Bud  has the patience of a cat.

He has several places around the yard where he sits and waits.  Sometimes he’s at the front fence ready to bark at the Amish horse and wagons as they go by.  He prowls the hosts bed, disappearing under the huge leaves hunting chipmunks and voles. He sits at the thick roots of the maple tree, head up looking for birds and the squirrel who lives there.

Also like a cat, he finds the shade in the summer and the sun on colder days.  He’s out all day this time of year, running and warning people and animals away,  shedding the weight he put on to keep him warmer in the winter.

The yard is Buds territory and he’s very serious about protecting it.

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I stitch forward and back a few times to make sure the end is secure.  Batting side up, my quilt is heavy  to maneuver, but soft on my hands.

I cut the threads then pull  Blue Earth from under the presser foot of my sewing machine.  Draped on my work table,  I start at the opening, the space I didn’t sew, and pull out the pins.

I go all the the way around until I’m back to the other side of the opening.  I stick the last pin in my pincushion, the crushed walnut shells inside it making space for the pin, sharpening it, holding it for me until I need to use it again.

Now I move Blue Earth onto my studio floor, holding onto it at the opening.

Then I reach in.

I push my whole arm inside the quilt until I get to the far corner,  I gather the layers of fabric and batting in my fist and pull it out through the opening.

The quilt pools on my floor like an evening gown slipping off a body.  I gently ease  the fabric though the opening.

I think of a farmer helping a cow birth her calf, of a moth emerging from its cocoon.  The front and back of my quilt are joined as they have never been before.

When Blue Earth is turned right side out, I reach in to it again and poke a single finger into each corner to push the bit of fabric out as far as it will go.

Then I shake it all out, iron the edges flat and hand sew the opening.

This is when all those pieces of fabric I’ve been sewing together for days and days, goes from being flat to becoming three dimensional. Even though I still have to tack it, in my mind it has become a quilt.

A piece of art in the same tradition that humans have been creating for thousands of years.

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This morning I went into the barn and there wasn’t a pigeon to be seen.

I’m guessing that Iris figured out how to fly up though the hole in the floor into the hayloft.  I don’t expect to see the pigeons in the barn again.  And I don’t think I’ll be able to tell them apart from the other pigeons that roost in the loft and travel the farm.

I’ve read that pigeons will hang around a while, but eventually go off to find a mate and another place to raise their young.

Makes me happy to think of Begonia and Iris doing that.

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The buds from our apple tree are falling.  I think it may be from the freezing temperatures we had when the tree was blooming.  Like many people in our area, we will probably have few apples this year.

This bud was caught on a spiders silk as it fell.

Petal fall is the stage in the fruits development when the petals fall and the fruit  begins to develop.

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The last time we made felted bracelets at The Mansion was five years ago.  Then it was Mary, Alice, and Jean and we used brown and white roving from two of my sheep.

All those women are gone now, but I thought of them today as we made felted bracelets using colorful roving from  Suzy Fatzinger’s Angora goats.

The big round table was full.  Susan and  Jane chose to keep coloring but everyone else made a bracelet.  Ellen made two.

I started the class by passing around the roving and letting everyone feel how soft it is.   Then I pulled up pictures of Suzy’s goats on my iPhone and walked around the table showing everyone where the mohair came from.

There were lots of oohs and ahhs over their sweet faces.

When I spread out the towels that we would be working on, Paryese, the activities director, held one up to her face and breathed in.  “You dried these on the line didn’t you?” She asked me.

I never expected to be talking about the wonderful smell of clothes fresh off the line. It brought back memories for more than one of the women at the table.

Making the felted bangles is so easy.  It’s just roving, soap,  water, and a lot of agitation. It’s the agitating that makes the fibers from the mohair or wool mesh together to create fiber.  We rolled the wet soapy roving between our hands and on the textured cloth (you can use bubble wrap too, anything the roving won’t stick to and has some bounce) on top of the towels.

When the fibers were all tightly woven together, I tied the long stand of felted mohair around the person’s wrist making sure it was loose enough for them to get on and off, but small enough so it wouldn’t fall off,

I’d tie a few knots making it look decorative then tuck the ends in with a long pin.

Then more rubbing with soap and water.

Just as everyone was finishing up, Art said he’d like to make a bracelet.  He finished his in no time, doing an expert job.

We got to talking about the pigeons as we worked so I showed everyone pictures of them as babies.  Susan said they were cute and I thought that kind of her (I think they are really ugly babies) although she meant it.

Nancy asked when Jon was coming back to teach his meditation class and everyone was excited to know he was going to be there right after my class.  As people were finishing up on their bracelets, I sat next to Sharon who wasn’t up to making a bracelet but had a few poems she wanted to share.

One was about me, Jon, and Zinnia coming to The Mansion.  She also gave me a copy of one called Rain Is Beauty, and said I could share it on my blog.

Rain Is Beauty   By Sharon Denny

In one’s life some rain must fall
That’s what my father used to tell us all

There’s no free life in this world today,
So buck up and be someone’s blessing

It could be roses, but so what if they are dandelions,
Yellow is pretty too

God has no favorites
They all have a purpose

So be happy for the rain because in the long run, 
it brings beauty,
Because that’s all god makes. 

We created some beauty today at The Mansion and I feel blessed to have been there.

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I was concerned this morning when I went into the barn and Iris was on the haybales.  When I got too close she didn’t fly up to the ladder but hopped down hiding behind another bale.

Minnie hasn’t been spending a lot of time in the barn, but if she did see the baby pigeon on the hay, I know she’d go after her.

I closed the barn door crossing my fingers and wishing Iris well.

I hadn’t seen Begonia in the barn since yesterday morning and I was wondering if she was coming back at all.  Still, I assumed that the mother pigeon must be coming back to feed Iris since she still wasn’t able to get food for herself.

After I took a shower, Jon came into the house and told me that he saw five or six pigeons on the pails we keep grain in in the barn.  I was relieved to hear that.  I hadn’t seen another pigeon in the barn, other than Begonia and Iris, since they were big enough to take up all the room in the nest.

And wasn’t I very happy to go in the barn soon after and see both baby pigeons.   Still not able to fly very high Iris was able to make it to the beam on the barn wall just under where Begonia was perched on the old chair hanging on the wall.

Now I know for sure that as long as  Iris is learning to fly, she will not be abandoned by her sibling or her parents.   Once she can fly Iris will be up in the hay loft with the other pigeons where she will have access to the world outside the barn.

I do wonder if Iris and Begonia will still sleep in the hay barn or will find a new place to roost in the loft with the other pigeons.

After coming home from making felted bracelets at The Mansion, I went into the barn and both pigeons were on the ladder.

Little by little Iris is learning to fly higher and higher.  Soon she’ll be on the roof of the barn with the rest of the birds.

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I couldn’t wait to get to my studio this morning and design more  Coneflower and Bee Potholders.  I made fifteen in all.  One without the Bee.

These still need to be made into potholders, I’ll have them done by the end of the week.

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Jon and I decided to honor Memorial Day by having a peaceful day.  “What does that mean to you?” Jon asked me.

Lots of people have barbeques on Memorial Day.  Around here they open their camps and bring their boats to the lakes.  Groups of Veterans on motorcycles rumble past the farm.

People have their own way of making it meaningful or just enjoyable, the unofficial first day of summer

For me, a peaceful day is a state of mind.

A day when I remind myself to stay present in the moment.  To do what I’m doing without thinking about what needs to be done next.  To try quieting my chattering mind. To allow the calm I feel inside myself to permeate the space and beings around me.

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“There’s a woman on my Nextdoor feed who has a nest of 4 little roadrunners. 3 hatched around the same time, but #4 took another week. She assumed it wasn’t going to hatch at all, but it did.”

This was the message I got from Jill.  Susan also emailed me telling me how the barn swallows that nest in her carport develop at different rates.

Of course, now that I think about it, it makes sense all the birds in a nest don’t necessarily hatch at the same time.  And they don’t all grow at the same rate.

I read about how pigeons incubate for 28 days then leave the nest after another 28 days and I take it literally. Maybe not to the day, but still, I make the assumption that there is precision in the natural world according to the man-made construct of numbers.

There I am trying to fit nature into a neat predictable package.  I know from my own life that kids growing up in the same family can perceive very different experiences of the same events.  So why do I expect baby birds to all hatch at the same time and develop equally?

I suppose it’s comforting to believe I “know” something whether it’s about nature or my own life.  I’m looking for some kind of certainty, something I can depend on perhaps to ease my underlying anxiety.

Or maybe it’s just the unpredictable nature of life that makes me crave the known.  The more information I have the safer I’ll be.

I think it’s my curiosity that saves me from getting too comfortable. From allowing me to believe that just because I read a book or two about pigeons, I know all about them.

Because it’s my curiosity that led me to climb a ladder and take pictures of the pigeons from the time their parent built the nest to the time the baby pigeons leave it.

It’s observing the birds in life that leads me to ask the questions and start the conversation often right here on my blog.

How often is it with me that information shuts the door and curiosity opens it again?  It doesn’t have to work this way. Information, when not absolute can become knowledge.  And knowledge with a dose of awareness and curiosity can become wisdom.

Perhaps if we humans could bring our awareness, knowledge, curiosity, and wisdom to the natural world, we might just survive.

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My back porch garden needs little work these days.  But I have been gardening all weekend.  Jon and I planned on going to the movies but decided it was too nice out and we’d rather sit under the apple tree and watch the birds.

I planted my dahlia garden and put seeds in the wildflower garden.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll make a garden video.

I’m too tired to do much more right now.

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It was so hot at 3pm I decided to let the sheep and donkeys out to graze later in the day.  The pole barn was cool so I sat with them a bit instead.

Fanny and Lulu came over and I scratched they necks and ears.  Issachar tried to eat my hat, but stopped when I told him to.

Then Kitty came into the barn pecking around and visiting with the sheep.

She hung out with Biddy for a while.

Then she made her way out of the barn….

…and went to see Robin.  At first he seemed a bit uncertain.

But when he saw she wasn’t going to bother him, he seemed to enjoy her company.

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One pigeon is flying and the other is out of the nest.

Yesterday  I got the ladder to look in the nest and the pigeon flew from the top of it to the chair hanging on the barn wall.

When Jon saw the pigeon on the chair he got interested in her.

We don’t know the pigeon’s genders, but we decided to call the older pigeon Begonia, one of Jon’s favorite flowers to photograph. And the younger pigeon is Iris.  Because it’s the name of someone dear to us and because the Iris’ are in bloom.

Begonia is still learning to fly.

In the morning she tried to fly up through the hole in the ceiling into the hayloft, but couldn’t make it.  This is the hole that I use to get into the hayloft and the pigeon’s mother and father pigeon use too.  (The difference is I use the ladder that’s attached to the barn wall).  It’s where they would fly to sometimes when they were sitting on the nest and I came into the barn.

When I went into the barn a few hours later Begonia flew up from the chair and right through the hole.  She must have been practicing.

There are two more pigeon nests in the hayloft and access to the outside through the broken window.   It must have been a whole other world up there for Begonia and I wondered if she would come back.

She did.

That evening, Begonia was back and Iris was out of the nest for the first time.  They were both sitting on the barn beam where their nest is.

I had to wonder if Begonia told Iris about the other world she had visited.  The place where their parents came from, and where they hear the coos of other pigeons.

Maybe that inspired Iris to want to leave the nest too.

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I took this picture of the pigeons a couple of days ago. It was the first time they were both looking in the same direction.  The first time I saw them in a different position.

You can also see how much more developed the one pigeon is than the other.  It’s not something I’ve ever thought about with birds.  I always assumed that all the eggs hatched at the same time and the birds all grew at a similar rate.

From looking at these two pigeons, I’d guess that’s not necessarily true.

This evening when I went into the barn the bigger pigeon was out of the nest for the first time.  The lighting wasn’t so good, so my photo is a bit out of focus. Except for a few tufts of feathers on the top of its head, this baby pigeon looks like an adult.

I don’t know if the pigeon has tried out its wings yet.   I haven’t seen its mother or father in the barn for at least a week.  I imagine they come when I’m not there to feed the babies.

I guess soon they’ll be feeding themselves.

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Taking care of the animals today took up more of my day than I expected.  But in between I did get into my studio and start a new batch of potholders.

I still had flowers on my mind when I was looking through my stash.  So when I saw the cone flower fabric that came in a big box of material from Nancy, I pulled it off the shelf.

I was drawn to the size and feeling of openness that I saw in the image on the fabric. I liked the idea of cropping the flower and using bold colors to give it space to breathe.   I wanted to reflect the simplicity of the image in the finished potholder.

I was able to design five Coneflower Potholders today. I’ll work on more next week.   They feel like summer to me.

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Suzy has worms.  We found out today after taking a stool sample to our Large Animal Veterinarian.

When I was mucking out the barn I saw some sheep manure with blood in it.  I watched it for a few days and when I kept seeing more, I looked up what might be the cause online.

Then I followed the sheep around looking at their rear ends for traces of blood.  That’s how I knew the bloody stool came from Suzy.

It was most likely parasites, but Suzy is old and I wanted to make sure.  I didn’t want whatever was happening to go on any longer without getting some help.

It turns out it was time for the donkeys and sheep to get their vaccinations.  So we made an appointment for the Vet to come to the farm at 2pm to worm them all and give them their shots.

Usually, the Vet has an assistant who holds the sheep while he vaccinates them.  But he didn’t today so we got the sheep in the stall in the barn and I held them for him.

I wasn’t sure I could do it, that the sheep would let me.  But I knew it would work out when Issachar came up to me and when I held his head up (this position usually keeps sheep still) he didn’t move.  Asher was next and he was just as calm.

They are my biggest sheep and I knew if I could hold them, I could do the same with the rest of the sheep.

I didn’t even have to hold the older ewes’ heads up, I just held their heads gently with both hands and they stayed still.

Robin was the only one to give us some trouble.  He all but jumped over the gate as I was opening it to let them all out when we were done.

Fanny and Lulu had a different experience.  I wasn’t prepared for how they reacted.  I could barely hold them still.  I’d never seen them behave this way before. And once we were done they wouldn’t let me near them to take off the halters.

We have since made up.

I was able to take their halters off by waiting an hour or so, then offering them a carrot.

Fanny was more forgiving letting me take the halter off after I gave her a carrot.  And I had the feeling that if Lulu saw what I was doing, just taking the halter off and nothing else,  she’d let me take her halter off too.

It worked. Although both donkeys ran from me as soon as I had the halters in my hand.

This evening I brought them the leftover crust from our pizza.

When I called to them from the gate the sheep came running.   But it took a while for Lulu to appear with Fanny cautiously following.

They both ate the crust from my hand so I decided to take it a step further.

I grabbed the soft brush from the barn and held it out to Lulu.  She put her nose to the brush and let me groom her.  Then I brushed Fanny.

I went back to the house feeling we had made big steps towards getting back to normal again.

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I scooped up the little green insect, from the water bucket with the tip of my finger.  It immediately started to move, then dry its antennas.

I think it may be a Macrolophus pygmaeus. An insect that eats whiteflies and aphids.

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Blue Earth needed something simple to frame all that pattern on pattern.  I was going to use graduated strips of different shades of blue, but I found it needed that single wide border.

Next week the back, batting, and tacking.

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I open the gate but the sheep don’t come running.  Slowly, one by one, I see them appear above the tangle of the maple that fell last year.   Half hidden by the unruly wood, summer blue sky with two small puffs of grayish white clouds behind them, the sheep peer at me as if they’re not sure what to do.

It would have been a wonderful photo, but I left my iPhone in my studio.

“Come on sheep,” I yell to them, but they stay where they are.  Maybe they’re still full from morning grazing or they’re confused, expecting me at the other gate.

It’s Lulu who breaks the spell.

She slowly walks down the hill and presents herself to me.  I rub the insides of her ears and her head slowly lowers in donkey bliss.  I find myself relaxing too, staring off into the woods behind the farm, forgetting to think.

When I’m done, I call to the sheep again, turn my back on them and walk deliberately towards the north pasture.  Now the sheep fall in behind me spreading out when they get through the gate.

Fanny pulls mouthfuls of the tall thin grass that sprung up since yesterday’s rain.   Constance chooses a bright yellow buttercup along with some plantain leaves.

I wade through the wild oregano, the familiar smell reaching my nose.

Robin grazes alone along the fence. He chomps down tall thick grass and Bud barks at him from behind the wire mesh then runs to chase a bird.

Bud is very busy.

I leave the dogs and grazing animals and bring Minnie her food on the back porch.

She’s not interested.

Last night I came home from Bellydancing to a headless rabbit on the welcome mat.  “If you’re going to kill a rabbit at least eat the whole thing,” I scolded her.  But she only looked at me from her perch on the wicker chair with sleepy eyes.

I throw the chickens some moldy tofu, pull a speck of a beetle from the water bucket then fill it up. The swirling water chases the last of the apple blossoms to the edge of the bucket and I watch them spill out carried by the overflowing water.

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