Sunshine and AI
The changing seasons, artificial intelligence, witchy things (obviously), art, education and a surprise birds nest.
Note: featured here are basically my journal entries from between the witch’s sabbats, Imbolc and Ostara; between the time of my last post and this one. Aside from a lot of thoughts on AI and art, I’ve been thinking about the sun.
February 10, 2024
This week I had the opportunity to drive to work a little bit later than usual. These were days the rain had stopped and the sun was shining. My commute takes me through Moss Landing where currently an old power plant is being slowly demolished in plain view. Boats are docked on the other side of that and I drive on a bridge connecting the ocean to a slough. Just past the old smokestacks (which will remain, unused) I see some of the prettiest sunrises, twinkling between hilltops on the other side of Salinas before making my way through winding roads lined with so many tall, evergreen trees. The morning sun causes moisture on the greenery to shimmer.
And here is what takes me by surprise, every year- the acacia blossoms on the side of the road. The brightest yellow, teeny-tiny little balls clustered up into multitudinous poofs that are so vibrant and delightful. When I was a child in Monterey County our house had like five of these trees. My friends and I used their crispy, brownish seed pods as pretend bacon when making pretend breakfast while playing house. The blossoms, I remember, were the cause of terrible allergies for myself and others, which you could probably sense from the pollen-filled image above. The trunks and thus the bark, which I’d climb around on, gave me ticks. The discovery and subsequent ceremonial-like removal of them gave my mom the heebie-jeebies. I don’t remember much about the young ticks, aside from thinking they were pieces of peppercorns (I didn’t yet know what peppercorns were) found in sliced salami. The tweezers were brought out after hot baths, for the removal of the peppercorn/ticks, followed by a full-body dousing of rubbing alcohol, which both chilled and warmed me. To this day, the smell of rubbing alcohol reminds me of climbing trees.
Oh spring. I’m ready for your light and longer days and since I no longer suffer from allergies and don’t climb acacia trees, I guess it’s okay to enjoy your early yellow blossoms.
This year, March nineteenth is Ostara and the Spring Equinox for the northern hemisphere; just a little over a month away. Yesterday was a new moon and I connect the new moon to what I want to bring into my life, so it’s fitting that I was able to travel in the sun, in both directions of my commute this week. I saw a lot of nice, fluffy clouds. Today from my table I see blue skies beyond my laptop screen and the light is helping my bean, corn and squash seeds start.
February 17, 2024
A few minutes ago I heard my Mr. Coffee coffee-maker make the sounds that let me know the brewing was complete and I was so happy. Ready to pour a cup. I added some cinnamon to the beans before grinding and I was looking forward to that taste.
To my dismay, it seems I had placed the paper filter in the filter spot and failed to dump the fresh grounds and cinnamon in. I brewed paper tea, essentially. Now it’s groaning away again (maybe a bit louder than normal?) and I just checked- brown hot water is filling the pot. Oh good.
Update: The coffee tasted terrible. I suppose it was the choice I made to pour the previously brewed “paper water” into the well. I’ve just returned from redoing the entire process, and I’ve checked my work. All systems seem to be “go.”
With all the suffering going on in the world, I’m lucky that at least for this morning, my biggest struggle has to do with the speed in which I am able to have a warm, stimulating beverage.
Now that I have my coffee in cup and body, I can share that I was considering writing about AI this morning, in reaction to the ways my Google Doc app seems to be suggesting changes as I type. There are ways I wish to work with words that don’t always make sense, that I think is lovely and feels like what I am hoping to express. As well, I don’t want to come off as someone who has trouble with language as I have a degree in creative writing and I teach people, for God's sake. So I tilt my head at the screen and make some of the suggested changes. I test it out. I go back to what I wrote or I accept the robot’s advice- especially when it comes to grammar. I know this is not exactly AI, but you can probably understand why I make the connection.
Commanding it to be funny.
Have I already written about the time one of my coworkers wrote a joke in an office email that I enjoyed so much I took several minutes to construct a clever retort that everyone on the list, including the author, would enjoy? I was so amused by the thought that they would see my ability to compose a delicately nuanced and yet office-appropriate joke that would take some thought to fully understand and as a result, would be something at least a few recipients would laugh at throughout the day. Perhaps my humorous response would be something they’d share with their loved ones, at the dinner table or on the sofa while unwinding that night, before bed.
Walking by the initial joke-writing coworker I commented on how funny her writing was and without lifting her head away from her computer screen, she casually responded that she simply placed some words into Chat GPT and commanded it to be funny.
It struck me in a way that felt a little like hitting your funny bone. First of all, up to that point I had only heard about AI on our campus as something students were getting “caught” using when writing papers or essays. Second of all was the instant awareness I had that my enjoyment of the joke she “wrote” and the fun I had constructing a response that met its level of charm, was moot.
Not that I think she needed to give me or the correspondence more attention, that is not what I’m saying- it’s just that there was a certain exchange that maybe should have occurred between us, rooted in being humans who can rustle through the nuance of experience (the original email had to do with a broken toilet and while I noticed the humor, I also noticed some things that were not quite correct in a way I now know was due to the fact that AI sorted through the ideas).
I’m intentionally blowing up an insignificant event for the purpose of exploring this new tool we have before us and all over the place. I can guarantee you and I’m sure many of my coworkers will confirm that I am a very easy person to engage with, on campus and through any sort of electronic source of conversation. As well, the person who I’m speaking of is one of the kindest and considerate humans I’ve ever worked with. She’s also very busy. I just want to express that what struck me was a tiny tinge of heartache at that moment. Just the teeniest, but it was there. It was a droplet of the kind of disappointment that can feel oh so real when experiencing a personal betrayal like a subtle but cruel insult from someone you feel love for, and it led me to feeling concerned about the potential, eventual removal of the assumption of authentic human nuance that exists within communication that makes life fun and interesting and engaging.
Maybe I’m fearing change, or maybe that’s how we will go as a species. The robots will be the ones to connect to creative energies that once inspired humans to compose art and literature. We will be busy filling out the forms they need us to fill out to keep things going, making us think we’re doing it for our own wellbeing, and they will have all the fun.
Maybe that’s just fine though, as everything we click on with laptops and touch screens is just such an infinite pocket of Hell-trash. Seriously, what a mess. It’s like a universe where the worst TV infomercials have taken a psychology course or have morphed into chemicals that take root inside of our brains. Our neurons connecting to alluring poison like what happens when someone is addicted to nicotine or heroin.
February 23, 2024
In glancing over what I had previously written, I think of a friend of mine, who I work with. She’s a poet and is not fearing AI at all. As a matter of fact, she sees it as a tool and sees it as natural- that we are apprehensive about it, as we always are with new technologies. I trust her, but I’m keeping my eyes open. I’m considering trying to use Chat GPT or something to help me construct an outline for a horror story I’m thinking about writing. We’ll see how it goes or if I ever get around to it.
At the same time, the same friend has been listening to Nick Cave’s and Sean O’Hagan’s book, Faith, Hope and Courage and so I chose to do the same. So far, it’s a fantastic series of conversations that are inspiring. I really don’t know much about Nick Cave and have not yet really listened to his music, but after this book experience, I’m planning to. I saw him once, walking in front of a gas station somewhere in Hollywood. This was after the first of his sons died. I had recently learned about that terrible tragedy and there is no mistaking Nick Cave, with his distinct look. It was odd to see him out in such an ordinary setting. Like seeing a vampire in the day, which I guess is what he’s aesthetically all about. I remember hoping he was okay.
I love the Wim Wenders movie from 1987, Wings of Desire, which is a film he appears in- performing as himself with his band at a club. I also saw him with PJ Harvey on a video, years ago, for the song they collaborated on for his Murder Ballads project, but I did so as a PJ Harvey fan and for whatever reason, wasn’t interested then in diving further into his work.
My friend suggested I watch some of his films, as well, and there is one I started to watch, and I loved how he shared a series of ceramic figures he made- telling a story about the devil. Interesting works, in my opinion, and the link between this deity and art is one I also care a lot about. Darkness, spiritually and the way mystical, spiritual or even biblical stories relate to our collective and very personal human experiences-
But then the movie moved into a musical performance so I stopped it. I’m not ready yet. I decided I will start with his album, Ghosteen, which they talk a lot about in the book, once I complete the book. Cave speaks about it in such fantastic ways in the conversations he has with O’Hagan- how it lives as something to do with the spirit of his son, and even more than that.
His words and description of his ways of creating and living as an artist were not only a great deal of inspiration for my friend, but I’m finding some kind of confirmation in things I’m doing with my own works and ways of living as an artist and a writer and well, just a person in the mysteries we all find ourselves uniquely traveling through.
In the middle of this experience I’m having with this (audio) book, I found a photo of a mixed media artwork I made in art school. I felt so incredibly connected to this piece. I remember putting it together in my studio senior year and it felt truly like a culmination of so much of my past, up until that point, and new discoveries I had been making that year. I don’t remember sharing it during our critiques. What I do remember is revealing it upon completion and receiving strong reactions from my peers and professor- that it was in some way, wrong, or messy or confusing or just simply not good. That is how I felt it, anyway, and in my memory I was very quick to tear the entire piece apart, leaving only fabric I had sewn around an old wooden canvas frame. I attached two tiny barbie heads to the bottom right corner and called it complete. I even featured it as a part of the senior art show in our department gallery. I had no attachment to this new version, but people seemed to think it was not offensive. One or two people reached out to tell me how much they liked it.
Seeing the original in my old, digital files brought back such a love for what I had first made. I love it even more now. In it, I trusted symbols and signs from a time when I had fallen deep into that language. I reconnected with my monsters and humorous doll eyes. To me, the stitching and painting on the fabric was and is very elegant and sophisticated.
I posted about it on Instagram yesterday and last evening, after my commute, when I arrived at the disco my partner owns, I found him sitting near my artworks that hang on the wall there and he was looking at his phone, at the posting I made of the piece that exists now only as a photograph. He loves it and was staring at it in a way that showed me he understood it, or felt something I feel with it. Perhaps it’s just that we kind of are a little bit of the same person at this point, I don’t know. But it was a good confirmation. The whole thing makes me understand, now that I’m so much older, how important it is to stand by work that everyone else tells you is bad, if you believe in it, or feel a vulnerability around it.
I am left feeling sad that I felt compelled to decide that other people were correct and I was wrong. To throw away my agency, my preferences, my internal awareness and enthusiasm of who I truly am and what I create, in order to make others feel better, safer, or whatever it is I think they want to feel.
February 29, 2024
It’s Leap Year Day!
It’s an ungodly hour, but I’ve had a lot of sleep. I’ll have to get up and ready for work soon, so I’ve been taking advantage of being awake by reading and editing what I’ve been writing here.
The last bit about defending my work is interesting to me because after writing that, I listened to a part of Nick Cave’s book where he talks to Nick O’Hagen about his ceramic works and the importance of defending it. In his case, he feels his son’s spirit is infused within them and therefore the issue of believing in the work enough to defend it makes a lot of sense to him.
I thought about my struggles with staying focused on my belief in my own works and what they are and stand for.
I guess I might be confusing the very important part of sharing work where one allows the viewer or experiencer to own their perceptions of it- to not get entangled within an argument over that sort of thing, and defending the value of something made.
Especially when my art explores humor and child-like imagery. But then, the physical work Nick Cave was speaking of is a group of ceramics modeled off of some collectable knick-knacks made for working folks to place on their mantle pieces. He’s telling a story of the devil within the “language” of something rather tacky or precious, but not really…
Yet, he is able to talk about its importance and epic-ness with true sincerity. The kind of seriousness that well, to be frank, men always seem to instinctively display ownership of, although it’s not exclusive to them. I think of the artist Alake Shilling and her teddy bears and ladybugs and bright colored-cartoon imagery and how she is seen in the world of art and realize that I can adopt a different way of being with my own work.
March 1, 2024
Well, I finished listening to the Nick Cave book and since I have to wait until mid month for my next Audible credit, I went onto the Libby app, where I can use my library card to check out books and found an Ursula K. Le Guin collection of essays from her blog. A blog I believe she wrote while in her eighties. It’s called No Spare Time.
I learned about her from the internet around the time she started the blogs, I believe it was 2010 or 2011. She seemed cool and had interesting things to say, but that said, I did not read her blogs, themselves. Just what others had shared about her thoughts. Science fiction wasn’t something I was focusing on then, so I figured I’d wait to read anything she had written.
My attraction to this collection of blog essays now is due to the fact that I engage in this format, and would like to read what a notable, widely published author who had lived a lot of life had to say and how she said it.
Nick Cave has a website called The Red Hand Files where he answers questions by his fans. It’s like a kind of blog, although he seems to view it as more of a service, both to his fans and himself. In any case, both his project and Guin’s work with her own blog is the writer/artist working by their own rules and parameters, which I have always been drawn to. I should also mention how Patti Smith’s work here on Substack has been so enjoyable for me and is an inspiration.
BACK TO THE WITCH STUFF
While driving I often listen to this podcast called The Middle Aged Witch. Yesterday morning I had a few to catch up on, as they are not long episodes and I was in the mood. The Imbolc episode stood out to me, as we are in the midst of Imbolc now, and also because Eli Ro, the host, made the connection between this time in the wheel of the year and the archetype, The Maiden. The maiden is the young woman (or female energy- all genders and realities are included), and there is The Mother and The Crone- Cycles of existing that witchy people may or may not connect to.
I’m paraphrasing, but Ro spoke of the Maiden as being the energy that “believes,” and is optimistic and brave in a way that comes from youth and lack of experience. I’ve been reaching out to the Maiden for a while now. Trying to figure out my delight in driving through places I once did as a young woman. The Maiden, she said, is not scared to make mistakes, and that was true for me in some ways but not entirely, which makes me feel even stranger about my pleasure in trying to get to the source of those moments. I need something from then, but I most certainly do not want to be the Maiden, again. At least not in this life-
It’s like I have messages for who I was. I want to let her know that I/she went through things she was terrified of, and due to that, reached a level of independence in not just surviving but thriving. It’s tenuous at this point, sure, but not scary. In turn I would like to snag just one tiny seed from a past way of perceiving that moved me to leap unwisely. A self-centeredness that now would not be exactly that and would not grow in the same way. (Did that make any sense?)
But the wonder (and that is too small of a word to get to what I’m trying to describe) is so needed here in this crone realm I have made it to. Like the title of Guin’s essay collection, there is No Spare Time.
What was it in my past lives, if I were to have had them, that led me to this one where so much of my youth was spent, for instance, considering how my physical appearance met up with expectations of others? I mean, I guess that’s just the damage from our patriarchal culture and I’m certainly not alone in this condition. But I’m so angry about that, and so bothered by people around me when they talk about it in their own lives. What a waste of time and energy. What a distraction. What a strange thing to project onto other people, which of course, happens all the time. I suppose I don’t really need a past life for that, now do I? Look at the plastic surgery industry. Look at how every celebrity seems to suddenly be stick-thin, when they might not have been that way in the past.
This is part of what makes me uncomfortable about admitting my interest in the maiden I was. One would assume it’s the physicality and naivete of youth I yearn for, but it’s not. It’s really not. The best way I can describe it is to say it’s the wonder I felt so often and easily.
In regard to this season, we are working our way to spring. The Maiden brings our early signs of growth and increasing light. Like it or not, the Maiden I was is what planted the seeds for the here and now I find myself in. That said, what is time? The young woman I was could be shifting as I type- now wouldn’t that be something? Maybe that’s what I’ve been mining for. Maybe that’s what’s been going on.
Above is a performative reading of a 2019 edit of a story I wrote called Time Travel Promise from my project called The Unmet Man. It was part of an art show on the Monterey Peninsula called My Body, My Voice. The people who put together the video got my title wrong. It’s about changing the past from the future or changing the future in the past.
March 10, 2024
Today is a glorious day! Aside from a a gigantic head cold I’ve been nursing- It’s daylight savings time! No more driving home in the dark during the work week. No more feeling as though the day is entirely done once I return home. Spring. Ostara. Light. Sun.
This is the start of the days when I exit the freeway toward home, right next to my local beach and can actually enter the parking lot (closed after sunset) and get a quick whiff of the salty sea air and watch a few waves roll in and out. Heaven.
March 15, 2024
It’s so pretty outside and I have to leave in a couple of hours to attend a professional development meeting that is all about using AI as teachers. I’m keeping my mind open for it, but I’m very glad that I wrote about the topic, earlier.
I’m also glad that I have learned from a humanities teacher I work with that they are strongly, morally opposed to using it at all. They are significantly younger than me, and they are a writer and said they explored the dark side of all of this via a work of short fiction, recently.
Their feelings feel in line with many of my students, all of whom are “art kids.” Young people who work mainly on iPads and have been sharing their drawings and animations on digital platforms since they started making art as young children. They do not like AI. They are very concerned with art-theft and funnily enough, most of them grew into the kind of artists they are because of their tracing or mimicking of other digital artists who make versions of characters in their worlds of gaming and various other forms of pop culture I have no desire to make the effort to connect to.
The interesting thing is that these are children of people in the Silicon Valley who are literally creating these technologies. It seems almost all of our students have parents who once worked for either Google or Apple or they still do. One of my students yesterday is an incredibly hard working and talented artist who shared very honestly that she is unsure how to feel about AI. She has big problems with it but she knows that her father is and has been very much involved in the development of it. I do so appreciate that someone so young was able to hold two sets of feelings about something like this. As you might imagine or even remember, it is often very difficult for teens to do this.
I think about my friend who is also a Gen-Xer who writes and isn’t really caring that much about it, either way. She sees it as something not unlike a calculator or tool. As someone who feels like so much is being thrown at me and us all, I think I’m going to latch onto that way of perceiving. Like me, she’s old enough to have made so many compromises as a way to live life and has had to manage within the ambiguities of well, everything. Through that lens of perception, this is just “one more thing.”
That said, I have been so empowered by Justine Bateman’s works and thoughts on AI and creative expression. Her perspective is one of an actor, as well as a writer and director and she even chimed in on the issue of teachers and students using AI technology, via a post online and I totally get it. I myself have given up on any true belief in the value of the systems thrown onto teachers and take it all on as busy work for myself while I do the actual teaching, which is subtle, human, sometimes slow and certainly nuanced. The fact that I teach students one-to-one at a private school allows me to take this approach.
I think about friends of mine who teach kids in public school systems. I also think about a post from a parent I do not know on a community app thing I look at sometimes. This parent shadowed her daughter at school and talked about the lack of consideration the teachers seemed to have regarding the grading and also the behavior of the kids. The teachers, in her description, seemed inconsistent and certainly distant. I can get myself into where the teachers might be, in regard to how they are thrown into so many systems and methodologies and apps and things they need to checkmark as completed. I can also see that the parent has an issue she cares to resolve and is perceiving things through the lens of her concern for her daughter. She isn’t able to witness the times in her child’s life where teachers did express the care she wishes to see in that school room. And she may be witnessing bad things, for sure. I, myself, have tiny memories- simple moments that were huge, in regard to how teachers at my public schools helped me along the way; how I recognized their care or recognize it now, as someone who teaches. I also had teachers who could care less about helping me and it was obvious that they really hated their jobs-
I guess I went off on that rant to try and sort out for you (as a potential concerned parent or an educator who is overwhelmed and underpaid) that the systemization of and desire for the quantification of growth and the need for “speedy everything” is on us- all over us right now and it’s not going away. It’s my view that the systems that organize us as educators are wanting a blanket of consistency that doesn’t exist, but it allows them to tick the boxes that bring in the funding and accreditation, etc... Just as some parents want something similar, in regard to: (their kid+school should= ”perfect” education). Really, it’s difficult and I have compassion for all perspectives.
I hope that teachers are able to hold onto a source of the kind of education they surely tasted at some moment when they were young or in college; that core of learning and making and discovery (all of which I have learned is truly within every teacher I’ve worked with) that they can keep on hand while they they write things on the chalkboard- sorry, I mean dry-erase board- sorry, I mean when they type things onto the laptop that reaches the projected image in the smart classroom.
Movies
You know, I was thinking about AI so much when I watched two recent movies. One was Poor Things and the other was May-December. Both were “Oscar” films.
I think Poor Things was really a wonderful exploration of being human and being a woman and May-December made me think about John Cassavetes and the brilliant Gena Rowlands’ Opening Night as it was, in part, about an actress preparing for a role. To me, May-December felt more about the art of acting than it was about the topic it explored. It made me consider the reasons an artist/actor/filmmaker is compelled to make and express and share. I wonder if AI was used in any capacity for these films? If so, perhaps they were able to just use it as a tool.
WHAT PEOPLE ONCE HOPED TECHNOLOGY WOULD BE
Twenty one years ago I was in a mental place where I felt that technology and the internet was in some way a consciousness. Sure, I was in the midst of a traumatic event and reality had taken an unexpected shift- but as an artist I find some kind of magic in that naive dream; in the memories of my past ideas that technology and humanity could find a sort of liminal world filled with harmony and the otherworldly magic and community that is involved in the best part of any kind of art. *The idealism I just displayed is most certainly a product of having spent my late teens and early twenties engrossed in Northern California, early nineties rave culture during the beginnings of oversharing online, when we truly believed that dancing outside, in a group, as the sun rose would create an ultimate, utopian unity. If you click on the title above, you can read a great article about the start of Wired Magazine and the perceptions many of us had, at the time.
Anyway-
Man, it sure is a beautiful, sunny day today. The kitchen door is open to my patio and my newly planted seedlings (beans, corn and zucchini) are soaking up the light. The squirrels will surely try and grab them again today, so hopefully my hand-crafted-and-it-shows chicken wire cage will continue to keep them at bay.
Soon I’ll pass Santa Cruz on my way to the aforementioned meeting and probably listen to my “goth” playlist as I look at the acacias and the redwoods and the oak trees and think about twenty one years ago and how the young body and mind I once was believed that liminal creatures were reaching through realms in order to send messages to me via our relatively new system of communicating with webs and waves. I’ll also think about how I need to trim the geraniums by my front door this weekend, as they have received a lot of rain and are taking over everything, including a potted camellia plant and potentially, the Alaskan daisies and morning glory seeds I have in the ground. I’ve learned to keep myself balanced, lol.
March 16, 2024
So, AI, again- I now have a catalog of various services that will make it so I can create an assignment that has more detailed directions for students in class and also as homework.
I learned about and even used a couple image-generating sites. My favorite was when I commanded it to create an image of a goblin with flowers. This morning I attempted to have AI make art that featured a witch and flower celebrating spring and the results were just so mundane. Really boring. I was going to add one to this blog but I just don’t want to. It just served as yet another confirmation that the internet is filled with such garbage. It’s also interesting to see how it captures the digital art aesthetic of so many of my teen students over the years- it’s no wonder they are not very pleased with the thought of AI in regard to art (that said, they all seem to have no problem with using it as a homework tool for other school subjects). It seems their generation, by sharing so much of their art online, has flooded the sources where AI is gathering data.
In the end, I accept reality (haha) and AI will continue to be a tool that I won’t be able to ignore. I can see how it will change the speed of how things are done, which I don’t think is a good thing. I think also of how I will be able to possibly create things I struggle with or that are tedious and confusing, perhaps things involved in applying for grants…
One of my fellow teachers is in a graduate writing program and uses AI to help create better characters for things she’s writing and to help her understand story elements she can’t wrap her head around. I guess in that way it can also be a tool?
During our meeting, I was glad to learn how flawed AI is at this point. They really laid heavy on the fact that AI is not anything without human input and that it’s never going to replace what we do as humans. Lol.
I also learned that our reaction to students who use it needs to be different, especially when there is so much push for teachers to jump on the AI wagon for things we are presenting them with. I think we can share with students that their job just got easier but they’re going to need guidance in using it more as a starting point to work with and around. In writing, they will have the formats sorted out if they enter in the correct and clear commands. In art, they can perhaps create a vision or plan of what it is they are trying to create, in order to get a head start. Sigh.
Perhaps if this technology came out when things felt less gross. I don’t think I mentioned enough here that I find social media to be SO boring at this stage. For instance, everything kids are listening to and watching now feels created by corporate monsters, even when I ask them to share things that are “underground”- it’s often something based on something made by a huge company but it has an aesthetic that references something punk or somewhat relative to grunge. I don’t know, I must have been doing some things that were similar at their age. I’m growing old. I’m perhaps just being the thing I’m supposed to be and they are where they are as teens. The world is naturally different.
I hope I’ll be able to use AI as a tool to work through things I struggle with, when it comes to tasks I often avoid that keeps me from reaching for new opportunities. I hope it can reduce my workload as a teacher that is overwhelmed by administrative tasks. Mostly though, I feel like it’s one more thing that will ask me to do more and do it faster.
March 23, 2024
Today is the last day to celebrate Ostara, so I’m not late in posting this. For all of my bad-mouthing the internet in this post, I used the internet to find out this information. I am, in fact, a flawed human.
I spent so much time writing about AI that I wanted to wrap up with something connected to spring.
A report: Where I live the ice-plants are starting to flower, blending the brightest pinks, magentas and purples with the orange California Poppies and the yellows of the first blossoming sour grass and acacia blossoms. My nasturtiums are starting to showcase their orange flowers too.
Two nights ago I returned home to find those that I’ve guided up a wall to cover an ugly utility box near our front door that had fallen forward, revealing the most perfect bird's nest, set atop the hidden box. I then realized that this is why a tiny, adorable bird has recently been hanging around and flipping out whenever I put the key in the front door. I knew the lil bud must have been protecting a nest, but I had no idea it was so close by.
I immediately and carefully re-mounted the nasturtium vines, hammering in a small trellis that holds it all together and did my best to not touch the nest, however I have yet to see my nervous little bird friend fluttering about. That said, yesterday there were two birds of the same size, one with a bright-red head, on the neighbor's roof, opposite of our door and the nest, watching me trim old leaves away from the blossoming flowers. I’ve decided to keep the perfect little nest in-tact. Kenny believes they may return, despite the major disruption. I hope so. We’ll see what happens.