Rosie and the Bear

Leo has gotten a lot of attention on this blog, so I thought it was time to give Rosie a turn. As I mentioned in an earlier post, both dogs got high scores on the Dog IQ Test; however Rosie always struck me as being a skoche or two (or three or four or ten) smarter than Leo. This is because Rosie had common sense.

If it surprises you that common sense isn't measured by an IQ test, then just think about all the really bright people in the world who don't have a clue about how to get along. Anyway, Leo always lunged straight into situations any sensible dog would have avoided. Like the time when Liz's band council was meeting at our house, and someone let Leo out just as a large Husky was walking by. The Husky outweighed Leo by at least twice and had a thick, heavy coat. Leo charged, snapping and snarling. The Husky calmly chomped his leg. By the time I got to the front door, ready rush out and save the poor Husky, a panicked and bleeding Leo was hurling himself at the front door. Unfortunately, this experience had no impact on his future large-dog-charging choices.

On the other hand, Rosie had street smarts. She'd size up a situation and take appropriate action. Like when I was remodeling the farmhouse, we had temporary stairs without risers, so you could see through them to the floor below. Rosie knew that she would fall through, so refused to go up the stairs, even though her and Liz's bed was at the top of them.

One time at my sister Jenn's house where there were, as usual, lots of little Yorkies running around (with their hair done up), Rosie began staring at the slowly turning overhead fan. After frowning at it fixedly for several hours, she realized that it was part of a dangerous Yorkie plot to kill us all and that the proper way to deal with this issue was to take out the Yorkies. Liz grabbed her before she could.

So you can see, Rosie was acutely aware of life's many dangers and knew how to handle them. One time, though, stands out above all the others as a demonstration of her good sense.

We lived on a remote farm. Deer roamed in our pasture, river otters paddled in the stream across the street, and red fox prowled the fields for pheasant.The most notable local wildlife, though, was a black bear. In the evenings we'd hear deep grunting noises outside, and figured it was the bear coming around for apples. The dogs would look up and softly growl. Once when exploring the dense woods behind our fire pond, Liz and I stumbled on the bear's sleeping place in a matted-down thicket. There were a bunch of apples from our orchard there, and a strong, gamey odor. It took at least a minute for us to vacate the woods.

For many  months, that was the closest we came to an actual encounter with the bear--until one dark winter night.

Our farmhouse was heated by an ancient wood stove, and I took many trips to the woodshed during the cold months. Rosie always came with me. We went through back porch, which had two doors: one leading out to the woodshed and the other providing doggie-door access to a fenced area where the dogs could hang out while I was at work (the Puppy Prison).

One night after dark, Rosie and I were in the woodshed when I heard a guttural grunt. Rosie tensed, nose in the air, sniffing wildly. The fur down her back stood on end, Mohawk-style. (If I had fur, mine would have been in a Mohawk, too.)

Then, rather than standing by me and barking at the intruder to keep him at bay (or charging at him, like Leo would have done), Rosie turned tail and disappeared into the house. I couldn't believe it. My protector had abandoned me!

A moment later, hearing frantic barking and growling coming from near the house, I looked over to see Rosie behind the fence of the Puppy Prison, giving that bear all she had.

Rosie knew when get out of the way. I quickly followed suit.



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Brave Rosie protects me from a bear, sort of.

Elegy for a couple of trees

I wrote this poem a couple of years ago after a developer took down two beautiful Douglas fir trees in the little park right behind our house. Bill and I had battled for two years to save all of the trees, and succeeded except for these two. I was very sad about their loss because they had made our yard feel peaceful and protected and were always full of birds. I started to write this elegy and realized that I was grieving more than two trees. As you know, my posts run to light and humorous, but to fully feel the joy and laughter of life you have to be willing to go into the sadness of it sometimes as well. Today I'm particularly missing my daughter who is far away in Australia, although very near in my heart.

Elegy for a couple of trees

The trees came down this morning,

Two tall firs that had been my constant companions

through the kitchen window.

Guardians of my backyard garden.

I knew they were coming down

and tried to prepare for the loss.

It was no use.

No more could I prepare for the day

when the children left home

or the dogs made their last trip to the vet.

Like the spaces left behind by the trees,  

they left behind empty places

in my day-to-day life, 

but not in my heart,

where I keep them close by.

Bertram is Back

Bertram just landed on the wire outside the living room window and peered in. I had already put peanuts out early this morning, but I immediately went out and delivered some more. He had fluffed up feathers, and flew over to another wire in front of the neighbor's house while I set out the peanuts, which he's never done before. Frankly, he looks a bit frazzled. I would guess there may be some young birds responsible for that. I stood quietly on the front porch and heard the peeping sounds of baby birds, possibly coming from the crow's nest.

O happy day!

Gardening for Wildlife

Did you know about the National Wildlife Federation program to help us build wildlife habitats in our yards? A wildlife habitat is a place that welcomes birds, butterflies and other local wildlife. To create one you provide the four elements animals need most: food, water, shelter, and places to raise young. Then you apply to have your yard certified, and get a cool sign to proudly display.

In our previous yard, Bill and I created a certified wildlife habitat by adding native plants that were decorative and provided food for birds and native bees. We planted evergreen huckleberry, snowberry, salal, and mahonia for their berries, and a lot of different native flowering plants to provide pollen and nectar for the bees and hummingbirds.

We also put nesting boxes--on poles to keep them away from predators because squirrels and racoons love to eat bird eggs. The boxes attracted chickadees and house wrens. We soon learned that house wrens are bossy. They scolded us soundly every time we came near the garden during nesting season. We also ended up installing three bird baths rather than just one because the crows took over the big one, and the little birds needed plenty of room for pool parties. When everything was set up, we ordered a yard sign from the National Wildlife Federation. It was a great conversation starter and led to some friends and their children learning more about wildlife.

Bill and I recently moved, and our new yard is a "blank slate," which is a fancy way of saying that it doesn't have much in the way of landscaping. The good thing is that we'll have lots of fun planting stuff. The less good thing is that establishing a new garden takes time. With nothing to attract any wild visitors to our new yard, I pined for some little friends. What could I do until we got a garden going?

Well, one afternoon instead of clearing a pathway through the living room and finding some dishes to eat on, I visited the Wild Bird Store and came home with an elaborate bird feeder, which I immediately assembled and put right in front of our living room window.

This is the view from our living room. The red thing way in the back is a hummingbird feeder. On the front of the box it came in was a photo of three hummingbirds peacefully sitting on the feeder together. This photo was digitally altered. In fact only one hummingbird is allowed on the feeder. The biggest hummer guards the feeder and attacks interlopers We had to get a second feeder so that more than hummer could eat, and had to put it on a different side of the house so two hummers never see each other eating. This helps prevent deaths from the vicious areal combat that's triggered whenever one hummingbird sees another one eating.

As you can tell from this photo, goldfinches aren't so good about sharing either. When a flock of them lands, they take turns knocking each other off their perches. I haven't noticed any deadly areal battles, though, which is good because we haven't got the budget for all of the extra feeders required for this group.

I hung an adorable bird bath from the feeder as well, but the yard squirrel was able to use it as a landing platform and a comfortable place to sit while devouring the expensive, hull-less bird seed I use, so the bird bath is currently on the ground. I need get a different pole to hang it from.

Anyway, I'd encourage you to make your own habitat. Watching wild creatures is endlessly entertaining, whether it's feathered ones playing King of the Mountain on the bird feeder, or furry ones performing acrobatic feats to get to the bird seed. And it's rewarding to know that you're helping them to live and thrive in harmony with humans.

Update: My sister, Jenn, has just set up her new bird feeder extraordinaire: 

Jenn lives out in the country, as you can see, so her feeder attracts all sorts of different birds. She gets a huge number of gold finches, who love niger, which is why she has two extra-large niger dispensers.

Bertram's Disappearance

Sunday evening, Bill spotted Bertram on the roof next door, eating a mouse. Crows aren't hunters, so I knew this was carrion, and started stewing about Bertram being poisoned by Decon, or some other poison that may have killed the mouse. My fears worsened when Bertram disappeared for a few days. I spotted him just once on Monday, and then not at all for the rest of the week. Corvina, however, continued coming around, although staying farther away than normal.

Yesterday I decided it was time to face facts, and sat down to have a good cry. Then I remembered. Corvina and Bertram are nesting, and one of them would need to be sitting on the eggs. I quickly found a web site dedicated to bird behavior, hoping to learn that the crow male rather than the female sits on the eggs. Not so. That was it!

Then it suddenly struck me. What if Bertram was actually a female? There's no way I can tell which one is which. I had simply dubbed Bertram as a male when "he" first started coming around, and my own story had become so grooved in my mind that I actually believed it.

Is Bertram really a girl?

I spent the rest of the day trying to believe that this could be true. After 24 hours, I'm starting to accept the idea. How curious is my mind, that I make up a story and then believe it's true, against all evidence!

This probably means a major wardrobe overhaul.

Update: A friend just told me that she watched a crow catch a mouse and eat it. So I was wrong, and they are hunters after all.

Digitizing Paintings

Like most artists, I'd like to get my watercolor paintings into digital format to display on my Facebook page and blog. One approach is to photograph them. The key to getting a good photo of your work is to have neutral lighting. As the interior of my house is all painted in warm colors, I must take my paintings outside to photograph on an overcast day. I lay them out on the gray concrete (e.g., neutral color) sidewalk, set up my tripod so the camera is pointing down, and then photograph them. This works fine as long as it doesn't rain, which is a bit of a problem for a good part of the year in Seattle. BTW, you'll find links to good instructions for photographing paintings at the end of this post.

To get around the rain-on-my-paintings issue, I wanted to see if I could scan them and get acceptable or better images. We have a Canon printer/copier/scanner/fax, so I suspected that this might be possible. Otherwise, my route to getting good quality digital images would be to have the paintings professionally scanned, which is pricey, and I'm not quite ready to take that step.

I quickly discovered that my 11 X 17 - inch paintings are too large to fit on the platen of the scanner. Canon's included software has a feature called "stitch assist," so I was able to scan two halves of the picture and join them into one image. This is a nice feature, but unfortunately you can see where the image is joined. After trying a number of different things to make this less obvious, I ended up using good old Microsoft Paint. It has an "eye dropper" tool that allows you to sample the color of one part of the picture and apply it to another. I picked up the color adjacent to the area I wanted to disguise and use the spray can tool to spray it on, trying to feather it to make it less obvious where the image was doctored. The result is OK, although I'll play with it some more tomorrow to see if I can figure out a better way to scan the paintings so this step isn't necessary.

Here are the three paintings I worked on. See if you can tell where the two halves are joined.

Coupeville Barn

Daisy Fall

Japanese Tea House, Japanese Garden, Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle, WA

This is a lot of work to go through for each painting, so next time I'm going to scan the two sides of each painting, save them into their own files, and then join the two sides together in Microsoft Paint. I'm convinced that this will eliminate the problem of the seam showing.

Update: I just found this article about how to photograph paintings for publication By Northlight Books. If you want to do a really professional job, here's how. http://www.wetcanvas.com/Dan/Art-Photography-Guide.pdf

Here's an article about how to scan your artwork: http://www.theartistsweb.net/wiki/How_To_Scan_Artwork

For a simpler approach to photographing your paintings, read this post by Gwenn Seemel. If you try her approach, please let me know how it works out: If you Don't Document Your Work, You Never Made It.

And here's another very detailed article from Plein Air Salon on how to make photos of your paintings. Scroll about halfway down the page to view the instructions.

And see my new post, Totally Geeking Out on Photographing Paintings, for detailed information on how to set up your equipment.

On Being Friends

Friends, as we all know, are one of life's greatest blessings. Friends celebrate our joys, mourn our griefs, and sometimes even laugh at our jokes. Friends keep us company in this big huge world. Friends also teach us new things, for example, my best friend and husband, Bill, is trying very, very hard to teach me how to golf.

Of all the wonderful things that friends do, though, the one I like best is the way they broaden my perspective on life. The people I end up spending the most time with are very different from me. Many of them come from different parts of the country and the world and represent the gamut of backgrounds, interests, religions, political and sexual orientations, and so on.

For example, one of my dearest friends shares my love of ballroom dancing and photography, but in lots of other ways is quite different from me. While I'm always changing houses and jobs, she keeps hers for years and years. And even though working with technology is my profession, I'm uncomfortable with tech gadgets. My friend, however, is always trying out the latest ones. She has a magic pen that records the person speaking while you take notes, a picture frame that flips photos automatically, so you don't have to break your fingernails turning album pages, and a little thing that looks like a book that also turns the pages for you. You just have to tap something, I think. It's all a bit mysterious.

You'll not be surprised then, to learn that my friend and I also differ in our preferences for pets. While we both have outdoor pets, they are quite different types. I have two pet crows and a yard squirrel. She has a pet wisteria.

My friend is very fond of her pet.

You might think it a bit odd that someone would keep a wisteria as a pet. I certainly did. After all, they don't eat things you put out for them or poop in your yard. But as time goes on, I've learned that wisterias actually make excellent outdoor pets.

For one thing, they keep roving bands of children out of the yard.

Wisteria bravely defending the yard from hordes of children.

For another thing, they keep marauding animals out of the yard.

Wisteria guarding against animal threats.

Unfortunately, they don't do as well with neighbors' cars. Neither do bushes, for that matter.

Wisteria even allied with bushes are no match for an automobile.

 So, you see, this friend with the pet wisteria has broadened my perspective on what makes a good pet, and I've learned a new appreciation for her pet wisteria ...

... from a distance.

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Friends broaden my perspective on things such as what makes a good pet.