First Post

It’s autumn.  My favorite time here at the northeastern edge of the Great Salt Lake.  The mountainsides are red, gold, yellow and bronze with dying leaves.  After a very wet spring and summer, the scrub oak and maple on the foothills are perfuse, gaudy even, creating a soft tapestry of colors.  I’m hoping to have the grace to die so beautifully.  With a big splash of jubilance. 

The pinyon pine nuts are showing up at the roadside produce stands along with pumpkins and other squash, as well as cobs of colorful dried ‘Indian’ corn.  I look, in vain so far, for chili ristras.  While there are thousands of Mexican seasonal farmworkers here, the anglo majority does it’s best to ignore them.  So no ristras on offer.  I’d love a string of dried red chilis to brighten up my kitchen, but no dice. 

The birds, sparrows mostly, but some goldfinches and the red-headed house finches as well, are cleaning up the seeds that have spilled from all the plants in our garden.  The wild Italian parsley that covers our front yard is especially seedy this year and sparrows swoop in squads onto it, covering the still bright green foliage with their drab browns and grays.  We also have numerous stands of sunflowers, some still petaled, but most just brown heads, bent by the heavy seeds.  These the gray-blue iridescent scrub jays dive after, screaming their claims to the best of the seeds.  When we had our roof replaced last fall, the workers discovered lots of caches of seeds the jays had made for their winter subsistence.  New, well nailed shingles are harder for them to stash food under.  At least that seems the case, since I’ve not heard them scratching and pounding away up there as is usual at this time of year. 

We’ve lived here almost ten years now.  Both my husband and I moving headlong in to our dotage.  Having spent most of our nearly 40 years together in cities, this small town of 20,000 souls seems a good place to ease into agedness.  Edged to the east by the majestic Wasatch Mountains and to the west by the Great Salt Lake, our town is quite lovely.  In addition, there’s a very large bird refuge on a freshwater bay appended to our inland sea that adds a touch of the exotic.  Avian visitors from South America join us in summer and from the earth’s extreme northern tier in winter.  Pelicans, all kinds of geese, ducks, loons and other water birds are with us year round, as are dozens of varieties of raptors.  But bright-feathered southern immigrants pass by on occasion, a flash of Carmen Miranda brightness against our deep blue northern sky.  Their names remain unknown to me.  I could find out who they are and from whence they come by stopping at the refuge’s visitor’s center, but somehow that would deprive them of their mystery.  Until moving here, I hadn’t realized how fascinating birds’ lives can be. 

My husband built a trellis and bird platform outside my home office window so I can observe the birds.  He put a scarlet-flowered trumpet vine on the trellis, attracting hummingbirds from very early spring to early winter.  They are delightful creatures.  The vine arches over the platform, creating a bower for them to rest in.  Until this trellis view, I’d never seen hummingbirds up close, nor at full stop rest.  They sparkle when they fly or hover, but at rest they lose their spangled iridescence and turn quite dark.  While flying into the trumpet flowers, they provide dashes of brightness against the deep green of the vines.  As do the finches: gold and red streaks across my window. 

Well, that’s all for today.