Birding on Block Island a few years back, a fellow birder, but someone I know only slightly, said to me something like “good thing you got your bulb fixed.”

Our little flock of birders had reached the point at the end of the Island where we would turn around. We were taking a break from birding to marvel at the vista of the Block Island Sound from atop a bluff. It was a picture perfect day.

“Bulb fixed?” What in heavens name was he talking about? Was he even talking to me? I turned from taking in the view of the Sound to look at him just to check. Yes, he was talking to me.

It seems he had read a recent blog post of mine about confounding — much the way he had just confounded me — my car repair man as I paid the bill for replacing a car light bulb with an out-of-context comment. “Good thing I am not a black man…I might be dead,” I had said to the repair man. You can read the post from 2017-07-24 here.

in July 2016, Philando Castile, a Black 32-year old had been fatally shot by a Minnesota police officer after being pulled over for a broken tail light. Castile’s girl friend was in the car with him. In June 2017, a jury acquitted the police officer. That brought back memories for me of the case of Walter Scott who had been killed by a police officer in Charleston after a traffic stop for a broken tail light. Black men frequently die for burned out car light bulbs.

As I paid the very small bill for my own tail light replacement, I could hear Joan Baez singing “There but for fortune go you or I.” That night I wrote a blog about broken car lights.

George, my Block Island birding friend, brought all this back when he posted a note on my most recent blog. I write my blogs for me, but of course posting makes them public. People’s comments often take me by surprise. Somebody’s reading these?

Just as I was thinking again about George, Philando, Walter, Joan and my privilege as a white person able to be fearless even should I neglect a broken car light bulb, I got an email via WordPress with another comment on Meadow Restoration to approve.

This one was tied to a post called August 4th from 2015. Why now? August 4th is approaching but this reader, a person I don’t know, already contacted me when I posted that blog five years ago. She’s a friend of the Crowell Hilaka Preserve in Richfield Ohio that used to be a Girl Scout camp where my friend Sallie Parker was struck and killed by lightning on August 4th 1959. Remembering Sallie was the subject of the blog. The woman from the preserve sent me a pdf of the plaque commemorating Sallie’s death. How did she find my small press blog?

“There but for fortune go you or I” often plays in my head when I think about Sallie. Maybe this is my theme song. As the lightning struck her, Sallie fell on the little girl sharing her pup tent. That little girl would have been me had my parents agreed that I could go from DC back to Ohio to join Sallie for another year at camp.

Blogging for me is largely an exercise in record keeping. When did the monarchs return this year versus last is the customary fodder for my posts. My sister thinks I should hew to the theme of meadow restoration when I post, avoiding light bulbs and death anniversaries. Maybe she’s right, although I feel I can write whatever I want since this is such a personal exercise.

Particularly in these pandemic days I have realized how lucky I am to have a big old field in which to putter and about which to blog. The restoration is as much of me as it is of the meadow. Any reader is taking his chances with my posts.

To my enormous relief, the first Monarch appeared tardily on 2 July. It took me until this week to catch it in a photo. I am beginning to see several.

The fawn is in all-day day care without an attendant in the lower portion of the meadow. I flush it on my way to pick blueberries. I had not realized that it would not be part of a family in its neonatany. That seems to be a word I made up to refer to the long period of development between birth and becoming an adult, but I’m sticking to it.

The fawn’s experience of childhood is quite different from that of a poult. The turkeys form gaggles (“rafter” is the collective noun according to “An Exaltation of Larks“) that roam the gardens and field. Each rafter consists of a odd number of adults and a scurry (my collective noun) of poults. No child left behind with turkeys.

The ground hog has not made himself visible for over two weeks. More importantly, the plants in the vegetable garden have not been decimated. In fact, I took a grocery bag full of yellow and green squash and a large bunch of chard to the Jonnycake Food Pantry — the first of several such deliveries I predict. I’m daring to hope that the ground hog found the Kennel House inhospitable after the installation of the 4-foot fortress and has departed for greener pastures.

A single baby bunny did not get a mention in the returning section of the previous report. However, I had one. And following the reproductive realities of rabbitdom, the colony now has two members. The 1/4 inch hardware cloth also keeps them out of the vegetable garden, but they (and I) are content with their consumption of clover blossoms. Like deer, adult rabbits don’t seem to invest too much effort in raising their young, perhaps because they so frequently find their lives truncated by a predator’s meal plan.

Scott blew Oscar’s cover. Or, more precisely, Scott began the spring restoration of Oscar’s borrowed meadow by mowing sections back to their proverbial studs. Now Oscar, the neighbor’s cat who, despite my protests, spends the preponderance of his time in my meadow satisfying his hunger for birds, mice, voles and frogs, is disoriented, if I interpret circling and circling and circling cat behavior correctly.

Before meadow mowing photos above; mowed below. Can you find Oscar in the mowed shot? Hint: in the middle ground heading towards the unmowed little bluestem.

Early spring brings changes in addition to the annual mowing of rotating sections of the meadow. The Red-winged blackbirds returned in time to be counted in the Feeder Watch Project (mid February). They didn’t start with their reliable “spring’s here” gurgling call until a few weeks later. (Do they await the calendar arrival of spring?) The first American robin came back for St Patrick’s Day; now there are at least three hopping, stopping, listening then lunging.

Days now begin with an hour’s worth of birdsong although the full chorus isn’t assembled yet. The peepers are calling insistently from sunset until well into the evening from the trees beside the pond.

Buds are swelling with the longer daylight, the grass is greening in the rains and the Sanguinaria canadensis (blood-root) is blooming.

But away from the meadow, early spring this year has been like no other. I can almost sympathize with unwelcome Oscar circling aimlessly aghast at what has happened. “His” meadow, like “my” world, has been mowed down. Of course, the meadow will regrow. What are the odds that the larger world will do the same especially in a season? I hope greater than it feels right now.

So far this season has been hurricane free. But a week ago Saturday at the grocery store I thought I must have missed the warning about an advancing storm. The checkout lanes were uncustomarily long; people’s shopping carts were pilled with containers of water.

The water buying was not in advance of a storm but to counter a water crisis: much of the community’s public water system had become compromised by the presence of E. Coli.

I bought my few groceries but no water. I still have several gallons of water from last year that I’d love to use up. It was also possible I would not be afflicted since I draw water from my own well.

In the early days of this nuisance, information about the extent and instructions on the required reaction was hard to find. An emergency robo call from some authority garbled the name of the  website to check. Nothing was mentioned about private wells. The internet was more helpful. It offered 2 suggestions:  boil water for one minute before drinking, and take a shower without ingesting any water.

I boiled some water. But soon it was clear my well was not implicated. A week and a day later, I poured the boiled water on the plants.

The messages of subsequent robo calls, of which there have been at least 2, have been audibly clearer. The boiling of water for those on the public water system is to continue until further notice. And we are advised not to take water into our mouths when showering.

A notice that the Y posted about showering.

The showering practice reminded me of traveling in developing countries and of Georgiana.

Georgiana was a regular in the commuters’ locker room in the main complex building of the World Bank. We commuter locker room users were a traipse of globe trotters familiar with the practice of showering with one’s mouth closed.

Georgiana’s participation in the locker room community was interrupted at one point when she was assigned to the country office in New Delhi for a multi-month stint. Upon her return she called out from a shower stall: “Remember you’re showering in drinking water.” Her message became a rallying cry in the locker room even for the shortest showers.

I often think of Georgiana when I shower, especially when I stay in for too long. And I’ve told plenty of people beyond that Bank locker room to consider the quality of the water they’re using when showering.

Of course, I hope my fellow citizens on the public water system get potable water again very soon. But I also wish Georgiana could call out so everyone in America could hear. It’s a message we need: natural disasters such as big storms aren’t the only events that threaten our access to what we’ve come to see as basic entitlements.

A light bulb icon appeared on the dashboard of my Jetta alerting me to a burned out bulb somewhere unspecified. A house guest and I were about to drive across the Jamestown and Newport bridges and along various highways monitored by state and local police for some ecotourism and socializing with other friends. Servicing the car was not part of the plan.

After two more days of traipsing around the state with a burned out light bulb, I took the car to the dealer. An hour later as I settled the bill ($4.51 for a left brake light bulb and a few dollars more for labor to install it), I said to the agreeable, young, white man in the service department — a person who knows me as a regular customer just as I know him as the young man in the service department, as a “person in my neighborhood” according to Mr. Rogers, “Good thing I am not a black man. Instead of settling this transaction with you, I might be dead.”

My comment did not fit the circumstances. The young man chuckled hesitantly. No doubt he was thinking, “What did she say?” But he quickly processed what I meant, switched from any light-hearted tone to seriousness and said, “You’re right.”

Suppose I had still been driving my previous car — a 1993 Nissan named Minima. She was an excellent car but not as communicative as the Jetta. When a turn signal went out, the blinking noise the signal made changed from slow to fast. Aha, you’d say, turn signal is out. But I recall no other warnings of burned out bulbs. It could have taken me a very long time to realize a bulb was not working.

If I were a dark-skinned male driving an uncommunicative car would I have to do an inspection of all the lights every time I drove the car in order to stay alive?

I rattled the VW service department man. But we both will likely survive routine burned out car bulbs. In that moment, we both knew it.

!st Asparagus harvest 2017

Sugar Maple leaf out

House Sparrow eggs removed from nest box

Lilacs in the dooryard

Male Baltimore Oriole FOY

Female (out of focus) Baltimore Oriole

April 3rd: A male Eastern Bluebird sat atop a bird nesting box in the meadow causing my heart to skip a beat especially since I knew that a House Sparrow had begun to build a nest in the box. Would that I could speak Bluebird to let him know that I’d do everything I could to keep the House Sparrows at bay. Just before the Bluebird arrived, I had been debating which of the several practices I have tried in the past to follow this year to make the House Sparrow feel unwelcome or, better yet, to go elsewhere far away. Given my success rate, the Bluebird might well have decided not to accept any offer of protection from me. After all for all my schemes, I still have a population of House Sparrows. This Bluebird sighting was therefore both a FOY (first of year) and a last of year. Indeed, he has not returned.

April 15: A male Wild Turkey nibbled insects in the herb garden and the adjacent lawn. I have not seen Turkeys again since then but, unlike the Bluebird, I know he and his relatives will be around into the fall.

April 16: A ground hog munched on the grass in front of the back house. I watched hoping to see whether he would lead me to his burrow. Something finally spooked him, and he dashed in the direction of the canoe, where he has resided in past seasons. Time to review my neighbor, Marilyn’s, trap setting technique. I’d like this to be among the last-of-year sightings but, like warding off House Sparrows, that could be a pipe dream.

May 2: I harvested the first asparagus stems. Every dinner for the next 6 weeks will include asparagus. Towards the end of the season, the mailman may find offerings of the veggie in the mail box. A friend reminded me I could drop off extra stalks at the Welcome House or the Jonnycake kitchen.

May 2: The Sugar Maple beside the porch leafed out. I submit a blurry photograph as proof. The wind was blowing — that’s my excuse. The other Maples will be a week or so slower in leafing out. I should report the dates to the New England Leaf Out (NELO)  project.

May 3: A male Tiger Swallowtail sat on a branch of the wisteria bush. Don’t tell my native plant colleagues who argue that natives attract and support wildlife better than non natives. Two immature but native Lindera benzoin or northern spice bushes are growing out immediately next to the forsythia but they seem too twiggy to have hosted the Swallowtail caterpillar, although spice bushes are said to be the larval host. On May 3rd last year, I saw the first Monarch butterfly in the meadow fluttering near the ground as though it could not fly. It was, in fact, laying eggs. The Asclepias syriaca, common milkweed, is popping through the ground in the meadow. I hope the butterflies return in the coming days.

May 4: A pair of House Sparrows are the only birds to have completed a nest in a bird box. I removed 5 eggs. Tree Swallows are noisily starting a nest in a newly sited bird box — now in the middle of the meadow. They have used this box in its previous locations for years.

May 5: Other Rhode Islanders have reported the return of Baltimore Orioles so I hung my Oriole feeder with an orange and Concord grape jelly. Within a couple of hours, both a male and a female were feeding.

May 6: Lilacs first in the doooryard bloomed. Seven years after transplanting these Lilacs from the southern dooryard to the northern one, the plants have bloomed in abundance! The old stand never produced as many blooms; all the blossoms are white.

May 6: A male Hummingbird arrived at the feeder I put out yesterday!

On ticks: I removed what I think was a black-legged tick from my inner elbow about 2 weeks ago. The next day, I found a full grown dog tick climbing the porch door jamb. I found another dog tick (I hope) on the frame of the northern door to the living room. All three are taped to the fridge. A warm winter, and for my money more importantly a wet April, seems to have provided excellent growing conditions for these nasty pests.

On ants: The carpenter ants invaded the kitchen again at the beginning of April. But after a visit from Narragansett Pest and time. As of today (June 10), I don;t seem to have any more ants. The fruit flies have arrived at the compost bucket, however.

On rodents: The Grey Squirrel population is growing. The Red Squirrel appears to remain a bachelor and is as neurotic as ever. The Chipmunks were out in force starting in April. Mice have not been very willing to take the peanut butter from the basement traps. The groundhog (is he a rodent?) is looking very well fed although I have battened down the garden perimeter fence and Scott and I built a special fence around the raised bed with lettuces and other leafy greens.

The news here is all more than a month old but I’m posting it anyway since this blog is my way of record keeping.