Door Situations

The moon will be full in two days and it must be aligned with something that makes people, nature and animals alike, unhinged. The weather has been a little strange, veering capriciously between quite hot (85F/29.4C) as I write to very windy one day last week to a 20 degree drop in temperature and predicted rain on Monday. We've had a bluebird pecking at our windows and fouling our porches and a turkey peering in the doors and doing likewise. A friend is mysteriously ill with a diagnosis, she says, of WTF. Several items had completely disappeared despite fairly assiduous searching.

It's also mating season...for the birds anyway which is undoubted what is fueling their strange behavior. Henrietta, the turkey, has apparently found her swain for she is no longer coming to the doors. My next door neighbor says she is 'dumb as a box of rocks' and I'm inclined to agree with her, but she is entertaining.

The bluebird, we're told, by friends who know more about it than I do, that it is most likely looking for a mate and for some reason thinks she sees him in her reflection in the front door. This morning I was reading the paper when she started her daily ritual fluttering against the front door. There is a mirror opposite the door and one opposite our bedroom window and I was wondering if that had anything to do with her obsession. I got up and taped newspaper over the top two panes, which were covered with her little foot scratch marks, and pulled the shade over the bedroom window. Coincidentally, I looked out the kitchen window in time to see a male Western bluebird having a drink in our fountain. They are quite common in the area, but this is the first time we have seen any around our house.  The newspaper solution is rather unattractive, but seemingly effective since we haven't seen her since I put them up.

One day last week we had high winds and drifts of leaves everywhere, as if it were autumn and not May. The light seemed odd as we went into the kitchen to make coffee. We had put up the umbrella on the porch and it was furled but not tied. The wind lifted it out of its heavy base and lodged it against the kitchen door. We eventually restored it to its base and tied it to the railing. John is still picking leaves out of the garden. And we are still arguing over how important it is to a) pick up leaves one at a time b) rake them out from under plants instead of leaving them as mulch or c) raking them into little piles all over the place and leaving the piles to redistribute themselves from whence they came should another rogue wind come up. The unusual winds have turned this into a semi-annual occasion.

Jim has gone to visit his mother near Cincinnati and Dana is dog sitting, leaving Blake alone, so he is staying with us. Dana sent a picture of the doggy art gallery above one of her charges' feeding bowl. It's in the extras.