One of the many fine things about living in Ann Arbor is getting to meet students from all over the world. It’s especially fun to invite them over for holiday dinners, and experience our typical events through a new filter. Most recently, we had guests from China.

One, a young woman, took out her phone as we came to the table, which at first I thought rude, but it turned out she wanted photos for her family back home. She documented the place settings, the turkey, and the centerpiece, causing me to take a second look at them. Yes, a 22-pound turkey’s pretty large; there were a darn lot of pieces of silverware at each plate; and those were certainly a mix of dead, dried hydrangeas and fresh chrysanthemums in the vase.

The reigning Greatest Holiday Dinner Hit for our guests over several events is cranberry relish, the kind with oranges and sugar, but not too sweet. I love the look on the face of a guest trying it for the first time: surprise, and then delight. Very like the first time I tasted a soup dumpling.

When the meal’s over we like to say, ok now, what part seemed the strangest to you? Pumpkin pie? Bread stuffing? In the case of our guests from China it was unanimous: the strangest thing was to serve a hot dessert with cold ice cream on top. So maybe we should say “American as pie a la mode.”

I’m pleased and grateful for these insights into things I take for granted. It’s only a very small step toward sympathy for other people’s points of view, but sympathy is in dire short supply these days. We need all of it that we can get.

I don’t swim, hate to get wet, and think palm trees look ridiculous. But I love mountains, flowers, waterfalls, local histories, and legends. Plus Hawaii was the only of the 50 states that I’d never visited. And the volcanoes sounded interesting. So when Doug had a meeting in Hawaii, I tagged along.

The place was so beautiful, you could be blindfolded and still take gorgeous pictures of it. Just wave your camera around and hit the shutter at random. Doug thought I’d be disappointed that there was no lava flowing, but ground that was hot underfoot, steam rising eerily out of it, — well, that was enough excitement for me. They say Pele, the Goddess of Volcanos, goes where she wants, and when she does there’s nothing for it but to get out of her way. She is the hot red flowing lava; she created the chain of islands that are the State of Hawaii today. She fights with the Rainforest God, and they barge in on each other all the time. I could see all around me that this was true.

These are some of the details at the heart and history of the Hawaiian people, and I don’t know nearly enough of their traditions to treat them properly. But look at us – look at people: no fur, no fangs, no claws. We wouldn’t have survived anywhere except in a climate like Hawaii’s, however far away it was from Pele’s islands: comfortable day and night all year long; fur not necessary; food falling from the trees. But it was only after we learned to handle fire and make clothes and tools and canoes and spread all over the world, that people made it to Hawaii, finding again the conditions that gave us all our start.

 

 

Birds are passing through Ann Arbor on their way to summer elsewhere, and the yard is sporadically full of songs I don’t usually hear. A frost was predicted for last night, so I gathered what was left to gather in the garden and brought it inside. The frost didn’t come, but even so, it’s interesting to see how different plants react to the slacking of the light: the zinnias and cosmos carry on, while the tomatoes have decided that’s enough for one season. Trees are starting to turn; the sugar maple brings on its famous red-gold slowly, from the top down.

One of the most beautiful color-turners around here is the burning bush, with a glow that bursts through even stormy days. I have several burning bushes in my yard, clearly planted deliberately, long ago, as landscaping elements. In some parts of the country they’re considered invasive, and I’m sure they would like to be invasive here, but the deer won’t let them. The large, older bushes date from a time before the deer population was out of control, but have now been deer topiaried to look like enormous, leggy bonsai. Any little sprouting ones that pop up get nipped down to nothing. I’ve been told they’re poisonous, but no one told the deer. It’s nice to see the deer being useful.

The frost didn’t come, but it’s only a matter of days till it does.

Harvest is over, and cleanup has begun. And then more planting: one hundred more narcissus bulbs will go out in the yard, and a few dozen tulips will flourish beyond reach of browsing deer, inside the garden fence. And then we all get a well-deserved rest. Except for the migrating birds, who have a long trip ahead of them. Feed well on the seedheads I’ve left standing for you, birds. Buen viajes on your way south and I’ll see you in April.

A chipmunk got into the garage today, and thence into the house. I can’t say for certain whether Zerlina brought him in or chased him in, but by the time I was aware of him she was in hot pursuit.

Oh great, I thought. I’ve brought in all the tomatoes, so the chipmunk has come inside to dine on them.

A mouse that gets under a bookshelf will hide for a while, but eventually will come out for food or water, and the cat on stake-out will pounce. But experience shows that a chipmunk, freaked out by finding itself in a living room, will stay under the furniture

until it dies. This causes Zerlina to lose interest, so we have to locate the moldering critter and dispose of it ourselves. Therefore when a chipmunk gets in, we wait until Zerlina inevitably corners it in the living room, close the living room doors with the protesting cat on the other side of them, arm ourselves with a broom, and open wide the doors from living room to the deck. Some chipmunks seize opportunity when first it knocks; others need encouragement, which is what the broom is for. This was a brighter than average chipmunk and made for the door right away, though it chose to squeak through the crack between door and doorjamb, rather than the big wide open space.

Considering the damage chipmunks do in my garden, I was not full of tender regard for this one. I wouldn’t have wept if Zerlina had killed it, but I wasn’t up to doing the job myself. Zerlina, my hench-cat, taking on the burdens for which nature has prepared you, here is my gratitude: a handful of kitty treats; a scratch behind the ears; ten thousand years’ accumulation of civilized respect.

 

Zerlina’s point of view is here.

This is not a metaphor or hyperbole or anything like that. No. I know there are more critters than you can shake a stick at in my yard, because I’ve tried it. Shaking sticks, fists, and random gardening tools in the front yard causes the deer, squirrels, woodchucks, chipmunks, and rabbits to run to the back, which causes the critters already in back to run around to the front.

The new pair of juvenile eagles haven’t discovered the joys of sitting around for hours on my fence and deck posts the way last year’s did. This has emboldened the earthbound deer, rabbits, and woodchucks to tramp on my flowerbeds, and the aeronautical squirrels and chipmunks to invade my barricaded tomatoes.

The chipmunks, if they’re having a world-weary day and not in the mood for climbing and jumping, run right up to the chickenwire, say some magic chipmunk word, and materialize on the other side. You may think they squeeze through, but I never see them do it. I see them run up to the fence and then suddenly there they are inside it, on their way to rip the critterproof netting over the tomatoes. My best defense turns out to be a nose-irritating spray

that keeps them from staying in the garden long enough to bite through the netting. It’s very satisfying to see them run in, turn around, and run out again, foodlessly.

And yet, they are cute, and they’re just trying to live. They have a libertarian attitude to private property: every critter for himself. Herself. Itself. They fight each other tooth and nail for seeds, nuts, possession of my deck. Chipmunks know nothing of government being instituted to secure everyone’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Unlike us.

 
But what does the cat say? Read it here.

 

 

Since the Art Fair ended we’ve had a long run of perfect summer days: warm but not stupidly warm, balmy but not damp unless it actually rains, which it’s been doing in moderate amounts and usually at night.

 

Inspired by this, I accepted an invitation to a classic summer event I had never experienced before. I went to a baseball game.

Comerica Park, where the Detroit Tigers play, is in the heart of the city, near the opera house. From the opera house parking structure you look right into the ballpark, which I’ve done many times and which always struck me as weird. I’d be all dressed up for an entertainment that combined symphony, theater, and dance, gazing into a crowd of people all dressed up for an entertainment that combined smashing balls with sticks and running until the balls came down.

I’m not taking a position on which is more weird, but I am now prepared to argue with people who say opera performances are too long. The baseball game lasted for 487 innings and they only sang two songs – the national anthem to start off, and Take Me Out to the Ballgame somewhere around inning 342.

But we had hotdogs and crackerjacks and beer and the world’s most expensive lemonade, on a beautiful summer evening, watching the sunset from our seats. The sunset was more action-packed than the game. Which the Tigers, surprisingly, won.

 

Want to know what Zerlina’s up to?
For the cat’s-eye view of life, click here

The first thing you learn about the Ann Arbor Art Fair when you move here, is that it will be hot and there will be thunderstorms, even if the weather before and after is mild and adorable. This year followed suit.

I have an attendance method that involves loose clothing, an air conditioned lunch, and a lot of iced tea. This finely honed discipline enables me to trawl for ceramics, paintings, and garden ya-yas across the whole fair, which is technically four fairs, from downtown Ann Arbor to the far side of campus. It’s a couple of miles as the crow flies but many more as the shopper wanders, hesitates, doubles back, and makes side trips for that lunch and iced tea.

Ceramics are heavy, so I count lugging them around with me as weight-bearing exercise. If you really like collecting objects ceramics are a great choice, because in the natural course of things the ones you have at home will break. This means you’re entirely justified in getting more.

Mid-ceramics, I took some actual dollar bills that were handed to me last month in exchange for my chapbook, and swapped them for a soft, beautiful, handmade, leather-bound blank book. Poems out, poems in. Like physics, right? Conservation of creativity.

Bags loaded with mugs, bowls, vases, and book, I staggered among booths and tea vendors. A breeze came up, very refreshing, as I made my way to the booth of an artist I especially admired, Andy Fletcher. See his work here. I was innocently buying a painting of a stormy landscape when a very enthusiastic thunderstorm moved in. We waited it out while Doug drove down to get the picture and me. Andy wrapped the picture in a big plastic bag, the last raindrops bidding it goodbye as he carried it to the car.

It looks splendid over the fireplace in my living room. The ceramics and book are splendid, too.

Find the cat’s point of view, here.

It turns out to be a lot of fun to have a five year old helping in the garden. He lives in a city house in San Francisco, with a front yard that pretty much defines itself right there, and a back yard consisting of a deck over a small patio. When I asked him if he’d like to

go into the garden with me, he said “Gardens are ridiculous.”

We went into my garden anyway. I showed him the asparagus patch, which is now all ferny tops, the spear season being over.

“Asparagus?!?” he said, incredulous. “Asparagus?!?” He laughed. I was making no progress against the idea of garden ridiculousness.

But when the next thing was to put compost on it, which meant digging dirt out of a big pile, carting it over to the asparagus patch, and dumping it between the ferny bits, he was into that. Like, literally into it. Kids and dirt are a classic combination.

After that, I suggested we check out the blueberry bushes.

“They’re green,” he noted. Yes, well, it’s early in the summer. But look! One blue one!

Guess I’m lucky he’s too young for eye rolls.

We walked by the squash plants with no squashes yet, the pumpkin

 

vines with no pumpkins yet, and the eggplant plants with no eggplants yet. Maybe I’ll try to get him to come out in August next year.

 

 

But at the tomato plants we ran into a little luck. I’d planted a single seedling called a Fourth of July tomato, and though

it was running a week late, there was one perfect, red, glorious if small fruit dangling there.

“Tomato!” he said happily as I twisted it off the vine. He bit into it with a look of absolute glee on his face, his smile half obscured by the first tomato of the season, juicy, bright, and not at all ridiculous.

 

 

 

— for Zerlina’s view of this visit, click here

I heard them before I saw them. “Dweeb! Dweeb!” they called mockingly to each other, voices high and screechy, almost like seagulls. My heart lifted. Juvies! We knew last year’s four-year-olds had sailed off to make their own lives, and we hoped Mama and Papa Bald Eagle had a new brood coming along, but spring came and went: the sky swirled with silent turkey buzzards, the yard vibrated with elegant songbirds, but the loopy, joyful, chaotic, confident chatter of the juvenile eagles was nowhere to be heard.

And now here they are, just in time for the Fourth of July. In their immature plumage, mottled brown and white without the gleaming head and tail effect of their elders, they own the skies, unconcerned with the other birds – which, however, become frantic about the juvies. The juvenile eagle siblings seem to care about nothing but playing with each other in joyful disturbance of the peace.

I used to hear the phrase “screaming eagle” and picture the bird on the National Seal with the arrows in its talons, striking out of the sky like a rocket. Reality is perhaps less majestic, but more relatable. Screaming is their song. Whatever else they use it for, they seem to use it to keep track of each other. Or annoy each other – after all, they’re siblings. And according to the National Seal, they carry a bunch of tickly olive branches in the other foot. I’m glad to have them back, even if they’re in the neighbor’s trees for now. I hope they come sit on my fence post again, terrifying the squirrels and bunnies into retreat.