Duck life

Down here on the bayou we have ducks, i. e. mallards and those white ducks. There are probably five mallard males to one female. I don't know the sex of the whites because males and females look identical (to me). During mating season--which I thought was over!--the mallard hen is courted and mated by as many males as other males allow. Typically, I've seen groups of three dominate and mate, then protect her until the ducklings hatch.

Today I witnessed five males, that's four mallard males and one white male, ahem, have a go at her. Since the white is not one of them, the mallard males (mm from here on) really tried to prevent this miscegenation. They failed. He held her under the water so long that I thought she would drown. But no, it all worked out. She swam for the edge, climbed up on a log and started preening and shaking her tail feathers. Oh, yes, she did. Each of the males gathered near her and also preened and kind of stood in the water, flapping their wings as if bragging. (All of this is human interpretation.)

I didn't get my camera until mating was over, so I missed that part. Here is a series of photos which tell the story....after!

 

Some of the most amazing flowers blossomed this spring in my yard and pots. These gorgeous lilies are one example. Their rich and vivid color are simply breathtaking, so much that I put this picture as my cell wallpaper and now here in a post.

I haven't gotten into the dirt yet (with its healing powers) because I have spent so long raking and bagging 50 bags of leaves and pollen droppings from the huge pin oak tree in the front yard. Then I had to go "down below" and pull out the layer of weeks covering my back yard below the deck and next to the bayou. I'm told that the bayou was once the Red River now diverted and reduced to bayou status. Whatever, I love it and the huge cypress tree that grows just inside the depths of the water.

I witnessed two sets of ducks--three males and one female in each set--mate in my yard. It wasn't pleasant but better than when they get her in the water and hold her head under. Such short unpleasantness produced a flock of nine ducklings. The second set of parents have not produced yet. An odd thing this year is the discovery of two abandoned duck eggs, one tucked in under some weeds next to a tiny cypress tree and the other in the open space of a cypress knee. I don't know what that was about. I also found the glass egg I set out last fall. It was tucked under a cement block along the sloping hill to the bayou. I have to walk uneven-legged on this yard. Mowing is quite the adventure as well!

There's a blue heron that fishes the banks and squawks and flies off when I appear. Two white egrets, but not together, also live and work along the banks. Birds do not have an easy life. In our neighborhood there are these half-breed pigeon/doves that mixed blood sometime back, creating huge breasts and ringed necks. Robins deck the front yard. One befriended me last year when I was still digging a new flower bed. I tossed him all the grubs I found. He blessed me (I think).

My vegetable garden is next. I'm a little late but I will plant accordingly.

Distortions and hammers on ordinary blogs

" I know a woman reviewer on Amazon that will write about her feelings, about books, products, with such insight- but humiliate you, in comments deliberately seek to inflame, distort, she was nicknamed for this "the hammer," she has commented on my mothering, teaching, life, goes onto and into characters I would think to carry on her strange dichotomous relating."

The above is taken from a recent blog by a woman who is the very model of twisting, distorting, inflaming because at her core is a very angry and vengeful woman. She has written and written and written about me--mostly inflamatory and distorted things, seizing on half-truths to twist them into something totally different.

Her latest little ditty is to brand me "the hammer." The most amazing thing is that she took this term out of context to make it become what she wanted to say about me. I reviewed a hammer on Amazon because I review home improvement products. One of my Amazon friends dubbed me "Hammer Judy," a name meant in fondness. This angry blogger believes that I attack her out of the blue when in actuality she always attacks first. Have I attacked her? Of course. Have I said negative things about her? Of course. When attacked, I do often respond (not a wise thing, especially in this case). Does she EVER mention that I apologized publicly and that she has never apologized for a single thing! She even believes that she was right to attack me. Oh brother!

I first met her as a reviewer on Amazon. She wrote insightful, amazing reviews and I--oh woe!--befriended her. I paid hell for that friendship eventually with thousands of negative votes and long, long notes that attacked me personally and all my circle of friends. Why? No one could ever figure out what would set her off or ticked her tail! She has an uncanny ability take my words, twist and distort them and use them to attack me!. To read her comments, one would think every word she writes is true--and I would have believed her if her comments hadn't been against me. That's how I know what she writes is half-filled with poison and half with the truth. Therein lies the problem: How does one distinguish between her reality and her delusions? Answer: with difficulty! She will also take things I say and incorporate them into her rants as if subsuming my qualities. Strange...

Foolish me, I befriended her twice--after a long cooling down period and because she began to respond to the reviews of a mutual friend who was always kind to her.  Foolish, foolish me. This time what caused her to implode was that mutual friend's very negative review of a book both she and I love. Her response to him was very personal, very negative, and far too extreme. Then she wanted me to choose her or him. I chose him. I paid again with hostility and twisted comments, things that just make one's mouth hang open with the orneriness and downright sickness behind the words.

I'm finally responding to her latest round of attacks on me, twisting a term of fondness into one of hatefulness. I am "the Hammer,' and I'm striking this blow for myself.

Addendum: There's much more to this story--there's always more, it seems--but dealing with this person is a no-win situation in that she does not "hear" the other side--merely her own blown almost beyond recognition. I was married to a person who, when wrong, would vociferously take whatever the situation and twist it to create a horrific verbal attack of unequal proportions in order to hide his own wrong. I thought he was the only person like that-- until now.

Cleaning out winter!

After an incredibly cold winter with freeze after freeze I could not imagine anything coming up this spring. But look! Entire clusters of dianthiuses! The irises have already bloomed. You know they are the only plant not to drop leaves. Instead, they just curl in on themselves, self fertilizing. Let's see what else we have...

A little wider view of the front bed. There was a magnolia tree growing smack dab next to the driveway when I moved in seven years ago. I had it cut down! Magnolia trees--the state tree of Louisiana-- are beautiful. The lemony aroma of the creamy yellow and white flowers is just remarkable. But oh! What a mess those trees make all year long. Two years ago I dug and dug to remove the stump and these long horizontal roots which fed toadstools all the time. What a job--it lasted one and one-half years getting those roots out! But the flower garden I created is so worth it. These are the plants that came up for the first time. I've done nothing to this garden except remove dead leaves from a neighbor's pin oak tree.

This is my back garden. I call it my English garden because it is small and dotted with hostas and azaleas. Well, I don't know what makes an English garden, but it feels like one. I just started cleaning out winter here. But look at the amazing hosta leaves! It is a mystery why the size of the leaves tripled in size. But I'm pleased!

Every spring these vivid yellow flowers spring up from this ground cover. When they finish blooming, I'll go round and pluck them off. The entire stem comes right off without damaging the new plant that grows at the bottom and continues on into the fall. One of God's amazing creations!

Will "the book" die?

(Note: This is an ongoing work in progress. I apologize for the inconvenience...) 
 
Will the book--the printed word-- die?

This question has been roiling in my head for a couple of weeks now. Because I am a school librarian, such a question would concern me. (Even if I weren't a librarian, I am concerned.)

Before I get to the topic at hand, here's the back story. You must know--and understand--that my principal is a science person--a hands-on, lab-based, former science teacher. She brought Science Olympiad to our school. In our second year of competition our team won second place in a competition hosted by a huge private school in Texas, a competition that brings in schools from many states. This year we won first. What she cannot do, she finds people to do. She has inspired our two science teachers to excel, to go beyond one's duty. One of those teachers is 69 (my point being that age is often irrelevant). I could go on and on about this principal who was hired five years ago to take on a run-down school with low teacher morale, with discipline problems that shouldn't exist in a Catholic school, and has made it into the place to be.

I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
Frank Zappa

It's good to find a quote like the above to include in a blog about the death knell of books, don't you think? It's good that they (books) still exist--still, definition: "Verb, 1. stand still - remain in place; hold still; remain fixed or immobile." Is the concept of a book static, fixed? Does it "remain in place"? Ponder those words a minute.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love. 

 Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)

 

If a book is "still," can it cause the reader to "fall in love"? Seems contradictory, now doesn't it? One holds a book in hand, one engages with the words, the symbols of thought from the author, the gift-giver. The reader soars, or dips, or dives, or paddles, or coasts, or laps, or zips, or roars. It's a swim. It's a flight. It's a trip of some kind. Ah, do you ever notice that very moment when your mind engages with the creative momentum of the author? It's really divine. I mean that literally.

 

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. 

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

 

During the summer before I entered the eighth grade, I had read all the books in the children's section of my local library I planned to read: all the dog books, the fairy tales, the Poohs and Wonderlands, the horse books, the Nancy Drews. (I'm a Boomer. There were no lovely children's illustrated books as exist today.) I wandered to the adult section. No alarms sounded. No lights flashed. I was surprised. I found Gone With the Wind, my first adult novel. I practically read non-stop. Then I found Exodus, even more adult. This young woman, still a girl really, entered a new era of her life from those two books. What came next, odd, I don't remember, but Thoreau certainly had it right.

 

Which in some odd way takes me back to my principal. A couple of weeks ago she said to me that Kindle and other ebooks would take the place of libraries, that libraries were on their way out. Frankly, she said, she would be glad to see the end of physical books because they take up so much space after one reads them. She has boxed up all her books, she said, and stored them in the garage.

Was I indignant? Did I fire back with the irrefutable proof of the living and pulsing and vibrant concept of books, as well as their physical allotment of space? No, I didn't. I didn't defend books at all. I was, well, I was speechless. Could someone really say that books and libraries were dying? 

A room without books is like a body without a soul. 

Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

A room with stacks of books!

 

Wonder what my principal would say if she ever wandered through my house? There is at least one bookcase in every room, including hallways, laundry room, and bathroom. In the main rooms bookcases line the walls. I also have stacks of books everywhere. Yes, it's a big clutter of books, but I love having my friends all around me. I pretty much know where everything is and can locate a particular book fairly quickly. Box them up? Not a chance!

 

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand. 

Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)

 

I've been reading books by Ryszard Kapucsinski, a Polish journalist, who traveled the Third World reporting on the human condition via wars, transitions of power, military juntas, soccer games, Herodotus. The first ball of light he gave me was through his book,  Travels with Herodotus. The book was fabulous, literally and figuratively. Rather than summarize my thoughts on his book, here is the link to my review: Judy's review of Travels with Herodotus. The second illumination came from The Other, in which the journalist shows the reader, cogently, what it is like to be "the other," an unspoken term that blithely and--like a blight--coats our daily language--if only we were aware. I also reviewed it: My review 

Although I remain very fond of Travels (it was my first meeting with Ryszard), I most learned from Imperium, his profound, imminently readable, quotable, and digestible book (in that it is "food" for thought). The history of the Soviet Union: its rise and fall, was utterly interesting, informative, shocking, riveting--a year's worth of reading in one book, a full curricula of study. I was mesmerized. Again, here is the link to my review: Review of Imperium.

 

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.  ~Kenko Yoshida

 

This quote summarizes the physical act of reading. Lamplight, book before you. If you're a reader, you immediately connected with the quote. If not,

 

 

 

 

(more to come--

The subject is cats and addiction...

Meet my Saints  Who Dat Cat!!   I sew a line of kitties from McCall's pattern M5259. I have about 20 of these in various colors and patterns. More are shown below:

 Saints Who Dat Kitty!! 

LSU Tiger Kitty

  

St. Patrick's Kitty (one of my favorites)

Valentine Kitty who had a tatoo put on her leg in support of the Saints!!

 Valentine Kitty 2

 Laundry Kitty (this is maye my favorite)

 Mardi Gras Kitty with yellow bowtie

Mardi Gras Kitty with Mask and Beads Legs