Everything’s Ducky

The secret of success is to be like a duck, smooth and unruffled on top, but paddling furiously underneath.
— Bill Cosby.

The popularity of ducks— often described as the happiest animals in the barnyard— is increasing in many areas of the world.
— Dave Holderread.

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
— Douglas Adams.

I have a new pet. Her name is Penelope, and she’s a duck.

Sorry the head’s blurry, but she was swimming in the middle of our pool. Ever since our first pool, we’ve had mallard ducks visit every spring. Usually it was just the pair of ducks that wandered the neighborhood, whom we called Daphne and Donald. Sometimes it was Daphne and Donald and a few other bachelors.

This went on for years, even when the coyotes moved into the neighborhood. Then two things happened. We upsized the pool, and my neighbor found the corpse of a female duck buried in her vegetable garden.

For a couple of years we had no ducks at all, and we figured the duck must have been Daphne. Then last year we had a couple of male mallards visit while the cover was still on the pool. There’s usually a few inches of water on the tarp, and they feasted on seeds from the birch tree and probably mosquito larvae. They came a couple of times after the tarp was off, but didn’t really like the chlorinated water. Plus there wasn’t much to eat.

This year we had a new pair of mallards on the tarp of the pool, and sometimes they’d help themselves to the plate of birdseed I’d leave out for the birds on the patio. Sometimes it would be a male and female showing up, sometimes two or three males. But it wasn’t every day.

When they did show up, it was either early morning or late in the day. Once we took they tarp off the pool we were surprised they still showed up because the hubby was pumping the pool full of chemicals to try and get rid of the algae that had formed while it was covered. The pool was the greenest we’d ever seen.

But finally the pool was clean again, and soon only the female mallard was visiting. Then a week ago Friday it was cool enough one morning to have the deck door open. As soon as the female duck, who was having an early morning swim in the pool, saw me there, she hopped up out of the pool and waddled across the deck until she was almost nose to nose with Dinsdale through the screen.

Figuring she must be hungry, I filled a pie plate with bird seed and took it out to her. What surprised me was that she had absolutely no fear of me. She followed quite closely and when I set the plate down, she started gobbling the birdseed up.

And she’s been waited at 6 a.m. at the deck door for me every morning since. I took back my pie plate and gave her a plate of her own, and I named her Penelope. Twice she’s tried to come into the house, and once she started nibbling at my toes because I wasn’t fast enough with the birdseed.

Normally by this time of year, the ducks would have abandoned the pool because it was getting used for swimming. Not only is Penelope still visiting on a daily basis, she began visiting in the afternoon as well, just floating in the middle of the pool. I think she was having her afternoon nap there.

However, this presented a problem on Friday when the hubby wanted to have a swim and did NOT want to share the pool with a duck. A meaner person than I would have taken a video of it and posted it online. It was hilarious!

The hubby tried slapping the water with the pool net, and Penelope would swim out of reach and then hop onto the edge of the pool. So he’d wade his way over to her and splash her to shoo her away, and she’d fly to the other edge of the pool. He shoo her away from there and she’d fly over him and land in the water again. This must have gone on for about fifteen minutes before Penelope gave up and flew away.

She did not return that evening, but she was back the next morning, waiting on the deck. She only stayed for breakfast, she didn’t linger for a bath and a swim like she usually does, but the next day she hung around for a while, having a floating nap, and then jumping up on the edge of the pool to dry off.

I’m thinking there has to be another family in the neighborhood feeding her, I have no other explanation as to why she’s so tame. And I expect she’ll keep coming to visit for the foreseeable future.

At least until I run out of bird seed.

Monophysitism Monday

monophysitism ~ belief that Christ was primarily divine but in human form

Seriously? I’m sitting here looking out the deck doors and I’m seeing a few flakes of snow drifting down. Snow! I was sure today was April 2, not April 1, so why is Mother Nature playing such a cruel joke?

Okay, now I’m seeing more than just a few flakes, and it’s sticking to the deck (sort of). Go away snow! It’s officially spring and I have proof:

Daphne and Donald are back, and they brought a couple of friends. The picture’s not the greatest quality because I was taking it through the glass of the deck door, but I saw Daphne and Donald Thursday morning - they were near our front door when I went out to get groceries. Friday morning I was awakened by the sound of a duck quaking - specifically Daphne. Man, is she chatty! Almost as chatty as the grandbaby. ;-)

I guess she was just announcing that they were back, because she was only annoying noisy that one morning. Every morning since I’ve wakened up to there being at least one duck in the pool, just not all four at once.

Everybody have a good Easter? To me Easter always meant a new outfit to wear to church, in fact I have pictures of my sisters and I dressed in our Easter finery, complete with hats made by an aunt. There was chocolate, of course, usually those big, hollowed out bunnies or chickens waiting on the breakfast table for us.

I’m not much of a church goer, so these days Easter is more about the extra time off than anything else. And if a three day weekend confuses me, I’m sure you can imagine what a four day weekend does. :-D

Normally I do my grocery shopping on Friday mornings, but this time I had to shop on Thursday. And because the daughter had to shop after work, I got home from babysitting around my regular Friday time. Which made Thursday feel so much like Friday that I woke up on Friday thinking it was Saturday.

So Friday I woke up and had my special Saturday morning breakfast (eggs, bacon, and toast) and sat down in front of the TV to watch Flipping Vegas, my Saturday morning indulgence. Only it wasn’t on. That, of course, is when I realized it was Friday, not Saturday.

So yeah, the weekend was pretty confusing and I didn’t get a fraction of the stuff done I wanted to, but that’s kind of normal for me, isn’t it?

One of these days I’m going to get my act together and then watch out world!

Mungo Monday

mungo ~ waste produced in a woollen-mill

Did anyone catch my little faux pas last week?

I wrote a post for my other blog later on Monday and accidentally posted it here. It was up for almost an entire day before I realized what I’d done.

Well, the first true sign of spring arrived. Just as I was taking up supper, I spied a flurry of motion out the kitchen window and watched as Daphne and Donald landed in our pool. Of course the cover is still on it, but there was just enough unfrozen water for them to land in.

That’s actually a picture from a couple of years ago, but it’s the same pool and same ducks. I just couldn’t stop what I was doing to get a current photo. Picture the same scene only with a little less ice in the pool. ;-)

But it gives me hope that we’ve seen the last of the snow for this year.

In the ongoing saga of my ear ... I managed to get an appointment with the nurse at my doctor’s office, who had the doctor look at me, who set me up with an ear/nose/throat specialist. He held a tuning fork up to my head and said that currently I’m hearing through the bone on the left side of my head, not the ear, which is apparently a good thing.

At least it was good enough that he’s not going to put a tube in my ear. There is a hole in the ear drum, but it’s already started to heal. He’s pretty sure the fluid in my ear will dry up without help and my hearing will come back on its own, but if it doesn’t I’m to call his office directly to make another appointment.

Meanwhile, I’ve finished my second round of antibiotics and I still can’t hear but at least the railroad spike pain is gone. :-)

Julius, our poor sick kitty, seems to be doing a little better. Although he doesn’t appreciate being force-fed (no more than I like having to do it to the poor guy), I think he feels better having eaten. Because he’d been starving himself, we decided to start him with the steroid that’s supposed to ease the internal inflammation, and build his strength up a bit before starting him on the cancer drugs (which can have harsher side effects). He’s been tolerating the steroid well and today I start him on his cancer fighting drug.

Wish me luck!

Mecometer Monday

mecometer ~ instrument for measuring length

You know, it’s all about the baby steps. I bought myself a couple of little notebooks to write stuff down in so I don’t forget stuff, now I just have to remember to make use of them. You know, like writing down ideas for my Monday blog post. *sigh*

I’m starting to wonder if we’re ever really going to get spring. We’ve had the odd good day, but never more than two in a row. Lately it’s been cold and rainy, and some parts of Ontario got snow yesterday - including us. Granted ours was a really wet snow that didn’t stick, but still ...

However, that’s not stopping the grass from greening up and the leaves from unfurling on the trees. I see tulips and daffodils blooming in other people’s gardens (I don’t have any myself). But because of the up and down weather my sand cherries didn’t bloom this year and I still don’t have my roses uncovered. Nor my wild flower seeds planted, although the planters they’re going in are set up along the deck and filled with dirt.

Another sign that spring will find a way ... I saw Daphne’s babies yesterday. I was sitting at the dining room table watching a couple of mallards wandering around the back yard when I realized Daphne was swimming in our pond instead of the pool. Then I realized there were about half a dozen little ducklings milling around in front of the pond. By the time I’d got to the window to have a better look, the whole lot of them disappeared under the fence at the back of the yard.

I’m finally getting back into the writing groove, albeit slowly. At the very least I had enough words in to make my wordage report worth while. If you’re interested in how I did, you can check it out on my Other Blog.

And the truly amazing part about getting so many words in is the fact I’ve been on a bit of a reading binge lately - four books in four days. I really, really have to make time to start updating my Goodreads list. I started out at the beginning of the year swearing I was going to update at least once a month; I’m only five months behind so far.

Saturday night there wasn’t much of anything on television (even with all those extra channels we have now) so the hubby looked through our DVD collection and found a monster movie we hadn’t seen yet. He suggested that we make this a regular thing, watching our B movies on Saturday night for my review on Wednesday.

As I discovered last Wednesday, it’s hard to review a movie you saw months ago. Kind of like trying to find something to say about a book you read months ago. Which is a real shame because we’ve seen a plethora of really, really bad movies so unless I see them again, I probably won’t be including them.

This means my Wednesday posts will be as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. So be sure to check back for my review of ... War of the Monsters. Ooo, scary!

Wednesday Fail

Okay. So I didn't exactly forget my Wreck This Journal post, I just didn't have a chance to do any wrecking last week. But I don't want you to leave empty handed, so I took a couple of pictures for you of other things. :-)

First we have an orchid in bud:

This was very exciting for me. I love orchids. A long time ago, when I worked in a grocery store, I used to admire the orchids in the plant department, but since I was only getting minimum wage, I couldn't afford one. However, I made friends with the plant lady and she had two orchids that were on death's door that she sold me for $5.

I took these orchids home and nursed them back to health, and lo and behold, against everyone's expectations, they bloomed. Granted they'd only get two or three blossoms on their bloom stalks, but the blooms would last for weeks.

I also had an orchid I'd started from a seedling that took seven years to bloom, but boy was it worth the wait. The blossom was huge.

Now we fast forward to a couple of years ago when we had an extremely hot summer and I learned the hard way that orchids do not like air conditioning. The orchid I'd started from scratch was a few yards away from the air conditioner, but in the direct line of cold air. And the two I'd nursed back to health were on a table beside the air conditioner.

I thought I'd lost them all, but I was able to nurse one of my two from the grocery store back to health. During the winter I put it on the kitchen window ledge so it'd have lots of sunlight, and it seemed much happier. Then one day I noticed it was getting a bloom stalk. I kept turning it to keep it from touching the cold window until the stalk was long enough that I could gently twist tie it to a stick in the pot.

Today my vigilance was rewarded when I saw this:

I can't help wonder how many of those buds I can get to bloom. :-)

And now for something completely different . . .

Remember I was telling you the ducks were back? Yesterday I could see water splashing up from the pool and went to see what was going on. I remember how much fun Daphne used to have taking a bath in the pool. Well, Daphne wasn't having much fun. She had two male ducks after her and they seemed to be trying to drown her - they kept shoving her head under the water. So I went out an yelled at them, and they took their argument onto dry land where they chased her into the neighbor's yard.

Then this morning, when I was leaving for the gym, I heard a rustling in the front garden. I just figured it was the wind. But when I came home I noticed this:

You might need to click on it for a better view, but it looks like Daphne found the perfect place to hide.

I'd say spring has well and truly sprung, wouldn't you? ;-)

Macrotous Monday

macrotous ~ big-eared

Thanks to some serious rain we had last week, the snow is finally gone. At least from our yard it is. The house behind us still has some snow showing in the grove of trees in their side yard, but not a great deal of it. But while our days are warming up, the nights are still cool enough that there's a skim of ice on the pool in the mornings. This is not making our feathered friends very happy.

Yes, that's right, our little ducky friends are back.

Daphne and Donald checked out the pool early last week, but it was still mostly frozen. So by the time the water on the tarp had thawed enough they could be swimming in it, they kind of disappeared. But they were back on Saturday. The only spent a little while in the pool, then they relocated to the pond garden in the back of the yard where they hunkered down for the day.

I didn't get a picture of them, but I did get a picture of this guy yesterday:

Isn't he pretty? He was a little skittish though and jumped up on the side of the pool as soon as he heard the sliding door open. Then a little while later he was joined by another male but neither of them wanted their picture taken. I'm sure it would have been a different story if I'd had any bread crusts for them. ;-)

I was actually surprised to see him. I heard him this morning, but when I looked out there was a film of ice over the pool and he was standing on the edge. Normally once the ducks have visited in the morning they rarely come back during the day. Of course this might have been a totally different duck, it's not like I've tagged them.

I've been trying to spend more time working in my office lately, and I've had some company:

As you know, my cats are weirdoes. Most of them will sleep in a specific spot, and only that spot, for a few weeks or months and then find a new spot. The exception is Romi - he has a cave in the workroom and he's been sleeping in that during the day for years.

Taz and Julius had been sleeping on our bed for the last few months, but only after we've both vacated it in the morning. As soon as they hear the curtains open, they're there. But Taz got tired of waiting for the bed to be free, so he started sleeping in the nook instead.

But wherever else you find them during the day you'll still find them sprawled all over the carpet in the dining room when the sun is shining. 'Cause that's just the way my cats roll. ;-)