Lady luck outside the door

A friend of mine has decided he wants to be a drummer, so he switched his home office to a different room because his old office was the only room that would hold his drum set. I’m not a particular fan of the craft, but when we were chatting the other day, I told him he had to watch Michael Shrieve’s solo at Woodstock. That got us on Santana, and he in turn recommended “I’m Winning” as being a slight dogleg from the band’s usual Afro-Caribbean sound.

He’s right. This is extra primo good. Crank up the volume. 

 

Oh, deer

My “office” is set up in what the cluster developers were pleased to call the “family room”. It’s more than half of the kitchen space, badly laid out and pretty uncozy. But the point, for purposes of this post, is that my desk faces the front of my house, overlooking the cluster parking lot, with some cluster-maintained landscaping. Moving from the back of the house to the front has literally given me a different view of the world, and I’ll talk about that another time.

Mostly what I see are cars coming and going, and (to a lesser extent) people walking—either to/from work or the shops, walking dogs and/or children or just getting some steps in. But Tuesday I noticed some movement to the side of my monitor, looked up and saw:

Well, that’s a thing, innit? I’d have expected wildlife to appear in the back yard, which is not open to vehicular traffic. But this guy nosed around, then munched on some of my neighbor’s shrubs and I caught him as he paused a couple of houses down. (Sorry it’s out of focus.)

The toddler of another neighbor started over to greet him, and he hightailed it.

Now, I was a little concerned because it’s half a mile from my ‘hood to any kind of woodland, some of which requires crossing fairly well-trafficked streets. I wondered if the heat or some lack of food was behind his foray, and I don’t know what kind of food to put out for deer.

Except for whatever shrubbery my neighbor has.

(And yes, I know that deer are very destructive to people's gardens. I am not actually going to put out deer chow.)

Okaybut—on my morning walk yesterday, I was about halfway round my circuit when I startled this guy, who’d been very still behind a large bush:

Again—we’re talking serious suburbia here, and I just don’t know.

But then, I was on a People’s Republic path that goes past my Gift Fairy’s house and a baseball field, and there was another deer making tracks. That’s more woodsy, so I felt better. (The deer was too fast for me to capture on video.)

But the day wasn’t over—about 50 meters up the path, I noticed a father and toddler standing still, looking over to some shrubs. I very slowly approached, and sure enough: this time a fawn. (Sadly—I thought I got some video, but user error.) We all four of us stood absolutely frozen for some moments; then the fawn melted into the bushes and disappeared immediately.

So—ducks and foxes in the backyard, deer in the front. I do appreciate them dropping by and sharing the neighborhood with me.

 

 

Nature's mysteries 4

Time for another round of plant identification. By way of update, these are hellebore, which I think I would like in my garden; these are winter aconite, Eranthis, which are in my garden; and these are wild azalea, and I definitely want them in my garden.

Today’s #IDme looks like it may be related to hydrangea, but I dunno. It comes in multiple colors—pink, white and blue (which I don’t seem to have caught). The petals only appear around the perimeter, which seems un-hydrangealike.

Help me out here.

STOP PRESS: I found the blue ones on this morning's walk:

 

Redneck landscaping

The People’s Republic has restrictions on pretty much everything, except on high-rise development. I’m pretty sure, for instance, that if I put up a clothesline and hung my laundry on it, I’d incur the full force of the Reston Association, with my own cluster association's aesthetic outrage piled on top.

So I was amused to find this in front of one of my neighbors’ house:

It didn’t stay there long (couple of days at most), but even so it was clearly an abomination to God and man and probably lowered property values for a while.

I also found it interesting because it wasn’t left in the parking strip, as though for pick-up. Nor was it in line with the front door. No—it was tucked next to the shrubbery as though the owners wanted to pretend that no one would notice.

 

 

Gratitude Monday: morning companions

This being the environs of the District They Call Columbia, I have to start my daily walks no later than 0600. Even so, by the time I get back, I’m soaked. The best five minutes of my day is my post-walk legs-against-the-wall pose and guzzling sparkling water.

But I’ve noticed that by going out at the early hour, I see a somewhat different ecosystem. It’s quieter, more tranquil, and creatures that stay hidden when the runners and cyclists are around come out. Twice I’ve spied a fox looking like he’s headed home after a night on the tiles (both times he was too far away for me to capture on video). And one morning I caught a glimpse of a couple of deer crossing a creek:

(Naturally, the instant I pulled out the camera, one disappeared, but I did get one.)

I don’t know where they hang out the rest of the day, but I hope wherever it is, they’re staying cool and hydrated.

And I’m grateful to share the early morning with them.

 

 

A Weed-Eater loose

I have a regular topic of conversation with a colleague who lives in Georgia; it’s basically Death To All Squirrels. He insists that they’re not bad with gravy and biscuits, but that’s not really much of a recommendation.

I bring this up because one of those convos brought me to today’s earworm; frankly, my colleague had me at the words, “There’s a Ray Stevens song…”

“The Mississippi Squirrel Revival” seems particularly appropriate for the week in which WaPo has published two stories about White evangelical goobers who would definitely worship at the First Self-Righteous Church. The first one reports on klansters in Appalachian Ohio who cashed their 2021 Stimulus checks but then whine endlessly about how the government support going to other people is screwing with the economy, driving prices up and is Communistic. Several of them are otherwise living on Social Security payments.

The second story is from Appalachian Virginia and reports on critical care nurses who’ve had to endure more than a year of Covid-denying klansters refusing to wear masks, opposing vaccines and deriding everyone in the medical profession as simultaneously lying, greedy and incompetent.

The kill shot for me was Jessica Goff, who said that the virus was a hoax and would go away after the 2020 election. When her own mother came down with it, was hospitalized and intubated, Goff became furious with the doctors for not bringing out sock puppets to convince her of the severity of the case; she told her mother to refuse remdesivir. When—despite her best efforts to the contrary—her mother recovered, Goff declared, “It was definitely a miracle,” but not a medical one. “I had rallied the prayer warriors.”

She still thinks the virus that has killed more than four million people worldwide is exaggerated and that the medical profession is falsifying cases to make money.

So, here’s my wish: may a plague of flea-infested squirrels descend upon every branch of the First Self-Righteous Church and run up the skirts and trousers of every single person there.

That would be a better recommendation than serving with biscuits and gravy.

Oh, here’s the song. 

 

Cycles of life

Here’s a story waiting to be told. A couple of weeks ago, I came across this dead motor scooter on the sidewalk.

How it got there, I have no clue, but it obviously was not going to go anywhere with some of its innards removed.

Then, it got knocked down by person or persons unknown.

And then someone moved it to the street—no telling why.

It’s been there ever since. Clearly Fairfax County PD do not bother with abandoned vehicles, as witnessed by this one, about a quarter-mile up the street. This one's been there for more than a year, with expired tags for ditto.

 

Lake views

Here’s a recent sunrise over one of the People’s Republic’s manmade lakes:

Here are some tourists:

And here are some kayaks and paddleboats ready for the non-webbed set:

Neighborhood buzz

Saturday morning I took a different route on my morning walk and discovered something I must have been passing daily for weeks:

“Those look like beehives,” I thought. So I investigated. And so they were:

America—gonif!

There didn't seem to be any activity, but it was pretty early in the day and I've noticed that I mostly see bees at work later on. I do wonder about how these were set up, and by whom.

 

 

 

Gratitude Monday: Year 245

Yesterday marked the 245^th anniversary of the publication of the Declaration of Independence. In the past I’ve written about the beauty of that document, which I’ve tried to hold on to during the past five years. I knew it was under assault beginning with the 2016 election, and in the first year of Cadet Bonespurs’ reign, the structure of the world he and his ilk wanted to build became clear when his end of the Twitterverse responded with ridiculous outrage to NPR tweeting the Declaration (as it does every year).

It turns out to be not at all surprising that pig-ignorant goobers who’ll have no truck with the notion that all men are created equal would storm the Capitol to overturn an election less than four years later.

The Founding Fathers have taken some hits in recent times—and not just from the would-be dictator and his white supremacist cult. The fact that race-based slavery was embedded in the Constitution because a goodly number of the Founders couldn’t imagine an economy not based on human chattel slavery has made it out of the academic halls and into the mainstream press. That’s proving to be as enraging to both ends of the political spectrum—those who mourn its loss while simultaneously denying it, and those who want white folks to acknowledge that the foundation of this country rests on the blood of their ancestors.

We have still so far to go to achieve the promise of the Declaration.

But on this Gratitude Monday, I’m thankful that we survived the past five years, even as we are still under the assault of both home-grown and foreign anti-democracy elements. After generations of small town parades and community barbecues with fireworks, we've been treated to militaristic willie waving and bloviating at Mount Rushmore. That was hard to take. But there are still more than 81 million of us who want to see this bold experiment succeed. That’s worth a day of gratitude.