Building Bombs

Welcome to My Bomb Sanctuary

I have a confession to make: deep in the dark recesses of my two-car garage on Elmira Pond, among cat kibble for Bootsy and the orchard ladder, I build bombs.

Before I have Homeland Security swooping down like an angry eagle, let me explain my ulterior and peaceful motives. I make bombs to spread love and nutrients among butterflies, bees and songbirds.

And you can make pollinator bombs, too! Here's a Wordless Wednesday tutorial:

1. You need space to do the dirty work. A garage or shed works well.

2. Recycle common items for supplies. A yogurt cup makes a funnel.

3. Gather something nutrient dense. Compost or horse apples will do.

4. If you make a liquid compost, use a milk jug to store it.

5. Best to funnel your black gold outside as it can be messy.

6. Add 2 cups compost or enriched soil to 5 cups of powdered clay.

7. Add 1/4 cup of cayenne pepper.

8. Add 1 cup of LOCAL (to you) wildflower seeds, pollinator-friendly.

9. Pour enough liquid black gold (compost water) to make a thick mixture.

10. Roll mixture into truffle-sized bombs (do not confuse for truffles).

To bomb your space, lob into grassy spots.

Let nature take its course and bloom your bombs over time.

Butterflies emerge hungry. Bombs provide food. So do clovers.

Did you know that dandelions attract butterflies and bees? Leave them!

Create space that is wild and free as a fluttering butterfly.

Pristine lawns might "look" nice but they are empty cupboards to pollinators.

Hiding in Plain Sight

A Grebe Hides...Somewhere

What Are the Geese Hiding?

Yellow Babies!

Hard to See

A Cluster of Babies Between Parents

Spring is Yellow

Look -- over there by the clump of blond reeds. A pie-billed grebe. Two! Do you -- they're gone now.

For three pond seasons in a row the pie-billed grebes have hid in plain sight. I can't tell the male from the female; both are drab and gray. Their most distinct attribute is a gray bill. A light gray bill and a dark gray duck that doesn't even weigh in at one pound.

Yet, they sink out of sight like feathered stones.

Often I'd see the grebe or the female hooded merganser. I became convinced that they were the same. Mergansers are only a few ounces heavier tipping the one-pound mark on the scale. Thus they are similar in size.

Some days the merganser's light cinnamon crest sparkled with water droplets and other days I'd think she was homely as a chicken.

The grebe is the one who looks like a chicken.

And like chickens, the new hatchlings of the Canada geese have arrived! They are fluffy and yellow like baby chicks.

Why yellow, I wonder?

As if Elmira Pond wanted to teach me a lesson, I've struggled to spot those baby geese among her many hallows and islands. I stared hard at both parents with the binoculars and a movement caught my eye. Then another. The babies! Four of them.

Yellow hides them in plain sight.

We think of spring as the greening. Focused on green we ignore the dwindling thatches of last summer's dried grass bleached blond by winter. Truly, spring is yellow. Try to find yellow babies and you'll understand.

Today, the wind howls, the water ripples and all the Elmira seasonal residents hide.

Linking up with Abracabadra for Wordless Wednesday. Photos of unseen things by Charli Mills.

Bootsy Goes to School

Bootsy Followed Me to School One Day

The Dirt Road to the Schoolhouse

Chimmney & Bell Steeple

Backdoor Where Teacher Would Have Stood

Remains of Gold & Red Paint

Crack From Train Vibrations

Bootsy on Teacher's Back Steps

Buttresses

Girls & Boys Outhouses

Double-Seaters

Old Mossy Four Square Pad

Scratching Claws n the Boys Outhouse

View Across Train Tracks of Older School

Original Teacherage

Something Bristled the Cat

Memories Linger Next Door

It's attractive.

Even in the rain, two young women from Seattle pull their car down the dirt road that separates my property from the old Elmira Schoolhouse. I'm piddling the dogs in a broad brimmed hat, rain-slicker and Todd's boots.

"Is that yours?" One girl leans out the passenger window in the rain, shouts her question and points back to the school.

"No," I shout back. I walk over to the fence where they have stopped their car. "But I can tell you about it."

"Can we look?"

"Sure. You can look."

Elmira Schoolhouse, built for the children of immigrant Italians working on the railroad and the children of loggers and ranchers, stands in the rain 105 years old.

How many rainy, snowy or sunny days greeted the teacher and students?

It closed down after 45 years of service, following a population decline. Kids in the area were bused to Colburn, a beautiful two-story brick schoolhouse now someone's house.

Today, children are bused all the way to Sandpoint, almost 40 miles round-trip, not to mention the miles of winding through the hills and forests of this area to pick up the scattering of students.

Yet the school continues to attract attention. People stop, take photos, look at the outhouses and some eat their lunch on the front porch. The owners live north 15 miles in Bonners Ferry. They keep the place mowed and accept the attraction of their unusual place.

Today is my turn to gawk and poke around the school grounds.

It's sunny, following a week of cloud cover and rain. Bootsy, the resident barn cat, escorts me to the double gates which I unchain and let them swing open. I step out onto the hard-packed clay of the dirt road that goes to three neighbors behind my property and the school's. Gray puddles pool.

And Bootsy follows.

I start to hum, "Mary had a little cat, little cat, little cat. Mary had a little cat whose coat was black as coal. It followed her to school one day, school one day..."

Bootsy pads behind me, meowing so I know she is there. When I first arrived to Elmira, I'd often see Bootsy slinking in the tall grass between our house and the school. I think it is part of her kitty territory. She seems at home while I look at the concrete blocks, the buttresses, the roof that is half metal and half original cedar shakes now grown over with moss.

There's a vertical crack caused by train vibrations, or so I've heard. At some point after the building was erected, buttresses were added to protect against the vibrations that rock me at my desk in my own home next door.

Bootsy sits on the back steps and I look closely at what remains of faded paint. At one time the wood was was painted  the gold color of school buses and trimmed in barn-red. I try to imagine it in fresh colors.

I close my eyes and can hear children racing down the backsteps. Some run for the two double-seater outhouses and others head to the cement pad to play foursquare. The top step creaks as Teacher stands and watches over her charges.

I imagine Bootsy going to her. "Hello, Cat." Teacher in her dress carefully squats down to scratch the ears of a now purring cat. I open my eyes and it is silent.

The peat has been growing here for so long it feels like I'm walking on sponges. From behind the school I can see Elmira Pond, glistening dark blue.

Did Teacher watch the pond like I do now? Did she point out different ducks to the children? I can imagine an exuberant Pollinick boy saying, "That's where I live!" Were Italian accents still heard? Did any of the Kootenai tribe sit in desks here?

According to an historical report made by J. W. Ramsey, Bonner County Superintendent, "The population of Bonner County has increased very rapidly, as two years ago we had a school population of 2,781 and in 1910, 3,625." That was the year that this Elmira Schoolhouse was built.

Across the road and BNSF train tracks I can clearly see the old log cabin that was the original Elmira Schoolhouse.

Ramsey reported that the county was able to pay teachers a "very good salary" of $74.50. They could offer "long terms of school (8 months)." That would come to $596 for a school term. Ramsey claims this attracted qualified teachers from the eastern and central states.

It's not clear if the teacherage was included with the wage or not. The house provided for Teacher was next door and has its own private outhouse. I chuckle at the lock on the outside of the door.

Was that ever a temptation to lock Teacher in the privy? Or was the lock a later addition to prevent use? Most likely the latter although I hear children giggling in my imagination at the thought of the first.

Bootsy and start back toward home, and as we reach the road something unseen spooks the cat. She tucks and runs with a bristled tail as if one of our imagined school boys shot a marble her way.

I turn back to the school and waggle my finger at the ghosts of the past. I can almost hear Teacher chide, "Master Pollinick that was unkind. Hand me your marbles."

Every year that I have lived here, I have found an old marble. Beneath that peat, sod and pine needles there must be many, many lost marbles. But I agree with Teacher, no tossing them at the cat.

Bootsy and I continue, leaving marbles and memories next door.

Linking up with Abracabadra for Wordless Wednesday. Photos by Charli Mills.

Lords of the Flies

Unexpected Fluttering

Robin in the Snow

The Day Before

Yesterday Was a Beautiful Day to Fly

Even in Snow, He Still Sings to Me

Governing the Feast

A Female Oregon Junco

Red-Winged Blackbird Participates

Junco Gets in on the Feasting

Red Robin Plucking Flies

Something is fluttering outside my bedroom window. Groggy, I wake slowly. Without glasses I'm legally blind, whatever that means because I can see light and colors vividly. I just can't discern shapes or distances.

Spring is the fly season. When you live in the country and have more livestock for neighbors than people, it's a given. With our early spring, daffodils, ducks and flies abound. I yawn, stretch and grab my glasses.

No flies fluttering at the window, but snowflakes as big as rose petals swirl like a celebrity romance. It's nearly a white-out, the snow is falling so fast and thick. Yet, I catch a glimpse of orange and can barely see a robin through the snow.

Hard to believe that the day before I sat outside under the apple tree with Bootsy the barn cat, watching ducks dive on Elmira Pond and sipping an Easter brunch mimosa. A small aircraft flew low across the valley and I thought what an incredible day to fly. I had a ham slow-smoking in the BBQ and spread a blanket over the still damp peat and new green grass. I could see plump apple buds already.

Snow. A hard reality to accept so soon after a sunny day.

As the flakes continued the grass greedily sucked up the moisture. It seems that the flies were surprised, too. Normally, flies seek shelter at the first hint of rain. Flies can survive getting wet, but they can't fly. This makes them vulnerable to prey.

For whatever reason, the flies dropped like...well, like flies. They littered the snow like little black smudges as if the chimney was spewing ash. And this did not go unnoticed by the stealthy red robins. They flocked in the snow, the Lords of the Flies.

Other birds caught on to the feast. I'll have to write more about my young red-winged blackbird who has been serenading me like a courtly lover. He sits outside my office window and trills so sweetly I expect to see a cap and plume on his head. Nonetheless, the snow did not deter him. He sang to me then joined the feast.

If I were this fanatical about birds in the UK, I'd be called a twitcher. That suits my moment because now so many Lords of the Flies are flocking to my snow soaked lawn that I'm visibly twitching. Oh, look! There on a dry stalk in my garden -- an Oregon junco!

You can tell a slate-colored junco by its white-rimmed tail. It might be a she -- females are dark but can have more brown on the back. She seems brown about the shoulders. Both genders have pink beaks and twitter in flight. They are all so close to my window perch that I can hear the twittering.

Or maybe I'm twittering while twitching!

With my camera mounted on my face, I follow the junco from garden to fence to grass. Suddenly, I realize there is a large and previously overlooked presence in the grass. With perfect camouflage, it's a red-shafted northern flicker!

Normally swift and elusive, I capture the day's prize with still shots that I've posted at My Friend Flicker.

Next the robins regroup and devour more flies. I try to spot other birds I might miss in my daily routine of watching the pond. The flicker has dashed but now watches from a garden post. I decide to grab some coffee and smoked ham. The Lords of the Flies continue to swarm all day.

And I didn't have to swot a single fly. Snow in spring can be a boon.

Team Ringed-Necks

Ringed-neck on the Pond

Getting Frisky

Puffy Peaked Head

Black, White & Gray Markings

En Masse

Wonder What the Turtles Think?

Daffy Duck. That was my first though upon seeing my first-ever ringed-neck duck. Like the cartoon character, the males have a puffy and peaked black head. Unlike the cartoon, though, the males have beautiful gray, white and black markings.

The females, like other duck hens, are the safe colors of dry nesting grass and rushes -- brownish. Yet, just like the males, both genders of ringed-necks have a distinct beak. It's a blue-gray bill with a black tip and a white ring. It's easy to spot with the binoculars.

What isn't easy to spot is the cinnamon-colored ring that encircles their necks. It is fro this ring that they get their name, but I'll be darned if I can see the marking. This is my third season of trying to spot it and I can't see a cinnamon-colored ring. I can see the white ring on beaks; not on necks.

This is a diving duck and no surprise there. Elmira Pond has enough tadpoles, early peepers, fish and aquatic plants to attract divers. Dabblers stop over, too but not as frequently as the divers. And ringed-necks are impressive divers. They can go as deep as 40 feet where they prefer to dine on bottom aquatic plants.

Like mallards, ringed-necks will sleep, floating on the pond. I can tell when they are sleeping because they twist their heads back to lie their beaks upon their backs. How peaceful to sleep and float en masse with your brethren. The sleeping group looks like bobbing tuxedos with more males present than females.

So far, I've counted five males and three females. They are monogamous and solitary nesters which always surprises me each year when they turn up in a group with odd numbers of genders. By May the males will be gone. I've not seen baby ringed-necks on the pond. Ducklings remain a favorite food of eagles and we have a hearty population in this valley. Or maybe, I just can't see the ducklings among the hiding rushes.

March Madness is fun for spotting the colorful males. They get frisky and beat at the water with their wings. After their "games" they will move on.

This is part of a March Madness Series. Vote for your favorite team!