I have been feeding the cottontails.  Two days ago I flushed one, which was feeding on the scraps from the fresh Brussels sprouts.  Every day I put out carrots and cut up apples and they are usually gone within twenty-four hours.  I keep checking so I know this for sure.  I like watching the tuft of their tail whenever I flush them as they hop away.

There were deer track in the front of the yard on the side.  Maybe, it is deer not cottontails that are eating the cut up carrots and apples I am putting out in front of the woodpile in my back yard.  Or maybe both animals.  I have seen deer tracks in my yard before but have only seen one deer in ten years on this property.  I have repeatedly seen rabbits in the backyard so I am not sure what animals are eating the carrots and apples I am putting out there.  They keep disappearing usually within twenty-four hours.

The three apples I put out behind the wood pile yesterday were gone.  I know there are rabbits in the backyard.  They hide under the big raspberry patch in the corner of our yard.  Deer like apples, too but they usually are not spotted so close to the house.  I always wonder where the cottontails live.  We see them occasionally.  The adults are big so they have no lack of food.  Of course, I help.  Usually we see them in the back–not in the yard for our dogs are there.  They love chasing them.  They usually don’t get the opportunity to do so, though.

The cottontails keep finding the carrots I put out behind the wood pile.  Twice within twenty-four hours they were gone.  They hang out under the raspberry patch near there.  The first ones we put out were big stalks, then we put out baby carrots.  The stalk of celery is also gone.  The carrots were a little old.  It did not make any difference to the rabbits.  They ate them any way.

My wife excitedly told me she saw from the kitchen window facing the backyard two bunnies chasing each other, going around the undergrowth.  I looked out the window and at first didn’t see any bunnies, but then two appeared, again chasing each other.  Later on, Momma Bunny appeared and decided to enjoy our grass nearby.  She was quite bigger than the other two.  The others must have been her kids.  I love watching cottontails from of (???) the window.

I have my eyes open for the two cottontails we saw in the backyard last week.  We tossed out vegetable cuttings in the bushes for them.  They were two plump rabbits grazing in back.  We do see them occasionally around but I had not seen any in awhile.  I wonder where they come from and whether they nest under that large white pine in back.  Ever since I saw them I keep peering out my kitchen window for them.  It is going on a week since I last saw them.  I just wonder where they go in the winter, whether they hibernate, or what?  It has been months since I last saw them.

Every time I glance out the front window I await the entrance of the first hummingbird.  I just put out nectar the other day for it.  In the past, the first one of the season came by the end of April so I know it could come any day now.

Yesterday (or the day before) I saw three cottontails munching on the grass viewed from the back window.  I never saw three at one time so I was thrilled.  Now every time I look out into the backyard I am looking for those three bunnies.

Nature has a way of surprising you:  when you least expect it, there it is another surprise.  It may be a northern mockingbird (you have never seen before in the yard) or some totally other different sight like the large orange salamander that we spotted twice.  Somewhere in back near the creek lives a large box turtle.  You never know and all you can do is live and view life with an expectant attitude.

The Nurse From Bricktown

Author: siggy

She came out of nowhere.  I asked my young nurse (during my brief hospital stay) where she was from:  she said, “Bricktown, New Jersey.”  I immediately asked her if that was near Lakewood.  And then asked her a flurry of questions.

She knew about Winwood Beach.  It was a vacation spot on the Manasquan River we often rented a bungalow for the weekend.  It could have been forty years the last time I was there.  I assumed the owner sold it a long time ago and the land was built on.  I was thrilled to find out it now was a park.

I used to love getting up in the morning to flush the cottontails.  There were the barn swallows who inhabited a garage there who would dive bomb every time I would go there near there.  I also picked wild blue berries in South Jersey every year.

Winwood Beach was the place where I used to throw rocks at the blackbirds perched at the barbed wire and once I hit one breaking his wing.  That was the last time I ever threw a rock at a bird.  The Beach was also not too far from The Atlantic Ocean.

She was familiar with Ocean County Park.  My Dad loved that park.  We lived two hours away but we often went there for the day.  My father upon entering that park would make sure the car windows were down so the smell of the virgin pines tree needles could drift in.

I also asked her about the park on the lake on route nine in Lakewood where we often went.  One memory I had of that place was my sister on a bamboo pole catching the largest yellow perch I had ever seen at the mouth of a stream there.

More of my childhood memories buried came back when I talked to this young nurse.  The conversation, unfortunately, was too brief.  I wanted to continue it but I did not have another opportunity. I owed my father a big debt for introducing me to nature by all our trips to South Jersey.

Every time I glance out my kitchen window onto the backyard and woods I am awed.  There is mystery there. Toads, turtles and cottontails live back there.  And I do not know what else.

Today everything is white and there is calm.  The snow is falling.  If I look carefully, I often see birds alight on some of the bushes.  It is wild back there.

Two summers ago I discovered a large raspberry patch in the corner of my property.  My wife made at least two pies from the berries I picked that year.

I love looking at the symmetry of the trees, how they placed themselves.  I know there is a higher power.  And every time I look at (???) that window I am assured of that fact.

There is a tiny creek back there which sometimes goes dry but the gully it created is at least six inches tall so it has been there for awhile.

Every once in a while I tramp around never certain what I will find.  I love surprises although they generally occur when I am not looking for them.  It is a piece of our property I love. I never know exactly what I will find.

It is wild and I want to keep it that way.  I hate manicured lawns.  I do not know why people are so proud of them.  And work so hard to keep them that way.  To me, it is an exercise in futility. I certainly don’t envy their neat lawns. I just love looking out my window.

I live in paradise.  My house is on the edge of the country.  There is a farm a quarter of a mile away.  goats3Within a mile a family has chickens, goats, and horses.  I love seeing the baby goats when they are so tiny.

The view from my large living room window is another portal into paradise.  I watch a steady stream of birds come into my view.  Birds I have never seen anywhere appear at my feeders like the magnificent red bellied woodpecker.  About once a year I see the exotic fifteen-inch red crested piliated woodpecker although it is far more likely I hear its wild cackle first.

We even had a brush or two from the local black bear who now stays away.  Our four dogs who now are enclosed by a large wooden picket fence now frighten him away.

There is so much beauty here and sometimes I do not see it.  I forget I grew up in the city–a large town.  I can see cottontails play outside from my kitchen window.  My two friends, a couple I have know for years, are going to visit us next week from NYC.  To them this is wild country.woodscreek I now have to view the land from their standpoint, change my perspective.  It is too easy to become blind to your surroundings.  Somehow I need to lift the veil that has grown in front of me and again see the beauty around me.

I had fallen in love with Central Pa.  I knew things had changed when once I was coming back from NJ (where I had lived for the past two decades) and I thought, “I am coming home”.  It is paradise here and I have to remind myself of that fact.  Every time I drive up the Juanita Valley, my breath is taken away by its magnificent view of the River and its surrounding mountains.  Even closer to home, when I drive into town from the back way and peer down into the Susquehanna River Valley, I can easily imagine I am viewing the fjords of Norway.  The universe is in my own backyard.  All I have to do is open my eyes.  It’s here.  I do not have to travel to Maine, Alaska or Hawaii.  It is all here.  Paradise.