Friday, December 10, 2010

Dating Updates and More

The Spots and Harriet wait in the kitchen for the maid to be done with their room, she is so slow.....

Amelia is doing just fine. It took a couple days for her to get her appetite and attitude completely back, but she seems just fine. She does need to be separated from the other rabbits until next week, though I'm considering letting Tyler visit her for moral support. Meantime The Spots and Harriet are getting along just fine. You'd think they had always shared space. Although Tyler has groomed Harriet, which means she is "dominant" I have seen him nip and chase her a bit if he thinks she's over hopping her bounds; getting too close to his piece of pumpkin or getting snippy with Amelia through the fence. My hope is once Amelia can socialize Tyler will keep Harriet in check. Right now all the gurlz want to do is fight.

Snuggling in the little box like old friends!!!

I've been taking an on-line Environmental Writing class with Crafty Green Poet.
There first assignment was to described an encounter with nature.

All the time I breathe, in and out, trading oxygen for carbon dioxide, the same as any animal: dolphin, cockroach, or wooly mammoth. Breathing too in a sort of opposite way, carbon dioxide in and oxygen out, are trees. Where I live there are a lot of trees, for an urban setting. My mother grew up in New York City and she always claimed there were no trees there and for this reason she was particularly fascinated and grateful for trees. She made sure that her children knew all the right names of trees from an early age. Podocarpus, Weeping Willow, Japanese Maple, Cyprus, California Buckeye.

As I walk around the neighborhood John rattles on and I silently say the names of the trees. Sometimes there will be a pink notice on a tree. This always means that the person who owns the property where the tree lives wants to cut it down. The City of Santa Cruz has laws that require public hearings for the removal of any tree over 15 feet. I have never attended such a hearing, but I imagine the red tape alone keeps homeowners from deforesting the city.

Along the block where John lives the entire street is lined with majestic Sycamores. Leaves buoyantly green in the spring and summer, drop brown and crunchy in front yards and on the street in the fall. Winter sees bare branches scratching calligraphy in the sky The tree protection law extends only to the actual removal of a tree; pruning is unregulated. It appears that cutting half the main branches from a tree is still pruning, since this is just what John’s neighbor did the other day. I arrived on the scene midway through the desecration and to my surprise felt quite nauseous. At the end of it a medium sized trailer was filled with branches, some a foot in diameter. The neighbor took them to the dump; they wouldn’t even be burned in fireplace or made into garden chips.

I breathe in and I breathe out, sometimes it is hard to be human.

13 comments:

dianasfaria.com said...

I'm sorry I don't visit here more often - I love your blog. It is always a mood lifter. Your bunnies are adorable & your nature encounter is touching.

Tamsin said...

I love the photo of the snuggle pile, makes me want to add my nose too with this cold weather I bet the are lovely and toasty.

PJ said...

Our neighbor cut down a giant live oak this past weekend. I don't know why, maybe it has something to do with the public works project he seems to have going on over there. But I won't ask why because I don't want to cry. I just tend to all of my trees and think about what an amazing gift they are.

I'm glad Amelia is healing. I hope things get better.

wv rests

Karen M said...

Glad to hear Amelia is improving. Hopefully the bunny wars will end soon.

Annette Tait said...

good to hear about Amelia! sending fur rubs and kisses her way :)

lovely writing style you have Diana! trees should be cut down, in my book, or should I say garden?

nice to see the cosy three party!

The Fab Furs said...

A bun hugger and a tree hugger be.

RG said...

Well, 3 out of 4 working together is pretty good!

Great writing! Take the front row seat! And bold to publish for all to see - yikes, what courage.

I tried option 3 which was outline/discuss an issue. Now poetry - sigh - rabbit ryhmes with habit and maybe I can work with that.

Clovie Boy said...

I am glad Amelia is on the mend.

I love the photo of the three snuggling bunnies.

From my kitchen window I watched an entire forest disappear so we could have a new shopping center that stands virtually empty today. It was sickening.

Ann (bunnygirl) said...

I wish I had a pile o' bunnies!

Lisa Alto said...

Also love the snuggly pic! Hope they are back together happily and healthy soon.

d. moll, l.ac. said...

L-don't deny yourself, come back all the time, lovely to have you visit :)
T-truly they would keep you warm.
P-Tree, trees trees, they are gifts plant another.
K-The next stage will be revealing....
AFT-Amelia says thank you !!!
FF-indeed !!
RG-grab it, nab it and had it too...
CB- wretched....:(
BG-you can....
TH-hoping for a four way snuggle here too;)

Deb Cushman said...

We're glad Amelia is okay. So sorry there was a hitch in the bonding.

We lost one of our favorite trees last year. It's time had come and it died. Still miss it.

Crafty Green Poet said...

Lovely to see your piece about the trees here! Sorry the trees disappeared, something I hate to see happen (unless there is a very good reason such as a diseased tree) and its a strangely fine line between pruning and destroying (though some trees grow back very rapidly)