February 9, 2014 by anexpatreturned - 4 Comments

Backyard Wild Kingdom (a Stay-at-home Adventure)

The arrival of winter weather back in December left me at a bit of a loss for awhile as to what my next expat-returned adventure should be. With snow and ice covering the roads and sidewalks and rendering the edges of the forest trail indistinguishable, I had no choice but to park my trusty, two-wheeled steed in the garage. The snows have come and gone since, but each time they melt they leave deeper mud mires where my paths through the woods used to be, and low points have been covered in a good six inches of standing water. However, even staying home is a bit of an adventure when you live so near the woods.

The backyard we jokingly call our wild kingdom is teeming with all kinds of furred and feathered creatures. Even with a chart of local birds on hand, I’m hard-pressed to identify all the kinds that come to our yard.

This blue jay is one of a bold pair that comes right up onto the porch to snatch peanuts from under the squirrels’ noses.

With their beautiful, bright blue plumage, who would ever guess they belong to the same family as the crow?

There are tiny birds with bright yellow feathers accented with black, which I’m pretty sure are finches. There is a large family of brown sparrows which has made its home in the birdhouse. There is a woodpecker with a head so red it looks like it’s been dipped in paint the color of a maraschino cherry. The mourning doves come in pairs to eat the seeds the others let fall from the feeder to the ground and squirrels and rabbits scatter when the shadow of a hawk or vulture passes across the grass.

One of our two wild rabbits. They rarely venture far from the protection of the backyard fence. (As you can see, this photo was taken a few months ago. I’m looking forward to seeing our bunnies return come springtime.)

The squirrels feel safe from birds of prey when perched in the branches of the trees (they’ve built a nest high on top of our pine)

Sitting on the fence to eat their breakfast…

…they’re sheltered from the hawks’ fast dives by the tree branches above .

The cardinals come in all seasons. I haven’t been able to get any photos of the female, but the male is bolder (and vain enough to stay relatively still long enough to have his portrait taken).

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Don’t get me wrong. I’m looking forward to getting out into the woods as soon as the trails are open again. Meanwhile, however, it’s quite nice here by the fire, sipping a cup of hot cocoa and watching the wild kingdom in my backyard.

See you again soon and thanks for stopping by!

– Jennifer

For those of you who’d like to make a wild kingdom of your own, here’s a good article published last May about How to Create a Bird-Friendly Backyard (nature.org). It’s not too early to start planning! Spring’s on it’s way, after all…
I’ve seen all three of these types of woodpeckers in my backyard, but so far they have been too quick and shy for me to photograph: Winter Feeder Birds: Indentifying Woodpeckers (donnallong.com)

See you next time!

December 11, 2013 by anexpatreturned - 9 Comments

Ice Garden

The scene I saw from my window when I opened the blinds on Monday morning…

View from an upstairs window

… was a garden of ice, a magician’s fantasy, the masterpiece of some mad glassmaker.

Each blade of grass has become a blade in truth

Every leaf of every bush is has been set in a crystal bauble

The trees shiver under an overcast sky that promises more snow to come

Memories of flowers, frozen before berries can be born

The pines have dressed their every needle in a coating of ice

A red pendant

Sparkling winter green

A cluster of berries hang enshrined in crystal like a bunch of garnets on some art nouveau bauble

On a morning like this, I could just about believe this was a Narnian lamppost

Even the most mundane things are made beautiful.

A rusty nail…

A gatepost…

A chain-link fence…

A suburban street…

Not a soul to be seen

The ice may be beautiful, but it has done its share of damage.

The wintry silence is broken only by the occasional sharp crack and whoosh of a frozen tree limb snapping and falling to the ground. The branches could not bear the weight of so much frozen water.

Boughs of glistening glass overhang the street and sidewalks. I almost expect them to chime in the wind.

It’s time to go inside for hot cocoa with marshmallows.

“What are those marshmallow things, anyway?” That’s a question many of my European friends have asked me. What can I say? That they are confections of sugary delight? Perhaps that’s a little too ornate of a description. I hadn’t had cocoa with marshmallows in years until this very cup in the picture. I do freely admit that our American cocoa cannot even approach the heights of deliciousness attained by the thick, dark, creamy chocolate I have drunk in Vienna or Milan, but there is something about the humble and rather silly marshmallow that makes American hot cocoa magical. It evokes memories of coming in wet and caked in frost and snow from sledding, snowball fights and snowman building, of childhood Christmases and visits to grandparents’ houses, playing games or reading in front of the fire while the snow came down thick and white outside the windows.

The next morning when I woke, it was snowing in earnest…

Overnight, the ice had been covered over in snow

I’ll close with a wish that you all are able to fit in at least one snowball fight in between bouts of grumbling about power outages and shoveling the driveway. We grownups have to deal with the problems winter poses, but its important not to lose sight of the magic and fun it brought us when we were kids. Enjoy the snow if you can, even when it’s doing its worst! If you have a hard time with that, well, hot cocoa with marshmallows might help. Our high temperature tomorrow is going to be about 18 F (that’s -3 Celsius), so I’ll certainly be making another cup.

Thanks for stopping by! Stay cozy.

– Jennifer

Homemade Marshmallows Recipe (instructables.com) This one’s for all my European friends who want to live the marshmallow experience (and all my expat friends who can’t get them at their local supermarkets).
Cocoa Local: Top Spots for Hot Chocolate (redtri.com)

I know what I’m having this afternoon in place of my five o’clock coffee. The problem is, which of these lovely recipes do I try first?

Hot Cocoa Recipes – CHRISTMAS EDITION! (amplearabia.com) Exotic, rich and extremely tempting
The Best Hot Chocolate You Will Ever Have (chelseyhardy44.wordpress.com) A very American cup of cocoa

And, for my local readership:

Cocoa Local: Top Spots for Hot Chocolate (redtri.com) A list of great places in D.C. for a cup of chocolate goodness on a cold day…
…and my post from the previous day, when the snow first started to fall here in Northern Virginia.

To conclude here’s a link to a pair of “winter berry” earrings made by a fellow blogger, expat and jewelry maker who lives in France. I was reminded of them when taking the photos of my own ice garden. I love her creations, inspired by the nature that surrounds her beautiful new home:

Enjoy!

December 9, 2013 by anexpatreturned - 1 Comment

First Snowfall

Snow on red berries by my neighbor’s fence

Wrong day for scooters (Rome, winter of 2010)

Flora in the Villa Borghese park gets a rare taste of a colder sort of winter (Rome, winter of 2010)

Days ago I heard that the area of Virginia where I live was in for some winter weather yesterday: temperatures in the 20s (that’s as cold as -6 Celsius), some snow in the morning and freezing sleet and rain in the afternoon and overnight. For someone who’s lived in a clime that is relatively tropical for the last seven years (well, Rome is tropical in comparison with Moscow, Prague, Bucharest and Bavaria – places to which I am more accustomed – so bear with me), this rather bland weather report sounded very exciting.

While I was living in Rome, I was lucky enough (well, I considered it good luck, though many of my Roman friends felt it to be quite the opposite) to be there for the first snowfall the city had seen in about thirty years. It appears that was the beginning of a trend, though, for it snowed twice more in the two following years (once for each winter). Still, one meager snowfall which barely sticks to the ground long enough to take a picture of it (these are a couple I was lucky enough to snap on those occasions) doesn’t really satisfy the longing for real winter weather that resides in the heart of a girl who spent the winters of most of her formative years in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Palm trees with a light dusting of snow on them were a rather magical sight, but what such scenes mostly did was make me nostalgic for the winters and Christmas holidays of my childhood.

You can imagine, then, how I felt when I woke up this morning, opened my blinds and found these scenes awaiting me through the upstairs windows:

Snow-dusted roofs in the early morning

A hint of white and a promise of more to come

I hurried to make myself a cup of coffee, throw on some warm clothes and head outside with my trusty camera to document the first real winter snow I’d seen in a very long time:

Frosted foxglove, caught by surprise

This morning saw a pitched battle between the resident family of sparrows and some bluebird invaders. The outcome is not yet clear.

Our garden sleeps until spring

Hardy rosemary

The neighbors have strung up their Christmas lights

Wearing their holiday finest

Bare tree fingers rake the frozen sky

A little help for our friends

The snow continues until mid-afternoon when the weather report is proven right and it turns to a sort of freezing rain. Still, the snow and ice are not going anywhere. We don’t expect the temperatures to get back above freezing for several hours. Until tomorrow, at least, I can enjoy my winter wonderland.