For the Birds

Question: What is a raptor? It's a bird of prey who eats his food after catching it in the wild with his talons.

The Garden Club of Waynewood threw a party Friday night, featuring 7 unusual invited guests: Raptors all.

Three owls, 2 falcons and 2 hawks made the garden club's acquaintance. There was a lot of squawking amongst the guests of honor.

Facts for your next dinner party: Owls have 75% more neck vertebrae than humans, because they cannot move their eyes from side to side, and have narrow fields of vision. Thus the swiveling head motion, "The Exorcist" style... Owls are not intelligent enough to train, but they sure are cute, especially the tiny ones. Their hearing is superb.

I'm Not Sure, But I Think This Owl is Making Eyes At Me!

Profile of the Barred Owl

Falcons are a bit more excitable and threatening, close-up. They have long needle like beaks, which can spear their prey, and their finger-like talons are long and sharp. I saw one knitting, without needles!

Hawks like to float along in the sky until they see a fish through the water. Then they swoop down in a corkscrew flight at 200 mph, at a force of 20g's. (The corkscrew is a necessity, because their eyes are on the side of their head. But it is also handy at a Wine and Cheese tasting.)


Humans cannot maintain their consciousness beyond 7-8 g's. If we could figure out how the hawks do it, then maybe we could conquer the world!

Or maybe we would all just be making ourselves dizzy.

Your Imaginary Friend,
Patsie

The Garden Club of Waynewod Turns 50!

Large Red-Tail Hawk

Falcon: check out his talons, thank you very much

Dear Imaginary Friends,

My garden club turned 50. Due to their impending midlife crisis, they decided to have birds of prey come to a meeting and attack us. OK, not really, but close.

The Raptor Conservancy lectured us about raptors, and brought seven charming and not so charming examples.We had a few cute owls, a few scary falcones that semed possessed, and two hawks.

ALL of them like to hunt their prey, scoop them up with their extra long talons, and carry them off for dinner.

Falcons only eat birds, but hawks can eat seagulls, rabbits and fish.

One-Pound Owl

Tiny one-pound owls eat a whole mouse in one meal. And I eat Three Musketeers. I guess that raptors find my food choices odd.

Not a raptor,

Patsie

Now on Display!

Daffodil Study, approx. 16 x 20", Oil, $550

Dear Imaginary Friends,

I have seven, yes, count them!paintings on display currently at the lovely gallery/shop A Show of Hands, on Mt. Vernon Avenue in Alexandria. What are they, you ask? Here goes!

Cherry Pie, 8 x 10", Oil, $350

Lewes, Delaware, 10 x 8", Oil, $300

That gives you a taste. Next blog, the four other paintings.

Don't you think the cherry pie is also a cheery pie? :)

Your Imaginary Artist Friend,

Patsie

Mountain Sunset, Oil, 9 x 12"

I wandered lonely as a cloud....

                                    William Wordsworth

Dear Imaginary Reader,

I am not a poet, but I do see poetry everywhere I turn. Visual poetry, that is. Today, while digging in my garden, I saw flowers and green shoots, that were like the very elixir of life.

Everywhere I see inspiration; nature is magic.

The colors of the sky make me swoon with delight. Tonight, there is a phenomenon called the Supermoon. I guess that will bring forth some super werewolves, but at any rate, it is 10% larger and brighter than usual. It is closer to the Earth than it has been in about 900 years. It is big and yellow, like a happy face from the seventies.

I saw the most beautiful thing this week at garden club. A friend brought in, for the horticulture competition, a branch from her Japanese apricot tree. This is an ornamental tree, and you cannot eat these particlular apricots.

She waits all year for it to bloom, and then poof, it's over. Today I drove over to her house just to photograph it in all its magnificence. The flowers are single, open cups of pink. The flowers are so prototypically Oriental in their beauty, so delicate.

Perfection is fleeting in the world of gardening. Art gives me more shelf life, as it were. If I can capture a beautiful image, it will last for at least 100 years, if it is oil painted on canvas.

The Japanese apricot tree blooms for only one week of each year. But I have to say, I like Nature's work better than mine, even though it is here today and gone tomorrow. If my paintings are essays, then the blooming trees are poems.

Your Imaginary Friend,

Patsie