I’ve been trying to get a photo of the bunnies that shows their size relative to one another, but I’m afraid this isn’t it.
😉
If nothing else you get an idea of the kooky things I try to let everybunny have a little freedom without hurting one another in the process. Cricket is the big, big-eared bunny closest to the exercise pen that serves as a temporary fence. Little loppy-eared Peeper is on our side of the fence waiting for Cricket to get close enough so that she can attempt a bite at Cricket’s nose through the fence. Boomer is reclining in a sunbeam in the background, unconcerned with the feminine territorial battle being played out before him. As long as he has a comfortable spot to nap in, he’s happy.
Peeper weighs less than half what the Flemmies weigh, yet she is the more aggressive one and spent all her *out* time at the fence, rather than exploring the rest of the house. Once I got tired of keeping her from biting off Cricket’s nose and put her back in *her* room, she promptly fell asleep for the remainder of the afternoon.
Exercise pens make a great safe place, indoors or out, to exercise a bunny that lives in a cage. They’re also an excellent alternative to cages, so long as your bunny isn’t a jumper. Peeper could never live in one because she can jump higher than the pen when she means to.
Word cloud 2
I posted one of these last year around this time and thought I would try it again to see how it had changed. The idea is that it analizes your blog and lists the most common words in the *word cloud*. The nicest change since last year is that I see many of your names there. Thanks for your continuing friendship.
In case you’re feeling mindless also and would like to give it a try – click here.
Another Pine Barrens mystery
I took this pic back in late December during a visit to the cranberry bogs in South Jersey when I was looking for those elusive Tundra Swans. I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out what it is and understand now why I didn’t find any birds that day. Guesses anyone? Have you come across any similar devices when out birding?
Winter bloom
Maybe yesterday’s greenhouse beauties were too gaudy for your taste – it’s easy to be bold and beautiful when you’re lovingly tended by paid staff and live in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment.
Is your preference instead for the frilly fragrant blooms of this witch hazel in the snowbound garden? Do you find their ruffled paper-confetti flowers more beautiful, or admirable, for their brash defiance of the snow and ice?
Just asking!
Maybe I’m looking for meaning where it doesn’t exist, or playing with metaphors just to amuse myself, but not a single person paid any mind to this plant as they passed it by on their way into the greenhouses yesterday during my visit to the garden center. Primroses and pansies and coddled orchids were worthy of attention, but not this common plant putting on its vernal show for all to witness for free.
Spring is where you find it and, of course, where you choose to look. I’m at the point that any flower, or other sign of spring, however humble, causes me to stop and take notice. All the little steps away from winter bring us closer to warmth and the greening of the landscape.
When the retailers decide to flood the market with colorful flowers really has nothing to do with spring. If we followed them, we’d be celebrating Halloween in late August. We laugh at that idea, but are willing to buy into it in late March when we’re desperate for an end to winter and cold. But if you have a garden or are attentive to the signs, even the green shoots of snowdrops and crocuses, without any blooms yet, can work their magic and convince you that spring is on its way, however reluctantly it comes sometimes.
The miracle of March is working, mostly unseen. By May, when all the world is green and humming with life, we’ll have lost all sense of proportion. For now the first crocus or the simple witch hazel are a gentle reminder that spring isn’t just a dream.
Spring tonic
What better antidote to snow and rain than a visit to a greenhouse! I was smart and left my money at home and just wandered around enjoying the moist warm air and the colorful flowers. I was very tempted by these *designer* baskets (with price tags to match), but think I could put together something just as nice with things I already have once I find some little pansies that need a home. I feel a little silly taking photos in a public place, but find them useful later when I’m looking for ideas and inspiration for container plantings.Don’t like the weather?
Not much to say today, but I do have an addition to the list of things I love about my job. The weather for the last week has been unseasonably warm; near to 70 degrees on Wednesday. But late yesterday a cold front came through and it’s been raining ice and snowing all day today. The view outside the copy room window at the office was very wintery:
I often stand at this window and watch for a Great Blue Heron that visits our *pond* – usually there’s a few Canada Geese and some Mallards. Last summer we had a bunch of baby snapping turtles dig their way out of the banks of the pond and under the chain link fence that surrounds it. I was talking about the weather, wasn’t I? See how easily I get sidetracked by birds! Anyway… so it was very cold out today. Winter on the outside.
But inside it was a balmy 81.5 degrees! Yesterday it got up to 84. A summer’s day to go with my coworker’s tropical postcards there in the background. It’s so nice to be dressed for the winter weather and have to sit at your desk and sweat day after day! I love it!
The summertime is even better because I can go to the office and freeze my ass off! I have this pretty blue serape from Mexico that I wrap myself in for the summer months because it’s usally about 50 degrees.
I’m trying to be funny, but I sense that I’m not fooling anyone here. So I’ll end this with an invitation to any of you that are suffering through the last few months of winter in the frozen north to come and visit me at work someday. Whatever the weather, you can count on the opposite once you step inside. I’ll be the one alternately fuming or freezing in the back corner.
Where is your Walden?
Thoreau believed that we all have our solitary places; places we go to in order to escape a world that closes in on us; a place neither physical nor geographical, but instead mental – a state of mind that exists within all of us and which offers the chance to think and to listen.
Thoreau called his place “Walden” and I’m wondering about what name I might give to my solitary place. Where is it that I take myself to be away from the here and now? Would it be a place like this sand trail through the Pine Barrens? Is that solitary place more about being very present in the moment and separate from memory and its weight? What view in my mind’s eye quiets the thoughts and endless questions from an overactive mind?
There is a place that I feel peace and safety apart from the world, but I don’t know that it’s one that I can photograph. It’s part blue sky and loneliness, the music of water and birdsong, the dazzle of sun and the whisper of wind, and the question of what lies ahead, just around the bend and out of view.
3/14/07 Mid-week bunny fix
Cricket, my stitching buddyNo, I’m not ready to give an update on my progress with the cross-stitch project! You can see that there hadn’t been much when this photo was taken. There still isn’t much.
Notice the nicely deconstructed wicker chair leg. One of these days I’ll sit down there and the whole bottom will fall out to the sound of the bunnies laughing at me.
Confusion reigns
My remedial reading students at the community college had their mid-term exam last week. I’ve been moaning and groaning since last Wednesday trying to get the exams graded. I’ve mentioned that the department changed the course; not so much the curriculum, but the method we are using to bring these students up to college-level reading skills. We’ve tweaked things some since the fall semester and made the mid-term more difficult. So far I’ve seen mostly low C’s, a few F’s, and one B. Not promising.
The course I’m teaching is the second in the series, yet these students are not reliably able to find the main idea of a paragraph or to make inferences about what they’ve read. Those very basic skills used to be covered in the first course and in the past I spent most of my time working on higher-level college reading skills and study strategies. It seems now that students are coming to me without those basic abilities which makes me wonder what in the world they’re doing for the first semester of the course.
Anyway, Lynne recently shared some funny student responses to math test questions. Most of them were very creative and showed that the student had a bright mind, but maybe just forgot to study for the test. It occurred to me that you might like a look at the work my students are doing. I’d like to think their answers are funny and show creative thinking, but I’m afraid not.
The mid-term was based on a short article about nutrition and students were expected to read the article and use particular strategies that they’d been taught to help them understand what they’d read. There were also questions to guide their reading that required them to find the main idea of certain paragraphs and to make inferences about the meaning of particular passages. Every single student got this question wrong:
The text reads: “Recent research shows that our food choices rival transportation as a human activity with the greatest impact on the environment. By 2020, people in developing countries will consume more than 39 kg of meat per person each year – twice as much as they did in the 1980’s. The people in industrial countries such as the United States will still consume the most meat – 100 kg a year – the equivalent of a side of beef, 50 chickens, and one pig each.”
Students were asked to explain in their own words what the italized sentence means. Some responses:
- “Our food choices make us how we act and how much energy we have.”
- “People who are competing for the same thing can have an impact on the environment.”
- “It means that we ask for so much food that we will need more deliveries of it in bigger quantities.”
- “We eat food that we can get to that is close to us.”
- “It means that consuming more food in the future is going to be a result of people being more active than before.”
- “People eat while on the go and don’t take time to eat a good nutrient meal. It is also easy to transport food.”
- “Since foods are easier to transport people are eating more meats than ever before.”
- “Food is competing with us, it lowers us in.”
- “We can’t walk long enough because we are to fat. So now in stores they have electronic carts to help these people get around. Not a good thing.”
Can you hear me moaning and groaning? And screaming?!? I shouldn’t make fun, but they are clueless.
I don’t think this question, or the article as a whole, was very difficult. What do you think? Can you find any correct responses? Am I just being too tough?
Pine Barrens birds
I mentioned that I had gone on a bird walk in the Pine Barrens yesterday. While I’ve spent a fair amount of time wandering around there on my own or with a friend who knows the place well, this was the first time I went with a group of birders led by a naturalist from NJ Audubon. The weather was perfect and there were only 8 of us in the group – a plus as far as I’m concerned. I hate birding in big groups of chatty women and hardly ever bird that way anymore. I’m glad I went along though, as I learned a few new spots to visit again on my own.
I don’t ordinarily share trip lists here, but we had a few special sightings that make this list worth reading. Going to the Pine Barrens isn’t really about seeing huge numbers of birds; the habitat doesn’t lend itself to great variety, but I think that makes each new species worth the effort of walking through all that sugar sand!
Pied-billed Grebe
Tundra Swan*
Canada Goose
Wood Duck
Ring-necked Duck
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganser
Turkey Vulture
Bald Eagle
Red-tailed Hawk
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Downy Woodpecker
Eastern Phoebe
Blue Jay
American Crow
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper (singing!)
Carolina Wren
Eastern Bluebird
Fox Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Junco
Not bad for a late winter day in the Pinelands! The singing Brown Creeper was a treat, as were the Bluebirds, and the Bald Eagle. I was most thrilled to find the Tundra Swans that I’ve been looking for since late November – there was a nice group of about 40 birds feeding in one of the cranberry bogs at the Franklin Parker Preserve. We also found a pair of Wood Ducks way back in the preserve in one of the dikes, but they flushed before I was able to really take in their beautiful colors. I don’t see Wood Ducks often at all, even though they’re a very common nester here in NJ. Anyway, it was a good day.