Good karma, bad karma

It’s Friday morning, and I am still holding out hope for a canoe float on this vacation. Today is the first fully sunny morning we’ve had on the trip – yesterday, after I did my pool chores, it grew overcast and threatening rain so I ended up running banking errands down in Elkton. So much for recreation, but I am resolved to relax here on the brick terrace for a bit today.

That banking errand was the next step in a long story about our property line that I will write about as soon as the issue comes to final resolution. The lawyer tells us it won’t be long now.
The sun is rising in the sky so I’ve had to move my Coleman Max chair into the shade so I can see the computer screen, and I want to write some more about what I’ve been seeing in the front yard of the Hawksbill Cabin this week – at least the events of those times when the clouds have broken up and it wasn’t raining.

I’ve mentioned our hawks that returned to nest in the big pine, and now we have another pair nearby. I saw two of the birds soaring on thermals this morning; at last I can tell the difference between them and the buzzards that are sometimes around. I would have thought our local ecosystem would require more space for these top-line predators, but apparently our little hollow is rich and abundant enough for more of them.

Add to that our little snappin’ turtle nest, the little pair of house wrens that live under the pool, the pair of blue herons nesting over by the beaver pond, and the beavers responsible for that feat of engineering – and we have some very positive karma emitting from this little corner of nature.

Yesterday, Jesse came by to consult on some projects and he spotted movement in some weeds near the driveway. It turned out to be a little box turtle clearing out a nest, and there she was, laying her eggs.

Jesse didn’t notice the beaver pond until he was on his way out, and he offered to stock it for me. I know there are fish in there because I see the little wakes, but I just don’t know what we’ve got in there. If we were to procure something indigenous, like some trout, small mouth bass, or even some kind of little sunfish, my hope would be that we could establish a little school here. I don’t know how long beaver ponds last though, so I worry that our interference in the process would be very temporary.

This contemplation reminds me of a conversation from when I stopped by to see Howard earlier in the week. We talked about the splendor of what I see out front and compared it to what is going on in the backyard. “These things have a way of balancing,” he said.

Back there, we’ve had another black rat snake find its way into the laundry room. There is a photo here of the “shed” it left out on the back wall. “How do you know it was a rat snake,” you ask? They are climbers, and of the four or five species I’ve encountered out here they are the only ones that can climb like this. So when you visit, if I send you for an errand to the laundry room or to the back of the house, be sure to keep an eye out – and look up as well as in all of the other directions.

I don’t mind the black snakes for their being here, it’s just the surprise of finding them. I quickly get over it and set to work putting them back in their place, outside. But Mary gets the dry heaves when she sees them now. This is also mainly because of the surprise – my hypothesis – since she nearly put her hand on one turning off the main water valve a while back.

The other problem out back is this new paper wasp nest. We have the pest control coming out to take care of this later today; we will have them consult on a wasp infestation that we have found down at the pool cabana as well. I am also going to ask them to puff some Sevin into a few carpenter bee holes I found in the soffit of the addition – an area I neglected to spray earlier this spring. Once the bees are gone, I will fill the holes with wood putty, and I may install my carpenter bee chamber there, too.

So there you are, the balance at work: all of the beauty and wonder of our front yard, and the treachery and danger of nature in the back. Maybe there will be a change in a few weeks when the bee balm blooms, but at that point I guess I’ll need to keep an eye on what’s going on out front.