December Rains

Santa Has a Tree for Me

Our Tree is Tagged & Legal

Frozen Grouse Creek on Dec. 5, 2015

Swollen Grouse Creek on Dec. 9, 2015

Pooling Flood Water

Nearing the Bridge

Churning & Muddy

Swollen Waves

Road Wash Out

A thin crust of ice clings to shadows as Todd and I shop for a Christmas tree. He likes the firs with their short needles, and I like the thick pines. We measure height with our eyes and try to imagine this one or that in our living room.

Finally, we agree on a tree and he gets the handsaw.

Our lot is the wide open Kiniksu National Forest, and we have a $5 permit with a "Merry Christmas" greeting from the Forest Service. It might lack mugs of cocoa or a red-suited Santa you'd find in town, but I like shopping for a tree in the forest.

Until I look down and see lynx tracks. That's when I notice the deer carcass and head to the truck. No way do I want to get caught between a hungry wild cat and her dinner. We pick another tree, and I say I like it better. It's better because it's not located in the lynx dining room.

Turns out it's a hemlock. Not a bad choice, but we are both surprised as we load it in the truck. We have to carry it because where there's not snow in shadows, there's mud. Two winters ago we had to trek through waist deep snow to find our Christmas tree. Now we are driving along Grouse Creek, tires slipping on mud.

We cut the tree on Saturday because we had a lull in the drizzling rain. On Sunday it returned. Though I wait for it to turn to snow, the rain continues to patter on our metal roof. The moisture is needed, but so is snow. Without the cold, the water saturates the ground. Snow is like a container and it (should) release the moisture as spring thaw comes on gradually.

Last year the thaw came early and quick. By the time the rivers would normally be close to flood stage, we were entering a drought. Yet, if you look at precipitation, we had a "normal" year. Cold plays a dynamic role in our Inland Pacific Northwest climate.

At 2 am last night it was 52 degree F. Crazy warm! And the rain poured relentlessly. The flooding began a few hours later. We went up both the Pack River and Grouse Creek to marvel at the natural disaster. The road we had just slipped down with our tree a few days ago is gone in places. The icy river is now churning pale chocolate milk. Logs look like sticks riding the rapids.

When the road washed out before us, Todd kept driving. Yes, I panicked. He found it funny. The only way I could calm down was to point my camera and film. Watching the screen diverted my eyes from watching the washout road. Not a prize-winning piece of journalism, but you can watch the video here.

There's something unnerving about how quickly water can displace rock. It's as if water plays nicely and goes through proper channels only because it agrees to this arrangement. We build up around it and one day water turns rebellious and destroys all we've built -- bridges, road, houses, pastures.

It's receding and we'll muck out the debris water left in it's wake. At least we got our Christmas Tree before the road washed out.

The photos I'm sharing via Abracabadra's Wordless Wednesday Link up. The photos are mine, as well as the words.

I'm not really word-less.

A Cautionary Tale

Picking Raspberries

Barefoot Birding

Raspberries and Blackberries

Blackberry Blossoms

Red Raspberries

Bucket of Raspberries

Bee Careful Picking Berries

Bees Hang Out in Grass

Me, Learning to Ride and Speak Slang

San Benito, CA

Where Ancestors Settled

Ranches, Orchards and Turkeys

Curious Man

Stinger

One Way to Have Hubby Finish Chores

First Note of Caution:
While this is a home-grown birding blog, a place for a simple believer to reflect and a hopeful storyteller to spin yarns, it is also about country-living. And sometimes the truth of the tales to be told go beyond a G-rating.

This is one of those blogs.

The female anatomy in no way offends me; I fully embrace that I am a woman. However, it may not be the conversation you are expecting from a blogger bird-nerding on a pond in northern Idaho. But things happen when outside, interacting with the environment. If a horse stepped on my toes, I'd tell you about my feet. If I fell into the pond, bruising my elbow, I'd tell you about my arm.

Believe me, I did not call the shots on the injured anatomy of today's story, although in retrospect, I could have exercised some common sense. Now that I feel like Chaucer, having given the reader my disclaimer, here is the day's cautionary tale.

Bee Aware:
When outside birding, gardening and especially plucking raspberries, wear underwear.

The day dawns cool, but quickly grows hot and dry. Todd and I eat slices of butter-fried ham with a fresh peach oven pancake, which is custard-like and naturally sweet from the fruit. We chat over coffee, and decide where to fish later this afternoon. I mention picking more raspberries to finish off a batch of raspberry peach jam. Todd offers to pick.

"The Blackberries are coming on next, " I say.

"Blackberries won't fruit if they are growing with the raspberries," Todd says.

For 25 years I've debated this man enough to know I have to show him proof. Todd likes facts, and the fact of the matter is, the blackberry canes are bursting with the beginnings of green berries that will one day blacken into late summer sweetness. So I tell him that I'll show him.

Now mind you, I'm in my thin summer nightshirt and nothing else. I promise you, this is not normally how I dress for birding, gardening or writing; it's just been a loitering kind of morning interspersed with office work and kitchen chores. And it's been hot. And it's just me and my husband--empty-nest, no guests and no close neighbors. Who cares if I'm wearing underwear or not.

We step outside and I giggle to Todd about my attire, to which he makes a sassy husband-like reply. He's grabbed the bucket to harvest red raspberries and I only mean to show him the blackberries. But as he starts plucking, I can't help but join in. The breeze is yet cool, the birds are pipping in the pines and we're talking about sweet jam. Out of habit, I squat down to gleen from the lower branches. It feels so good, this living-in-the-country freedom.

Until I feel a sting. No buzz, no tickle, no warning just a horrible reminder that I have on no underwear. With the reflexes of Wonder Woman I strike at the bee between my legs and actually pluck it away, flinging it to the grass. Bow-legged and appalled, I stand up and cry out, "My panocha! A bee stung my panocha!"

Let's pause a moment to discuss language. I know my female anatomy; I know the right words for my private parts. But there's something primal about a crisis that thrusts us into the dialect of childhood. San Benito County, California is inland from the San Francisco Bay and worlds apart from Silicon Valley. Among ranches older than the state itself, this was where I was born. Mexican land grants created old ranchos that raised cattle and grapes, and Mission San Juan Bautista was built in 1797.

My family tilled hay, tended cattle and raised turkeys among the oak-strewn golden hills called the Gabilans. The community is a melting pot of old Californios, Italians, Basque, Portuguese, Scots and other gold-seeking pioneers that came in the 1850s. John Steinbeck walked where I rode horses. My great-grandfathers planted apricot trees and rode in rodeos that I rode in, too.

The language that surrounded me as an impressionable child was a melting pot of cowboy English, pigeon Portagee and Mexican American slang. Thus I have ingrained in me such words that gained my mother's glare when spoken such as putah, chichis and panocha.

The first time I ever saw a Chi Chis restaurant in Minnesota, I choked, laughing that anyone would called a mexican-food place "boobies." But evidently, the slang did not extend that far north, so no one knew why I cracked up anytime someone from work suggested we go have margaritas at Chi Chis.

Most people recognize putah, as in the insult, "Tu madres es putah," meaning your mama is a street-walker. But that's not how I heard it used growing up. Putah was an exclamation like "holy crap" and I said it a lot. In fact, if you surprise me today, I might just holler, "Putah! You scared me!"

In New Mexico and Colorado, panocha is a pudding; in Spanish it refers to raw sugar. In my world, it's slang for vulva. So, yes, simultaneously crying and laughing to the point of hysterics--because really, who ever gets stung on the panocha?--I waddle toward the house stunningly stung.

Not much ever flabbergasts my husband, but he was looking as puzzled as Richard Neil must have looked upon discovering the joy of a woman's menstrual cycle has nothing to do with extreme sports and blue liquid.

By the time we get into the house I'm sobbing, more out of cowardly fear for the sweet stung spot, with intermittent bursts of "I can't believe this!"

Todd came to his senses and I truly thank God that my husband was home as the man had to find and remove the stinger. Ever the curious man, he has thoroughly examined the stinger under magnifying glass and affirms it was "definitely a honey-bee." Not that I was trying, but Todd covered the rest of my chores.

Evidently bees find women sweet as raw sugar. Therefore protect thy sweetness, fair ladies. Next time I pick raspberries, I'm wearing a chastity belt!