Goldfinch on coneflower + excellent help

The charm of goldfinches who live on November Hill are really loving the coneflowers, and yesterday I managed to get a photo of one of them having a snack.

This is why I leave the spent coneflowers alone - so the goldfinches can have the seeds.

In other news, the walkway is clear! The hollies are pruned! The japonica is too! The dogwood branches are no longer growing onto the roof. The front porch is clear of webs, and the front steps and rails are scraped and newly painted. Hallelujah! A big bunch of things were knocked off my list thanks to two hard workers who know what they’re doing. 

In addition, my new muck helper arrived this morning and will be coming every day from 7-9 a.m. to do all the mucking and all the water buckets and troughs. What this means for me: I will have time to do other things that need doing! Very grateful for the help and happy to pay for good work! 

Rafer Johnson is a TEENAGER! Happy Birthday, Rafer!

Rafer’s birthday slipped by me this year, and I’m attributing it to the pandemic and my distractibility in general, but this week he reminded me in his very gentle and sweet way. We’re having an extra special birthday party for him this weekend, and all is forgiven. 

As I have said in years past, Rafer is the sweetest, most loving donkey ever. He is a love bug and I’m sure he would be happy if we brought him in with us at night or on hot days. I can totally see him hanging out in the living room with us. Of course, he’d have to deal with the dogs, but I think Rafer would even be able to manage that. He is a special soul.

I took this the day he reminded me that he is now a teenager - 13 years old - how can that be? He and Redford hanging out while the horses went out to the front pasture. We love you, Rafer Johnson! Happy, happy birthday to you!!

November Hill farm journal, 105

After a week of very hot days, we finally got some rain last night and again this morning. Everything needed a good watering, so I’m grateful for the cloudy skies and break from the heat. It’s mostly a gray day today, which is very welcome after the blazing sun.

Our farm helpers are coming Tuesday to do a very specific project - weeding the overgrown walkway, pruning hollies and japonica and dogwood, cleaning upstairs windows outside, painting trim, cleaning front porch top to bottom, and painting steps and rails. 

We will of course have no contact and while it looks like a hot day again next week, they will at least have shade for much of the work and they plan to start super early in the morning. I’m happy to have some sprucing up done out front by two people whose work is meticulous!

Meanwhile the pastures and paddocks are growing so well this year we’ve ended up rotating between them instead of leaving all open to the herd. My overseeding in the fall and last spring has really paid off. This fall I’ll need to do this in the bottom of the front pasture, but otherwise, all looks good.

I’ve been meaning to write about our summer tanager(s). We’ve not seen this bird on November Hill that we can remember before this year, but we have one (or more) who is living and foraging very close to the house and barn so we see him/her every day. It’s been a treat to have a new species to watch. I don’t yet have any photos!

The barn swallows have finally finished nesting and fledging their second clutch of eggs and are out of the barn. I admit the last few weeks they were there had me very tired of them swooping in and and out. Now they’re gone and I miss them a little bit!

July is my least favorite month because of the heat and the biting insects but I do love the lushness of it when we’re getting good rainfall, and I’m spending a bit of time each day noting the beauty and being grateful for it. Though I love the landscape in winter, with so many of the trees bare, we lose the privacy we have in the summer months and there’s always a winter day on which we’ve had a lot of rain and it seems so cold and dreary and muddy that I long for summer’s green. Right now we have it, so it’s good to appreciate it while it’s here.

I’m done with my bookshelf painting and the newly-colored shelves are in their new place, with books back in order. Yesterday I indulged myself and painted the lid (which for some reason has always seemed unfinished to me compared to the rest) of my grandma’s old cedar chest, which holds the beloved stuffed animals from my children’s younger years. There’s a small panel of filigree woodwork on the front and I lightly painted that the same color. I’ll finish it up today. I also painted the roof of the Breyer barn, something I’ve been thinking about for several years and boy was that fun to do! I have more ideas for it and since it’s such a little and manageable project, I’ll work on it a little at a time as a reward for some of the larger jobs. Today I’ll begin painting the bedroom next to the guest room, which we’re calling the “new garret” - really the second garret, for my daughter. The paint color is a bright botanical green and I’m looking forward to seeing color in that room!

The new furniture is set to arrive on Monday, so I’d like to get this painting done by Sunday. There’s one piece of furniture in there that has to be moved out and hauled away tomorrow, so I have to clear a few things off it today. 

Speaking of painting, I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never finished the laundry room nor the dining room - partly because I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue the colors on the adjoining walls. I’m still not sure, but I’m hoping this bedroom redo will inspire me to get back to figuring out what I’ll do with the colors in those two areas. (Sometimes I just spend way too much time pondering colors and choices!)

Right this moment it’s gray and cooler than it has been and everything has been watered nicely by the rain, and I’m enjoying the way the windows as I look through them are full of green foliage. I can’t see the end of the driveway or the lane, and I love that. 

Nancy Gifford and her art installation piece Lament

Some of you may remember my trip to the west coast to tour graduate programs with my son several years ago. I wrote a post about an art installation I happened onto while exploring UC-Santa Barbara while he had meetings there. The artist was Nancy Gifford, and her installation, titled Lament, took up an entire wall inside the university library. 

I was absolutely stunned by this art installation, taking photos from a distance, close up, and truly wishing there were a way I could bring it all home with me. I still remember walking into the large room where it was and seeing it and realizing it was made entirely of books. 

Unfortunately my photos were taken with my phone and weren’t very good, which is why I’m not re-posting them today. 

About a month ago a comment showed up for moderation from Nancy Gifford herself! She had been doing some online searching and came upon my blog post. She wanted to thank me for writing about her work and to say how happy it made her that I loved it so. She also told me it now has a permanent home in Santa Barbara’s Main Library. 

I so hope that anyone reading this who travels to Santa Barbara in the future will schedule time to go to the Main Library and see this piece. 

Best of all, Nancy’s website has excellent photos of the installation as well as a video that shows the process of the work. Since we’re mostly staying at home right now, what a wonderful armchair travel experience to explore this wonderful piece.

GO HERE to see Lament and the video, and be sure to explore all of Nancy Gifford’s art on her website. 

I was absolutely thrilled to see her comment and happy to share with everyone, again.

A few bloom updates + a crow PSA

These aren’t the best photos I’ve ever taken - I was sweaty and my glasses were muggy and I couldn’t really tell in my quick pass if I was getting things in focus or not! 

First, a bumble on the nodding onion. This bee was the only one and I think it was enjoying having these little blooms all to itself!

Update on the pretty fern patch. They have gotten quite tall and are lovely to the point that I want to create a mulched bed around them. Another project for the list. 

The Black-eyed Susans are really out now and make a very bright spot in the garden. They’re in a place in the bed that I see from inside the house when I glance out the windows on that side, and it’s so nice seeing them there!

This little scene became a favorite yesterday when I was standing on the walkway and glanced over. If it weren’t such a bright shot, it would be even better. I tend to like things slightly overgrown, not perfectly manicured, and while this tendency gets me in trouble in the garden a lot of the time (there’s a short distance between slightly overgrown and totally out of control when it comes to growing plants), in this moment I really liked how the garage looks with all the plants framing it.

Overall, some things are out of control right now with weeding, and we had a couple of days where two Corgis smelled a bunny and went crashing through the front bed, trampling the Stoke’s asters and narrow leaf mountain mint, and while those plants are alive and blooming and serving pollinators well, they won’t stand back up the way they were for the rest of the season. Daughter has worked with them to set some boundaries and I hope they will stay out of my flowers now!

It’s just too hot to do too much out there right now.

In other news, we had a big drama yesterday on the farm when I opened the back door and heard a cacophony of crow shrieks. It was the loudest ruckus I’ve ever heard from the crows and I knew something was amiss. I called out to my husband, who ran out the door to the back pasture where they were, and he found a crow in the horse water trough. Thankfully it was alive, and the moment he rescued it from the water, the crows went totally silent. 

The crow couldn’t fly and seemed stunned, and it was shivering, so he brought it around to the garage and we nestled it in dry cloths in a box in the sun to see if we could help it warm up. We read during this few minutes that when crows get in water they can get hypothermic quite fast, and pass out, roll over, and drown. I had no idea! While we were on the phone with our local rehabber, the crow warmed up and flew away! So we’re glad the crow family made such a racket and this one made it.

When I went in the back pasture yesterday evening to scrub and refill the trough, several crows came to the oak tree where the trough is and cawed softly. I really do think they know we helped and were there to let me know things were okay.