Five Things For Spring:
Spring is supposed to be all about renewal and birds chirping and whatnot. Spring always feels like a weird mix of beginning and ending here because the days are getting gloriously longer, but each day of nice weather feels like the last we’ll see before November. Every evening without a torrent of mosquitoes feels like a gift.
1) Patio Furniture
The metal “wicker” sofa we inherited from my mother years ago is falling apart. I think my mother might have bought it at a thrift store because one of the legs was folded in on itself when we got it, but it only had a slight tilt at the time. Now, it’s rusted through in a lot of the base, so it’s time to replace it.
Similarly, the wooden bench under the arbor has rotted and the curtains around it have become Halloween decorations a few months early.
Meanwhile, there is a pile of high-end patio furniture (a literal pile) in the overgrown yard next door. It’s been slowly getting smaller. I’m not sure where it’s going because I never see it leave. For all I know another neighbor is taking it in the night. Or racoons are dragging it away. Since no one seems to live in the house, I’m sure it doesn’t really matter. If the person who made the pile really cared about the furniture, they’d wouldn’t have left it in a jumble in the elements for months.
Because it’s the elements that is the problem. You see these great patio setups on things like HGTV, especially shows set in California. Stuff just doesn’t rust and degrade in California like it does Florida—not even people. They have pretty intense sun in So-Cal, but the lower humidity also explains why all those MotorTrend shows are always finding ancient cars that need few modifications to run again. It takes near-constant maintenance to keep Jeepie running and she’s only from 1991. That Wrangler is on something like her fourth or fifth top, second engine, third clutch, second set of leaf springs, twenty-sixth shifter knob… For a long time, I just gave up on the rubber pedal cover for the clutch because it kept disappearing.
So, yeah, we’re not willing to pay a lot for patio furniture. Luckily, we’re reaching the end of “outdoor season” in South Florida and most chains put patio accessories on clearance during summer, so we’ll be able to find something good by the time pleasant weather returns.
It’s taken decades, but I’ve grown mostly-accustomed to our tropical seasons of wet and dry. The more time I spend outside running, camping, and hiking, the easier it is to feel the subtle shifts between the two as well.
2) Butterflies
Speaking of seasonal shifts: Butterflies have returned in force. We see butterflies year-round, especially the Zebra Longwings. They live a long time (months, compared to weeks) and roost in the same place together each night. We periodically have a Zebra “hotel” in the backyard and every time we’ve hiked one of our favorite fire trails out in Big Cypress, we’ve come across roosting Zebras at dusk.
Because it’s spring, we’ve been seeing an increase in atalas, swallowtails, monarchs, julias, gulf fritillaries, and sulfurs. The sulfurs mostly hang out across the street, but sometimes flutter over. The atala butterflies (also known as the coontie hairstreak) use the next-door neighbor’s coontie plant as a host, but like roosting in the oak and black olive trees at night.
Maybe this is the sort of thing that only fascinates me, but I love watching the butterflies. They have such different flight paths and food preferences and behaviors. Very meditative.
Maybe that’s an ADHD cliché to be distracted by butterflies, but I find nature very calming, restorative, yet it also really sharpens my observation skills. I’m regularly spotting animals and insects others don’t.
Case in point: This swallowtail larvae.
3) Joy
For those unaware, Joy is a duck. Specifically, she’s a three-year-old Muscovy who was raised as a rescue in a kennel in my home office until she was old enough to live in a coop. She unfortunately lost her sister too soon, but she now lives with her foster son and he hangs out with a dwarf Muscovy drake during the day.
Somehow, Joy injured her foot last Tuesday by pulling the hard cover off one of her claws and exposing the cuticle underneath. Which, meant, Wednesday morning, she went on a field trip to her vet. The “bird vet” is different from the vet the cats have been seeing for decades because the practice where the cats go doesn’t deal in “exotics.” So, Joy gets to travel up to Sunrise, FL where the vets’ office has a large white bird hanging out in the staff room.
Because Joy is a duck, she managed to get all poopy on the drive up, so I cleaned her off in the exam room sink before anyone could come in to check her out. She preened a bit on the counter and then just stood there demanding pets and being sweet until the doctor showed up.
There isn’t much anyone can do for an injury like that, but because ducks tend to walk around in dirt and poop all the time, Joy got some antibiotics. She also got an anti-inflammatory to help with the swelling and pain and some medicated wipes to clean up the area a couple times a day.
She’s always very well behaved at the vet. Her first trip, she stood on my shoulder like a pirate’s parrot while I filled out paperwork. That time she was diagnosed as “stressed out” and prescribed a spa week of hanging out in the bedroom cat tube like a feathered tabby.
She’s already feeling a lot better, and she’s been great about taking her meds. Giving a duck liquid medications is tricky because most are too smart to eat it in food after the first time and unlike dogs and cats, they can aspirate if the liquid goes down the wrong way.
Poor little girl. She’s been so sweet, though. Husband says she acts like she knows I’m trying to help her. I’m just thankful we have a good duck vet. Makes a huge difference since ducks can be tricky. Even worse than cats at telling you when they aren’t feeling right.
4) Cat in a Tree
Speaking of cats… We went for a walk Wednesday night after I finished my geometry PowerPoint presentations and found a cat.
We often walk down to the park near the river, so much so that we tend to gravitate toward it even if we don’t talk about where we’re going to walk. We’d gone for a walk because it felt too late to go for a run. I regularly run after dark, especially in the winter when it gets dark super early, but when too many hours have gone by since lunch, running sounds like even more of a chore than usual. I say it was “too late for a run” to set the stage for how late it was. Much too late for baby animals to be out alone.
The park is near a neighborhood, but there’s a large concrete-block fence separating the two. The past few months, that end of the neighborhood has been overrun with semi-feral bunnies. They hang out in yards and occasionally find their way to the parks. They don’t seem to live at any particular house, and they don’t seem to have a hutch or coop anywhere. They are definitely not the native marsh rabbits we see out in the Everglades and Big Cypress.
Except, on this lovely night in late dry season, we did not see a rabbit. Instead, we heard crying in a tree. At first, we thought maybe it was a bird. The neighborhood has tons of birds, including a variety of owls and raptors. Ibis, osprey, and herons are frequently seen during the day, but none of them quite make the sound we heard. High-pitched, but not a quite a bat either.
As we rounded the path to leave, we heard it again, louder this time. As we approached, flashlights trained on the trees, we discovered a tiny calico kitten screaming her little head off.
And that’s how we ended up with our seventh cat.
She went to the vet on Thursday where she got a pretty-clean bill of health. She got some dewormer and her own antibiotics as well as all her shots. She was cleared to hang out with the other cats. And it became pretty clear she was not someone’s escaped pet.
She’s made herself right at home.
5) Art Studio
She helped me organize my art studio this weekend. Granted, she wasn’t a huge help since she isn’t so good at moving furniture, but she’s awfully cute and entertaining.
The art studio has been an ongoing project since the husband started working from home full time and we moved all the art supplies out of the old “guest room” and turned that into his office. I have plenty of room on the other side of my home office/classroom to set up all the art stuff. I just need to get it all organized so it’s useful and doesn’t look too cluttered. That’s a delicate balance since ADHDers tend to do best with open storage. There’s a bit of an “object permanence” issue where putting things away in cabinets and drawers causes those things to “disappear” and become forgotten. It sounds ridiculous, but trust me when I say it’s easier to figure out ways to work with it than to keep denying it’s a thing.
One of these days, I hope to be able to wander across the room, flip on a lamp and just start creating like I used to. I’m getting closer. What seems to be holding me back at the moment is the lighting over there. The sun has shifted and it’s not as bright through the window and the lamp light is coming from the wrong direction. I’m hoping the little light the husband bought me for focusing on small projects like my nails helps.
In the meantime, the kitten (her vet paperwork says “Niblet” but she’s seeming more like a “Natasha” the older she gets) is happy to play with ribbons and sleep on the rug dreaming of her own art projects.
I'm hoping for spring soon as well! What lovely critters. Niblet just sniffed out the menagerie and decided she belongs there, and she does. Joy is aptly named and I hope she heals well. I love reading your duck tales.
Florida makes me wonder about why places where life can flourish are also prone to decay. Like if your want wild bunnies and butterflies galore, a place where escaped monkeys or imported pythons can make empires is also one where keeping a jeep or a patio sofa permanent is a full time job. Maybe decay isn't decay but a renewal, like spring.
I was thinking last weekend similarly about climate and decay, as I was in the PNW, which is so much more fecund than the borderline high desert of where I live (it's getting more high desert every year). If I could (afford to) live anywhere, it would be that bioregion, I think. I love it.