An Lily named Peaches

Peaches is a nice lily with a subdued color — between red and orange — and I call it “Peaches.” It comes up on the north side of the house but on the south side of the board fence so this area gets hot and generally stays dry. It gets an equal amount of rain and sunshine. Plants do well there and usually grow larger in that environment. I don’t know if that is how this color came about but it is a cousin to one bunch here on the east side of the house that are darker reddish-orange. They all have that different colored fringe on the edges.

Almost everything I grow here are perennials. Now and then I will get something like petunias in new colors like a fluffy white and yellow but those go out front where people can see them. The backyard is a kind of wildlife sanctuary and habitat. Birds and beasts don’t seem to mind colors.

Blue Jay in April

Some say George W. Bush brought on our Global Warming. All I know is the oceans are 2 degrees warmer and in many places that is enough to kill the coral and with it the food chain. It is coming — a day when Charley the Tuna is a factory of rusted tin cans and polar bears live in zoos and politician’s “Not In” signs are interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, live in the Situation Room.

Who would have believed the Republican Party would come apart like hooks on a bra strap in a bordello, but it did — no pun intended. You don’t hear much about it. Nothing like Bill Clinton’s escapade with what was her name? I wonder who the Republicans will trot out in 2012? Surely not the Wolf Killer or the aged, angry, 100 years in Iraq, wardog? But then I don’t think they got much left since the last great hope to run actually ran away with his mistress in Argentina.

All I know is that our birds are gone. None of the little birds — chickadees, titmouse, nuthatch, woodpeckers, finches, and big birds like the crows and hawks did not return this spring and are not here this summer. I hope, at least, they just migrated farther north and are all doing OK. If that is the case, and I hope it is, then it is part of Global Warming in our neighborhood.

Passing Time

Time came yesterday. I got through it in about thirty minutes. Nothing in it that I didn’t already know about or have seen it on television. I wonder how long some of the old popular magazines will be able to stay afloat as more and more people are reading magazines online. The same goes for our newspapers. My wife and I read the death news online every day. I don’t know why the death news interests old people more than young people who almost never look at the death news but it does.

I don’t even watch the news every day. Sometimes when I feel woozy and am in my cool living room chair, looking out at the trees across the street, I will turn on the LCD television set and click on #70 which is CNN. If somebody died, or if somebody took off and can’t be found, it will be on there all day long. CNN is good at milking tabloid news with their anchors on 4 hour stretches. Good looking lady news anchors begin to look like old sourpusses before the 4 hours is up and I usually flip them off.

The summer of 2009 isn’t like all other summers here in Brookville, Ohio. It used to be a place where I could stand in my backyard and photograph beautiful animals like this Coopers Hawk squeezing its prey to death. We are still a community of cornfields, soybeans and allergies. This is one place you can see giant boats parked in driveways and the closest lake is 67.82 miles and 1 hour and 18 minutes away at Celina, Ohio. A land of fence rows without fences and barns without animals — this landscape has a scarce supply of birds this summer. My Coopers Hawks have not returned and the chickadees, titmice, red-breasted grosbeaks, brown thrashers, red-bellied woodpeckers and the raucous crows are not here to be chased by blackbirds. I really miss these magnificent hawks. I think the birds are still on the map but farther north where it is a degree or two cooler. Perhaps Lima or Toledo, but maybe as far north as Cleveland.

This is Global Warming on the local level. The corn withers under blistering sunshine and flowers wilt in the garden. Rain and lots of it keeps hope alive but it costs money to make sprinklers work where I live. If I could I think I would plant Bush in the corner on the south side of the board fence where it gets the hottest.

My brother in law lives there. That’s him in the paddle boat. He is giving himself a thigh workout while taking his neices and nephews around his lake behind his house. It was a lovely day with bright sunshine and a great cool wind. It was a special get together for his Custer relatives and they all showed up for an afternoon that will be hard to top next year. I don’t think it can be topped because it took place at Wayne Lakes.