Starlings are not lovely to other birds or even to other Starlings. Every morning, there’s a fight at the feeder.
Starlings prefer to keep their secret; they want everything every other Starling wants and everything any finch or bluebird wants. They quarrel all morning and share nothing, much like politicians.
I’m lucky. The first thing I see in the morning is the sun showing itself at sunrise. The bedroom window is at the foot of our bed, so we don’t have to move.
This morning, Mother Nature put on a show, perhaps celebrating the end of the biggest snowstorm of the year, days into Spring.
It’s a sweet way to start the day. Mother Nature is the finest artist around.
Sara Harrington just messaged me about the food pantry’s request for the most urgent and needed food of the day: food they are out of.
It’s Huggies Size 5 Diapers, Little Movers Baby Diapers, Size 5, 19 count: $9.94.
I know many of you have a lot to deal with; this enormous storm, flooding, and fires have disrupted our farm and many lives. But I need to help the Cambridge Food Pantry, its families, and its children daily when possible.
There are other items on the pantry’s wish list, but this is the one I’m responding to every day or as often as possible. It was a hard choice for the pantry between tuna fish and Huggies. The pantry is out of them, and there is a great need.
Feel free to make another choice or none at all. Thanks for thinking about it and for the contributions so many of you have already made. The boxes keep coming and going.
My motto is to do the best that I can for as long as I can. I can’t do better than that. Small acts of great kindness, the motto of the Army Of Good.
Please do not endanger your budgets, but if and when you can help, it will make a tremendous difference to an urgent cause.
You can see and search the rest of the wish list here.
I’m sorry to say that my beautiful Calla Lily is dying; this is probably their last day. This is a landmark moment for me. I love this flower and took great care with my photos, hoping and perhaps expecting some praise and approval. Yes, I have an ego, which is unsurprising to anyone reading the blog.
This photo is in honor of my Calla Lilies, who are dying. If I wasn’t able to respect their lives, I could undoubtedly appreciate their death. You are great flowers, and we shall meet again shortly. You brought me much happiness.
The irony was that the Calla flowers were among the best photos I’ve ever taken. I was surprised that they were also the most criticized and reviled.
My critics never mentioned the photos themselves; I just misspelled the name. My dyslexia has hit me hard with this one. I was accused of disrespecting the flowers and of denigrating the language. One man called me stupid and asked why I kept misspelling the flowers repeatedly. Many people did that, including me. But I knew the answer.
I also received an awful lot of praise, appreciation, and support. This is a much-loved flower.
As always happens, I tried to figure out what I needed to learn when I thought I had done something good and was told by several outraged people that I had not. It’s time to move on, I decided; this felt like Stupid Time. The poor Calla, I’ve been misspelling flowers for years, and no one has ever mentioned it before.
It was a valuable experience in many ways. But all good things come to an end. Bye.
Maria made this post-it, and I have it taped to my computer. Soon, there will be more.
The Callas are gone, but the Post-it isn’t. I plan to get more flowers and post-its this week; the Calla lilies are now my favorite flower of 2024 (at least until another flower pops up whose name I will almost certainly disrespect). Thank you, Dyslexia.
I have one confession and one thing to apologize for:
I knowingly put up a misspelled Calla picture this week and deliberately misspelled it and didn’t correct it.
I just wanted to see some of these stuffpots and correction addicts jump through a few hoops. Only one or two noticed it and bit; I think most have moved on, looking for other criminal misspeakers of flowers.
These insults were adolescent and lame. No one had accused me of insulting a flower.
Most original complainers have moved on and sought other people to target. I was taught it wasn’t cool to ridicule people with learning disorders, but that was a lifetime ago, in the lost world of civility and empathy.
I have yet to lose either compassion or empathy, but I did change the spelling; it wasn’t good for me to do that, either. I’m adding disrespecting mean people to my list of sins. I won’t do it here.
Taunting people is never healthy or proper; it is genuine writing abuse, worse than misspelling the Calla.
I apologize, although I can assure you there will be other misspellings of flowers in the future; my garden beds will be complete in May, and my Dyslexia does not love a flower and will not save me from misspelling it. Get ready for a wave of pretty pictures, many with the wrong spellings. I fault no one for fleeing or hiding.
I don’t know how to say this other than honestly, but sorry, folks. I love flowers and photographing them, but I don’t really care much about spelling them correctly.
There, I’ve said it. I have more important things to do and write about than how to spell Calla Lily or why I didn’t (thanks, Maria.)
You won’t find another word about it here. My readers have more important things to do, too.
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What I did do at the end of this silly saga to respect it – I won’t read or post these messages again or deliberately provoke floral self-appointed police as a kind of twisted revenge. I need to be better.
I also dug out ten shrink-approval ways to respond to cruelty online. I call it the Creepy List. It’s good advice; I plan to follow it. It’s posted on my computer, also:
There is hardly a day I can think of where Zip did not surprise me in one way or another. Last night, I saw Zip creeping slowly atop a massive mound of snow at 1 a.m. as this severe storm was thinking of easing up,
I laughed and said Zip was not sleeping or hiding out in the barn as I might have expected. He was hunting something; the heavy snow, ice, and rain did not slow him down or bother him. He is a loving thing but a wild thing.
The puzzle may have been solved this morning when Maria went into the barn to feed him while I was in the shower.
He always rushes out of somewhere when he knows he’s being fed, but this time, he didn’t show up. Maria waited a bit and then heard some rustling in the direction of the tires we stacked when it was time to get or switch snow tires.
She called his name and went closer to the rustle.
It was coming from the tire. Zip popped his head up while she grabbed her iPhone. He ducked in and out. She took a closer look, and there was a dead creature in the tire, which he was using as a fox den or even a sleeping retreat and secret stash. It’s very warm in there, says Maria; the rubber tire retains heat. That cat is something else.
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I was fortunate to look at one of the wood stoves and see Bud’s reflection in the glass window. He loves to sleep near that stove on cold days; I think the furnace likes him back. The photo was neat.
Like most Labs, Zinnia loves to come along for the ride. She sits in the back seat, and when we went into the farmer’s market today, I always left the rear window open.
She is impervious to cold. It was freezing this morning in the wake of the storm. Zinnia never barks or moves; she rests her chin on the window will and waits for us to return. She feels much emotion but never shows it. She is the biological opposite of Zip, a whirling dervish.
I thought the photo captured her great calm.
