beast project: week 13

Two ravens sharing a tender moment. A few weeks ago, Matt took me hiking to the top of a cliff where he climbs. He had seen the remnants of a nest tucked into a notch in the rock, and wanted to check it out. While he rappelled down with the camera, I waited at the top with my binoculars, watching a pair of ravens. They preened one another and hopped and touched beaks and talked, and one did little flying loops of love off the cliff edge and back to its mate. They completely ignored Matt and I. Getting to see this was so sweet, and so unexpected. When Matt climbed back up, he had pictures of a beautifully woven nest of coarse sticks, with a soft bowl in the middle, and three speckled eggs, which you can just barely see...

Each time it has snowed since then, I think of the ravens up there, tending their nest, looking out over the mountains and the weather. We won't disturb them again, but I hope to glimpse baby ravens from a little further away.