In Which the Naughty Cat Decorates for Autumn

We gathered on the last day of summer, the lovely women in my monthly craft group and I, for a morning of knitting, felting, stitching, and chatting. Tea and coffee flowed along with the conversation. There were pastries. And chocolate.

Autumn would start the next day, though that was just a chronological fact; summer lingered, lolling in a beach chair, putting on its shades to block out the sight of any turning leaves. (Indeed, summer only just packed its bags and left town three days ago.)

All too soon, needles were safely stowed in a pincushion, skeins carefully tucked into bags, and cups and dishes stacked on the counter.

The dog pranced around, begging for a walk, as soon as my friends left. I put on her leash and off we went, after I remembered to weigh down the stack of orange paper napkins left on the table beneath a heavy book.

But my precaution was useless because when we returned, this is what we found:

The culprit wasn't hard to figure out. Or find.

Not only did he have no regrets, he also bragged about his work.

Django tried to convince me that he hadn't chewed up the napkins and strewn them about the floor merely to be naughty. No, this was just another one of his art installations, one in which he was celebrating autumn and was going to call "A Scattering of Leaves." But I found a big wad of napkins stuffed into the dog's water bowl, as usual, so I suspect he's just trying to veil his addiction to immersing paper in water.

(The age-old excuse "the dog ate my homework" will never be true for my daughter, because the dog is good as gold, but "the cat drowned my homework" would be 100 percent fact. The same blue geometry worksheet, for example, ended up in the drink not once but three times the other day.)

Of course, after all this hard work and creativity, he had to rest for another 23 1/2 hours.

A Fish Hawk's Visit

London's Tate Modern has its resident peregrine falcons. New York's got red-tailed hawks nesting on 927 Fifth Avenue. Not to be outdone, little Ballard's home to a pair of ospreys that raise their young near an old train trestle close to the Ballard Locks.

(Never mind that Seattle boasts not only red-tails and peregrine falcons but also Cooper's hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, and even bald eagles and merlins among its breeding birds. But today I'll stick to Ballard, the city within a city that is still disgruntled about being annexed to Seattle in 1907.)

The Ballard ospreys started nesting on an old telegraph pole belonging to a railway in 2009. In 2011, the pole was removed as a hazard, depriving the birds of a future nesting site--but was replaced early in 2012 by a platform tower built just for them. The ospreys quickly moved in (even birds know that the three most important real-estate considerations are "location, location, location") and raised a new brood.

I had never seen an osprey before moving to Washington State in 1989; the first one I spotted was flying over Lake Easton carrying a massive fish headfirst, osprey-style, in its talons. Since then they've turned up on nearly every trip we've taken: nesting atop a snag on the Oregon coast, plunging into a lake in Yellowstone National Park, tearing apart fish while perched on a pole in an apple orchard near Lake Chelan.

The most recent osprey soared into view as I sat with my mother on a porch swing on Bainbridge Island. There we were, sipping lemonade, winning front-row seats to wildlife drama without exerting a speck of effort.This bird lugged its heavy load to the tipped-over top of a nearby conifer. Its sharp beak ripped into the fish. It tossed fins and scales aside as it fed; they sparkled as they tumbled to the ground. In between bolting fish, the osprey turned to fix us with its golden glare.

After a while, it paused, still clutching the fish's backbone, the head and tail flopped over on either side of the branch. Then the bird most dramatically displayed the behavior beloved of professional bird photographers--namely, a perching bird's tendency to release waste before taking off, thereby giving the photographer a signal to get ready for the beautiful soaring scene.

Well. It's one thing when you're talking about a little wren letting loose before flying. When it's a big, hefty raptor expelling its cargo against a deep-blue sky--to a distance of six or so feet behind the bird--let's just say you would be very glad not to be within striking range.

(A long time ago I heard someone at a reading share a poem that called bird poop "the white apotheosis of the cloaca." We used this term for a very long time, as in "You might want to wash that white apotheosis of the cloaca off the picnic table before we set it" and "Ick, there's white apotheosis of the cloaca on the windshield." I can only think the poet had a defecating osprey in mind when he penned this line.)

Ospreys are found worldwide and always near water--the best place for these fish hawks to catch fish, after all. Their toes, with undersides covered in rough, spiky scales, are adapted for the task of grappling slippery, wiggling fish. They can also move one of the outer toes so that they have either one or two of their four toes pointing backward, which further aids them in gaining a grip on a struggling fish.

It seems remarkable that a bird circling 50 to 100 feet above the water can pinpoint a fish visually, compensate for the way water bends light, then suddenly drop and smack down on the surface to seize its prey. Yet they manage to succeed in this task nine out of ten times when they dive. Then off they flap, usually carrying the fish pointing forward to minimize air resistance.

In his epic work Birds of America, John James Audubon rhapsodizes about the courtship and shared incubation of ospreys in a manner most wonderfully anthropomorphic:

"[During the breeding season]....The males are seen playing through the air amongst themselves, chasing each other in sport, or sailing by the side or after the female which they have selected, uttering cries of joy and exultation, alighting on the branches of the tree on which their last year's nest is yet seen remaining, and doubtless congratulating each other on finding their home again.....The male assists in incubation, during the continuance of which the one bird supplies the other with food, although each in turn goes in quest of some for itself. At such times the male bird is now and then observed rising to an immense height in the air, over the spot where his mate is seated....

When the Fish Hawk has attained its utmost elevation, which is sometimes such that the eye can no longer perceive him, he utters a loud shriek, and dives smoothly on half-extended wings towards his nest. But before he reaches it, he is seen to expand his wings and tail, and in this manner he glides towards his beloved female, in a beautifully curved line. The female partially raises herself from her eggs, emits a low cry, resumes her former posture, and her delighted partner flies off to the sea, to seek a favourite fish for her whom he loves."

I think the Ballard birds are an old married couple by  now; they'd probably just order in fish-and-chips from the local Red Mill if they  had cell phones instead of engaging in volatile public displays of affection. Either way, I'm looking forward to their return in the spring.

Peaches, Pie Birds, and Summer Slipping Away

Forms, files, appointments, commitments, emergencies, and chores have abruptly moved in with the arrival of September, rudely shouldering aside the languid days of summer. But fortunately the weather has been much kinder and more considerate, blessing us with lovely, lemony early-autumn sunshine and temperatures in the high 70s and mid 80s.

Such weather is glorious, at least, on this, the rainier side of the Cascades; fierce wildfires are devouring the eastern portion of the state, and the people there are longing for rain. The smoke smothering their landscape drifts westward to paint ruby and apricot sunsets.

Soon the relentless drumming of rain will drive us indoors for months on end; we'll wake up in darkness and return home from work in darkness, the garden will be a foreign, soggy place viewed through a scrim of water on the window, the sky a wrung-out rag of gray.

So we're scurrying to take advantage of these lingering summery days and the chance to sit in an Adirondack chair in the garden, reading and sipping coffee (morning) or wine (evening) and savoring the bounty of summer fruit still spilling into farmers' markets. The most recent batch of peaches and raspberries went into a fat, sweet pie.

The P-Patch is still gifting us with tiny alpine strawberries and plump raspberries (summer in a thimble!) while their stolid neighbors, the turnips, are just settling in next door to them, muttering to themselves about how nice the garden will be when the frivolous berries leave the neighborhood for good. But mums, asters, and other hardy flowers are steadfastly keeping up the summer fiesta for now.

The dog, lucky her, is blissfully unaware of any emotional entanglements with the change of seasons. It's all fine with her. For Luna, "life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea" (and dog food, treats, walks, fetch, naps, pats, squirrels, and more treats).

 

 

Just not ready to have the sun set on summer yet!

Trip to England, Part 10: Gargoyles, Grotesques, and Grimaces, Oh My!

Many of those ancient and imposing piles of brick and stone and terracotta over there in the UK are wildly embellished with all manner of creatures as well as human faces. Quite a few of them stare menacingly while others gaze benignly. Plenty of them seem self-absorbed or gaze off at something we can't see. And a few make me think of Bill the Cat, with eyeballs rotating in two directions at once and tongue lolling crazily.

This lion growling from a flint-studded surface is part of St. James' Church, a 14th-century church in Dengie next door to a house where my husband's maternal grandparents once lived. It's a lovely, serene spot, with roses tumbling out of their beds and over walls in the churchyard.

If St. James's embodies all the charm and serenity of a small village church, the great cathedral in Wells is the ultimate in splendor and awe.

 

(I love how Wells Cathedral's website declares boldly that it is "Perhaps the most beautiful of the great English cathedrals." That demurring little "perhaps"...so polite, so self-effacing, so British! If it were here in the states, it would be advertised as "the most beautiful in the world." And would probably have advertising on it.)

Wells Cathedral dates back to 1175 A.D. and is heavily populated with statues and images of saints, angels, and the like. Enigmatic people ponder unseen horizons...

 

 ...while others nobly endure 900-plus years of having a grinning predator of some sort breathing in their hair.

This grumpy little Seussian creature glowers randomly from a graceful wall:

The beautiful Chapter Room, with its vaulted ceiling made of luminescent, pearly stone, is incongruously pocked with faces that grin and gurn. This fellow seems to be mocking some stately decision made by the canons at a long-ago meeting.

Our favorite stony stares, however, belonged to the creatures that crouch on, crawl over, and climb up the walls of the Natural History Museum in London. This stunning building, which dates back to 1881, was praised as "the animal’s Westminster Abbey" when it opened, and is still lauded as a cathedral to Nature. (Though not everybody hanging around in 1881 was disposed to praise it; one curmudgeon harrumphed that the building was "ornamented – if so it may be termed – both externally and internally with incorrect and grotesque representations of animals."
 

Along its western wall perch existing species; the eastern wall boasts extinct creatures, such as this marvelous pterodactyl who looks like he just stepped out of a 1950s-era roadside dinosaur park in Utah:

He keeps company with the Great Paleotherium, who sounds as if he should be worshipped. He has a rather hawkish look about him, but apparently a Great Paleotherium was nothing more than an early hoofed mammal, a sort of small, rubber-nosed horse.

Neither one seems to have anything to fear from the carved creatures cavorting nearby: a fairly fierce fish...

...and a lizard with a hearty appetite:

Indoors, the bestiary's a bit more well behaved. There are animals  everywhere you look, tucked atop columns and in beds of terracotta leaves and blossoms.

All told, 78 monkeys clamber up the arches in the Central Hall.

I can't help but think this ladder of monkeys winks a bit at the ladder of angels ascending to heaven--the "Jacob's Ladder" theme--such as the ones stretching up the front of Bath Abbey:

The Abbey, the Pump Room, and the Roman Baths dominate Bath Abbey Square. But from some viewpoints in the Baths, you can glimpse carved animals that look like ones you might see on a carousel from the late 1800s:

An amused lioness...

...a grumpy donkey...

..and a satisfied bear.

Trip to England, Part 9: Steps and Stairs

Timeworn feet, Glastonbury Abbey

I have not yet been to visit the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, but I recall reading about its opening and have never forgotten the author writing about the impact that the exhibit of shoes (what one Yiddish poet calls "the last witnesses") has on visitors to this institution.

The museum director herself, in a 2010 article, notes that the shoes "are iconic symbols of the Holocaust since they are personal and each represents an innocent life."

Once one starts thinking about shoes, and feet, as symbols of both human individuality and a universal bond between all humans, past and present, suddenly crowds of associations patter, dance, and stomp through one's mind: the milestone of  Baby's first steps and the enshrining of them in bronze, old silk slippers in a chrysalis of tissue paper, a heavy pair of men's dress shoes in a closet bearing silent testimony to the father who once carefully polished them and kept them in shape with shoe trees.

For some reason we frequently found ourselves noticing evidence of the passage of feet on this summer's trip to England--humble, mute evidence of the many lives that came before us. Maybe it was because we were literally following in their footsteps as we climbed stairs and followed paths. Or the attention to detail even in carving feet in sculptures created by artists' hands long ago. Or perhaps it was our own blisters, weary arches, and stones in shoes that goaded us into noticing.

Steps, ruins of Glastonbury Abbey

Medieval floor tiles, accessible under wooden lid, Glastonbury Abbey

Worn steps to Chapter House (built 1306), Wells Cathedral

Unhappy man removing splinter on column in Wells Cathedral

Worn step in  temple precinct of the Goddess Sulis Minerva, Roman Baths

King's Bath with steps situated for visitors "taking the waters" at Bath so they could descend from the Pump Room level right into the water; the water level reached to the top of the orange staining on the walls until 1979, when removal of a pool floor caused the water level to drop. This tub of sulfurous hot water was open for bathing up until the 1930s (the ancient Romans didn't bathe in it as it was the Sacred Spring, source of the water for the baths, though they did toss offerings into it).

The looooong staircase in the Marshall Wade House, built around 1720, a National Trust house we stayed in that was right next door to Bath Abbey and looked out on the square that included the Roman Baths

(And before stepping away from the computer for the day...)

...we did also spot the flatfish known as a sole on the shore in Bradwell-on-Sea.

Trip to England, Part 8: Pathways

A lazy post as summer winds down and balmy evenings with a glass of wine in hand encourage the mind to wander down all sorts of paths.

The Northwest has any number of excellent paths and trails, some easy and many grueling, but unless you live in the country you pretty much have to drive to them or otherwise seek them out. And "No Trespassing" signs abound, even on beaches (except in beautiful Oregon, where the state had the wisdom long ago to ensure that the ocean shores would always be accessible to everybody--no matter what walk of life you come from, you can still walk by the sea).

What I love about England is how you can go out for a stroll in a town and happen across a public-footpath sign that beckons you to veer from your intended purpose and go for a tramp across a field.

And we usually did.

Truly, who could resist the urging of this sign?

Footpath, Burnham-on-Crouch

This particular path led first through a field of rapeseed and then opened up as it meandered through a  sward with views of the harbor.

Turning around and going the other way leads into a woodland.

Complete with bunnies.

Other well-trodden paths:

Chalk path, Avebury

Avebury Stone Avenue, a processional path 4,600 years ago

Path on Glastonbury Tor leading to 600+-year-old St. Michael's Tower

There is, of course, a path back down.

Path to St. Peter's on the Wall (654 AD), Bradwell-on-Sea

Path once led to 3rd-century Roman fort of Othona