A Morning Person's Observations #6: Life and Death in the Pea Patch

One professor who introduced the concept of sit spots to my class told us to not always sit in the same spot. "Get up and explore around your spot," he said. "See if you can find the paths and homes around your spots, where other travelers are coming through."

This has been a dry, sunny, not too cold, clear winter in Seattle. One morning before daylight savings, there was still only a corner of the Pea Patch in sun. I went and stood under the Doug Fir hanging over the fence, the opposite corner from my usual bench sit, to soak in the morning Vitamin D while I sipped my coffee.

The chickadees were out that morning. I know I'm not running late if the chickadees are still in the Pea Patch. They grew more and more comfortable with me standing below the Doug Fir, and flitted to branches closer and closer to me. Finally, one hang upside down from a cone and started pecking at some of the seeds. I hadn't been close enough to them yet to see what they eat, it was amazing.

It's been a year since David and I moved to the Pea Patch apartment. A year of sitting and sipping my coffee back here. I just noticed this morning that the white flowers on the tree have blossomed again. It's important to notice this when it happens, because in a week or two the first spring storm will take them all down. I love that I've sat under this tree for a year and am familiar with this pattern.

But I love how the Pea Patch continues to surprise me too. A gray cat slipped under a bush and came up to me meowing, and rubbing against my legs. I pet this gray feline for a bit, then the cat went down toward the tulips and slipped out of site. About five minutes later, the chickadees started a call and response. Some other birds chimed in, one that did four long high notes. And the arpeggio bird, which I haven't heard in a long while! I've never seen it, or I should say I've never connected its call with a bird I could see, but when I first heard it at my sit spot at IslandWood, it sounded like a young child learning arpeggios on the piano, eagerly jumping up and down along the notes.

The intensity and rapidness of the responses toward the calls made me wonder what the cat was up to. It seemed like they were pointing the feline friend out to any other birds, which was good of them since no one had belled the cat.

Somehow or other a crow died in February. Its carcass hangs from the one of the top branches of the chestnut tree, swayinh ominously above the apartment building in the breeze. As the weeks go by, it doesn't seem to have decayed much. There are certainly more flies in the Pea Patch at first, then not too many. I wonder if they've eaten out the core of the carcass and moved on, and all that hangs now are feathers on bones. But there'd have to be meat holding the feather to the bone, right? No way to explore this further, the carcass is so high in the tree. It will be a fun item to pay attention to, what happens to a decomposing crow that's so far out of reach? Can't get scooped up like roadkill, can't get eaten by anything except creatures that can fly/climb that high.

Some patterns are repeating in the Pea Patch, and some new intriguing ones are just starting.

A Morning Person's Observations #4

The New Sit Spot

The first morning in my new apartment, I sat on the steps on my patio thinking this would be my new sit spot.  Goodness am I excited about that patio, but it would not be a nice place to drink coffee each morning (apparently I'm a coffee drinker now).  There is nothing but wood and concrete, and I heard some birds, but didn't see a single one fly overhead on the day I sat on the terrace.  There are some empty pots for a garden underneath the staircase, so I figured if the landlady didn't mind I could create some greenery to watch each morning.

Then I went to throw out the trash and explored a little in the alley behind my building.  To the right there was the sign of a garden plot.  As I got closer I saw it was actually a ppatch!  There was a bench leaning against the wall, with the perfect spot to sit and watch the ppatch as someone sips on their morning tea, er, coffee.

Spring sunlight in the ppatch

There's a sign with a number to call if you want a patch.  I'm sure the waiting list is enormously long, but I got on the interest list anyway.  However, if I only spending a year in this apartment, never get a ppatch, but still sit and enjoy the setting every morning with my cup of coffee, that will be enough, that will be perfect.

It's Lent and I'm feeling lost.  Since the GED changed, everything at work feels like a different moving part, moving away from the rest of the puzzle instead of coming together.  I'm trying so hard to figure it out, to give the students concrete steps forward with their education, but everything I say sounds like a broken promise.  "No we don't have the practice tests yet," "No you don't have enough credits," "No your old scores aren't saved anywhere."  All of this is out of my control, but it's so frustrating and trying to navigate the pieces has burnt me out.


So, I'm giving up doing too much work and taking on sitting in the ppatch.  I'm giving up going out and taking on cooking long, slow dinners at home.  I'm giving up spending my evenings glued to the computer screen, and taking on long, slow baths, reading more books, seeing more friends, playing more games, and longer nights of sleep.

The ppatch has already given me hopeful signs of spring, I think one bush must be the Indian plum, because it was buds when I first started sitting in February, and now its blossoms are the size of my hand.  They look like hands opening to the sky during meditation.  The chickadees and robins make frequent appearances, talking to one another as they pass through and check me out a little.  Two pigeons, darker than most, spent a flirtatious morning cooing and following each other around the adjoining balconies and gutters.  This is what I love, having a moment in the secret world that is always here, that I tune out when I'm focused on my human schedule.

This morning the crows came and sat on what Ann (a smoker and coffee drinker in the ppatch I met today) says is a chestnut tree.  One held a large twig, the other stared me down for a second, as if to challenge my place in the patch.  I didn't back down and took a sip of coffee without batting an eye.  Then the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the row patches, and the crow accepted me and took off.

The highlight was a month ago, creeping slowly and quietly into the ppatch, trying hard not to spill my tea (back when I still could get through a whole day on tea, sigh).  I looked to the top of the Doug Fir that is on the other side of the fence, but hangs generously over the ppatch.  Often on the bare branch sits a crow or sometimes a robin.  Today there was a hawk!  It had been making an alarm call that I mistook for a squirrel.  After I sat on the bench it stayed a little longer, scouting the situation.  It gave up, possibly thinking I'd scared away any prey.  As justice, it soared away calling out again, scaring away any prey for me.

My hawk identification is horrible.  It was tiny for a hawk, and almost all white on the underbelly.  My initial google research suggests it was a Short-tailed Hawk by the looks, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature says that hawk is keen to stay tropical, so back to square one.  Hope it shows up again and gives me a better look.

Birding and Porchin'

New camera!

Sit Spot - April 12, 2012 8:30 a.m.

High 50s, lower 60s.  A little cloudy.  Clouds are slowly moving NW.

The heron is the first sighting of the morning.  Darker than a Great Blue, slate colored.  It's heading west, working its way to the Sound.  Jake and I spot it two evenings later, same heron, same shade, same direction, different time of day.

On this morning of April 12, a mom is packing up a stroller to wheel her kid somewhere on Stone Way, right under the heron soaring west.

Two robins make appearances.  One of them flits about the yard, gathering nest materials, and stopping for juicy worms if it is so lucky to find one.  E.J. was working in the garden the other day, and one of these robins was busy working by the side of the house, tugging and munching on good worms.

The other robin sits up top on a telephone wire and keeps an eye out for its partner.  They don't chirp at one another, they stay within eyesight.  The robin on the ground poops on the curb then hops under Madden's car as some humans walk by on the sidewalk.  It's so funny to see it walk, and hard to describe.  It moves quickly, like a run, but with the pace of a walk.  Scurrying is probably the best word.

A chickadee flies in to sit on the lower branches of the Cedar tree.  It doesn't do the call that named it (chicka dee dee dee), instead it makes some short peeps.  I never realized how high pitched Chickadees were.

Then I hear the laughing birds.  Each time I see them, I think, "Finch."  Something about the beak, or size and shape of the body.  The truth is I'm not an expert with birds, really I just feel like they are finches.

They are also in a pair, everyone seems paired up by now.  The one I've seen make the laughing sound has a red breast.  This laughing noise sounds like a child on the piano learning arpeggios.  Jumping up and down across the notes, showing off how well it can hit them.

Two smaller birds who I don't know, and don't come close enough to introduce themselves, are also paired up together in the grass.  They are about the size of chickadees, maybe even a little smaller, but they don't have any markings I can notice.  They chirp back and forth as they go about their business.

The crows are soaring about up top, they don't come down to the street on April 12.  They are acting reasonably sane.  Last Saturday, the second day of Passover, when we had our Seder, they were going crazy.  One crow would perch on a tree or roof, and call out to the murder of 7 or 8.  As if the perching crow was directing the rest of them, the murder would dance, swoop, turn, and dive together.  This was around the time of the full moon.  E.J. thought they were acting out the story of the plagues.

On April 12, runners and young professionals move by, all in a hurry.  Their ears or eyes are shut out by earplugs or a smart phone.  I do not write this to judge them.  In an hour, in the middle of my work day, I am glued to the computer screen or absorbed with texting my students.  These are just more patterns I'm noticing.

A few weeks ago, there was a Hummingbird.  I looked at a Crow sitting on top of a house up Interlake, and a hummingbird came and hovered next to it for a fleeting moment.

When I walk up to my room after my sit spot on April 12, I see the Red-Breasted Laughing Finch sitting in the tree outside my window.  I think they are building a nest over my windows.  Fine by me.  I can't think of a better bird song to wake up to on Seattle spring mornings.

You can barely see their nest above the diagonal beam