Big thunderstorm last night! Loud cracks of thunder, torrential rain, lightning. We were watching Amelie at the time – a movie that we both knew of and, for some reason, had never seen. By the way, we loved it. It has the same magical quality that The Shape of Water has. I find I’m very taken by that kind of movie; the movie equivalent of magical realism in novels.
I’m still not feeling well but I’m hanging in there. My head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton and I get very sleepy. After Don dropped me back home yesterday, I sat down in my chair and the next thing I knew, it was 30 minutes later. I went out like a light.
Hello, little stone dove.
I had been meaning to tell you this, but I kept forgetting. My worries about the demise of Lonesome Dove and/or the pair of doves on the property were unfounded. It took a while, but I started to see them in June. I was so thankful and relieved! They mean the world to me, these sweet birds, and I consider them part of our extended family. I’m very grateful they are still with us. I’m sorry it took me so long to let you know.
In fact, lonesome dove hung out on the birdbath for quite a while yesterday, effectively stopping us from going outside to sit on the porch. She/he looked so peaceful that I didn’t want to disturb her. (Don is used to this.)
There’s my beauty. Photo taken from inside the living room.
I need to weed but it’s too humid and I don’t feel up to it, so I’ll just have to let it go for a few more days.
It’s quite beautiful out there today.
Happy Thursday.
Amelie is a delightful film, I’m fact I think it’s one of those that improves each time you watch it.
I hope you start to feel better soon x
I already want to watch it again! Thanks, Fiona!
hope you feel better soon!!!
thanks for letting us know about the doves. i love doves … they are so sweet anyway and, better yet, pair up forever and don’t shun the lonesome ones.
love that movie … and the soundrack is perfect (especially on a rainy sunday afternoon)! i like your description of “magical realism” and agree with fiona that “amelie”, with all its charm and little details, gets better with each viewing. my sister gave me that dvd a long time ago; think i will watch it again this weekend!
happy thursday to you and don.
kathy in iowa
that should be “soundtrack”!
xo
The soundtrack is wonderful! Thanks, Kathy!
So happy to hear about the doves. We have some here and I love the cooing sounds they make. My head is horrible in the mornings but getting a bit better as the day goes on, defiantly allergies. Amelie is such a sweet movie and I need to watch it again soon. I love how someone saying how they saw a movie or read a book sparks me to say Oh I need to see/read that again!! I hope you feel better today. It’s another hot one here.
It’s hot here, as well and still humid. Tomorrow is supposed to be a bit cooler!
Thanks for the news about the doves….always good to hear. We weeded for a bit yesterday in the late afternoon. It wasn’t too humid, and the area was in the shade.
Sounds like now I need to start a new list….a ‘to be watched movie list’. Hope you’ll feel better. Enjoy your day! ;)
Thank you, Donna. I just want to take a nap, the way you feel when you have a cold/sinus/allergy thing.
Have been meaning to mention this for months. You, my friend, must clean your windows every single day because I’m always floored by the photos you get that you say are taken from inside the house. AMAZING! Looks like there’s nothing there at wall – no glass, no screening, not a gosh darn thing. Today’s is no exception, obviously. Chubby little birdbath dove. Peace.
#Resist
#ProtectMueller
I never wash my windows! It’s a fruitless endeavor as the rain usually pelts all the windows in the house, so why bother?
Well, you are certainly keeping the inside windows immaculate… because every ‘through-the-window’ photo is crystal clear. Gorgeous.
xo
oh! a wonderful post!
I love Amelie. I own it.
also I love doves. how can a person not love them? and if it’s because they’re messy…
I don’t want to know about it! I still love them and their special sweet call.
you are wise not to ‘push’ it when you feel like that. it’s your body telling you to rest
and just stay cool! xoxo
Thank you, Tammy. I have spurts of energy but then I get very sleepy.
The dove is a beauty
Sorry you are still not well, sending healing thoughts from across the pond
Siobhan x
Thank you so much, Siobhan.
I saw the stage version of Amalie at Berkeley Rep prior to it moving to Broadway. It’s just as magical on stage. I’ve been a Berkeley Rep subscriber for years and Amalie remains my favorite production. (Treasure Island currently occupies the #2 place.) One thing I don’t miss about summers in Eastern Canada with my grandparents is the humidity. Enjoy the. Beautiful day and your doves. My pair only returns sporadically and I miss them as you did yours.
Unfortunately, the stage version of Amelie, like Escape to Margaritaville, closed all too soon, within a few months. I was sorry to see that happen.
On the Berkeley Rep stage, Amalie was intimate and light, yet lush and magical. I’m sorry it wasn’t enjoyed by a wider audience on Broadway, and I hope ETM makes it to the SF Bay Area on its road tour.
xo
So glad your doves have returned. I know how it feels to love one’s special birds. I have yard work to do as well. Despite the intense heat and humidity, I can’t put it off because it won’t cool off here until October, and by then the yard will be a jungle. Take care, and I hope you feel better soon.
Big Texas Hugs,
Susan and Bentley
I was out a bit today, but it really zapped my strength. I guess I’m still too under the weather to handle working in the humidity.
Missing my beachside doves now. We don’t seem to have any at the lake. In SF they were a constant background music. Our FL ones are much more grey in color than yours appear to be. I’m sure the music is just as sweet. I’ll have to be content with my loons, I guess. (Just kidding. I love the loons and their nightly chorus.) I hope you feel better soon.
Ours are gray too. Probably the way the light was hitting the dove.
Sorry you’re not feeling well! My husband thought his primary care doctor was going to, for sure, send him to an allergist but, alas, just more drugs and he HATES the way they make him feel, which means that he won’t then take them. We bought an air cleaner that stays on 24/7 but we haven’t noticed that it’s making any diff for him. The doctor did tell us that she’s never seen such a summer for allergies; of course, you and we are on diff coasts…
My doves are grey-toned, dark & light hues; they coo and mourn so what have I got, a pigeon cross-mix or something? Yours look brown-colored in the photo. I know nothing about doves except that I had so many, they crowded out everybody else in the feeder and water bath. It had become an unmanageable situation and was a main reason why I quit feeding. I’m glad you have a lesser number and that you can enjoy them. I would have 20, 30, 40…
I was out talking to a neighbor of mine this morning; she has the largest lot in the tract with a huge, private backyard (and we’re all up against a hillside); it’s close to an acre, completely fenced in. A friend of hers who volunteers at a animal shelter-rescue center with her lost her home (small canyon ranch property) in our December wildfire (I hear this again & again & again, even 8 months later; poor people) so has farmed out her multiple pets to various diff friends til she can get permanently settled (I’m finding that more than one fire-victim homeowner could easily be in rentals for another year and a half; the ones who had homeowners’ insurance). So, my neighbor has taken in this other woman’s chickens and goats; I had no idea, I never hear anything; no farm animal noise! Or odors! And I’m just 3 houses down. I won’t say a word; it’s actually not permissible within city limits. The goats are ‘trimming’ her lawn and culling overrun bougainvillea on the hill (thorns are apparently not a deterrent). I was thinking, “Claudia needs a couple of goats!!”
to vicki …
as someone who loves animals, i say thanks for keeping that secret so your neighbor can (contrary to city code) continue to help her friend’s chickens and goats after that awful fire. very sweet … and i am sure very comforting to the friend and those animals.
we need more of that kindness and understanding in this world!
kathy in iowa
ps: i am glad the noise and odor doesn’t bother you.
Yes, for all that the wildfires here have wrought the saddest stories, you hear of these real-life stories where people reach out and it just makes you dissolve in tears, how there’s still so much humanness out there, just ‘everyday’ people doing really heroic things; kind things as you mention. I think that for normal people, it’s still our automatic…I can’t think of a word…reflex to want to help, not harm.
Like there’s a woman with whom I’m acquainted whose significant other is one of those guys they call a horse whisperer and he (and she) went to dangerous lengths during our fires which burned into Santa Barbara County (a wide swath from where it started in my own county last December) to save over a hundred horses. He has pretty fancy horse trailers which can transport a lot of horses at one time (I think the trailers even have air conditioning) so he and Pam went to those ranches inland and back in canyons…some of this was three or four hours from where they live…braving the smoke and raining ash, and helped get horses out of harm’s way, which is no easy task because the horses are frightened; intelligent beasts who know what’s up, and it had to be done quickly. The next time I saw him and her, I thanked them profusely as any citizen would and did, and he especially was so humble and quiet about it, saying to me, “It was a lot of horses.”
We’ve got a story right here with Claudia and Don, and how they followed up with other people over the fate of Ashley and Pliers, I think those were the names of two horses who desperately needed some help and what if nobody had talked about it amongst themselves, tried to figure out what was going on, how to possibly intervene. Say something, do something, don’t just sit back and do nothing. To care and be kind, what are we if not that?
We had 30-40 doves in our feeder in San Diego, too.
Some of our doves have a bit more brown, but they’re mostly gray. Mourning Doves are a mix of gray and brown and the light definitely has an affect on the way the feathers are seen. Same with bluejays who are, depending on the light, gray or blue.
We’d love goats because they’re awfully cute and fun but we don’t have the outbuildings or fencing for them.
Brown is not a color I pick up on with the doves here. Maybe I should get out the binocs and have a closer look. We’ve had doves nesting all around our house in the last couple of months. The one poor girl was trying to make a nest on a slick light fixture and of course her twigs just were going everywhere except where she wanted them. It wasn’t a good place for her (also a potential fire hazard, for us humans) but we tried to help and hung a box in the general vicinity with a lot of her twigs that had fallen into the ground; added some straw. But, you know, it scared her off I guess.
I swear they roost on the phone cables/wires when they see me out there feeding the cats, as if waiting for me to feed them, too; always hopeful and then I let them down. Makes me feel so guilty but I was going through a heckuva lot of seed and it’s expensive; $200 a month except when I could get the sacks on sale. It was beginning to feel like scenes from that Hitchcock film, “The Birds” which creeped me out when I was a kid. Just too, too many birds. I was feeling overburdened because I spend a lot of money on dry cat food, too, for the ferals, because I mix specialty blends for them; I can’t do much else for them except to give them healthy food since I can’t even really get near them. I’ve been doing this for eleven years, same cats the whole time (most of the time; there have been a variety of visitors/friends, short-term and long-term); their outdoor life is otherwise such a challenge for them. But, you know, fixed-income years getting here; expenses have to be reduced. I won’t continue this once these guys have passed.
As for the birds, our habitat like yours there in the Hudson, is teeming with plants and trees and bugs and worms, even with drought because we irrigate, so it’s not like the birds can’t find stuff to eat and I have three water baths for them which I never let go dry. Still, I feel guilty. It’s Mom’s house and she fed the birds for 35 years. Sigh.
It was a dark picture, because I had to long range focus on the dove.
Well, brown or grey, she’s indeed a beauty for sure. In contrast, I’ve got a couple of jays who I thought were gone for ‘the season’ yet one will reappear and they’re looking pretty ratty; like unkempt. Don’t know if that means they’re unhealthy; doesn’t seem right. Maybe they’re just old; the male is one BIG jay. I know jays can live a long time. Your dove-girl looks the picture of health.
How old do Jays get, I wonder?
Claudia, you are such a sweetheart to all of the nature around you…be it bugs, birds, frogs, flowers or others..they are so lucky to have you near them to protect and admire them….This is how I strive to be also!…Nature needs us to protect and care for it…That’s a beautiful shot of the hydrangeas with the fog in the background!…so glad to hear that your doves are doing well…
Thank you, Nancy. I try my best! I love all the critters around here – even the black bear!
Summer weather is very difficult for me. The heat and haze from the forest fires makes me tired and I am always sleeping. I can’t concentrate on more than TV. My stitching has been put aside because I can’t work up the energy. It is supposed to be cooler tomorrow. I hope so. Hope you feel better very soon. I do love your doves.
Supposed to be a bit cooler here as well. If the humidity would drop, it would be even better.
Amen to that. This was the first night (Thurs) in too many days that everything wasn’t dewy with moisture from humidity although we were still in the 80s at bedtime. We went to the beach on Wed eve and were completely fogged in; it was blissfully cool and nobody was going home, even at 7:30pm. So weird, couldn’t even see the waves break; people looked like they were emerging from a cloud if they were going back to their cars. I wish we could get out of the 90s; I shudder to think what my electric bill is going to be this month although I’m one of the lucky ones with central air conditioning which in my part of California has never been a requirement except for these past few years of drought and increasing heat.
I remember the days in San Diego when we didn’t need an air conditioner.
The doves are lovely. Sorry you are not feeling better. It looks like the weather may break over the week end.
Marilyn
Fingers crossed, Marilyn. We deserve a break!