Duck Went A-Courtin'

One Word Wednesday: Quack

Life Knocks on the Door...

...and we answer.

We have no excuse for not blogging. Well, except that we've been outside in the warm-ish temps, cleaning up the yard, weeding and prettifying the place. It's a lot of work. There are some clumps of grasses by the pond that take quite a bit of time to remove. Their roots are so weirdly thick, tangled, and deep. Eight hours of weed pulling in two days. I thought of Wayne and his microstegium. I also got sidetracked by a fantastic, brilliant novel by Lydia Millet called How the Dead Dream. I highly and unreservedly recommend it, if you like dense beautiful literature with a drop-dead perspective and a hauntingly perceptive look at the decline of our poor twirling blue planet. All seen through the eyes of a real estate developer, money mogul in southern California.

The duck dramas continue. Wednesday morning there were three mallards (two females and one male) plus one Great Blue Heron together in the pond. I thought it sounded like the beginning of a joke. The heron took off as soon as I got close to the window. The three others took turns in the pond, on the edge, under the feeder, etc. On Thursday, first the lone female showed up and spent several hours. Then she left and the lone male showed up. He stood around quacking, looking for the girl of his dreams. After a while, he took off too. Even the life of ducks is complicated. It all goes on just beyond our radar. Their secret language. I felt like crying when I saw him looking for her. Maybe it's just me, but is life sad, or what?

Lately I've been thinking how we are mostly so incidental to history. Our lives take place in a context, but that context is out of our hands. If I designed things, I swear it wouldn't look like this. Much, much kinder, the world would be. We would understand the secret language of everything.

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No lab test results yet.

I'm writing a response to an inquiry from someone who is writing a book on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock 1969. It's delightful remembering the times.

Roger has been working on a book review for James (Clusterfuck Nation) Kunstler's new book World Made by Hand. It should appear here sometime soon, if he can finally get all the weeds pulled, the moss scraped from the roof, the garden planted, and every loose end completely tied up.

We wish you a great weekend, friends.

Duck Spa

Our pond is very small. It's really a large puddle with a pump and a little waterfall. In real estate jargon, it's called a "water feature." For the past four years there were goldfish in it that reproduced and multiplied just fast enough to keep the pond populated, after the ravenous heron had had its fill in the late fall. This past fall, though, that's not what happened. Only one fish survived. We saw it when we came home from California, but even it disappeared shortly thereafter. The pond bottom has Colorado River rock, smooth and pretty stones in pinks, blues and whites over standard pond black plastic. The rocks are covered right now in probably a half inch of thick muddy muck. Because there are no longer any goldfish, we considered rigging a system to clean the muck out so the pretty rocks could be seen, and potentially be a selling point for someone who is just gaga for ponds with rocky bottoms. We casually talked to the septic inspector about how to get the muck out, and he told us he would sell us a muck-sucker at a great deal, if we wanted it. We said, thanks, but no thanks. We let the muck be.

A good choice as far as these mallards were concerned. They arrived on Saturday and made the pond their private spa and rec center. They snoozed lazily on the ground most of the day, like vacationers on cruise ship lounge chairs, and woke only to take a paddle around in the water, turn their little bottoms up and eat what ever was wiggling and squiggling in that mucky mess. They couldn't have been happier. In fact they celebrated by doing a lovely little courtship dance that ended in wild duck sex right there in the pond. We watched while we were cooking dinner. Entertained mightily, I must say.

As with all creatures if you watch long enough you start to notice details about their particular behaviors. Ms. Duck seemed to not be able to stop moving her wings, even when she was sleeping. There was a constant shaking motion like she was trying to rid herself of pests, and never quite could. We wondered if they had sought refuge in our yard because she had some kind of nervous affliction. Mr. Duck was solicitous of her, and stayed awake to guard while she slept fitfully. They were quite the romantic couple. We thoroughly enjoyed their weekend with us. Something scared them off around 4:00 pm on Sunday. We hope they'll be back. I was already planning on finding their nest, which I was sure they were going build here. We'll keep you posted.

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On a different note:

I would like to thank each of you who left comments on my osteoporosis post. If you are reading here Monday morning around 8:30 am Pacific time, I'm at a lab having blood drawn to measure my Vitamin D levels and a metabolic panel. My doctor took a conservative approach, wanting to see what's going on with my calcium, magnesium, phosphate, etc levels before she prescribes some therapeutic intervention. I greatly appreciated all of the input from your comments. I learned a lot, and I certainly will stay away from bisphosphonates. There are other interventions that I will be exploring. I will say this-- if care and compassion could build bones, then after reading all that you wrote, I would be strengthened for a lifetime. I can not thank you enough for your good wishes.

Suddenly We Have Ducks

Late Sunday afternoon a pair of mallards landed in our very tiny pond. It seemed a fluke, something incredibly sweet, but certainly not something that would be repeated.
However, on Monday, Mrs. Duck arrived at 6:30 pm, floated in the pond a while, and then took her dinner under the birdfeeder. Seeing her reminded me that I heard something the other day when I was out in the garden. I mentioned to Roger, I thought I heard from somewhere off in the border trees a sound like a decoy duck call, not real but duck-like. Now I wonder if they actually have a real nest there. If they show up again tomorrow, I'm going to buy duck food. I should, shouldn't I? Would it be wrong to encourage them?