Tag: Nature

Hannah and the CoalBear: Lavender and Roses come Inside

Hi. I’m Hannah.

I’m basking in the lights of the new plant shelves!

The days out on the catio are getting a little cooler now, and there are leaves falling off the trees. Mateo really likes to chase the leaves! And the bugs. Okay… he chases everything that moves, basically… The squirrels are waaay more busy than usual, and I haven’t seen a baby bunny for weeks and weeks. There are lots of birds at the feeder that are kind of new, and sometimes there are tons of birds in the trees. The Mother of Cats says that the birds are flocking, and that there are changes coming.

Do you see the box that I am standing on? It was pretty long and a little heavy.

The Mother of Cats pushed that long box up the stairs and then she got out some tools. Yay! I love to help out with projects!!!

Look at all of the stuff that was in the box!

It took her a little while, but the Mother of Cats put all of those pieces together to make some shelves with lights. Oh. That’s kind of cool. I really like sleeping under lights like this, and shelves are always fun!

Then the Mother of Cats brought in all of the plants from the deck to come live under the lights in the indoor garden and on these new shelves. Look at what happened!!! There is no more room for me on the shelves! What was the Mother of Cats thinking of?

She brought in some of the plants from the deck and put them on my shelves!!!

After she brought in the first plants, she started messing around in the indoor garden so that she could make even more room for plants. Then the really big lavender plants came inside along with all the rest of the rose plants.

Now almost all of the plants that were living on the deck are now in the knitting room with the Mother of Cats and me. I love the plants!! Some of them are starting to put out new buds, more roses and lavender blooms are on the way, and the room smells kind of nice. Pretty cool, right? The new shelves even have a bar to hang plants from, there is a timer for the lights, and there is a shelf to put all of the knitting project boxes on the top. We are ready for winter now!!!

This week the Mother of Cats and I sat by the lights, smelled the lavender, and sewed up all of the chickens that she had knitted in September. So much fun… I like to chase the yarn while the Mother of Cats is sewing. This is what the finished chickens look like:

Didn’t I do a good job helping out? All of these chickens will go to their new homes this week. Bye chickens! It was nice to know you!!

Time for me to catch another nap.

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Note from the Mother of Cats: the lavender plants aren’t hardy enough to survive a Colorado winter, so indoors they came! Yay, lighted shelving!! These came from Amazon.

Introducing the BioGeek Memoirs

How many magical moments can one person have with another species? Only a few, right?

I had a baby Cottontail rabbit in my yard all summer. How magical is that?

I mean, there was that time you fed a cute chipmunk some chips at a rest stop, or the day you encountered an owl in the limbs of a tree right over your head. The squirrels that frolicked through the branches and around the trunk of that huge maple as you walked out of your doctor’s office after getting some good news. The squad of squid that left you trapped on an offshore rock in La Jolla when they positioned themselves between you and the beach, flashing rainbow color changes in unison. The time when a whole herd of deer ghosted out from the early morning mist and silently moved past the deck of your rental cabin while you were out there drinking coffee, wrapped in a blanket, waiting for your students to wake up. The day a fox trotted down the sidewalk in front of you while you were loading the car for work and vanished into the falling snow, leaving only its footprints behind. The flight of geese that swirled around your car and landed, feet extended and wings furiously back-flapping, unexpectantly dropping from the sky while you slammed on your brakes, stunned by the joy of the moment. The day a huge beaver swam across the pond while you and your children silently watched from the bank in the shadow of some shrubs, amazed by the size.

All that stuff didn’t happen to you?

Oh, yeah. Those are my memories.

A Painted Lady butterfly on a butterfly bush in my garden.

I have had a lifelong love affair with nature. I started young with bug collections and jars full of creatures that I dug up from the sands during family beach outings. As I got older I branched out and collected every pet my mother would let me keep and looked at things from the garden with my little Christmas microscope. I learned about cells, genes and DNA in college, and then became a biomedical researcher in an immunology lab. I moved on after a few years to become a biology teacher and took every opportunity that came my way to continue my interactions with wildlife and nature. Workshops in the mountains, trips to the desert, classes with wildlife specialists, and days in museum workshops. It has all been great; a life in biology, rich with meaning and wonderment.

I loved these coneflowers in my backyard so much I use this photo for my phone screen.

But the best, the very best, have been the magical, serendipitous moments that have come to me on my own, interlaced with memories and fraught with personal meaning.

Welcome to The BioGeek Memoirs.  

Hopefully I will be posting every Friday.

I have a lot of memories.