Kaaren wrote to me that the owl is “the bird for those born in January.” And Barb said she sees the owl “as the representative of our wise inner self.”
Maybe I waited to make the quilt that I’d been thinking about for so long until January because it is the month I was born in. And perhaps the owl is reminding me that it is time to actively seek my inner wisdom.
I think of the owl that followed me and dogs in the woods last year. How she waited in the trees and watched us as we walked. Sometimes flying along with us.
I wasn’t ready for her then. But I haven’t forgotten her. And making the quilt now, just a few days away from my 60th birthday, I think I need to explore her message more closely.
I think I am ready for it.
I finished designing my Spirit Owl quilt today. It didn’t need much more, a thin solid border then more of that wonderful leafy fabric.
I have a list of a few people who are interested in it.
The ground warms, the snow turns to mud and the air is soft and wet. The sheep and donkeys eat their hay then wander into the back pasture. They scratch in the bit of snow left on the ground for last summers grass and forage though the low bushes eating the thin branches and chewing bark from the trees.
The sheep come back wearing souvenirs, thorny branches, broken sticks and vines tangled in their wool. If they won’t let me pull them out, they all work themselves out soon enough.
Where they walk most there is mud, ice, pooling water. Their thin path to the back pasture is the brown of Asher’s wool spotted with round droppings.
They only leave it when the pass through the gate where it becomes many paths.
I didn’t get to put up a picture of the work I did on my Spirit Owl quilt yesterday. So here it is the owls all in place. I’ll be working on it more today.
Last nights snow was heavy and wet. It stuck to my shovel and was already melting down the icicles on the edge of the roof.
Later, in my studio, I listened as a tidal wave of snow slid from the slates arching over the bird feeder and piling up in a long line on the ground.
I didn’t really have time for a walk with Bellydancing class a couple of hours away. But tomorrow the snow might all be gone and the woods will be another place than it is today.
What I saw, that wasn’t there after the snow first fell, were lots of footprints. Mostly squirrel and rabbits, but also the flutter of a birds wings….
Bird wing and foot prints in the snow
…and the Bobcat.
It’s the first I’ve seen of the bobcat since the summer when Fate found her scat on the rocks. Today, Zinnia and Fate walked the low rock wall covered in snow and footprints and most importantly to them, her scent.
I followed along, ducking under low branches till I lost the trial. I have no hopes of finding her. I don’t believe she’d let that happen, but I like to pretend. I imagine us looking each other, both of us startled, but neither of us moving long enough for me to get a good look. To get my fill of her wildness.
But in reality it would be me and two dogs confronting her. And I know that Fate and Zinnia want nothing to do with a bobcat. Just as they don’t want to catch the chipmunks and deer they always quickly give up chasing.
I look up from my laptop as I write this and see beads of rain running down the living room window. It will either freeze tonight or keep melting.
We didn’t have to wait long enough for me to finish my drawing.
I realized today in the waiting room at a doctor’s appointment with Jon that it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do one of these drawings.
For some months, last spring and summer, my sketch pad was full of “Waiting for Jon” drawings. It feels good to be on the other side of that. Today we didn’t even wait long enough for me to finish the drawing.
My friend Emily gave me this little sketch book last year. It’s about 3″x4″ and I just started carrying it around in my bag since I used up the last little sketch book.
It has a drawing that I did last January that was inspired by a visit to the Williams College Museum where I saw an illuminated book about the same size. On one page were words and on the other a pictures.
I want to keep that format though out the whole sketch book.
But I won’t just use it for “Waiting for Jon” drawings. I have a feeling it would take too long to fill it up. And that’s a good thing.
We stopped on the way to the appointment for breakfast and I got a piece of sponge cake. It was in a little plastic bag with this tiny clothes pin holding it shut. It was so cute I took its portrait.
I looked into the washing machine and this is what I saw.
How had the fabric, a beautiful old tablecloth, flying pig chef pants, and vintage fabric of girls sweeping from the 1930s, turn into what looked to me like a modern-Baroque, Trompe-l’oeil painting? Those girls with the brooms and dust pans instead of putti angels.
All that spinning spread the table cloth along the bottom of the basin with its flowers perfectly positioned. It placed the other fabric, expertly along the edges.
I just kept staring into the washer as if I were looking into another world. It’s the first time I was reluctant to take wash out of the machine.
The hens were gathered outside my studio, under the bird feeder this afternoon. They stood huddled on a small patch of bare earth cleaning their feathers.
Despite the busy day I got some good work done on my Spirit Owl quilt.
The process of sewing it together is a bit different than how I usually work because I had to do some planning when it came to placing the owls.
In some ways it was like playing Chess. I had to look ahead when sewing the pieces together to make sure they would all fit. Sometimes I had to take the owl “squares” apart to make them work.
It’s coming together the way I imagined it. And just a bit more to do before the next step.
Bud loves to go into his crate at night. But we have of leaving him out to fight off the rat.
I heard the strange ping coming from Jon’s phone first. Then I heard some noise coming from downstairs. As my mind started to go to dark places about who might be in the house, it came to me that the sound from Jon’s phone might have been an alert from the motion camera we set up in the kitchen.
We thought it might be a chipmunk that was raiding our cabinets and eating the crackers out of the boxes. Whatever it was didn’t show any interest in the rat and mouse traps we set and there were no droppings.
But the camera caught what the traps didn’t.
Jon and I lay in bed watching a rat jump from the kitchen counter into the cabinet (which I had tied shut, but obviously not tight enough).
Two days before I stuffed steal wool into the holes around the bathtub pipes then crammed chicken wire around them to hold it all in. That worked for one night, then the rat was back.
This morning the rat left a trail of muddy foot and tail prints leading from the counter to the space behind the bathtub.
But now at least we know what it is and where it’s going.
So we set more rat traps this time with the rats preferred food, crackers. And we set the Have-a-heart chipmunk trap with more crackers.
We thought about leaving Bud out of his crate for the night, but he might just scare the rat away for the night and we want to make sure the rat is gone for good.
The hanger and little pulley for the bird feeder
That all happened somewhere between 4 and 5 am. So Jon and I went back to bed and when we got up it was 30 degrees out and felt like spring.
I knew it wouldn’t last, so after feeding the animals I got out the ladder and hung Jon’s bird feeder in the living room window.
I found everything I needed in the basement.
The metal bracket was a little short so I added on a piece of steel with holes drilled into it. The screw and nut I used to hole it all tougher seemed to need a little more support so I wrapped it with wire.
The pulley will allow us to lower the feeder for refilling it with seeds. I saved the “S” hook from a worn out bungee cord.
I still need to hang the suet feeder. I wasn’t sure how to do it, but as the day went on I decided to hang it from the same rope that holds the feeder only higher up.
As I was working on it a crow circled around cawing. Maybe he was spreading the word that there’s a new feeder on the farm.
Zip visiting the hen house
When I was done Jon and I had breakfast then I went right to my studio. I was eager to get to work on my Spirit Owl Quilt.
And I did but not without interruption.
I was at my sewing machine when I saw Jon and a man in a blue uniform with the word “Sheriff” on his back in yellow letters, walking into the barn. I couldn’t imagine what was going on. They were chatting so easily, I thought maybe Jon knew him.
I was in the barn not a moment later and Jon said that the sheriff was here because someone called the police and said we were abusing Zip by not letting him in the house. I laughed, certain he was joking.
But it wasn’t a joke. Someone had actually called the police on us.
Zip was on the hay bales flirting with all three of us. The sheriff looked at the child sized wicker rocker next to the cat house and said, “This cat even has a rocking chair.”
He had already seen that Zip was a healthy, happy cat, and he was just as impressed with his accommodations in the barn. He couldn’t understand why someone had made the call saying we were abusing Zip.
This was the same sheriff who came the to farm when a bear was hit by a truck and was dying in our pasture. He called the DEC who shot the bear. (Ed Gulley took the bear home to skin) The sheriff said every time he drives by the farm he thinks of that bear.
As surprised as I was to hear why the sheriff was at the farm, I know that there are people who read Jon’s and my blog who feel differently than we do about cats. And ever since Jon euthanized his dog Orson, over 15 years ago, he has been a target for certain Animal Rights groups.
The idea that we are abusing Zip is so absurd it still makes me laugh to think of it.
(Jon was with the sheriff longer than I was and had more of the story to tell. You can read his account of the Zip Incident here)
It was a wild day and my head is spinning when I think of all that happened. But it was a good day too. We have solid plans for catching the rat that has been invading our kitchen. Soon the birds will be coming to the new feeder and Jon will, no doubt, be taking some wonderful bird pictures. And in the eyes of the law, there is no longer any question about Zip being well taken care of.
