The Barn Swallows June 16, 2010

After this year’s long rainy season, the weeds had taken over my gravel driveway, and it was time to fight back. I settled into a pleasant morning of bending and pulling out thistles and dandelions while listening to interviews with several political activists on West Marin radio – KWMR, which broadcasts from just down the street.

Two birds with forked tails carved quick arcs through the brilliant sky above me, and I spotted their nest on the back of the studio. It was a work of art in scalloped mud and feathers, a large tea cup plastered on the cedar siding under the overhang. Huddled inside were three small barn swallows, their fuzzy heads poking out and beaks occasionally opening wide, anticipating a treat from their parents. Who am I to interrupt? I moved my operation farther from them, but couldn’t resist visiting the nest often that day to revel in the wonder of it all.

The Sheep May 28th, 2010

We leapt out of the car to unlock the door and Annie’s friend emitted a cry – sheep! Indeed, the newly fenced-in pasture of our neighbor contained a small herd of sheep, 6 white and 1 black. A few seemed to be recently shorn, but most were overwhelmed by their wooliness - exuberant bundles of fluff on toothpick legs. The flock clumped together, and when one sheep moved, the rest followed behind, cutting a swath through the tall green grass. “All we like sheep?” (Handel, I think).

And now for my sister’s first and best-loved poem:

Two little wooly lambs, a sister and a brother.

Two little wooly lambs, looking for their mother.

The Creek May 23, 2010

Whenever I am “downtown”, I pop over to the corner of C and 3^rd streets looking for the quail. I have yet to find them there again.

But finally the little path in the Giacomini pasture, which is now being reclaimed as wetlands, is dry enough for a morning stroll. I grab my morning java and pain and walk along the path to Lagunitas Creek, just as it picks up steam from under the bridge. I sit on the stones, a sole plover on a little island keeps me company. With time I notice too many songs – an iambic tetrameter follow by a high pitched report and a low buzz that sounds down-right un-avian. A western bluebird hops from twig to twig and a goldfinch brightens the neighborhood.

I bask in the calm of a warm new day, shaking off the cold westerly wind of yesterday afternoon, a relentless spring feature. Tiny insects flit about the creek but none pays me any attention. Finally, a person stirs from within a house hidden behind the live oaks on the far side of the creek. The plover flies off and I decide it is time for me to head out, too.

I take the other part of the path deep into the old cow pasture. It is lined with clover and Queen Anne’s lace, chamomile and wild arugula. There are any number of grasses that I can’t identify – green, brown, purple, and yellow. Some day I will figure this out.

I march on – can I walk all the way to Inverness on this path? I feel like Moses on the Red Sea. Finally, I stop – the path has ended for now, but I see two tracks of plastic pink pendants, surely marking the fence lines for a walk on another day.