Wings

All summer, Dean has been keeping the hummingbird feeder filled (one part sugar to four parts water; boil to dissolve sugar and cool completely), and the hummingbirds have been visiting regularly. I'm not sure if we have one mating pair -- I know there are two regular visitors and one has the clear coloring of a male ruby-throated humming bird and I am guessing that this is his mate -- or if we have more than that.

I finally managed to get out with my camera today while this one was feeding, but it wasn't easy to catch her.

We're going to see if we can plant more things that will attract even more hummingbirds, or maybe even hang a few more feeders. Anyone have any advice about this? Are more feeders likely to bring more visitors, or do we need more plants?

And in an entirely different category of wings, I can tell you that my brother Tony makes the very best chicken wings in the whole, wide world.

Here's his recipe:

2 lbs. chicken wings (prepped with the wing tip removed and discarded and the wings cut apart at the joint)
1 or 2 whole limes, juiced
About 3 ounces of Frank's Original Red Hot Sauce (we'd like to suggest that you really do use Frank's -- first of all, because it has a very nice flavor without the kind of keister-kicking heat of Tabasco and these wings are tasty even for people who don't want the big heat hurt*, and second of all because Tony is employed by the parent company)
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced
About half a cup of chopped fresh cilantro
[You will also need your favorite BBQ sauce, about 3/4ths of a cup, but you don't need it until you're ready to grill -- don't add it to the marinade.)

Rinse the wings and set aside. Combine ingredients (but NOT the bbq sauce) either in a shallow container with a lid or a zip-top plastic bag, and squish/swirl around. Feel free to play it loose and easy with the amounts of ingredients -- more of whatever you like (but probably not less of where you start from). Place wings in with the mixture, swirl to coat, and refrigerate 24 to 48 hours (you can also freeze the whole batch at this point to cook at a later date -- just defrost first). If possible, swirl 'em around or flip 'em a couple of times during the marinading time.

Drain wings and discard marinade. Grill over low heat, turning once or twice, for about 25 minutes. Turn heat up a bit and coat the wings with the BBQ sauce.
*At this point, if you do want heat to your wings, you can add hot sauce to the BBQ sauce.

Slowly cook the wings with the BBQ sauce on them, turning once, so that the sauce cooks and forms a nice crust on the wings -- don't just put the BBQ sauce on and then pull them off the grill, but watch carefully so they don't burn. We like ours with corn on the cob and grilled red potatoes. Yum.

Thanks

I'm nearly ready. Just planning to write this post and then head to the kitchen to cook, cook, cook. We'll set the table before we go to bed tonight, and anticipate all that tomorrow will bring.
Aw, shoot. I meant to tilt this on its side, so that you could easily see the uppercase 'X' -- could you please just tilt your head to see it? Pink granite and lichen at Acadia National Park.
'X' is for xerophyte -- adapted to limited water. Only two little letters left in the ABC-Along 2008 project.
Cold fall afternoons give Dean the two ingredients he needs -- leafless trees and temperatures that inspire indoor time -- for optimum bird-watching. Maybe we need to make this into a more official, and more comfortable, window seat.
I wish you peace, time to reflect, much to be thankful for, and time with those you love -- whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not. If you do celebrate it, I hope it's a holiday of good cheer and calm.

Robin's egg blue

Our routine, on Thursday afternoons, is that Dean (after getting the mail out of the box) gets out of the car so he can gather up the recycle bins, put them into the big garbage can, and roll the whole thing down the driveway to the garage. I follow behind him, slowly easing the car down the driveway at a distance. About half way down the driveway yesterday, he motioned for me to stop and get out of the car. I did not want to get out of the car. I was tired, it had been an unpleasant bit of driving to get home (from Wellesley, 30 miles away, via Route 128 and the Turnpike and 495 -- a drive known for it's ability to be unpleasant), and I've been hovering on the edge of a dark mood and not feeling the best. No no no, Dean motions, just get out of the car!

So I get out. And he excitedly shows me that, right on the driveway, right on the path of the tires of the car, is a robin's egg shell. It is beautiful, as Dean knew instantly -- beautiful, and precious, and worth stopping for and saving. I apologize for being grumpy. He says that's ok because I knew you'd be happy when you saw this. He's right, of course.

Somebody was asking on her blog, just this week, what "robin's egg blue" really is. Here you are. This is what it really is. An almost impossibly beautiful color for an egg to be. We've had just a bumper crop of robins in our yard this year; one even made her nest in the arborvitae right next to our front door (and she yells at us whenever we go in or out that door). Ken winces at Dean's and my passion for all things bird -- picking up feathers and old abandoned nests and empty shells seems to him an invitation to the risks of disease. But we can't resist (and we wash our hands carefully with soap).

By any other name

I flipped through this book just now, My Little Bird Book by Elizabeth Gould, to find a picture of a goldfinch (having just enjoyed their return to my garden) and I realized once I came to the illustration that this book must have been published in England (it was -- no publication date given, but it's old). Indeed, this is not the bird we know as the goldfinch here in the states (or, at least, the Eastern US). I don't know the Latin names of any birds, so I swim in the soup that is the "common name" and am just happy when I know at least that much. I used to know more of the Latin names of the flowers in my garden, but this spring find myself having a hard time bringing those names out -- I usually begin with something along the lines of, "I know it begins with an 'A'." I like to think that I keep filling my brain with so much information that I can't keep it all in, even if it is just the date and time of this week's soccer game, and whose birthday party is this Saturday and what time it starts and ends, and what we're out of and need more of from the grocery store. That line is more comforting than the idea that I am simply losing it.

I'm trying, regardless of what we call them, to learn some of the birds by their song this spring. I'd like to be able to sit, cock my head, and say, "oh, the goldfinch must be nearby!" Reminds me that Dean has a nice cd designed to teach children some common birdsong -- have to dig that out. [Ah! A pair of Canadian geese are flying overhead right now -- theirs is a tune I can always recognize! Hooonk, Hooonk to you, too!] I'm pretty sure I can identify most if not all of the trees in our yard. Dean knows more of the birds than I do, but I'm working on it. (I didn't believe him, initially, when he glanced up and said, "oh, that's a cedar waxwing" -- but then I looked it up and decided to go with his identifications without question and try to learn something at the same time.)

Our school is undertaking a more formal, organized approach to something we've done pieces of all along; place-based education. David Sobel spoke at school recently and lit a fire under us to implement some specific programs for next year. The very basic idea is that children learn in-depth, and in a hands-on, active way about the world that's right around them -- they learn about their immediate environment, their community, and take a meaningful role in its improvement. That could include anything from planting a garden to getting involved in local politics or public service projects. A fundamental component of our school is that the adults in the community are there to learn as much as the children are. Now that I piece this all together, I realize it's a big part of why I feel good about my life -- I feel overall that I am in the right place, doing the right things. Still feel there's more to do than I can manage at any one time, but I'm trying to keep moving ahead and constantly assessing the priorities in the moment. Now I need to get ready to go to work.