A BAD DOG TRIES, BUT FAILS, TO BE GOOD

Autumn Leaves

IT'S COOL AND OVERCAST IN BIRDLAND. In short, a perfect Autumn day. The Hackberry trees in our yard shed brown leaves that gather in the driveway, and soon I will rake them up for the deep litter bedding in the chicken coop. So far, not much color in our yard or in the woods beyond the fields—just the green is not so brilliantly emerald as it was in summer. I did see a sugar maple in town yesterday that had half turned a bright pink-orange. That is, one side of the tree had turned, the other side was still green.

Cullen, the good dog.

I sit on the porch to enjoy the breeze, bundled up as I am. The cat just came out from under the ornamental quince to join me. Ursula barks from the line on the other side of the house. She, the bad dog, is on probation, but I will let her off in a minute. She is sneaky, that one. She knows she is not to go into the chicken coop and steal food, so she waits patiently on the walk up to the kitchen door until we go inside. We watch from a window—sometimes the window in the kitchen door, sometimes over the kitchen sink. She watches the window until we go away. She even waits there a minute more, steadily gazing at the window.

I am but an innocent dog.

When she thinks she is in the clear, she v-e-r-y c-a-s-u-a-l-l-y moseys toward the coop. She takes a circuitous route, behind the garage. But sometimes we are still watching from the window with our coffee, and when I see her come around the other side to go into the door of the coop, I will knock loudly on the window. Then she will run back to her station on the cobblestone walkway and scrutinize again the kitchen door. "Who me?" she asks with her innocent gaze? "I was just, you know, visiting with my little feathered friends."

This morning, though, the knock did not call her back because I had just put out a pile of compost for the chickens to scratch and gather. Is there anything tastier than orange peels, apple cores, egg shells and coffee grounds? All that deliciousness is just too much for a bad dog trying to be good. I had to run out yelling, "No, No No!" And still she gobbled as fast as she could. What could I do but catch her (easy to do when she stands with her head down, gorging as fast as she can) and put her on the line for a while.

She is getting used to the line. Cullen doesn't mind it, and we put him there after his meals for a while, so he doesn't run off following the deer and come back full of prickles and cockleburs. He takes it in stride and lies in the driveway watching for whatever comes around the corner and down the hill. But Ursula used to fret quite a lot. So mournful was her cry that we would not leave her on the line too long. So anxious was she that we could not leave her unattended or she would tangle herself in the bushes. But now she takes it in stride. Her barking this morning is just because Jim has come out in his white truck to check the soybeans. Are they dry enough to harvest? We both watch him, I from the porch, Ursula from the driveway. He walks down the grass waterway a bit and over to the beans and bends over them, feeling, I suppose for dryness. Then he hops back in his truck and drives away. Will he be back today with the combine? Will the rain that seems to be gathering in the low clouds to the west hold off? (And will I gamble, and hang my laundry out anyway despite the lack of sunshine and warmth? Probably. It should be done with the wash cycle by now.)

Ursula has settled back down, and I can see her in my mind’s eye, lifting her nose to the breeze, letting the wind lift her black fur a little. I'll go in a minute and let her loose from the line, but for now I'm going to sit here just a little longer, looking off into the bronzed fields and enjoy the morning.

Sit in Beauty; Lie in Peace; Blessed Be

Mary Lucille Hays lives in Birdland near White Heath. If you’re missing your weekly dose of Birdland Letters in the News Gazette, you can still read them every week in the Piatt County Journal Republican and at www.letterfrombirdland.blogspot.com. Consider subscribing to support your small-town newspaper. You can follow Birdland on Instagram and Twitter @BirdlandLetters. Mary can be reached at letterfrombirdland@gmail.com or via snail mail care of this newspaper.

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OF MONARCHS AND PINEY WOODS

Monarchs Abound

It's a sunny, cool day in Birdland, and we have passed the corner of the year bringing us to Autumn. My corner meadow is now dressed in fall colors of Goldenrod and the dotted lace of White Heath Asters. The bees like it. The small trees I intend to pollard are getting to be pruning size, and indeed, last year I cut the top off of the largest sycamore, hoping to get that nice rounded shape. Cottonwoods quake in the cool breeze. I'm not actually sure will take to this kind of pruning, but I figured I'd give it a try since they’ve come up so abundantly. Other trees I’m trying are mulberry (which take well to pollarding) and redbud (another experiment). I came out to the porch to feel the wind. I suppose it's time to turn off the air conditioner and open the windows to the autumn coolness. Next to me the Elephant Ears are shaking their heads slowly—back and forth, back and forth—enjoying the breeze too.

Sun Sets over the Corn

The beans are beginning to yellow, now the same color as the tassels on top of the cornfield to the east. The field to the west is a little further towards dry, the leaves just beginning to brown. I'm on the lookout for the Monarchs. They sometimes stop over here to rest in the neighbors' mulberry trees on our lane. When I was walking in the cemetery up the hill with my friend, Cate from Cincinnati, we caught sight of first one monarch, then another, then a dozen. They were fluttering around the trees on the edge of the old piney woods (which no longer holds many pineys, having been planted as a Christmas tree plot and never harvested. They, all but a few staunch holdouts, died one year after a bitter winter bracketed by a couple of summers of drought. It might have been the weather stress, or maybe they just lived out their natural life. The mass die-out of the pineys shows another failing of monocultures. A thousand trees planted in rows one summer by six enthusiastic kids may all die together seventy years later. A diversified forest—or farm—is the way to go.) But back to the monarchs. They were fluttering and lighting on the leaves, some of them folding their wings back to rest, hiding the bright colors to look like autumn-yellowed leaves. I told Cate about how they often stop here to rest up before their long migration. Or maybe they stop here every year, but I am only occasionally aware enough to notice. After visiting the family plots and meandering around the headstones, trying to read the inscriptions blurred by acid rain, we set off down the hill. We found another congregation of monarchs in the lane, but not as many as I have seen in years past. Maybe it was just the welcoming committee. I'll keep an eye out. But back, again, to the Pineys. (And this letter meanders like the chicken I'm watching in the yard, tail up, head down, walking and pecking after whatever catches her attention.) Despite its unnatural form, the Piney woods seemed magical to me: forty foot trees, green at the top, but brown underneath, soft cushion of needles, regular, curving rows that followed the curve of the terraces my great-granddad had put in on the sloping parts of the farm to protect the land from erosion. (After his death, the terraces were destroyed on the rest of the farm, but those in the piney woods were hidden, protected from the careless plow.) As a child, I used to go alone to climb up the ladder of branches in one of the pines on the edge of the plot, to sit high in the tree and watch what the wind blew over the western horizon. Nobody knew I was there, I guess, since I never got scolded for it. But if anyone bothered to look east from the house, they would see me sitting high in the tree, or maybe just a splotch of blue overalls, and, boy, would I have heard about it.

On first glance they look like yellowing leaves. Look closer.

Later, when we moved out to the farm, we began to cut our Christmas trees from the pineys. The kids would try to see from the ground, which tree was most promising, and Michael would fell the tree with his chainsaw. (Sometimes we would guess wrong and wind up with a lopsided tree, but we decorated it anyway.) The pines were so close together that often out tree would only fall partway before being caught in the arms of another. My husband would cut the angled trunk again, and sometimes again, before if would fall all the way to the ground. Then we would top the tree and drag it home.

Fly in Beauty; Congregate in Peace; Blessed Be

A DRIZZLEY DAY ON THE PORCH

Emerson and Minnie Mae in foreground
Big hens in back

In Birdland, we sit on the porch in the gentle drizzle. The roof keeps us from getting wet, but the chickens don’t seem to mind the rain, continuing their slow meander through the yard, digging and pecking.


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