An experimental garden

How long was it going to take before garden talk showed up this spring? Well, this long. Seeds went into Solo cups Sunday and Monday and already are sprouting.
     Rather than plant the same old stuff this year there are a couple of experiments in the works. First,

These are sprouts from sunflower seeds bought as bird feed over the winter.

last summer a sunflower sprouted in a place I hadn't planted nor where an errant seed from the plantings could have landed. Nevertheless the plant grew to a little more than two feet tall and flowered. A friend suggested an errant seed but none that I could think of could have reached that particular place. This spring raking up the leavings of the winter I found the answer. The birds had left numerous sunflower seeds on the ground from spillage off the feeders. Could I have missed one of those with the rake and it sprouted? I brought it up as a question and a friend said she often sees sunflowers sprout under her feeders. So, I thought, why not plant a few to see what happens.
     Sure enough after about four days little sunflowers are sprouting in my Solo cup ranch. We'll see how they do over the summer.

Corn sprouts – four days, only 54 to go.

     Meanwhile after the success with sunflowers last year I thought I would experiment with the planting spot rather than the plants. No sunflowers this year except the ones growing from bird feed. Instead I started some corn last Monday. I picked two varieties that have shorter growing seasons, one is 60 days and the other 70, and I will put them in the spot that gets the most sunlight, where the sunflowers were last year and again, we'll see what they do.
     Along with those I have started the usual selection of favorites, zucchini, potatoes, lettuce and a few onions. It will all make a smaller garden this year and I hope a more productive one. I did a little research over the winter and I'm adding some fertilizer and some fertilized soil around the place and fixing the boxes so they drain better, raking and loosening the soil deeper than I did last year and drilling some drainage holes near the bottoms of the planks in the raised spots.
     I might invest in a few flowered plants at the store later. Looking forward to one of those conglomerations of potatoes, zucchini and red peppers coming out of the oven in the future. Some day no matter what my doctor says I might melt some cheese over it. Maybe take two of those cholesterol pills that day and give them something to do. So it goes, watch this space for updates.

Chickadees hang out for a drink

This is my favorite, a lot going on. Besides the wing stabilizer and the fact that
 the bird is drinking, notice you can see him through the clear ice. Also look
how it clings to both sides of the icicle. I suppose they do it but I have never 
seen a bird cling with its feet in opposition like that,

This year for the first time I was at the East Pole long enough to justify putting out a bird feeder. I hung it off a corner post on the deck and it was there and full most of the time from the middle of December until the end of March.

In that time there was a constant flurry around it. At first maybe a dozen chickadees began hanging out. In time redpolls discovered it and a couple dozen of them came over. Interspersed with them, a couple of Pine grosbeaks stopped by every day and one day a hairy woodpecker showed up.

My presence didn't seem to deter them a bit. A couple of times they almost hit me as they flew around. My chopping block was almost directly under the feeder and even that activity didn't discourage activity around the feeder. It is so quiet in the woods, I could hear their wing beats overhead as I wrestled with firewood and they flew back and forth.

Note the drop of water from another icicle at upper left.

In all it mesmerized me at times and I would discover I had stopped doing whatever my task was and I was watching the interactions among the various birds.

Then one day something new happened. It came about around the middle of March, a time when I have mentioned the temperature on the porch sometimes reaches 80 degrees in the sunshine. I had finished my work for the day and poured three fingers of an expensive scotch over a handful of compressed snow and settled into my deck chair to sip the whiskey and watch the birds. In that heat snow on the roof had begun to melt and icicles formed along the eaves. It took a while to focus on the fact that some of the chickadees were landing on the icicles, clinging to them and staying for a moment or two. At one point I noticed a couple of drips falling off the tip of an icicle and it was in that

Note two drops falling. My friend Gretchen Small was
inspired by this photo to paint the picture at left.

observation I realized the chickadees were drinking the meltwater on the icicles.

Over the next few days I sat out there for several hours with my camera in my lap, watching them drink and sometimes even forgetting to lift the camera. In the process I was able to capture several good photos of this phenomenon. I posted a few of the photos on the Birds of Alaska facebook page and one of them got more than 200 likes and the other about 150. It seemed few if any people had observed this activity by chickadees.

Artwork by Gretchen Small

I found it so interesting, if rain hadn't appeared in the weather forecast, I'd probably still be out there photographing drinking chickadees. I've posted some photos here that show different ways the birds approached the icicles in order to catch a drink.

Birds of Alaska facebook page

This one's kind of a stretch.

A joke

So, Kid Rock, Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent walk into the White House …

… what are you waiting for? Isn't that enough of a joke?

An interesting construct in basketball today.

Watching the Houston-Oklahoma City playoff game today might have held a lesson for young

Some James Harden friends.  Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle

players. To begin with understand that Russell Westbrook of the Thunder is in a neck and neck race for most valuable player with James Harden of the Rockets. Westbrook also set a record this year for number of games with a triple double. To those unfamiliar with basketball that means double digits in three statistical categories, in this case points, assists and rebounds. Steals and blocked shots show up once in a while.

What made it a little more interesting was something the commenters discussed before the game. The two players are friends in the off-season but agreed not to communicate during the playoff series. Then they quoted Westbrook as saying when he is on the court he has only one friend – the basketball. As one said, his only friend is Spalding.

Immediately I thought, what about your teammates? I guess a guy who sets a record for triple doubles has little regard for his teammates. I mean they made the playoffs, though a number six seed. We used to call that guy a gunner or a ball hog. Obviously he can perform, but even Michael Jordan acknowledged his teammates. It sounds like Westbrook plays by himself and those teammates who aren't acknowledged as friends or anything else are only there to feed him the ball.

Nothing was said about Harden and his relationships.

What does it all mean?

Final score: Hardin and the Rockets 118, Westbrook and whoever, 87.  Westbrook had 22 points and no triple double without any friends. Harden with a little help from his friends had 37 points. In the plus/minus statistic: Westbrook -22; Harden +22. Of course it's a seven-game series, so there are more games to play.
Update: In game two Westbrook scored 42 points, still lost. I can hear Joe Cocker singing.
As it turns out Westbrook's team lost the series four games to one. At the end he walked off the court without a handshake or so much as a head nod to his teammates or to the winners. He may need more friends than an inanimate ball.

The sounds of spring

Poets, naturalists and dreamers always look to the symphony of bird songs to welcome the Spring, In this neighborhood it's internal combustion engines and a couple of other loud noises as well,

 

From the high-pitched whine of two-cycle engines to the lower register rumble of four-strokes on such machines as four-wheelers including my own which I started for the first time this year today, the change of engines from winter to summer marks the arrival. A chainsaw snarls its way through a log, while another two-cycle, probably on a dirt bike runs up and down the scales as it rolls over lumps in the trail to the river or plows through a puddle of water and mud. When the sound stops abruptly you wonder if he didn't flip in the puddle. Over all that a big-block engine roars to life probably over at the drag strip, while small airplanes do touch-and-goes at the airfield.

Then there are more recognizable sounds: a couple of gunshots and from another direction a curse word shouted at some difficulty, the rooster crowing in the chicken yard across the street and occasionally a squirrel chattering at me from the trees overhead.

Such is the orchestration here as the neighborhood wakes up from the long winter. All  of the noise compounded by the scratching of a leaf rake gathering last fall's discards from the trees. Then in a moment of pause, the honking from a wedge of geese flying overhead sends a softer tune across the land only to be interrupted when a chainsaw again bites into a trunk of wood.

Amid it all a realization. Last summer I had great luck with sunflowers. I started them indoors and then put them in a raised garden out by the road where they would get the most sun. They grew to about eight or nine feet. Then in August one grew and blossomed in the garden next to the house. It reached a couple of feet and put out a flower, but I had no idea how it got there. I can't see that I got a seed mixed in with others or a bird found one and dropped it. Then today as I was raking around under the bird feeders before taking them down, as I looked at all the seeds that had been discarded uneaten, it hit me. Could that sunflower have grown from a seed the birds discarded during the winter? I thought those seeds were radiated before they could be sold to prevent invasive species, but who knows? Just for fun I am going to try a few of those seeds this year and see what happens. (That picture is the little sunflower growing amid the leaves of a geranium.)

And April 16, 2017, the ground is mostly still frozen just an inch or so below the surface, so it will be a while yet.
That's springtime in the Butte.

A comment on facebook from a friend in Fairbanks: Sharon Wright: "We always get some
sunflowers sprouting below the bird feeder but they land in gravel and poor soil. I do dig them up and move some of them but they're always stunted. Still, they flower. For our oak 1/2 barrels at the start of our driveway, I buy one Mammoth and one "other" from a local organic greenhouse. They turn out the best. Aren't they just fun to grow? The daily growth is incredible!"

Milo Minderbinder would be so proud

Hello?

Hello, Bashar this is Don.

Don? Don who?

Trump, Donald Trump, president for all, you know.

Oh that Don, hello, what's on your mind?

Well Bashar, don't worry this isn't an official call.

Does that matter or change anything?

Well, yes, we think it does anyway.

What is it then?

It's business, Bashar. We'd like to opportunity to bid on repairs at the Hom airport.

The Hom airport? There's nothing wrong with our Hom airport.

That's what we need to talk about it, Bashar.

We have two ships offshore there looking for somewhere to test their Tomahawk missiles.

Is that a threat, Don?

No threat, a business deal and you know I make good deals, the best deals in fact I wrote a book about it, a best seller.

So what's the deal?

It's the best deal, believe me. We drop a few missiles on the Hom airfield. Then you give Trump Properties the contract to rebuild the place. There's be a nice piece of change, a big piece of change, that comes right back to you, believe me. You could buy more of that gas you like to spread.

We could do that? How much for me? What about Vladimir?

We've talked with Vladimir about it and he already has his plant preparing to increase gas production waiting for your order, You see? Winners all around.
I suppose it would give a boost to your poll numbers too,  hey?
That's one benefit.
Well, good luck with that. Give me some time to move my planes off the field.

Done.

USS Porter, stand by for the president.

………

Then,

Hello?

Mr. Kim, this is Don …

You sending warships here!

It's all part of a business deal, a good business deal, the best business deal, winners all around. Interested?

AN EXPLANATION: I was  hoping I wouldn't have to do this but, sigh, here goes. Milo Minderbinder was a character in Joseph Heller's classic novel "Catch 22." In order to satisfy the conditions of a complicated business deal involving among other things Swiss chocolate and Egyptian cotton he engineered an air strike on the U.S. airfield where he and the rest of the characters in the book were stationed during World War II.

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Tomorrow will be kinder

(This is an update of an item posted originally March 23.)
Ever had a day when everything you touch seems to go wrong somehow? The climactic event for me yesterday came when the little sled I use to haul firewood to and from the piles under the house got away from me and slid down the hill. I gave up in disgust and went indoors to pour a glass of the expensive single malt I had purchased on a trip out earlier in the day.
     Today dawned in a better place. I went about the usual chores of wood and water and sweeping and such, all the time aware at some time I was going to have to go down the hill for that sled.
In time I did. And I understood if I had gone and retrieved it right away I could have avoided the torment.    
      You see, it went only about 50 feet until the tow rope snagged on a single thin twig standing up through the snow. If that twig hadn't caught the sled it would have gone at least another hundred yards into snow so deep I would have had to snowshoe to grab it. And fortunately the sled was empty or it surely would have bent the twig and possibly shed chunks of firewood along the way careening down the hill.
      Lots of conclusions could be drawn here, feel free to apply your own. Or, just chalk it up to a matter of course for life on a hillside.

ABOUT THAT PHOTO: The surveyors' tape marks the saving twig so I can remember. You can see the track whre the sled stopped and to the right, the hill it would have gone down