Way later than we expect it to each year, the crape myrtle finally leafs out and grows like crazy. Here it is, leafing and growing.
Then, when we’ve totally giving up on it blooming, maybe in July, the flowers pop out. Nothing to show here. No flowers popping out. It’s still just June.
There has been a mockingbird in the crape myrtle though. A pair in fact.
We watched them build a nest. No photos, the nest was pretty hard to see.
It got easier to see when they started feeding the baby that hatched out though. Got a couple photos of a baby face getting fed.
The baby fledged and is gone now. We saw it one morning in the latticework on the back fence complaining and getting fed. I guess that’s all it took for it to be off on its own.
These would be the people who lived in our basement for six weeks in Colorado when Becky was a baby, so 1969 or 70. An unfinished basement, they put in some cots and hung sheets and blankets on the walls as noise insulation. They only practiced during the day while Judy and I, and Becky, were away at work, the babysitter, and school. Once Slumgullion hooked up with the Hungry Farmer in Boulder, they played there for years. Other gigs too, but we usually went to see them at the Farmer.
The Farmer was way outside of town on Arapahoe just east of 55th. (That’s not way outside of town anymore.) It’s long gone now, but I found a couple pictures online for anyone who remembers Boulder in the ‘70s.
There’s no reason for it to come to our feeders. It waits on a perch for a chance to fly out and pick off a bug out of the air. Nothing as cool as that on offer in our yard. Maybe it chooses the perch by us because the birds that are already here make it seem like a safe place.
Growing up westerners, it’s not a bird we ever encountered until we moved farther east.
Same neighborhood. Same age. Same schools. Good friends. We spent a lot of time together.
We both had pigeons. We both played acoustic guitar. We both sang. We even did a couple gigs together while we were still in high school. He continued on with music. I went a different way. Whereas I could play the guitar, Danny could do a lot more. He played guitar, drums, banjo, harmonica. Who knows what else? Maybe mandolin. I think he could play whatever instrument he decided to pick up. An enthusiastic entertainer. Funny.
He continued on as a musician. I don’t know that he ever had any job other than musician. I think he mostly stayed a local guy around Long Beach, except he came to Colorado for a couple years. In fact, one year while Judy and I were visiting family in Long Beach at Christmas he was talking about going to Colorado. Judy and I ended up canceling our plane tickets and we all drove back to Colorado together in his VW Bus. That was a very cold ride over the Continental Divide in winter with only a VW Bus heater to take the edge off. (It didn’t take the edge off, by the way.) We ended up buying a propane fueled open flame space heater and tried not to kill ourselves by burning up all the oxygen in the car trying to stay warm.
We’ve lost touch with Danny now though. The closest I’ve come in the last couple decades to running into him is discovering this album for sale on Amazon Music.
A collector’s item, apparently. I had that album. I had cassette tapes of all the albums he did. But I don’t have any of them anymore either.
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