Acair Fearann

Between critters, that is.  Last night was a lovely, nearly full moon night, not very cold.  The trees were casting great, black shadows, and the amount of light was very great.  And, despite the large amount of snow, there is no question that spring is well on the way.  In addition to the Great Horned Owls calling back and forth from the hedgerows, and the multitude of cardinal males chasing one fewer female (during the day), there were the skunks.

We have had one perfectly gorgeous big skunk, nearly all white on the back and tail, for about a year. He/She now has a friend, equally large.  They were cavorting out on the snow near the flagpole garden, always a favourite location for the skunks.  Exactly what food they were finding, I don’t know.  But that didn’t seem to be what was on their minds, anyway.

It was rather fun to watch them.

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Not actually going through and counting, mind….but following an off the cuff comment, I tried to count up the doors in the house.  That is, doors designed for people to walk through (not cabinet doors).  I think I got 83 in the main house; the outbuildings take that to 109.  My count might be off by one or two, it is surprisingly hard to get all of them!  And no, double doors don’t count for two, nor do storm doors.

That is entirely too many!

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Sunsets here are very obvious, with the great sweep of the meadow and the far hills, one can never miss the exact point in time when the sun sinks below the horizon.  Sunrises, however, have an entirely different aspect.  If the trees weren’t here, of course, they would be just like the sunsets.  But the trees are here.  So the sun rises behind them, as through a curtain of lace and green silk.  Early morning light is more ‘alive’ than sunset somehow, it is lighter. * Today, with a fresh inch of new snow on all the trees it was even more so.  Gold light, dark green trees, and diamond white snow.

And then not fifteen minutes later, the gold had vanished, and the day turned bright, with a clear blue sky, white snow under a distant sun.

*I am a closer to a poet than a scientist, thank you.

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About this time of year, the birds start to get ready for spring.  A pair of robins hanging about; male cardinals practicing their songs, chickadees, owls, all gearing up; and, once in a while a flock of starlings.

The latter, thank heaven, don’t hang around for long.  They are, however, quite interesting to watch.  Whereas the over-wintering, native birds are confident and independent; the starlings act like a school of hyper-wary bait-fish.  Anything will set them off.  Even the robin approaching with a bit confidence will spook them, the entire flock will go whirling off and the robin will stand there looking puzzled.  Same with a titmouse or cardinal in a bush, or nothing at all.  The native, non-flocking, birds don’t behave like that at all.  I got the distinct impression that there was no sense of communication between the starling flock and the native birds, almost as if they didn’t recognize each other; which most assuredly is not the case with the chickadees, cardinals, titmice, etc.

I think the starlings were after sorrel/plantain seeds on the flagpole lawn; they have since vanished.  They were a bit locust like, frankly.

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As these things tend to around here, one thing leads to another…One gets a new freezer…one shuffles the table and file cabinets about to fit it in correctly.  Well naturally, one therefore has to shuffle the inside of the file cabinets right?  There are a few simple rules: if it is in order, keep it in order; if it is a book or bound print, it doesn’t belong in a file cabinet but on a shelf; all oddments go in a drawer concerned with oddments, not scattered through the paper.  Priority in fire-proof cabinets is given to things that really need the space.

So reams of genealogy* get chucked out of the fireproof cabinets, by taking the bound books out, a remarkable amount of space is created.  Slightly random collections are organized, therefore creating more space in what had been thought to be a ‘full’ cabinet.  Voila: a completely empty fireproof cabinet.  How fast do you think we can fill it?

*Disconcerting to see one’s name neatly placed in a book.

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