Disposing of the Fruits of My Labor

Dahlia, Autumn 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

As I sit on my enclosed porch, the weather is most definitely autumnal. I am in my warmest robe. The windows are closed. A feeder has drawn cardinals. The sun's arc is shorter and it doesn't rise as high in the sky. Days are most decidedly shorter.

And in the corner are four pots of vegetables continuing to grow.

Every year around this time I begin the slow task of closing the garden and getting the house ready for winter. I wait for as long as possible before bringing indoors the houseplants I've put on the porch for the summer because they are going to get more humidity outside than in, especially once I start using the furnace. This year I made it until the beginning of October when the projected overnight low one night would be 37 degrees F. My porch would've kept the plants a degree or two warmer but since many of them are tropicals they had to be brought in.

The pots of cannas and dahlias in front behind the deer netting are staying put for now. The dahlias are autumn flowers, just starting to bloom. The cannas' leaves still look fresh although what flowers they had are long since done. Once frost hits and the foliage goes brown I can cut it off and put the pots in the garage, while I pull up the dahlias and store the bulbs, wrapped in newspaper, in a box nearby.

Tomato plant, still bearing fruit (Margo D. Beller)

That leaves the vegetables. Most people, if they grow vegetables, seem to harvest what they can and leave the rest to rot. I've seen this in my town's community garden. I've walked there after a frost and found many tomatoes still on the vine until the plot holder makes it there to rip out the plants. (One of those holders allowed me access once and now I know what a frozen tomato looks and feels like.)

I, however, grow vegetables in pots. Usually I have anywhere from two to five pots of peppers and one of basil. The basil is used up first, long before the first frost. But if the peppers are covered with flowers (connoting the fruit to come), I bring them indoors for the winter.

Things are different this year.

Two autumns ago, I found a tomato seedling near my compost pile. I potted it and it grew into a tree that was difficult to keep upright. Just as it was about to put out fruit, it became infested with white flies that also affected the nearby peppers and my houseplants. Out went the tomato and the peppers, the former into the front yard where, despite the sun, it died in the cold, the latter into the one corner of the enclosed porch where the sun shines the longest. (Each houseplant was examined and cleaned outside before coming back in.)

Peppers  and base of tomato plant; note the pepper flowers
(Margo D. Beller)

This year, I had two of the four peppers I had kept inside for the winter (two died and the other two were continually moved to rid them of white flies) plus a basil, a third type of pepper and a cherry tomato plant that also grew to be like a tree. All were in a protective cage but the deer soon discovered they could reach up and eat the upper parts of the tomato. Thus I covered the tomato and the cage in netting. The plants continued to give me vegetables and, as usual, seemed to get a second life late in the summer.

So once the houseplants were brought into the house, I transported the four pots to the porch where I continue to pick tomatoes even as more grow. Of the peppers, one has been a disappointment (the one decent pepper it produced wasn't particularly good), one is nearly done but the last is covered with flowers and growing fruit.

Tomato flowers and small, unripe fruit (Margo D. Beller

What is different this year is my attitude - none of these pots are going to be taken into the house. I am done with battling white flies. I am done with moving heavy pots. In the autumn of my life, there are more important things I must consider, such as my declining physical strength.

Next year I plan on following Thoreau's dictum of "simplify, simplify" and have one pot of peppers and one of basil. I'll leave the majority of vegetable growing to the farm markets.

When the really cold weather comes, which it inevitably will, I will pick what tomatoes and peppers I can use and leave the plants on the porch and let nature take its course. Then the plants will be pulled out and composted to feed the worms.

Sunday on the Porch, With Junior

It is quiet on the porch this Sunday morning. Despite the rain I have windows open and it is cool enough to not need the fan to air things out. It is quiet except for the sound of the rain, the occasional call of a jay or cardinal or a car driving on the next street.

I am sitting with my coffee and trying to wake up after a long Saturday visiting with friends in the City. I turn my head and there is the immature ruby-throated hummingbird that has been visiting the feeder for the last couple of days. It is grayish green on the back with white on the front. Since this could be either a male or a female (and even be more than one bird) I have been calling this visitor Junior.

Juvenile ruby-throated hummingbird
(photo courtesy Birds of North America Online) 

This has been the wettest summer I can remember. Some of my plants have thrived - the tropical cannas, the peppers in their pots, the basil, the coleuses - while others have struggled. The joe-pye weed I grow near the hummingbird feeder has not produced many flowers or grown very tall, likely because of the nearly continual deluge of rain off the garage roof above it. The pink flowers of the coral bells and the perennial geranium are long gone. In a sea of green shrubs, the red feeder and the red ant moat above it stand out like a beacon.

And yet hummingbirds have been few in the backyard. Junior has only been coming the past few days. During the usual peak (for my yard) period of July I saw one. That might've been because of the heat. I can't sit long on the porch, even with the fan, when it feels like close to 100 degrees. Also, while the feeder is in the shade, the sugar water can still go bad if not changed after a week, and there were times I did not do that. (When a hummingbird hovered and then flew off, I knew it was time to clean the feeder.)

In July, the males, having mated and created the next generation, are gone or ready to leave. By August, the females have raised the young and shown them how to fend for themselves. Then the female adults leave. So by this time of the month the juveniles are what come to feed before instinct tells them it's time to head south for the winter. (When I say I have "peak" visitors in July it is females who need to fuel up as they seek protein food - insects - for their young.)

Canna flowers (Margo D. Beller)

What I need is a better garden of flowers attractive to hummingbirds and not attractive to deer. Right now the small yellow-orange flowers of jewelweed are blooming near streams, offering hummers a meal. Gardens with varieties of red - joe-pye, phlox, purple coneflowers, cardinal flower and zinnias -  I have visited in the last month have drawn anywhere from one to four hummingbirds at a time, fighting each other over the same flower despite all the food around them.

I do have more flowers that attract hummingbirds in the front yard. I just bought a purple coneflower, the light pink flowers of the Rose of Sharon are finally opening, the sedum are not yet ready to bloom but are close, there are the purple flowers of the butterfly bush and the bee balm and there are the red flowers of the cannas. Cannas are usually grown for their foliage but I like the flowers. One year I opened the front door and there, through the storm door, I could see a hummer at one of the flowers. It saw me, flew to the storm door, looked at me and then flew off. But I'm not always looking and most hummers are skittish and fly off at the slightest movement.

Soon summer will finally be over. I've already taken in my wooden wren house so it doesn't rot in the rain, and the house wren brood at the birdhouse next door are gone. (What I have seen is a lot of squirrel activity in the trees, gathering nuts. When one squirrel knocked the birdhouse, I knew the wrens must be gone because the parents would never have allowed a squirrel to get that close.) School resumes in a little over two weeks, and the daylight is noticeably shorter.

The leaves will fall, the flowers will be done and the hummers will be gone until next spring, when I hope for better weather conditions and more a more favorable environment to bring them to my feeder.

Watching the Neighbors

On Thursday, June 28, we had an intense thunderstorm. I was up early and sitting on the porch before going to work. The house wren young were chattering, calling for food. They were big enough that I could see a bill or two coming out of the nest box opening. A parent would fly there, the chattering would intensify, the parent would fly off.

That afternoon, hours after the rain ended and the sun came out, they were gone.

It took a while to realize this because I was working, but later in the afternoon I came out and did not hear chattering. I stood under the apple tree, next to the box. No chattering. No scolding parent. Gone.

A week after this picture, the birds were gone. Note the tell-tale
twig showing the box is occupied. (Margo D. Beller)

I had expected this. The birds were not happy with all the squirrels and birds going after the apples in the tree. They were not happy with me picking them either. It had been over a week since the little peeps became an almost constant dry rattle, and I admit the sound was getting annoying. Any day they were going to fly from the box.

Once I realized these birds had flown, and knowing a heatwave was coming in the next day or so, I got my extension pole and knocked down close to 30 apples, adding them to my bucket filled with close to 100 more. There may have been one or two left in the highest part of the tree then but I can tell you that now all the apples are gone. Even the apples I had dumped around the yard were gone. (I used what I picked for sauce and a couple of cobblers.)

A couple of days later, as I was sitting on the porch in the early morning with my coffee, a house wren flew to the top of my feeder pole and sang. And sang. It sang all over that part of the yard. From my vantage point I saw it fly to the birdhouse in my neighbor's dogwood tree. Last year, when it looked like chickadees got to my nest box first, a house wren had gone to that birdhouse. (Another one later came to my nest box and evicted the chickadees.) This year a house wren took over my box just a day after I put it up. Now I saw the tell-tale sign of occupancy at my neighbor's - a plastic strip waving in the breeze from the box opening. 

Now there is wren song at dawn again, but from elsewhere as the bird stays relatively close to the nest. 

It made me wonder, why not my nest box? House wrens can have two broods in one summer but I've never had two broods in the box. Are these new wrens next door or the ones I hosted that decided they didn't like having all those creatures around the nest? In past years the brood would fledge and the apples would need to be picked a few weeks later. Not this year when we had sudden heat and the squirrels didn't wait for the apples to fully ripen.

Were these new wrens put off by the twig sticking out of the box, thinking the box is occupied? I pulled out the twig but no wren has come. Meanwhile, the two wrens next door are shuttling to and from the birdhouse. Soon there will be eggs, then young, then fledglings. By then summer will just about be over and the wrens will fly south.

Here in the suburbs we watch our neighbors' yards to make sure there is nothing illicit going on. I mean more than Neighborhood Watch groups. I'm talking about the garden variety sort of looking at what's going on nearby. When I hear the sounds of mowing or drilling or sawing, I make it a point to see where this noise is coming from, to make sure my property won't be affected. I admit, I am rather territorial and sometimes my watchfulness isn't appreciated. Had my neighbor come out and seen me on my porch with my binoculars pointed at his house, he might have become concerned. He has small children to protect. 

Well, he also has a family of young house wrens as neighbors that he may or may not be aware are in his birdhouse. So in my own watchful way I am trying to protect them, too, from afar. 

See You in September

It is always with mixed feelings of sadness and relief that I take the seed feeders inside for the summer.

Carolina wren at feeder, from another year.
(Margo D. Beller)

The signs were there. Few of the birds I like - chickadees, titmice, white-breasted nuthatch - were visiting but there were plenty of birds I don't like:  A grackle hogging the house feeder. A jay swooping in again and again, swatting away any bird, including a big cardinal, that dared come to the feeder between swoops. A family of house finches - a brood already? - swarming the caged tube feeder, eating more than half the seeds in a day.

With the feeders inside for the next few months the downys and redbellied woodpeckers will have to work a bit harder prying bugs from tree bark as they walk along the side of a tree trunk. The cardinal pair that would be sitting on the feeder pole waiting for me to bring out the feeders in the morning will have to spend more time searching the trees and the grass for insects to feed themselves and their young.

They will do alright without me.

Hanging baskets 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

To give myself something to look at from my corner porch chair, I've hung two plants that usually spend the summer sitting on the sunny window ledge in my front room. This is an experiment to see if these plants can do well outside where they'll be rained on, baked in the sun and visited by insects. Who knows, the pink geranium might even draw a curious hummingbird.

There is one feeder still outside. The hummingbird feeder is out, hanging above the pink flowers of the perennial geranium and the coral bells, and I am hoping a hummer or two come by this year. The only other bird that concerns me now is this year's house wren, which has been singing continually to protect his territory. When the bird first claimed the box there was a second one, presumably a female that accepted the offered lodging. But lately I've only seen the one wren, singing from a tree, the feeder pole, on top of the nest box.

Apples in the making, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

If there is a brood this year I should be able to hear it soon enough and I hope all will have fledged before the apples need to be knocked off the tree for me to use before the squirrels can ruin them. Based on all the flowers this year we'll be having another bumper crop.

So with apples and summer's heat and humidity on the horizon, it is a relief to not have to worry about taking the feeders in each night to avoid any bear, or put them out early each morning when my back is stiff. I do have water out for the birds and that is really all they need from me as long as there are insects to provide the protein. They won't need the fat from my sunflower seeds until it starts to get cooler and the days grow shorter after Labor Day.

And that is when the feeders will go back out. I'll miss the cardinals but I've no doubt they'll be back again.

Rainy Day Musings

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We have had rain for much of the last week. I sit on my back porch and listen to the rain fall, knowing human-made activity and noise will be at a minimum this Saturday morning and I'll have some unusual suburban peace and quiet.

Rain-swollen Whippany River, Morris County, New Jersey 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

In "Walden" Henry David Thoreau wrote that a "single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener." This rain has done that, and also made it many inches longer. Weeds have sprung up and MH is going to have an interesting time using the mower, whenever things dry out.

There is little in the way of bird activity. A male cardinal looks for the seed feeder I did not put outside because I didn't want the seeds to get so wet they'd sprout. I can see the flowers from the forsythia, quince, apple and pear have already disappeared while the fading dogwood flowers are becoming overwhelmed by the leaves. The daffodils are finished but the azaleas, rhododendron, perennial geranium and coral bell flowers are opening. Out of nowhere purple columbine flowers have appeared.

There's always activity in the garden and in the woods but northbound bird migration may be slowly ending. I have been hearing a blackpoll warbler calling for the past four mornings. This bird, which looks like a black-capped chickadee, has one of the longest migratory routes of all the birds -- nearly 1,800 miles. Most years this would be one of the last warblers I'd hear in the spring, but the way the weather had been the birds were delayed, bunched together and passing through in a big rush, including the blackpoll. Still, when I hear its thin call I know migration is soon to end even though I still hear plenty of bird calls from those that will breed in my suburban part of New Jersey.

Friends south of where I live complain their gardens are becoming seas of mud and fear their plants will drown. Where I live we had a day off from the rain yesterday so MH and I could go out. As we took a walk around what used to be known as Greystone we sidestepped mud on the paths and saw lakes in the depressed areas of open fields. However, we also saw plenty of birds including hungry barn swallows flying over those fields that weren't inundated, hunting for insects.

2018 peppers, so far (Margo D. Beller

Rain is a necessary evil. It keeps you indoors when you have things you'd rather be doing outside, like looking for migratory birds or working in the garden (or doing more mundane but necessary chores like getting groceries). It forces ants, spiders and all sorts of creatures that live outdoors to come indoors - usually into the cellar but sometimes into the house, too. As long as we maintain power and the sump pump can keep running, I am not that concerned about rain.

That's because the rain has also woken plants from their winter slumber. Tree leaves have popped out and spread. Plants I knew I had but worried had died are growing. Plants I did not know I had make a surprise appearance. I have picked small but ripe peppers from one of the plants infested with white flies. This plant had to be put outside much too early, when it was still cool, to limit the damage to my other house plants. That these peppers, stunted but still edible, grew at all is amazing and no doubt helped by all the water. The other pepper plants I'm growing are flowering or showing fruits, the basil is growing nicely and the cannas have responded to the rain by sending up this year's shoots.

I can put up with the rain. When life is hectic it is good to sit and stare out and let your mind go blank. Is that "mindfulness?" Is that "meditation?" Call it what you will, I call it a necessary, good rest. And at some point, the rain will end. It always does.

Midsummer Musings

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy.

-- Regina Brett

As the sun rises this midsummer morning, its light is filtered through the backyard trees, throwing patterns on the porch, where I sit on the shady end. At various times the light hits the medallion atop my bird feeder, creating a stained glass effect that is very pretty.

Stained glass effect (Margo D. Beller)

Behind me, through the opened window, I hear robins, catbirds, redbellied woodpecker, titmice and... is that a house wren? I go to the screen. Yes, that is a house wren. Perhaps it will discover the nest box now that the apple tree is done for the year and the attacks by squirrels have ended. As I look, a small chipping sparrow flies to the paving stones to search for insects. It still has its breeding red cap, but when it flies south in a month or so, that cap will have gone brown.

Every so often a hummingbird has come to the feeder but at this moment I see a downy woodpecker has discovered it too, just like last year. I go outside and chase it off, and am rewarded when a hummingbird suddenly returns, causing me to freeze so I don't spook it off. As I stand on the path by the apple tree, a family of house sparrows, several jays, a robin and at least one calling chickadee fly into one of the few trees on my property I can't identify, which is full of hanging seeds. The birds sound agitated. Is there a hawk in the vicinity or am I the cause?

I don't know. There is still a lot about birds I don't know, including why they all suddently appeared and then, just as suddenly, why half of them flew off.

Downy on feeder, Sept. 2016
(Margo D. Beller)

This is about as active as I get early on a summer morning, rising because I don't sleep well nowadays and I want to sit outside while it's cooler and do my birding by ear.

In NJ, where I live, you have to get up early - even on a Sunday - if you want to beat the traffic "down the shore" to the beaches or have a sporting competition (I can hear the crowd noise from the recreation area a mile or so away from my house) or even take a walk. When I look at the state birding list I see a lot of entries from Brigantine, one of New Jersey's premier ocean coast birding sites. But to get to Brig before the summer traffic it would require MH and me to rise much earlier than we'd like.

Years ago, when I was working in the city on a rigid schedule, on weekend mornings I felt compelled to rise before dawn, dress and rush out to a familiar birding spot so I could listen, walk and shake off the week's nonsense. Then I started working at home, still on a rigid schedule, where I could fit in walks and wandering during a long midday break. I wasn't restricted to weekends anymore.

Now, I am still at home but my schedule is far from rigid, and with all the time in the world the best I can do most mornings is creak my way downstairs to my porch chair and listen to the yard birds.

There are many reasons for preferring this. For one, it is summer and, unlike the spring migration season when I want to find the gaily colored warblers as they head north, it is harder to find birds unless you get out ahead of the heat, humidity and the mosquitoes to walk and listen. The birds, when seen, may already be starting to molt into their duller fall coloring. And, to be blunt, I am 99% sure I am not going to find any bird I haven't seen before many, many times over the years.

Once I have made my annual late May/early June trip to the northwestern part of the state, where you drive along a road and can hear hundreds of breeding birds singing their different songs at the same time - a challenge to identify, I can assure you - I can't be bothered.

Also, I am older and perhaps more than a little lazy. I'm not happy about the lack of energy but there were several times during my life when it could've been cut short and I'd have never met MH or bought this house or met many of my friends. So I can live with this alternative.

As I sit and time passes, I see more cars are now rushing about. I am in no rush, even with places to go and things to do. I know where this road leads. You do, too.

Down the Shore

Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice, And with that boding cry Along the waves dost thou fly? Oh! rather, bird, with me Through this fair land rejoice!
-- Richard Henry Dana

As I write, in June, the backyard is very quiet these warm, humid mornings. The house wren box next door I can see from my chair is active, with both parents shuttling back and forth to feed their young. In my longish grass that MH won't shave to the nub as our neighbors' lawn services do, there are chipping sparrows and their begging young. At the box in my apple tree, the house wren sings softly and then enters the box with food. This nest is a week or so behind the other one, so the young are still small enough for the parent to enter. Soon, the chicks will be much bigger and noisier when the parent arrives to feed them.

Skimmer (left) and laughing gull (RE Berg-Andersson)

The singing birds I heard just a month ago are either nesting and keeping quiet to protect young, or they have moved on from my area to their breeding territories farther north. If you want to find any birds during the summer, you have to get out early when the birds are most active. It will also help you to avoid the heat.

It is at this time of year I look at the various bird lists and see more reports coming from what we in New Jersey call "down the shore." This can mean the beaches from Sandy Hook to Island Beach State Park to Long Beach Island down to Cape May, or it can mean the Delaware Bay side of New Jersey, or it can mean river inlets in between. Where there's water, there are likely a lot of birds in summer.

It is times like this I miss Plumb Beach, a short walk from where I grew up. At that time it was a dump but now it and the rest of the Brooklyn shoreline is prime birding habitat and lots cooler than where I live now.

Unlike Plumb Beach or the rest of the southern Brooklyn, southern Queens and eastern Staten Island shoreline (which make up most of the Gateway National Recreational Area), in New Jersey it costs money to go to the shore and look for birds along the beaches. You need to pay for parking and/or a beach pass. The shore gets pretty crowded in summer, as you'd expect. Even at Sandy Hook, which is also part of Gateway, you have to get there very early to tell the guard you are a birder so you do not get charged for beach parking. But I don't go to Sandy Hook in summer. I can't get down there that early and I don't want the crowd and the traffic.

Redwing blackbird, Bombay Hook (RE Berg-Andersson)

When I go birding in beach areas it is to places where you only go to go birding. In New Jersey, that place is the Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge, not far from Atlantic City, where you pay your fee and can drive along the dikes, stopping if you see a bird or other creature that interests you. (There are also trails in some areas if you prefer hiking and land birds.)

In the hottest days of summer you can find yourself in slow traffic, just like the highway you took to get down here, and you have to be careful not to ram another car as you scan the impoundments. Besides other cars stopping suddenly, you have to deal with other hazards such as green bottle flies that will hit your eyes and enter your mouth or your car if either is open too far or for too long, more common house flies, ticks and mosquitoes.

But there are the birds, sometimes thousands of shorebirds.

Great egret, Bombay Hook (RE Berg-Andersson)

I am not the best person to ask about shorebirds. I can identify the ones I know best including various herons, egrets, the sanderlings that run down to the water line as the ocean waves pull back only to rush away when the waves come in, more distinctive shorebirds including skimmers, ruddy turnstones and willets. But don't ask me if I am seeing a western sandpiper, a semipalmated sandpiper or a least sandpiper in that large flock flying quickly away. I will have to check my guidebook really, really hard, and even then I won't be completely sure.

There are other birds, however. In Delaware there is a similar place to Brigantine where you can drive on the dikes and slowly scan the impoundments for waterfowl, Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge. MH and I have been here in November when there have been thousands of snow geese but it is rare we come down in summer. As it happens, we were there in early June. The thousands of shorebirds reported Memorial Day weekend were gone except for three distinctive shorebirds called avocets.

However, we had many bald eagles, osprey, indigo buntings, herons, egrets and two birds I rarely if ever see. One is the clapper rail, the other the marsh wren.

The clapper lives its life in secret, within the thick vegetation of salt marshes. I have only heard one once, in one of the murky areas of one of my favorite New Jersey birding sites, the Great Swamp, where clappers and other chicken-like marsh birds such as the sora and the Virginia rail have been known to show up in summer, when the vegetation fills the watery areas. In Delaware, however, it was on the sand in front of the vegetation. I was so startled to see it I thought at first it was the sora, which does not hide itself much. Reason soon returned - soras are darker and smaller - and I realized what it was.

Clapper rail, Bombay Hook (RE Berg-Andersson)

The marsh wren, meanwhile, I would expect in an area with reeds and other vegetation. In fact, if you hear or see one marsh wren it is likely you are going to hear many more because they continually call to remind each other that this is THEIR territory. If you are lucky, one of these feisty little guys, whose song is thinner and faster than its cousin the house wren, will pop up, clutch a reed in each foot and sing for a long time. Listen carefully and you'll hear more wrens singing as you drive along the road.

Back to Brigantine: For the hardcore New Jersey birder, this is where you go, no matter how far away you live. But when I wake in the mornings nowadays, sitting on my porch before it gets too hot and humid and listening to what few birds are around is enough, even if in my mind I'm scanning the beach shore with my binoculars from the comfort of my folding chair in the sand, no one except MH around.

Soon enough it will cool again, nesting will be over and the birds will be on the move southward. 

Marsh wren, 2017, Bombay Hook (RE Berg-Andersson)

My Corner Office

A good back porch beats a big corner office.
--from a side panel tacked to my wall that was once on a box that held a sixpack of Mike's Hard Lemonade

From my comfortable chair in the corner of my enclosed porch, a chair that should not even be out here but I had no place to put it after we got some new recliners, I can see the bird house next door where a pair of house wrens are now feeding young. Looking the other way, I can see the hummingbird feeder that has so far drawn one bird to feed.

Backporch dining area, with plants (Margo D. Beller)

If I turn my head even further to the right, I can see my wren box where another house wren took over after a pair of black-capped chickadees apparently abandoned their nest. Another female wren put in a few twigs and now the male sings every morning, hunting for food to bring to the box. Since I hear no chatter of young, I am presuming the female is sitting on eggs.

Some early mornings when I sit out here with my first mug of coffee, I can hear both male wrens "battle" each other in song. I watch the catbirds in summer just as I watched the white-throated sparrows in winter, looking for breakfast from the vantage point of atop the flood wall. I watch the flowering plants in succession: forsythia, quince, dogwood, lilacs, the wild rose.

I am out here most mornings, taking advantage of having a more flexible schedule, no longer killing myself to make the train or drive a major highway, enjoying the quiet as other people head to work and school or run or walk their dogs. I enjoy my solitude as MH sleeps upstairs. This enclosed porch was one of the reasons we bought this house almost 25 years ago.

When we bought it, the porch had a roof and was "walled" with floor to ceiling screens. The first winter we lived here a couple of inches of snow blew in. The company that re-sided the house put in kick plates to block the snow, outside carpeting over the bricks and window panels we could raise and lower, making the porch usable in every season, including summer thanks to our fan, except on the coldest of days (although I have been known to sit out here in winter coat, hood up and blanket on my legs).

It is the best of both worlds, outside the main house but not completely exposed to the elements. "This is outside?" a visiting friend once asked. For me, yes. I can be seen or not seen. I can write, as I am doing out here now, or read or get away from MH or the sound of the washer or dryer and, with headphones, avoid the sound of suburban lawn mowers.

Plants, May 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

This is where I store soil, pots and other plant supplies. It is where I put rooted cuttings into small pots or plants into bigger pots. It is from where I put seed into feeders and take them outside in the mornings, then bring in the feeders to protect them from bears every evening until around Memorial Day.

Now the feeders are put away and many of my front room plants can sit out here all summer, getting a shot of sunlight in the early morning and the late afternoon because of the configuration of the house. If there are two things I'd have changed about this porch they would be to have it facing south instead of north (so my plants can stay out here all year long) and cranks to open and close windows instead of my having to lift them with my balky back.

This porch has hosted large cookouts and MH and me eating our ice cream side by side. It has allowed me to sit in my chair and watch an assortment of common and migrant birds eat seed and suet, the ultimate bird blind.

It is my sanctuary from the stresses of everyday life, although not always from insects. Let others enjoy their outdoor patios or their street-facing front porches. There is something to be said for sitting outside in the breeze, and I enjoy it when I take a folding chair outside in the morning shade to better hear the birds. I can even understand the need to sit out in public and wave at passersby.

My mornings. May 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

But from the comfort of my chair here on my enclosed porch, this is all the society I want as I watch the birds, my jungle of houseplants and the trees' green leaves unfold and later turn color. From here the world looks swell.