A University of Delaware ecologist speaks.
Anyone who reads this blog knows UD‘s gardens, front, sides, and back, are massively mammalian. Man, I found a MINK in my garden once.
Sometimes I try listing everything that’s out there, but I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff.
rats
mice
voles
rabbits
raccoons
opossums
fox
deer
coyote
squirrel
bat
shrew
moles
chipmunk
ground hog
Plus reptiles, insects, and avians! Never a dull moment.
… I found in front of the fireplace this morning, overturned and waving its legs about in an effort to right itself. Mr UD took it outside. I think it might have slid down the chimney, since I always forget to close the flue. The whole episode was shamelessly lifted from Metamorphosis.
We’re seeing a young red fox almost every morning, around 8 AM, in and around our pollinator garden. Looks like this (photo, Colleen Bruso):
It walks calmly through the bee balm, unaware of us, doing a last-minute rabbit check before returning for the day to its den. It is a beautiful, elegant animal.
The fantastic evening firefly show, followed by the morning fox, makes these summer days and nights mesmerizing and surreal.
… on UD’s deck has put out tons of buds, which, dedicated readers recall, soon unfold into massive red blooms. (Images are from last summer.) UD tried getting a picture of the pale green crab spider on one of its leaves, but as she approached, it jumped away. Praying mantises, you may also recall, loved last year’s hibiscus, and I found a baby mantis on this one the other day, but there aren’t any on it at the moment. (There are probably ten on it, but, you know, camouflage…)
As UD took pictures of her hibiscus, two chipmunks on the grass near her did that frantic little dance where they take turns hopping into the air and then race off.
Yesterday, early evening, Les UDs were startled by a large dark snake on the garden pavers. I’m thinking water snake. (We live near Rock Creek.)
… for photographing spider webs, and UD found a perfectly circular one at the top of her hill; but I felt too unsteady over the thick vines and slippery limbs to get close enough for a good shot. Best I could do.
Both places from UD‘s outing today — a very beautiful day.
… this photo in the New York Times, part of an ad campaign for Parachute, an upscale bedding company. (There’s a Parachute store a thirteen-minute walk from La Kid’s trendy DC apartment.) What strikes me is the dirt on the bedroom floor, and on the pants of the person troweling.
In the bedroom. Troweling in the bedroom.
Other elements of the image – washed-out whites, distressed terracottas, and palely flowering plants – are familiar from the hyper-minimalist, organic design world, and UD herself is a paid-up member of that world… Often, when UD visits her neighbors’ houses, she thinks They put everything in. I take everything out…
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Mr UD is fond of this guy… something of a crackpot … named Bede Griffiths, who just kept getting more and more and more ascetic in his spiritual life, and for sure that ain’t me. Like only wearing a loincloth and sleeping under the stars. But I recognize myself, somewhat, in this pallid pictorial. Remember that Mr UD’s father was a noted Corbusierian, so there’s that influence in our (midcentury) house, and its simple pollinator gardens/unrefined forests, as well. We’re definitely on the spectrum.
Anyway, there’s above all the devil-may-care, so-what-if-I’m wearing-white-slacks thing to note in this image. I get the whole bringing the garden indoors trend, but wow. Does this woman not have a cat/dog to gambol in the loam and track it all over the house? Or am I supposed to be too cool to worry about that? Is it bourgeois to worry about that? Croyez-moi, I don’t care when stuff in the house gets dirty and dog-haired, etc.; but I’m thinking I draw the line at potting plants on my bedroom floor.
EILEEN AROON The greening of the evening The cold flat light of night And the mesmerizing Tritone thrush in the honeysuckle Thrill me, and hush me. Later, sitting in a black chair Under the thrush I start to sing Eileen Aroon
But not before UD, who does Wordle just as a new game begins, at midnight, played. She had a devil of a time with FETUS, and she usually breezes through Wordle. She got, quickly, three of its letters, but all three kept being in the wrong place; and she had to stare for about fifteen minutes (an outrageously long Wordle time) at the alphabet, and shift letters around here and there in her head, to figure out what the word could possibly be.
She got FETUS in four moves, which is more than respectable given its difficulty, only to be told by her fellow players (there are four of us) that they all got a different, easier word.
ADIEU
QUOTE
ERUPT
FETUS
Not to mention, more modestly and locally, Potomac, Maryland, down the street from ol’ UD, many of whose McMansions house a rich diversity of foreign kleptocrats…
I mean, first they came for the Armenians (starting with A, I presume), and I did not speak out— Because I am not an Armenian. Then they came for the Brazilians, and I did not speak out— Because I am not a Brazilian. Then they came for the Croatians, and I did not speak out— Because I am not a Croatian. Und so weiter.
If my government truly takes the wonderfully named Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Awards Program seriously, expect all those exciting new super-thin luxury towers overlooking Central Park to thin to nothingness, babe. More critically, expect UD’s little house’s price (currently overvalued, by some online estimates, at close to a million dollars) to plummet as all the nearby rich people who are propping the poor thing’s value up go to jail.
Seriously, do you really want to go down that path?