good time vernal equinox

HELLO, SPRINGTIME.

I have news and announcements - first things first: Happy birthday to Martina!  Since we were born in the same year I can say this: Every birthday gets us closer to becoming wise women who hold the important cultural knowledge of our past, like the complete lyrics to Wham! Rap.

March has been a busy month so far - I got to meet Maggie - she's just moved back to Oregon and already knows the best cake restaurant in Salem! I know this because we ate some - I still think about that raspberry chocolate ganache. I briefly wondered if it would be weird at all to meet someone I knew only through email and the internet, but it was not! Maggie's lovely, her little dog is a sweetheart, and I'm so glad she's living close enough to visit in person.

In other news, I think I finally have an answer to why I have been so lethargic about this blog and life in general: not enough blood in my blood! Events of the last month led me to the doctor that I'd managed to avoid since I got insurance (last July), and she told me I was anemic and to start taking  iron supplements. I feel so much better! It's only been about 3 weeks, but I already have more energy, my fingernails are recovering, and the black circles under my eyes are fading away. Hurrah! Anyway - if you're feeling inexplicably logy, make them check your iron!

With that extra energy I took a walk on Tuesday and here are some of the pictures. I love springtime.




This is on the sidewalk in front of my house - the horse chestnut branches are getting thick and twisty like they do every spring. Soon there will be enormous bright green leaves and then white flowers.
(the sky was like this when I set out, but half an hour after I got home it was bright blue and you'd never know it was threatening rain like this just before.)




ha ha! looking at this now all I see are what look like dried grass clippings in the candytuft, but what I saw when I stopped to take the picture was GREEN, pops of purple, lacy white, and a line of hot pink fallen camellias at the top. Maybe I was just tired and wanted to stop. (this happens.)



I like how all the wires look like they're coming out of this yield sign.



This forsythia is aggressively cheerful and I love it. You're not going to miss that one.



CAMELLIA! I love how this looks against the white brick - I pretty much always love Camellias, especially in someone else's yard. (they are messy.) Anyway - this little vignette looked very fairy tale or story set somewhere else at the dawn of aluminum gutters to me.



Daffodils, man. They are so cheery without being as in your face as say, forsythia.



I'm sure this was to mark sidewalk or sewer repair, but I like to think someone wanted to make sure I knew I was going the right way.

uncooperative birds

 A million of these tiny birds (they're the size of 2 jumbo cotton balls or  1.5 large marshmallows) converged on the tree outside my window the other day. They're so cute! I thought this even after I witnessed them plucking blossoms off the tree - were they looking for bugs? eating petals? just destructive thugs?

I couldn't get a good picture of them for anything - adorable as a Disney cartoon bird until the minute I picked up the camera, then it was all twiggy profiles and fluffy bird butt.


Are they on the lam for crimes committed in another tree? Or maybe they just don't like having their picture taken. (I also dislike having my picture taken.)  I'm pretty sure they're house finches; they had pretty little red throats and seemed kind of finchy.  Sometimes the little birds are hard to tell apart - but I like All About Birds as a destination to figure it all out.

Did I mention that there was a Cooper's Hawk sitting on the birdbath the other day? He was just hanging out, freaking out all the little birds and squirrels while having a through the window staring contest with Busby the cat.

fold the cloth

Right now, this very minute (12:26 AM) I am listening to the Cate Le Bon album Cyrk and the song playing is Fold the Cloth - I'm enjoying the album so far.  This song's got a kind of psychedelic welsh hippie mama vibe, which I like.

I am having strange days! Part of the strange days condition (not officially recognized by the AMA or any official body) is that I'm having trouble articulating the reasons - but the results are that I've been a spotty blogger, a terrible email correspondent, etc. I haven't even been writing much in the journal I've kept faithfully for years. Maybe it's just a quiet time? I'm feeling a little more interior than usual. It's nothing bad - I'm not sick or depressed, just contained. Anyway, that seems like a feeling about to pass and I'm not sorry.  Spring is coming - the light lingers, the bulbs are pushing out of the dirt; we'll see what happens.

all things being equal

Happy Vernal Equinox! -- day and night equal length today, but from here until june it will be longer days. (hooray!) I love spring and summer in this city. I intended this post to be longer, but instead I will keep it short (for now) since, thanks to Martina, I have a ticket to go see Barack Obama at the crack of dawn and I should really go to sleep. It's her birthday (and the first day of spring!) and she gave me a ticket. That's some good birthday karma right there. Happy Birthday, Martina!

Happy Spring, other people in the northern hemisphere! Happy Autumn, people in the southern hemisphere!


this is like the tree that blooms right outside my window. I think it's actually a plum and not a cherry, but "cherry blossom" sounds springier, somehow. today, in perfectly fitting spring weather, there was a freak hail/rain shower with a lot of wind. There were pink petals mixed in with the rest and it was really quite lovely (nature's ticker tape parade!), although I was happy to be inside looking at it rather than outside in the middle of it.

I don't know where else to say it, so I'll say it here: today at the park I saw a hummingbird! The funny thing was, I heard it first! They sound like large bugs -- their wings do make a humming (more of a buzzing, really) sound. What I always forget is that they also make this really distinctive smacking noise when they're looking for food. I would have thought it way to early for hummingbirds, but the green one I saw today thought differently. (it's so funny that I saw one since I was JUST thinking about them the other day.)


Peonies! They look like aliens at this stage. Or shiny cooked cabbage. Cooked cabbage aliens at a dance. "would all cabbage aliens please leave the dance floor?" They always refuse, thank god. They persist, looking strange and not of this earth, leaning on each other and swaying back and forth until May/June when they become some of the most beautiful flowers you've ever seen. (they smell good, too. Way to go, cabbage aliens!)


this is from tuesday. It's been raining a lot, but also sunny a lot. Usually in the same day. More soon.