jumpingfish

This is the pergola over the back patio. We’ll need to remember this when summer comes around.

Now. If we could just get some water to come out of the faucets.

A winter has descended on Austin unlike any I have seen in the (many) decades I have been here…

1. Finches and Birdseed

The bird feeders have been well stocked (and millet-free) since before the snow started falling, thanks to the fair and industrious Trudy. Although in the early afternoon Starlings scare everyone else away, in the morning the Lesser Goldfinches own the place. They peck at the seeds in the feeders and pick up the jetsam strewn about on the snow covered ground. Every once in a while, a yellow and black flash will arrive, but mostly it’s the greyish/greenish/brownish females and juvenile males.

Trudy stands transfixed at the kitchen window watching them.

2. Waxwings and Possumhaw

Down the street, there is a magnificent Possumhaw near the curb. Sadly, ours is male and so produces no berries. This one down the street is decidedly female, and its berries have been untouched until recently.

I glanced that way yesterday in the morning after the five inches of snow fell overnight. There was a fury of activity: Cedar Waxwings swooping in and swooping out, fluttering in the branches, frantically hopping on the ground where many red-orange berries were lying on the white snow. Today half of the berries were gone. Well gone in a sense, because strewn about on the snow- and ice-covered street and yards of four nearby houses was evidence (shall we say) of the berries that used to be.

3. Oak and Moss

There is a massive Live Oak on Old Fredricksberg Road just where the hill begins.  

It lost a limb last night as the freezing rain coated the trees. This tree in particular is struggling since it is between the street (which must have taken half its rootball) and a sidewalk (which was poured recently as likely damaged the other half). Its canopy is thinning. The Ball Moss is moving in.

Covered in ice, the weight of all that ball moss must have been tremendous. A large limb had crashed onto the street overnight. The ice-covered branches and twigs shattered as it hit the pavement. It was no longer so much an oak limb as a pile of ice shards, broken off bark, kindling, and piles of frozen ball moss.

It took about 20 minutes to move the mess out of the road. Thanks to Pete who pulled over to help move the huge main branch.

Winter wildlife — got water?

Winter not-so-wildlife — what’s this between my toes?

The test was halfway through. It was time for lunch. The kids had slipped their answer sheets into the test booklets and given them to the teacher who stacked them on a table at the front of the classroom.

She was about to pass out their lunches when I walked in. I was her lunch relief. She was free to go. I passed out the sack lunches from the cafeteria: a sandwich, a baggie of carrots, an apple, and chocolate milk.

When they have lunch during standardized tests, they are absolutely not allowed to talk. Thirty minutes of silence. With lunch distributed, all I had to do was keep them quiet.

There was a girl in the middle of the room who was reading a book. She wasn’t going to be a problem. And there were several whose heads were down and others staring blankly into space. No problem with them, either. But there were four boys in the far corner who were already chatting.

“Guys,” I said in a low voice. “No talking.”

Thirty seconds later, they were whispering.

“Guys.”

After the third time I got up and walked over. I tapped on one of the desks. “Come on guys, that’s enough.” 

And it was. Until they opened the baggies of carrots in their lunches.

Pop! One of them bit a carrot and it made a resonating sound.

About 30 seconds later. Pop! Another carrot. The resonant tone was different, and it came from a different part of the room.

Pop!

Pip! Pep!

Pip! Pep! Pop!

To my knowledge, there are no rules against resonant carrot popping. So I just ignored it all. And after about five minutes, the popping stopped. 

I think they ate all their carrots.

She let me know in advance. She was having her wisdom teeth removed. She was going to miss class. Did she return the next day? I think she did. She’s often the first one in the room, and we get to talk.

“Welcome back!” I said when I saw her. “How’d it go?” 

She explained how her sister told her that as she was coming out from under the anesthetic, she was in tears.

“I wasn’t in pain,” she told me. “But my sister told me that I was distraught and that I kept telling her that I had to do my algebra homework.”

How about that?