Signs of Life

The seeds I planted a week ago are coming up already.

broccoli

spinach

 

beets

 

and the peas are just barely popping up

 

If I can keep the dogs, cats, birds, squirrels and bugs away, I just might get some edibles this season!

Katrina

Must Watch TV

I’ve fallen in love with Bomb Girls, only to learn that there are only six episodes! Although the program was renewed for a second season, production has just begun, and there's no telling when the new episodes will be shown in Canada, much less here in the US.

This Canadian show is set in 1941 Toronto, where women have taken over the work of building bombs at a factory since most of the men have gone to fight in WWII.  

Waiting for their shift at the factory

Although I was drawn to the show by the promise of 1940s wardrobes and hairstyles, music, dance and period lingo, I was immediately impressed by the presentation of daily life for women of the time. Yes, it is somewhat glamorized for television, but the grim reality is there too.

My almost-twin, Meg Tilly (we were born 24 days and 400 miles apart) as the stern matron

Women dealt with shortages of food, toiletries, clothing and every other item we take for granted, and they were essentially single mothers raising their children. They lived under a constant burden of fear for their husbands and sons who could die far away. At the same time, they went into unfamiliar workplaces where they learned technical skills, performed dangerous jobs, and kept manufacturing going throughout the war. Through all of it, they were subjected to mean-spirited chauvinism by the male bosses and harrassed and undermined by the few male coworkers. Moments of joy came from family time, camaraderie with their coworkers, and the occasional flirtation with soldiers at the local pub.

the dresses!

The wardrobe designer did extensive research in the Canadian archives, and the GlobalTV website has some very nice photos of women at work and in everyday life during the war years. Yes, the wardrobe is fantastic. Every time I watch an episode show I jump and twitch with each scene change, coveting the incredible dresses and blouses. I’ve already got a mental list of styles I want to recreate.

All photos from Reelz channel

 

 

 

 

Bomb Girls is definitely worth watching if it comes to one of your television channels or if you find it on DVD (I don't know if it is available yet).

Katrina

Those Who Can’t Do, Plan

I seem to be stuck in slow motion. I have been working in the vegetable garden all week (granted it’s only for two hours each day) and I still haven’t even finished the first step, which is clearing out the beds. How’s anything going to grow if I never get around to planting seeds?

Awesome seed company! Botanical Interests

I’ve been playing around with the planting chart to see how everything can fit.  

It’s easier this year because I don’t have any incompatible plants. Last year I planted onions and dill, and they each had certain other plants with whom they could not play nicely.

Since crop rotation is one of the ways I can reduce the chronic plagues and pestilence this garden endures, I can put the peas into the beds that did not have beans last year, and the single tomato plant (I could not refuse a special request by the Piemaker) can go in the one bed that did not have tomatoes earlier this year. This leaves room for two sowings of everything else, if I actually follow through with my plan.

 
I have also been doing a bit of sewing, but have nothing to show as it is all for gifts and thus top-secret! Definitely a departure from my usual (making unnecessarily fancy garments for myself), this is fun, crafty work with pretty quilt fabric to make what I hope will be very useful objects for the recipients. We will see!

And of course, since I’m sewing for others, I can’t help but gaze longingly at the stacks and stacks of lovely apparel fabrics and think of what I would like to make for myself next. I have really been loving my orange striped jeans, so it might be time to make another pair from this very successful (self-drafted!) pattern.

So there you have it. Nothing done but a lot of plans.

Katrina

Raptors in Rehab

This past weekend we got to take a tour of a rehabilitation facility for injured raptors (birds of prey), called Wild At Heart.

 

Wild at Heart is quite a large place, housing about 175 birds, but it’s well hidden among desert trees and cacti in Cave Creek, just north of Phoenix.

The sights and sounds instantly took me back 35 years, to when I worked at a similar facility as a teenager. A soft flap-flap-flap-thump repeated back and forth in the falcon flight cage. When I looked through the wires of the Great Horned Owl cage, fourteen identical brilliant yellow eyes stared back.  Baby Barn Owls silently swayed and bobbed in their nest box. The kee-kee-kee of the Kestrels created background music to everything else.

A nice facility for recovering birds and hardworking volunteers

The facility is run entirely by volunteers. Veterinary services are donated, as are the materials for the aviaries and flight pens. The layout seems quite well-designed, the cages are very clean (advances have been made in cage materials since the 70s), and the birds are certainly healthy, aside from the specific injuries which necessitated their rescue.

Harris Hawks – healthy and very noisy

The people at Wild At Heart also coordinate several important programs: captive breeding, species recovery, foster parenting, and relocation.

Burrowing owls frequently need to be relocated due to human encroachment or other problems with their dens.

I worked at a wildlife rehabilitation center all through Junior High and High School, and then worked at a raptor center similar to this one during college. That was a very large part of my life then, and it made a big impact on me.

Yet I ended up not being a veterinarian or a bird biologist, or working with animals in any way. Is it possible to suffer from burnout at age 22? Because I think that’s what happened. The physical challenge of the work was no problem for me as a young woman, but the emotional drain of trying to help hundreds of suffering animals day after day broke some part of me that would have been required to keep going. When I think of it now – standing in the treatment room, attending to any given crisis: the broken wing, the hungry baby, the oiled feathers, the gunshot wound, the blind eye, it goes on and on and never ends – I still feel a painful wrench of something inside that tells me I’m still not quite ready to go back to working with hurt animals.

So I’m thankful to those who have the guts and determination to keep doing it for years on end, like the people at Wild at Heart. There is a lot of interesting information at their website here.

What did you do on the weekend?

Katrina