The season of white flowers

We are having a bonanza of white flowers blooming lately.

At the moment, the most ubiquitous are the daisies. Honestly, these are some of my favorite flowers, so much so that I had them in my wedding bouquet.

This is dog fennel (Anthemis cotula). The flowers are similar to that of daisies, but they're smaller and the plant is stinkier (it's sometimes called "stinking chamomile"). Many years ago, my parents came to visit us, and my mother (who had a wonderful green thumb) was enchanted by the dog fennel and wanted to collects its seeds to plant at home. I warned her it would spread. She went home, looked it up, and agreed not to plant dog fennel.

Oceanspray. At our old place, it grew everywhere and was stunning when in bloom. Here we have far less, so every shrub is appreciated.

Elderberries. This particular (bush? tree?) is located on an embankment near the river. In the fall when the berries are ripe, the road-facing side is stripped bare and the river-facing side is left alone, because no one can reach the fruit.

Yarrow.

Mock orange (also called syringa), the state flower of Idaho.

White iris. We have a clump of these growing just inside our pasture fence.

Bind-weed, a type of wild morning glory.

The blackberries are in full bloom. I don't recall ever seeing this many full blossoms. We're going to be inundated with blackberries in late summer.

This is due in large part to the enormous number of bees and other pollinators busy at work.

And of course – though really, this is cheating – the seeds of dandelions. Hey, they're white.

With a few exceptions, there aren't a lot more flowers expected to bloom from here on out. Instead, the seeds and fruits are growing.

"Do we look poor?"

Recently something rather baffling happened: Don and I were at the receiving end of an act of charity.

A contractor came into the house to receive the final payment for a hefty home improvement project he had just completed. We had saved for this project for two years and therefore had the cash on hand to pay for it in full.

But without any prompting whatsoever, the contractor offered us a steep discount for the work he had done. We tried to argue that we could afford to pay for the project and were more than pleased with the final results, but he would have none of it and insisted on giving us the discount. After he left, we were baffled by (and grateful for) this act of generosity.

But the question arose, why was this discount offered in the first place? There was no need for it. We had the money for the project. "Do we look poor?" I asked Don rhetorically.

At this, he laughed. "Of course we look poor," he chuckled.

This actually startled me, because I don't think we do. Certainly I feel very, very rich. We have no debt, and live in a comfortable home with everything we need.

But then I looked around our house and tried to see it with a stranger's eyes. Nearly everything we own is either thrifted, inherited, or built by Don. The most noticeable "flex" is our books, 99% of which were purchased second-hand at library sales or used bookstores. When this person walked into the house, I had clothes drying on our indoor clothes racks and a cooking project in the works. There was no television in sight (we haven't owned one since about 1993), and the only visible electronics were our respective computers. The house was tidy and neat, without clutter.

In my eyes, our home is comfortable and inviting. I feel very, very rich. But to the contractor (who sees many houses), we must have looked like we were struggling financially, and felt prompted to offer the discount.

So, unexpectedly, we were left with more cash in hand than we anticipated at the conclusion of the project. To this end, we decided to ... well, never mind. The left hand shouldn't know what the right hand is doing.

Is this ... a mockingbird?

In my younger days living in California, I loved hearing mockingbirds. We left the Golden State in 1992 and moved first to Oregon and then later to Idaho, and I haven't heard a mockingbird in those decades since. Once, briefly, I heard one sing when I was down visiting my parents a few years ago in Southern California, but that's it. They simply don't live in (or rarely visit) Idaho.

Or so I thought. But for the last couple of days, we've had an unknown bird singing its absolute heart out, right in a pine tree off our deck. It's lovely to hear, but I couldn't see it.

This morning I was able to spot it and photograph it from below.

Sure looks like a mockingbird. Here's a photo from the Wikipedia page:

According to this website, mocking birds have a "transient" presence in this part of Idaho, with no breeding evidence. They are definitely more southern birds, hence why I always heard them in California. However, this website points out they are definitely native to Idaho, though far, far more frequent in the southern part of the state and certainly not breeding this far north.

Whether or not I've mid-identified this bird, I must stay it's absolutely delightful to listen to. I hope it stays.

UPDATE: I was unaware catbirds had such a wide repertoire of sounds. I listened to this video at the same time the "mockingbird" was singing right off our deck, and the calls matched. So yes, it appears to be a catbird rather than a mockingbird. Thank you to all who correctly identified it!

The bird who fell upstairs

Doubtless many of you are wondering how Lihn, our Quaker parrot, is doing since her rehoming last week.

In a nutshell, this parrot fell upstairs.

Seriously, the family (Lara, her husband and children) who took her in are nothing short of bird whisperers. Lara has a lot of experience rehabilitating parrots, some of whom have been abused, and said often she starts by simply leaving the bird in its cage for the first few weeks to get it used to its new surroundings and to understand there is no threat.

So I fully expected Lihn to spend several weeks in her cage, huddled and terrified. Wrong.

The very first morning she arrived at Lara's, Lihn was sitting on top her cage, sassing people, before flying down to the kitchen table to try and snitch a bit of granola from Lara's son's breakfast plate. She sent a video, from which Younger Daughter took a screenshot.

Lihn was due for a beak trimming. Normally Lara would take care of this herself, but since it was Lihn's first day in her new home, Lara opted to bring Lihn to the vet to have it done (so any "anger" for this indignity would be on the vet, not Lara, so early in their acquaintance). Lihn actually takes beak trims without a problem, so that was fine. On the way back home, Lihn was loose in Lara's car, and her daughter was scratching Lihn's head. (All photos are cropped to edit out faces.)

Younger Daughter says this is one of her favorite photos so far, since a bird must really trust someone to allow its head to be scratched.

Lihn has also been hanging around Lara's shoulder a lot, getting affection. Again, this is remarkable. Anytime we allowed Lihn on our shoulder, she would try to chew our earlobes off. But with Lara? She's an angel.

And again:

Back on the kitchen table, looking interested in another kid's oatmeal.

So yes, Lihn fell upstairs and is now living with a remarkable family. Younger Daughter and I couldn't be happier about it.

Maggie has popped at last!

Our Jersey cow Maggie was officially due last Friday. Each and every morning, armed with my camera, I carefully checked her before releasing the cows from the corral. And each and every morning ... zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

Yesterday morning, Don and I were getting ready to do a fencing project. I started walking across the yard and, as always, glanced up to gauge Maggie's posture (cows adopt a sort of hunched position when in labor). She looked like she was peacefully grazing ... except she had a long strand hanging from her backside.

I turned and walked back into the house. "Change of plan," I announced. "Let's go get Maggie's calf instead." The little sneak had managed to conceal her early labor when I released her and the other animals from the corral into the pasture, and then had the audacity to have her calf without my being able to watch.

Dragging the gorilla cart, Don, Younger Daughter, and I all trooped up into the pasture to fetch Maggie and her newborn back into the corral.

The calf had just been dropped and was still flat on its side, and very wet with the birth fluids.

Loading the calf was a three-person effort: One person to hold the cart steady in its "dump truck" position, and two people to shove and push the slippery-wet calf into the cart. (By the time we were finished, both Younger Daughter and I were soaked with placental fluids and would require a full-body change of clothes and a shower.)

After the calf was in the cart, I pulled while Don kept the calf from trying to climb to its feet, and Younger Daughter shooed the other animals from following us out the gate. It was a steep downhill drop from the pasture to the driveway, then level-flat as we pushed/pulled the cart around to the back of the barn into the corral. Maggie trotted on our heels, agitated but not aggressive. (Thank God for sweet Jersey cow dispositions!)

Once in the corral, we gently dumped the calf out of the cart to the ground, and let Maggie continue licking her baby dry.

Meanwhile the other animals had come around through the gate to see the new calf. This is Stormy, the calf's older sister, meeting the newcomer.

And the baby is a girl! Back when we had Maggie bred by AI (artificial insemination), the breeder was actually able to select for a heifer for a slight increase in price. She emphasized the gender was not guaranteed, but of all the times she's selected for one or the other gender, she's been successful. We'll have to let her know she succeeded again.

This is our first purebred Jersey calf, so we're pretty jazzed. In years past, all our calves were either purebred Dexter, Jersey/Dexter crosses, or Jersey/Angus crosses.

Maggie is an experienced mama now, so we had no concerns about her maternal care. However we wanted to make sure the calf was nursing as soon as possible to get colostrum.

Meanwhile, she had a long strand of mucous hanging from her backside that was dragging on the ground and tangling around her legs. I took a pair of scissors and snipped off a length.

It took the baby some time to get to her feet. She didn't seem in any hurry.

We left the animals to calm down a bit and let nature take its course. An hour or so later, we checked and saw the calf was standing, though very unsteadily, and blundering around trying to find a teat.

She tried the usual suspects: Maggie's armpit, her sister's leg, the steer's nose, that kind of thing. (It takes a calf a while to figure out where the udder is located ... and on what animal.) The calf didn't quite have her footing, either. At one point, trying to master the three-inch lip on the threshold of the barn door, she went splat.

"What just happened?"

Maggie wasn't much help during this process because she was swishing around in agitation as she labored to pass the placenta.

I went to fill up the feed bins with hay, since the animals were confined to the corral, and by the time I was finished, Maggie had passed the placenta.

Then, in true bovine fashion, she proceeded to (try to) eat it. This is normal behavior for cows, and doubtless is an instinctive technique meant to prevent drawing in predators. Maggie slurped and chewed and chewed and slurped, but wasn't making much progress.

After about fifteen minutes, I grabbed a wheelbarrow and a pitchfork, and scooped up the placenta. Maggie seemed vastly relieved to be excused from this duty.

I decided to run the placenta down to the county dumpsters (located a few miles away) rather than trying to bury it somewhere. I invited Younger Daughter to come with me, and she went to put on some shoes and use the bathroom before departing.

"I'm going to go load the placenta into the car," I called to her through the bathroom door.

"That is SUCH  weird sentence to hear," she shouted back.

Toward evening, Younger Daughter and I went to check on the animals and saw both mother and baby were resting, doubtless exhausted from their ordeal.

I was mildly concerned because I had not yet seen the baby successfully nurse, and I rummaged around in our supplies for a rubber teat in case I needed to milk out some of the colostrum and bottle-feed the baby. The calf was still blundering around investigating armpits and legs without locating the correct spot.

So YD and I collaborated to get her to feed. At a point when she was kinda in the right neighborhood of the udder, YD pushed the calf gently from behind while I guided her mouth toward the teat. Aha! Success!

With a belly full of warm colostrum, within an hour she began doing the cute little skippy-hops of a healthy calf as she tried out her legs.

"Hi Mom! Whatcha doing?"

Later she settled in for the night among her new herd-mates.

So all is right in our little bovine world.