Category: The land

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Nothing brightens the yard in early spring like red clover. I hand-scattered 10 pounds of seed last fall. Today I found the first bloom, on the day lily bank. Soon there will be much more.

This is an iPhone photo. The iPhone is convenient for quick close-ups.

Just as the self-quarantine began two days ago, a car rolled in with the abbey’s best friend, who promptly got to work on the overgrowth. If such a bleak and scary time had to occur, what good fortune it is that spring (rather than a winter) is bursting out all over. The neighbors are out walking and visiting and gathering flowers, but everyone maintains the six-foot distance of self-quarantine. The refrigerator and the cabinets are full. The kitchen is running full tilt. I hope that all of you are as well situated.

The news is terrible and seems to be getting worse. The whole world seems strangely unified, focused on the same thing. Then again, I think I’ll take that statement back. Here in the U.S., at least, we seem divided into the usual two groups: Those who try to understand and work with reality, and those who try to deny reality and work against it. It feels as though something historically important is happening.

I’d love to see your comments on how things are in your part of the world.

Running cedar, as far as I know, has no legal protection, and that’s a shame. It’s not nearly as common as it used to be. I see it often while walking in the woods, but never in the large patches that I often saw as a child in the Carolina woodlands. Its ideal habitat is on the ridges of coniferous Appalachian forests. It likes acid soil and dappled sunlight.

The Virginia Native Plant Society asks people to leave it alone and writes, “Over-collecting and habitat destruction have increased the rarity of the plant, a slow grower.”

It’s scientific name is Diphasiastrum digitatum. When I was a young’un, people used to pull it up to make Christmas wreaths. I hope that’s not done anymore, not least because running cedar is said to be highly flammable. Another form of winter greenery, mistletoe, sometimes grows at the tops of oak trees in these woodlands. It, too, is not as common as it used to be. The Druids, it is said, would climb an oak and cut mistletoe with a golden knife, on the sixth day of the new moon closest to the winter solstice. I’m embarrassed to say that, when I was a boy, we shot it out of trees with .22 rifles.

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I’ve posted a couple of times about Mrs. Squirrel, who gnawed her way into the attic through a ventilation grill, built a nest, and gave birth to four baby squirrels thirty feet up in the abbey’s attic. I quarreled with her often for not staying in the woods where squirrels belong, but of course I allowed her to remain in the attic until the little ones were big enough to live in the woods. It turns out that I never had to get rough with Mrs. Squirrel to evict her. She took her children, now half as big as she is, to live in the woods three mornings ago.

It was Sunday morning, and I heard her scrabble down the back of the house at dawn, as usual. That was the last time I heard her on the house. The nest in the attic is now cold and empty. I was relieved, because now I can nail metal fabric over the ventilation grill, and baby squirrels will be born in the trees from now on.

But she and I had become pretty good friends. I never tried to tame her, but we got along. Sometimes I’d go out onto the rear deck and call her, and she’d climb down to talk. She never got closer than about four feet, but she’d look me in the eye and bark back at me when I scolded her.

This evening, I put a long lens on the camera and went out to look for her. When I called her, just behind the house, she came halfway down a tree to say hello. There was no sign of her children. But there are four squirrels’ nest in that area where the children may be.

All’s well that ends well, and I hope to remain friends with Mrs. Squirrel. She is a brave, good mother, and a fine activist for squirrels’ rights.

Update: Mrs. Squirrel came to visit this morning. I was on the deck and didn’t notice her at first, but she barked to get my attention from the tree that overhangs the deck.

Mrs. Squirrel’s nest in my attic

For a year or two, I have been chasing a pesky squirrel off the deck. My argument with it (she turned out to be a she) was that she had plenty of space in the woods, so go home. She also loved climbing on the house. She would often sit on the deck railing and scratch, and I blame her for the case of fleas that Lily — a house cat — acquired last fall. Some months ago she started gnawing on a ventilator grill about twenty feet up the back of the house. I chased her away and threw potatoes at her more than once.

Then I heard a scratching noise in the attic. She had gotten in. I tried to plug the hole as a temporary fix. She gnawed around it. Two weeks ago, I went up to investigate the scratching and found four baby squirrels. Mommy left when she heard me coming, but the babies were sound asleep. They were several weeks old, I’m sure, because they had plenty of fur and were the size of two-week-old kittens. I was defeated. What choice do I have but to let them live there until the babies are grown?

I checked on the babies today after seeing Mrs. Squirrel in the front yard eating leaves of some sort. She had brought in litter and had built a very snug squirrel’s nest, because the weather has turned cold. I heard rustling inside the nest but didn’t disturb the babies.

Mrs. Squirrel has become shameless, though I have not tried to tame her. I scold her, and she just looks at me and barks. She’s also curious about the grill on the deck. Either she’s trying to get inside it, or she smells food. She gets close enough to me that I can see her wet little teats.

Living up against the woods as I do, it would be easy to be too lenient with all the creatures needing safe homes and a handout. It’s a forest, really, and there are coyotes and an occasional bear. Mrs. Squirrel wouldn’t mind the deer, but there are plenty of owls and hawks. If it’s safety that she’s looking for here, then she’s less afraid of me than what’s in the woods. I’m flattered. But if the doors here stayed open for too long, I’d soon have opossums, raccoons, and skunks, all expecting supper, and a warm fire, and bedtime stories. The voles, at least, stay in the basement. A few weeks ago I discovered that Mrs. Raccoon was bringing her three children to eat the leftovers that I put out in the backyard for the possum. She’d be among the first to arrive.

I can imagine worse neighbors, though.

Mrs. Squirrel, eating for five

The severity of the overgrowth from the woods and old blackberry stalks is directly proportional to how long Ken has been away from the abbey. He had been away for quite some time, so the overgrowth was serious. Even the weed-whacker on wheels is defeated by blackberry stalks, so Ken took the chainsaw to them.