The Cardinal Direction

A while back I realized that our Indiana back yard was going to be quite different from our Tucson back yard. One morning I found the pole holding my bird feeder bent to the ground and the seed feeder emptied. I put out a trail camera and dumped some remaining seed on a rock. Apparently there is a raccoon army out in the woods behind the back yard. They haven't gotten into the seed feeder again, but recently I hung a second suet feeder under my first suet feeder, this one containing a small seed block. One night it simply disappeared.  Where did it go? I hypothesize that it was hanging just low enough for a raccoon to reach up, unhook it, and carry it off into the woods. I have started hacking a trail through the mostly non-native, invasive Amur honeysuckle that makes up much of the forest understory, but so far I haven't found the feeder. (More about plants in another post.) You probably noticed the slinky hanging down the feeder pole. This is a new anti-squirrel device called...

We are mostly settled in, after almost a month here in Indiana. The furniture is arranged, curtains are hung, trash cans are lined, we have some art on the walls, and things have been put away.  But where have they been put? This house is smaller than our Tucson house, but between the house and the furniture it has many more locations for storage. Specifically: 32 drawers, 28 cabinets, 6 closets, 2 spare bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1  pantry, and 1 two-car garage.  It's one thing to put stuff away and another thing to find it again.   Drawers and cabinets in the kitchen. I still have to open an average of 2 or 3 drawers or cabinets to find what I'm looking for. This is on top of my "male pattern blindness." That's when the thing you want is right there where you're looking , but nonetheless you can't see it. A few days ago I was looking in the pantry for a small bag of rice. Mary Beth pointed out that it was straight ahead of me at eye level.  There is always ...

 On June 15 and 16 we packed up a 16-foot pod. Pods are big, steel-framed boxes that are delivered by a company aptly named   Pods. It was delivered on June 13 and picked up on June 17 using a device call Podzilla. Podzilla is a big, movable frame that rides on a truck with the pod, picks up the pod,allows the truck to be driven out from under, and then deposits the pod on the ground. (Or in our case, on a nearby street since it wouldn't fit in our Tucson driveway.) It is substantial feat of automation, allowing a single operator to unload an empty pod and, later, load a very much heavier pod back on the truck. Here's a brief video of part of the process.  To load the pod we had great help from Justin, one of Mary Beth's adult students. Then for the rest of the process we hired two men who had experience loading pods. You have to load the back of the pod to the ceiling and then strap everything down to keep it stable. Then you rinse and repeat, layer by layer, until you r...

This blog chronicles our move from Tucson, Arizona to Richmond, Indiana, and our ongoing exploration of our new home region. I lived in Tucson, Arizona, for over 25 years and my wife, Mary Beth, lived there for 45 years. So it's a big move socially, psychologically, and in distance: 1,800 miles!  Here we are before the move at one of my favorite places: San Pedro Overlook in the Santa Catalina Mountains, north of Tucson, a high point that affords a grand view over the San Pedro River Valley. (See below for us after the move, at Indiana's highest point.) Mary Beth grew up in Richmond so she knows her way around a bit. But many things have changed since when she last lived there, which was 1980. So while it's a homecoming, it's also a new beginning. It is a great new exploration for me, having always lived in the West. I also thought about calling this blog The Big Move , or  A Vivid Green for the saturated verdure of eastern Indiana as we arrived in July . But then I re...