You want to run — I'll run with you

Be cunning, and full of tricks

First a note to any remaining loyal reader(s): it was brought to my attention that you can make a comment here, but then it seems to vanish into the ether. "Do you moderate comments?" my brother Adam asked me, after leaving one on my most recent post. "Um," I thought to myself. And then I checked and yes, I do, although I seem to have neglected my moderating duties for the last...eight years? Oh readers and former readers who are not reading this: I'm so sorry, I wasn't ignoring you, I was just blissfully blogging into the dark. If you leave me a comment now, in 2026, I will (theoretically) see it!

News of the yard: we've expanded from our resident one butterfly, one bunny, and one hummingbird. Now there are two bunnies, occasionally adjacent to each other, kind of playful, hopping in concert, big and little, the big one seeming subtly irritated with the small one. When it's business as usual, they just inhale clover and dandelion, packing it away for the colder months, little eating machines with shiny black eyes and twitchy soft ears. Clover occasionally has a staring contest with one of them, but she doesn't chase them.*

A dream in which I worked at Whole Foods and was answering a customer's question about when we would be getting a fancy new locally made jam. I told her there would be an event that very evening, and then they would start rolling it out. And then I said, because in my dreams I am a standup comedian: "But very carefully, because most of it is in glass jars."

*best girl.

We were looking at the ceiling and then we saw the sky

"Ohoho what's this?" my three readers are no doubt exclaiming, at the sight of a post that is not a monthly rabbit. I have clearly been uninspired to write here for some time, in part because this blorg had mainly become a litany of things I see in my back yard. Birds and rabbits, birds and rabbits! Which was making me think sadly about the photos Mark's dad took toward the end of his life, all of them capturing only what he could see from his La-Z-Boy (the TV, mostly).

Nevertheless, onto the birds I saw today while walking Clover: SO MANY DOVES. Maybe 20? Flying and landing on a roof, clearly doves, not their streetwise pigeon cousins. I held the thought in my head all the way home: look up terms of venery for doves. I had to remember rather than search on the go* because I've been deliberately leaving my phone at home more often, to prove to myself it's not a remote control required for my normal functioning. Also because I was wearing lightweight summery clown pants that become more clownish when I put items in my pockets.

As usual, there are many collective nouns to choose from when it comes to doves. I like dole and pitying. Also bevy. A dole of doves. A bevy of doves. 

*related: no photographic evidence

In a dream I possessed it

What a year, huh? What a month, what a time to be alive. 

In dog news, Clover is not immune to the generalized national anxiety disorder and was so disconcerted by 1) the sound of melting snow sliding off the roof and 2) the fact that Mark and I were away from home at the same time and probably 3) news* on the radio, left on to "keep her company," that she nibbled through the handles of the tote bag that hangs on the basement doorknob and holds dishtowels and cloth napkins destined for the laundry. It was the first illicit chewing she's done since she was a wee pup and shredded an entire New Yorker, cover-to-cover, into confetti. At first we panicked, misconstruing how the handles had connected to the tote bag and estimating there were about six missing inches of handle. Luckily, we didn't see "intestinal obstruction" etc etc online and immediately whisk her off to the emergency vet, but instead looked again at the tote bag, correctly lined the handles up and realized she'd only detatched them from the bag, without actually ingesting any fabric. 

She's sometimes a nervous wreck, but zooms, gleeful, through the backyard paths dug in the snow (more coming this week, but there's ~ 9 inches out there now). A person can walk the paths like a labyrinth too, if a person doesn't worry about the neighbors thinking they're crazy!

In bird news, I've noticed several robin gangs recently, hundreds of them in enormous rounds** swooping from tree to tree, down to the ground, back up together to gobble withered, frozen February berries, ravenous and noisy. 

In dream news, I dreamt I was talking with Oona about her dream of taking a cross-country road trip. "It's actually," I told her gently, "a pretty great reason to get a driver's license." She agreed. David added, "Plus, cars are great!" And then, I told a dream joke: I said, "Although your mileage may vary."

Fun fact: William Burroughs' parents paid him an allowance until he was 50.

Blast from the past.

RIP David Lynch.

5 Early Signs.

*BBC News because it sounds less real when it's in a British accent.

**A round of robins, or a breast of robins, or a blush of robins, take your pick.

So, 2024, despite being numerologically pleasing (to me, based on my own private superstitious preferences, which involve even numbers in general and the number four in particular), sucked.

As in any terrible year, there was plenty that was wonderful, including moments woven into (and even intrinsically part of) the horrible parts — the terrible/beautiful of it all. (But not the politically horrible stuff, that was 100 percent rotten). I thought I'd make a list of some highlights from the year:

• Further development of my positive relationships with crows in my neighborhood (ask me about my peanut budget).
• 2024, Year of the Rabbit(s), aka Year of the Backyard Bun.
• The Northern Lights at last!
• I read 97 books — in 2023 I only read 37 — and watched 38 movies.
• Countless beautiful loaves of sourdough bread were created in my kitchen.
• I got marginally braver about flying? (at least very short flights!) I flew to North Carolina eight times in 2024, which means I got myself on an airplane SIXTEEN times.
• Puffins, little cartoon birds as seen through binoculars from a boat bobbing wildly in the churning ocean, with Stella and Ben and Mark: none of us seasick.
• I dug so many holes in the ground and planted so many plants in the holes, and saw tiny seedlings turn into green, leafy, gloriously flowering plants.

Some of my plans for 2025:

• I intend to wash my windows this year. They are so grubby.
• Plant more plants!
• Bake more bread.
• Keep getting on airplanes.
• Visit Canada.
• Replace more Instagram time with book-reading time.
• Cook biryani and yakisoba and okonomiyaki and tiramisu and pupusas.

Also keep taking deep breaths.

We quiver inside our shocked fur

I've seen a half dozen hummingbirds in the last two weeks, enticed by my prolific red bee balm, one of which hovered in the air like a little AI creation, 18 inches from my face, and I swear looked me in the eye.

Oh the dinosaur blue jays, a crow mama and teenage baby calling for peanuts, dozens of sparrows startled out of the rain-dampened grass when I open the screen door, little goldfinches with their shockingly bright feather jackets, a woodpecker diligently working on the remains of the suet (previously ravaged, loudly, by starlings). 

When I look at the garden I see the holes where we need to plant more flowers (tis the season of yellow and red — I need more blue! more purple and pink! more white!). But if I list everything in bloom I'm stunned by it all. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Especially this past (long) weekend, when Stella and Ben visited and indulged us on an arduous canoe paddle and a wild and stormy boat ride out to Eastern Egg Rock to get a really good look at the puffins nesting there. We also spotted seals, porpoises, and many seabirds. In return, we indulged them with a perfect Red's Dairy Freeze score (4 for 4 nights). Plus there were lobster rolls, bocce, board games, an Eastern Prom food truck picnic, bubble tea, and used bookstores. And the back garden fauna was satisfying too: a rabbit* (first rabbit we've seen in our yard in 25 years); two skunks, flaunting their white-striped tails at twilight (we all yelled SKUNK!!); lots of squirrels.

Seen, but not captured on film, no matter how hard I tried:

Flashing sign at the corner of State and Congress: SNOW HAULING

Alarming the tourists since 1999:

Mark, to Ben and Stella, in line for the puffin cruise: "Did you hear about that humpback whale that flipped a boat over the other day?"

Up top we saw so many puffins!

Below deck there were bodies on the floor.

*I think it's a New England Cottontail

If a black bear attacks, do not play dead

Who pooped in my raised bed? Who keeps digging in there, amongst the volunteer strawberry plants?*

"People are advised to play dead and lock their hands behind their neck...in the event of a grizzly bear attack. If a black bear attacks, do not play dead." —Amanda Holpuch in the New York Times

I replaced all the good bird seed with unshelled black sunflower seeds to send the soft-beaked starlings a subtle message: Fuck off, friends. They descend to peck vindictively at the remains of the suet. The crows visit to caw at me periodically throughout the day; they've trained me to toss peanuts into the yard on command.

A few days ago, I pulled into the Back Cove lot to get a look at a giant wire art installation — two huge egret heads against the blue sky. In the Subaru parked beside me, a man was calmly eating food with a fork as a woman in the passenger seat leaned out the open car door and vomited on the asphalt. When she was done, she closed the door and they both swigged from a bottle of mouthwash, swished for a long time, and then simultaneously opened their doors and spit on the ground.

The song my brain sings whilst I sit on my parents' fancy heated toilet seat in late June: hot seat in the summertime, to the tune of this.

“To kill an eel, seize it with a cloth and bang its head violently against a hard surface.” — Larousse Gastronomique, 1938

*I devised a torture-chamber-looking method of diverting the pooper that involves take-out chopsticks and skewers. Watch this space for DIY slug murder and powdery mildew abatement.

Flooded with gracious light

"Too busy" to write on this blorg. 

I keep intending to call my dancer friend, but unfortunately she is in Spain and it always seems to be midnight there. The fact that she slept through that fabulous comet chunk makes me feel a little better about the fact that I slept through the northern lights.

We are piecing our back yard back together, slowly slowly, after losing two huge, stately trees. It looks less like an empty rectangle, bleakly immense, than it did two weeks ago. There are birds, and a faded forsythia, and bleeding hearts, forget-me-nots, rascally strawberries everywhere, violets, lilies-of-the-valley snuck over from next door. A bed of herbs growing inches overnight, especially after rain. We bought a serviceberry we'll pick up next week, and we're contemplating a dogwood. We're planning a pea stone patio, another garden bed, planning and planning as we sit on the dirty back steps with our morning coffee.

My "notes": 

Sweaty season commences, as evidenced by how everyone in Hannaford smells today.

"To pay attention is to love everything. To see the future as brightness." - Sarah Manguso

"It was early summer; everything was fresh and fair. The grass was green green; the sky was blue, immensely blue; the world was flooded with gracious light." - William Steig

Agree with these synonyms.

Be careful out there. I love you.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain

Related: I have been one acquainted with the ice. A surprise (TO ME) ice storm brought down a spectacular number of large branches into our yard, many of which fell upon and adjacent to the Honda of Nine Lives. It made for exciting photo opportunities but didn't cause any real damage. And our friend Geo came over immediately with his chainsaw and safety gear, so now our yard is full of logs that we'll eventually have to deal with. Pine and willow, pine and willow everywhere.

The ice was beautiful for days, sparkling in the trees and glittering down in shattered, shining pieces. Clover did. Not. Like it. There was crackling and popping like the whole world was full of strange brittle wind chimes. Now we've moved into the soggy phase. The birds are huge fans of the impromptu hiding spots around the yard, little bird fortresses of branch and pine needle, and even though the feeders are almost empty, they're thronged with the little brown ones.

I haven't collected much for you lately, but here are a few artifacts to tide you over:

Huh.

(Said in hiccup voice)

NOT ON YOUR TINTYPE, BUDDY.

Isn’t every season, no matter what we call it, shadow season?

Reporting live from inside a month-long rain cloud:

FULL SET ACRYLIC TOES (seen in the window of a nail salon).

Looking at my gory finger (I accidentally poured boiling water upon it last week), thinking about Yellowjackets.*

An entire family of starlings has moved into my yard, including a dozen juveniles who scream at each other as they compete to hog the bird feeder. Each day I watch them shove each other out of the way, gobbling the birdseed and plunging their beaks into the suet cake. Today there's nothing left to eat but still they stay, squatters in my back garden. (Very Werner Herzog voice) Their hunger is almost incandescent. Again and again the birds continue their instinctive struggle for survival, pushing aside their own kin.

A thought, several days after I wrote the above, days and days later, as I watch these same starlings continuing to assault my bird feeder: it's only a murmuration of starlings if they're forming mesmerizing, shifting cloud shapes in the sky. If they're noisy back yard interlopers, you can instead call them a vulgarity of starlings. Or a scourge of starlings. Or, most accurately and benignly, a clutter of starlings. 

Speaking of Werner Herzog, I happened to read this in an interview with him and it made me laugh out loud. Interviewer: "Is anything cute to you? Have you ever seen a dog and thought, 'That’s a cute dog?'" WH: "No. I would assign a dog a different word."

My entire search history

*If you know, you definitely know

And we'll not complain if it never stops at all

Minimalism in all things except reading glasses. And by that, I don't mean bejeweled frames, I mean that I apparently need a dozen pairs — in my bag, my coat pocket, in the car, in the kitchen*, bathroom**, down in the printing area, on my desk, beside my bed. Plus backups. Or maybe it's time for progressive lenses.

Okay, apparently it's going to rain for 40 days and 40 nights four days. Yesterday I divided some plants, planted some flower seeds, cleaned up some garden beds. I filled ten leaf bags with willow branches, pine needles, weeds, errant day lilies, and some leaves, then hauled them through the house*** and into the garage to keep them dry until my yard waste pickup day (Thursday). Then I'll haul them back out and put them on the curb. I've hardly made a dent in the collection of brush that expands through the year, mostly willow branches that blow down in every storm, piled behind the old playhouse (That's okay — the birds love it!). Speaking of the birds, Mark helped me move the bird feeders farther away from the pine tree in the corner of our back yard, since several squirrels recently tested their acrobatic abilities and discovered they could leap through the air from tree to feeder and suck the bird seed into their greedy mouths while hanging upside down. I don't think they can make it that far now, though I'm eager to see them try.

Can't believe the only thing I wrote in the entire month of April was this half-assed post about reading glasses and puttering in my yard , but would you get a load of these feet??

*reading recipes and labels

**tweezing and deciphering medicine bottles

***garage door — long story

Their greenness is a kind of grief

Alas and alack, I knew this day would come:

HORROR OF HORRORS

How am I going to blurb this "word"? Ah, but there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Right?

In other news, various birds and dogs, it's Calendar Spring, and tiny crocuses are poking up through dry brown leaves and dirty snow. It seems as though the yellow ones were tastier, since I've only espied purple and white so far.

And now for some things I collected for you on the internets:

I suspect Japan is the best place on Earth.

Hamster content.

More hamster content (not ham).

Everyone needs a wee baking raccoon tattoo.

And a sausage dog named Nigel.

People also ask.

Where can we live but days?

Animals this week:

• two red-tailed hawks in Deering Oaks
• many of the little brown ones at my bird feeders
• ditto a few starlings
• a corgi named Gordon
• a beautiful black cat with a plume of white fur on its chest, sitting on my fence

I don't think I've mentioned my dental coronation here, during which my new beloved dentist filed a crumbly old tooth down to a nubbin and fitted a brand new fake tooth onto it like a Lego piece (plus magic glue). My tongue can't stop admiring the wonderful new tooth, it's so smooth.*

Also in medical miscellany, at my routine mammogram this week I saw a sign that said "Avoid handshakes — try an elbow bump instead," with that last part inexpertly covered with masking tape. Elbow bumps are so 2020.

This morning we encountered the usual mob of middle-schoolers, but with an extra Lord of the Flies vibe. One kid with huge headphones was scrawling graffiti in black marker on the bridge railing, another walked with a portable speaker at his chest blaring Kendrick Lamar, a pack of boys behind him. Several were headed in the wrong direction, away from the school. We realized next week is winter break.

We're giving The Last of Us a shot, despite all the...zombies. I spent most of the first two episodes moaning, "Oh no, I hate zombies." Also, not a fan of these particular fungi. But episode 3 has inspired me to continue, it was sweet and touching and sad.

Absolutely NOT 10 miles west of Boston.

*It should feel amazing, it cost as much as a brand new sofa or a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2

As smoke is in the world

It's Friday, or as I like to think of it, Gentleman's Saturday.* Specifically, it's Friday the 13th, always a lucky day for me, a person who missed being born on Friday the 13th by a mere ~19 hours. 

It's been a month of birds-of-prey sightings: just this morning I saw another Deering Oaks hawk, a smallish brown one drying its wings while perched in a tree, holding them wide and letting the wind blow through the feathers. 

Everything is eerily green for January. It's 50 degrees and raining. There are teeny buds on the lilac.

We started out the week eating Chinese food and playing? solving? a mystery-in-a-box with Adam and Jeannette's wonderful upstairs neighbor, Dani. We were successful, but we required many hints.

Sleuths, sleuthing

*To be perfectly honest, I think of Thursday as Gentleman's Friday. Today is actually just normal Friday.

Do you want to make dreams, but not enough any time?

Tis the month when I normally post something every single day/whether or not I've got somethin' to say*

But not this November! I have just been taking notes, on scraps of paper, on electronic scraps of electronic paper, and in me own head. Things like

• My own typos that are cracking me up: Security breeches
• Things found on the internets that are cracking me up: Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo
• I angrily returned a pair of sunglasses because they were crooked. It turns out my face is crooked (all the sunglasses, including the replacement pair, sit askew on my face. I guess I inherited my dad's uneven ears after all!)
• On our way to the park with Clover in the morning, we watched a gaggle of geese cross the street in a line as meandering and leisurely as a group of middle school kids, while cars waited in both directions. Thirty seconds later, the geese were aloft, honking and flying low over our heads (I covered mine with my arms) en route to the pond. Walked across the street, then flew across the park.

And then, of course, there's the usual gleaning of the internets:

Trending.

Who can blame them, really?

Synonyms for fuddled.

Never enough any time.

Of moste pleasaunte taste.

*poet/know it

Each each other's animal again

Sarah brought me two little baby sweet pea seedlings, which I anxiously nurtured through the end of the winter and into the spring and then planted in a pot outdoors. I keep adding sticks and bamboo poles for them to wrap their tiny tendrils around as they grow taller like Jack's beanstalk. They're sort of humble, and they look like they'd fall over on their fine stems but somehow they don't; they're stronger than they look. Pale cream and pink and violet.

Oh yes, when I see the word "saucepan," it is pronounced in a British accent inside my brain: SUUSpin.

On this day in history: I had to reference NFTs in something for work. Also, "cryptocurrency." 

Make your nails look as smooth as Velveeta feels.

If I'm not worrying about the state of the country/world as I fall asleep, I'm picturing roots, the branching kind and the rhizome ones, the coy rugosa babies popping up here and there, looking so tender and innocent above ground while sneakily connecting to something wide and woody as a tree branch underneath the surface. Also, weevils on the roses and oleander aphids on the milkweed. Daily, I put on one disposable glove and squish the aphids, their tiny yellow bodies staining my gloved fingertips. I wear my reading glasses out in the garden, which means I move drunkenly from plant to plant but can see each little bug vividly and avoid harming the tiny monarch larvae under the leaves. I often startle my neighbors, crouched there in the plants. "Squishing aphids!" I called to one confused neighbor this morning. It's strangely satisfying, like popping caviar between your teeth.

The past few weeks in animals:

• Yellow oleander aphids
• Rose weevils, knocked into soapy water
• A ferret, held like a baby at the Pride festival
• A baby goat, also held in arms at the Pride festival, looking less happy about it than the ferret
• Primary-colored birds in my garden: cardinal, goldfinch, blue jay
• A little dog named Blossom
• Swallows dancing over the pond in Deering Oaks

Ouch.

Small reprieves of coffee and birdsong

The Last week in animals!

A small dog dozing in a wagon, by the beach, half covered by a blanket, the sun warming its old grazing muzzle.

This little brown bird, landing on the feeder with its mouth full of paper or tissue for a nest, conflicted for a bit before dropping it to gobble up birdseed: we've all been there.

A duck couple in a little mulched area of urban shrubbery, beside one of the busiest Portland streets.* Another duck couple, identical, in a video sent to me from Isaac, who filmed them paddling around a canal in Paris, France. 

THIS week in animals!

So many birds, brown ones and starlings and that one dove and chickadees, robins, possibly a hummingbird, purple finches and a goldfinch and my catbirds and more.

Things I Found Online!

I don't think I want to go to here.

No lie, just look at those two.

Hmm I'll go to Lowe's I guess

He's not wrong

LOL

*At least there were no babies, like that time on the highway heading to Ikea.

I was a child of the shining meadow

Trying to write here, dear (and few) readers! I'm still attempting to surgically detach myself from very many of the Online Places, and this is one good way. April seems like an ideal month for such things. I'm also writing on paper, some. 

I filled my bird feeders and the Little Brown Ones are gobbling it all, once again battling each other for the cheap finch food in the red feeder that distracts me while I try to work. They can be pretty brutal with their little beaks, and always I wish I could communicate there's more than enough to go around, small friends. 

We're watching so many TV shows, keep intending to sit down to a whole movie but then getting pulled into series that keep us busy, plus the sportsball of course.* Here's a really good thing we're watching and loving: SEVERANCE. Here's a really bad thing we're watching and loving: Inventing Anna. 

I'm also reading. I liked Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads a lot more than I expected to, and about halfway through, I'm warming up to Klara and the Sun. I really loved Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso. I am also reading all the things about the Larry Ray trial.**

We have continued to have social interactions with a small number of actual humans, which is lovely. This week's plans involve more humans, on at least three days! And I can hardly believe it, but Adam returns to Portland one week from today!

*ROCK CHALK, though I may have just jinxed it for tonight, and they'll be rushing Franklin Street instead of Mass. 

**CW: bizarre and terrible cult details

Those Evenings of the Brain —

I'm scattered (sung to the tune of this song). Look at me! 

Where the heck did March go? I've seen some animals this month and meant to keep careful track, but right now I'm only remembering

1. A huge, beautiful, brown hawk that landed on the metal fence beside the highway overpass that is on our regular dogwalk route. It was right behind Mark! I said, "WOW," and it flew away.

2. A motherforking RAT that ran across my back yard, from the compost to the shed/playhouse. Clover was oblivious. The sighting inspired me to move every single thing that had been near the house* to a location far away from the house, and Mark to fix a loose piece of siding that may have been an entry point for squirrels to dance about inside the ceiling over our sunroom? Or...rats? In any event, after he closed the gap, he stopped hearing anyone tap dancing in there**

3. A butterfly. A butterfly in March?

*lumber with nails sticking out, mostly
**I never did hear it, thank you hearing loss!

By the pricking of my thumbs

Woke to frozen pipes* in the bathroom, after not even the coldest night this week. I took Clover for a long walk in the cold to a completely deserted park. Back in our driveway, she paused and looked up at the branches of an evergreen tree — I looked, expecting to see a squirrel, but it was a small woodpecker. A female (black and white without red all over). Now I'm not sure if it was a downy or hairy woodpecker, not recalling how long its bill was or even if it was "small" or "medium" sized. I didn't hear it pecking, but Clover clearly did. It made me miss Gus, the way he would watch birds all the time: how do they do that?

In the back yard, I saw a nuthatch, a bird whose name I always grasp for, skipping over "titmouse" before I get there. I don't know, I guess it doesn't evoke nuts or hatching — it's the upside-down, gray and blue guy with the pointy bill (they always stand upside-down on the trunk of the willow tree). I tried to draw one:

It kept coming out looking like a narwhal. 

They say Wordle is is the sourdough starter of 2022 and that's fine with me!

The Tragedy of Macbeth was stark and stunning. Wow, what a bleak play. It's not my very favorite, but I still remember** Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow after being told to memorize it in ninth grade English class, and there are so many great lines. 

*It's a work in progress, but we've unfroze em before and we'll do it again!

**I will be quoting this in my dotage, no doubt, driving my caretakers crazy. Ditto The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. 

Dig a pony

I was so distracted from work this morning by 1) my Christmas shopping lists and 2) these puffed up brown birds battling over a perch on the red bird feeder, shoving and shouldering each other off over and over again, when there was plenty of space for everybody.

Happy last day of November, everybody. I'm still a little obsessed with the Beatles documentary, totally in touch with my child self who loved them* so much and was utterly heartbroken that they split up. 

Fun fact: my first memory (quite possible not real, but I like it anyway) is being in a playpen and hearing Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.

*especially Ringo, every child's favorite