Baby robins 3

This was supposed to be titled "Hungry baby robins", because the generator work, right next to the front door, kept both Mom and Dad away from the nest (and fussing mightily) from 9 am to about 3pm. Every time I took a look through the camera those babies were yelling and screaming and stretching their necks, and pushing one another around so that if anyone ever showed up with food, whoever pushed hardest and latest would be first up. Great pictures, despite baby robin distress.
But the camera battery was dying (it doesn't tell me that until it's about to shut the camera down) and not a single picture came out well. Mostly out of focus (or focused on the dust on the storm door).

The good news is that Puny is alive and well. Lots of pictures. If you look closely (enlarge the picture), you'll see three little bills peeping up.

I have a generator

I thought it would be an ugly, messy mess.  Not hardly. Neat as a pin.

First, for those of you who are fascinated by machinery, a walk-behind Bobcat. (What will they think of next?)

Navigating the ditch with the forklift carrying the concrete slab on which the generator will rest.

Using the forklift to put the generator unit behind the woodpile, temporarily. .

Looks like a giant chain saw, doesn't it?

But no! It's a ditcher, and digs a trench about 8" wide, if that. Here they are, marking the start of the ditch.  The tool can be placed accurately to about 3 inches.

And away we go!

Assembling the circuit and switching boxes

Right by where the power comes into the house. You can imagine how the robins felt about this ...

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Only 4 daylilies had their leaves sacrificed!  They might not bloom this year, but you can't kill a daylily.

Once again the Bobcat does its job, raising the generator up to the frame.  You can see the concrete slab in place.

And with the generator at the right height, it's just a small bit of lifting. Yeah, so you say ...

There it is, right in the garden.  Have I got a lot of replanting to do.  There are supposed to be propane tanks by the tree to the right of the generator. But Gillespie forgot to come to install them.  They're coming Monday, they say.

And there's the house hookup.  Tiny ditch across the driveway, properly tamped down (the Bobcat again).  This nifty generator knows when the power goes out, and turns itself on and then off when power is restored.  It tests itself every month.  If something takes the power out when I'm away for several days, the house is safe. Probably a good thing.

Baby Robins 2

More baby robin progress.  Here's Mom with the Pushy Big Kid. Baby birds obviously grow into their bills, like puppies grow into their feet.

Family dinner time.  Notice the Pushy Big Kid, the middle-sized baby, and a third baby that looks a little puny.

Please, can we have some more?

Mom, we're still hungry!

MOM!!!!

I'm a little concerned about Puny, who seems much less active in the nest.

(I just looked at last year's pictures. These robins nested three full weeks ahead of last year.)

Baby robins!!

Well, the time has come, and these pictures are not wonderful. I've been fooling around with my "camera studio" (stepladder, footstool, books of various thicknesses, whether the ceiling light should be on. etc). I want to get the camera positioned so that I don't have to frame the picture every time, which is about how long it takes Mama Robin to fly away. I forgot that I was taking pictures through glass and plexiglass, hence the reflections.  Then I opened the house door, so there's only the plexiglass on the storm door to worry about.

Mama has been perched higher on the nest the last few days and I thought she was setting on something bigger than eggs. 

Then I saw Mama peering into the nest in a new way. 

Then she got curious about something (and promptly flew away). 

Then she returned with something in her mouth. No doubt delicious. The camera wasn't ready and she flew away.  But the little tummies weren't satisfied!!

Mother's Day

(An edit about the photos: On my computer, you can't enlarge the pictures unless you are using Internet Explorer.  They won't enlarge in Firefox.  YMMV.)

It was a lovely Mother's Day after all.  I had Sunday Morning Coffee with Thelma, Betsy K. and Beth, feeling low. We bring one another a potted plant on Mother's Day.  I didn't have plants to bring because yesterday's plant-digging included 3 large, well-established hostas (which is the same as digging 40 lb rocks). I severely pulled a muscle in my already none-too-happy back and spent the better part of the afternoon (when I had planned to get the plants) shuttling between the hottest shower I could stand and the very large cold pack that lives in the freezer.  It looks like 3 Advil 3 or 4 times a day will go on for a second week, maybe more.

Then I realized that after the generator goes in this Friday I will have to find a place for the plants I dug up, and I know I will have leftovers.  So I will take those plants to our next coffee.  Thus, in a better frame of mind, I left Thelma's, stopped briefly for groceries, and set off to see my friends George and Gail Africa in Plainfield, because today is opening day of their Vermont Flower Farm.  I see George regularly on FB, but it's always good to see your friends in person.  I managed to limit my buying to three plants, and then on the way back followed a sign down a back road to a farm that was selling plants and seedlings of all sorts, including (ta-daah) well-started delphinium, thyme, and rosemary.  The delphiniums will replace the ones that died in the winter (with the roses) and the thyme and rosemary will replace the ones that I tried to winter over in the house, unsuccessfully.

Seeing friends and buying plants is a nice way to spend a few Mother's Day hours, and I came home to put away the groceries and then plant the newcomers. I opened the base cabinet door to the trash can and saw a mouse. A very small mouse. And obviously a baby mouse because it stared back at me. Ever since Ernie died, I have been bothered by mice, and mouse bait is not doing the job.  For those who want to know, this is the White-Footed Mouse, not to be confused with the Deer Mouse, which is brown.  I looked it up.

 (This is not a picture of Mousie in the base cabinet. Who runs for a camera when a mouse is in your base cabinet? This is Mousie post-capture.)

I quietly closed the base cabinet door and  looked for a container. The only thing close at hand that wasn't a saucepan (yucky thought) was a plastic nursery pot on the porch that had some rocks and a fair amount of dirt in it, and was deep enough that Mousie couldn't climb out.  Armed with the pot and a whisk broom, I opened the cupboard door quietly.  I was truly astonished to find that Mousie was still there, and had retreated behind the Bon Ami cleanser.  I slowly moved the cleanser and Mousie retreated to a spot between the side of the cabinet and the small shallow box containing Windex, Fantastik, the floor cleaner, etc.  I slowly moved the shallow box and Mousie began to get worried.  I carefully put the plastic nursery pot in a strategic location at the bottom edge of the cabinet and moved the whisk broom toward Mousie.

The whisk broom started Mousie in the right direction.  Unfortunately, the whisk broom has tiny bristles (the better to sweep with).  The bristles caught in Mousie's fur and instead of being whisked into the pot, Mousie was whisked onto the kitchen floor.

A mature mouse would have disappeared in an instant.  Mousie led me on a chase across the kitchen floor and behind the computer room door, with me unsuccessfully wielding the whisk broom.  I cornered Mousie behind the door, Mousie sniffed the whisk broom and climbed aboard, and  was unceremoniously dumped into the pot. Needless to say, there was a fair amount of nursery pot dirt and a couple of rocks on the floor by this time. 

Outside we went to a corner of the yard.  I put the pot down and Mousie just hunkered down and sat.  I went indoors to get the camera and when I came back out Mousie was still there.  So I took the pictures posted here, of Mousie in the pot. The pix are a little out of focus because I didn't have time to figure out depth of field, etc.  Then I moved the rocks (the largest, which Mousie is not on, is only 4" long), and Mousie went out one of the drain holes and sat in the grass.  That last picture is REALLY out of focus but you can see how tiny the mouse was.

Some readers will suggest that I should've whacked Mousie with a shovel, and considering that mice are disease carriers, and are vectors for Lyme Disease, I guess I should have.  But Mousie sat in the base cabinet and looked at me.  Couldn't do it.  Couldn't even think of doing it.

I'll sweep up the dirt, but before the floor gets washed, I must get those new plants in the ground. We just had a thunderstorm, the ground is soaked, there's no better time.  The floor gets washed later ...

SPRING!! Look quick or it may turn into summer

Blog posts on rainy days are pretty dispiriting, and there have been lots of rainy days. But today is a perfect day - bright, sunny, temps in the low 70s, projects to do - time for a blog update.  Although two weeks ago we had a hard frost, which destroyed the daffodils that had bloomed, we think Spring is really here.  This was April 29.  (Oh wow! If you click on a picture, you'll get an album, like on FB. And the pix look great.)

This was today.

On to Mama Robin.  She has been sitting diligently, but we're still waiting.

She is very skittish. Friday early evening and this morning I mowed the lawn (Spring is here for sure), and she flew in and out of the nest, perching on the fence or in the box elder tree, fussing and fuming the whole time.  But before that, we had rain, and cold, very windy days. When it was cold, she really hunkered down and snuggled into that nest!! I've already said that I had to take down the yellow tape because its flapping frightened her.  Well, the wind whipping the daylily leaves around had her really worried.  Here she is, looking left and right and wondering if the leaves are really coming for HER. 

Next Friday I'm having a whole-house generator installed.  A very expensive investment, and perilously close to making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  But it will protect the house, the pipes and the well from a long power outage in winter - over Christmas break, for instance, when I'm away for several days, or for a long storm-related outage (heaven forbid). I have to get out to the fence and lift the plants  that I don't want destroyed by some digging tool.  The violets and spring bulbs and forget-me-nots willl come back, but not the gorgeous hostas and astilbes and columbines that I've given TLC to for quite a while.  So today is the day for serious digging.  I borrowed a small water tub from Berta to keep them all in.

Mowing the lawn gave me a look at what really happened to the back yard after the last stream bank work.  Stan Wheatley made a long swale so that if water comes over the bank way in the  bank,  most of it will drain back into the brook instead of into the house.  But this means the back yard almost has a terrace on it, and it will be hard to mow.  Looks weird, too.  Be careful if you come to visit.  You may be put to work extending the vegetable garden.

Friday I was surprised by wonderful loving Mother's Day gifts.  Alice sent me note cards and memo pads with cute, colorful flower sketches. How Alice finds such distinctive and thoughtful gifts - always just right for me and my life and my tastes - always astonishes me.

Tim and Mike (da Boyz) sent a beautiful box of flowers to the office, so several of my colleagues folllowed our custodian as he delivered the box ("Who's getting flowers??") and there was oohing and ahhing. They're just beautiful. I loved being able to enjoy them over this whole weekend.  And I loved having my "mom-ness" called out.

Tim and Danielle's wedding anniversary was this month, and Alice and Pat's, and now it's Mothers Day weekend.  May is a month full of love. (Not that September isn't, too.)