Just like that(!), the tree seemed to fill with catbirds. I couldn’t see a single one, but my ears told me they were there, and then my Merlin app confirmed it. The catbird is one of my favorite birds—social and talkative, pretty in a quiet way. And not usually particularly shy, but today’s were. Perhaps a migrating flock?
Because they drew my eyes up to the tree canopy, the catbirds did me the favor of showing me a flitting, frolicking flock of goldfinches, who were uncharacteristically quiet. On the move almost constantly, they skipped from branch to branch, back and forth, and it took me some minutes to make out their brilliant yellow plumage.
Too long away
I haven’t sat out on the porch since before Tank died. This was his spot with me, and Rolo’s with and before him. We could sit for hours, them watching the world go by (Rolo) or sleeping (Tank), me reading or working. I think it’s no coincidence that I’ve returned now, when suddenly there’s another dog to accompany me. The new guy, Elwood, isn’t 100 percent comfortable yet on the porch, but then he isn’t really 100 percent comfortable anywhere, yet. It will come. He’s settling in more every day, showing more and more of his personality, claiming new spaces for his own.
Dogs, birds, books, neighbors. That’s what the porch is for, and my favorite times to be on it are during the spring and fall bird migrations. Tonight’s migration forecast is “HIGH” (Thanks, BirdCast!). I wonder who I’ll see!
It’s a grateful Sunday. Gray and occasionally misty outdoors, following a day or so of strong but not scary wind, all I believe remnants of Hurricane Helene, which moved so much more quickly than most post-hurricane storm systems. I’m tired of gray, rainy days, but grateful to have my home in tact, no giant limbs ripped from trees, no heartbreak.
A friend in Georgia has heartbreak, a home and yard she loved in tatters, trees through the roof, ceilings collapsed. The home is uninhabitable, probably reparable eventually but currently with no power, a gas leak in the area, and of course that jagged opening to the sky. My friend has decamped to Atlanta, grateful that she, her husband and dog were uninjured, but devastated by this abrupt loss and the uncertainty that is now her world.
Friends in Florida were lucky this time, and they and I are grateful for that. At the same time, we’re reminded again how precarious the world is and especially the climate. We have done this to ourselves, and here in the Midwest it’s still easy—though terribly short-sighted—to not be worried. Our temperatures have risen, spring comes earlier, and here in September the leaves are already falling from some trees. Tornados and other dangerously severe storm systems are more common. It’s not the same climate I grew up in. While it’s a grateful Sunday, it’s also a wary one, worried for friends, worried for our interconnected future.
So I read
Meanwhile, what better to do with gray days that read and cuddle with a dog? I’ve just finished my Roger Angell book (This Old Man), having started down the rabbit hole of other reading it inspired even before closing the cover. I’ve checked one Angell-inspired book out on Hoopla, placed a library hold on another, and read two poems that Angell singled out for praise: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Poem,” and Philip Levine’s “Turkeys.” I confess I don’t yet love either one as much as Angell did. But I’m still re-reading them, and one of Levine’s lines stuck its claws into me instantaneously: “… The next year / spring came late if / at all. …”
Wow.
Wonderland
The rabbit hole already has opened into a warren I might get lost in, as looking for the Bishop poem I chanced on this blog post about it, referencing an essay discussing it in the introduction of a book, and now I also have a blog post and a book introduction to read.
All of which reminds me of something I read not long ago in defense of owning books you might never read, wherein someone made an argument that books aren’t only for reading. That’s right. Discovering books nourishes the soul, too—reading the back cover or the first paragraphs or pages in the book store and having those grab your interest so that you want to read it right then, even if you already have 200 books awaiting your attention, even if after you get it home you never recapture that moment of being thrilled and intrigued and the book ultimately goes unread in your home.
Meanwhile, I’m off to book club in an hour to discuss Dawn Turner’s memoir Three Girls from Bronzeville, which I read shortly after it was published in 2021 and haven’t reread but hope to remember clearly enough to profit from the conversation. On our way to book club, we’ll stop at the library to drop off Roger Angell and pick up the on-hold book it led me to by Donald Barthelme.
Enter Elwood, stage left
Did you notice where I mentioned cuddling with a dog earlier? We said goodbye to our Tank on August 1—I hope one day to be able to write about this, but for now it’s still too raw—and have been living without a dog in the house for the first time in 30 years. That ended last Sunday, when we drove into Chicago and met Duke, a shy 6-year-old beagle. We brought him home on a trial basis—because we have two rabbits (Tank’s best friends) who occupy a hutch in our living room; any dog we bring in has to be able to co-exist—and so far, so good. We believe we are headed toward adoption, in which case Duke will become Elwood. We would not normally rename a 6-year-old dog, but this guy truly does not recognize Duke as his name and responded to Elwood the moment we tried it out.
Already we’re growing attached, both to this sweet beagle and to the renewed experience of living with a dog. The greetings, the wiggles, the cuddles, the outings to the woods, the soft scent of dog. Elwood bounds into the room and tiptoes into our hearts.
Gorgeous weather outside this morning, but so far it’s been a bookish Saturday. I ended the workweek at 11:50 p.m. with a dip into the Chicago poetry anthology Wherever I’m At, and I opened the weekend with my face burrowed back into Roger Angell’s This Old Man, which in the space of only a few minutes took me on a ride of reminiscences (Angell’s) that left me with multiple new additions to both my want-to-read book list and my want-to-see movie list.
Happy sigh, when my reading adds to, rather than subtracts from, my ever-growing book list. Also, when I need to add two random scraps of paper (today that would be a flimsy receipt torn into pieces) to the one bookmark actually needed to mark my place because, of course, there are passages in the book that I want to be able to go back and find easily when needed.
Let’s put “needed” in quotes, but honestly the soul does need these moments.
It’s not all happy news today, though. Our bookstore is closing. We’ve known this for weeks, probably more than a month, but I continue to face it with a mixture of sadness and denial. It doesn’t seem possible. Perhaps I’m at an age now where more and more of my good friends will quietly die off, but to start with my bookstore seems a cruelty. This shop has nurtured so many memories, supplied so many gifts to friends and family, provided so many hours of discovery, I can’t imagine life without it. The only good news is that it hasn’t failed to thrive; the owners have simply worn themselves out with its running. They don’t want to sell to someone else because they don’t trust anyone else with its name and its customer list. I respect that. And yet…
So later today, I’ll probably find myself once again cruising its shelves to see if anything calls my name and demands to come home with me. Bittersweet, as it feels more than a little like picking at the bones.
The hawks are well and truly gone. Yesterday, believing they had left the nest the day before, I walked past to check (of course) and found that I could see much less of the nest than I had previously. One adult bird was up there, facing away from me and doing … something. There was its head moving, its tail bobbing a bit. But there didn’t seem to be any young birds. I heard one hawk call from a tree somewhere nearby, but that was it.
Today, another check. High, high in the sky a raptor soared above me. In the nesting tree, no birds. In fact, no nest.
No nest. It’s gone. Our nest of two years, that I watched a pair build last year, is no more. I don’t know if the young birds damaged it while trying to fly, if a storm hit it, or if the birds actively dismantled it because they were done.
I must read more about Cooper’s hawks. I want to be an informed neighbor, a good neighbor. And of course I hope they come back next year. I’m pretty confident they’re still in the neighborhood, but where? I must read more about Cooper’s hawks.
Flowers, not hawks
On the bright side, my milkweed and day lilies are in full bloom, together, a lovely combination. The hydrangeas, too, are thriving. And the bee balm and sweet peas that I put in last year have taken root—finally. I have tried both before with no success.
Yesterday I spied the bright red of a milkweed bug flying through the flowers some distance away from me. Its color gave it away; it was too small to identify otherwise at that distance. What a delightful surprise it was. I usually see them happily settled on the plants, sometimes massed together, rarely a single one in flight.
Ah, summer in the garden. If only the vegetables would thrive so well. This year’s lot seems somewhat sad: only one tomato plant with any flowers (and a meager couple they are); the basil scraggly but trying to recover from nibbling by bugs—probably our cicada emergence—at the start of the summer; no blossoms yet on the beans. Even the dill seed decided not to germinate (or perhaps got eaten?), so I had to put in a couple of plants later on. I’ll hold out hope, though, for a recovery.
I’ve been watching the nest—a Cooper’s hawk nest three blocks away—closely for the better part of at least two weeks, hoping not to miss the fledging. In my wildest dreams, I would be right there when one or more of the babes flew for the first time. Realistically, I think my main hope was to monitor the situation and know—or nearly know, as much as possible without actually seeing—when it had happened.
I missed it last year. After weeks of watching the nest, from its construction, to Mama Hawk sitting it by herself first for weeks, even before having eggs to warm (they really do this!), clear through to little heads peering occasionally above its rim, I was on vacation when the fledglings flew. It was a needed and happy vacation—almost certainly Hound Dog’s last one, and he enjoyed it—but I was sad to come home and find the nest emptied, defunct. Sadder than ever I would have imagined.
So with Hound Dog unable to travel anymore, and his people no longer willing to leave him in anyone else’s care, I’ve pinned a lot of hope on being around for this year’s fledging. The hawks are back at the same nest for a second straight year. (I say “the hawks,” but I’ve no idea whether it’s the same birds, young who were raised in the nest last year, or an entirely different pair that happened upon it and found it. What I do know is that it has been occupied with Cooper’s hawks yet again, more joy for me.) And I’ve been watching it closely, walking past multiple times each day, once even making The Husband stop the car so I could get out and check the view on the way to some outing or other.
This past week or two has seen a lot of activity. The adults have been perched just outside the nest most of the time, sometimes seeming to feed the babes but often just perched, as if there weren’t actually enough room inside for them anymore. Two to three days ago, I saw a pair of youngsters perched on nest’s edge, flapping a bit, probably testing out those wings, while one of the adults called out from a nearby tree, perhaps encouraging them to soar.
I haven’t actually seen any of the young (and how many are there, even?) fly from the nest. But this morning when I went past, I saw no birds at all for the first morning in more than a week. I did hear one hawk call from nearby, but the nest looked empty. Had they flown? It seemed likely. From my vantage point down below, of course, there’s no way to be sure, but…
This afternoon, as I stood chatting with my neighbor outside our two houses, a young hawk flew overhead. One of the babes from my nest three blocks away? I think so. It’s the first time all summer that I’ve seen a hawk on my block, and it was a small one. I’ll keep watching that nest, but I think our little family might have lifted off.
Though I’m uncertain about the hawks, there’s no question that a hummingbird just made its daily pass among the branches of the large tree on my tree lawn. I never knew before that they would feed in trees, but this one does a fly-through every day, hovering branch to branch in apparent search for food. My lilacs also attract hummingbirds when in bloom, and the trumpet vine in the back yard is in full glory right now, so we have plenty of nectar for those long beaks.
The plants feed the hummingbirds. The hummingbirds feed my soul.
Today is also the day that I finished Tracy K. Smith’s memoir To Free the Captives. More than memoir (not that memoir isn’t enough!), it’s an exploration of racism and Black history and shared history, and a (perhaps) prayer for progress and equity and healing. It reads often like poetry, almost one long prose poem, as much as the series of essays that it is. It’s moving, thought-provoking, challenging, and I expect I’ll be thinking about it for quite some time.
This has been memoir month for me, as the book I read immediately before this one was Knife, Salman Rushdie’s memoir of the 2022 knife attack that nearly killed him. I’m still thinking about this one, too, as well as about expanding my list-of-books-I’ve read-by-Salman-Rushdie. It’s been a long time since I read his fiction, the last time being my second pass through Midnight’s Children, courtesy of my book club, and I miss it. I’m reminded of seeing him speak about his writing and free speech as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival—hardly seems possible that was nine years ago, but apparently it was.
