You Talkinna Me??

This morning I was out doing the usual early Saturday round of little chores that build up during the week. I'd earlier scattered the kitchen refuse atop the compost pile - now nearbelow the cherry tree - and was bucketing the last of the wood stove ash from the ash heap to scatter along the feet of the biwa (loquat) and natsume (jujube) trees, the blueberry bushes and the mountain azaleas that line the inner road, then to sprinkle the last of it all atop this morning's compost. 

The bucket was heavy with damp ash; I was just passing head down beneath the cherry tree when a blast of raucous sound from above made me look up. There in the branchy shadows blustered Mr. Crow, who owns this turf. Japanese crows can be uncomfortably loud even from a hundred meters away, but Mr. Crow was right there, yawping in my face. He wasn't flying away, as he normally would have done from this sudden proximity; he was staying put, hopping mad on a low branch: I had entered his dark presence just as he was planning his daily breakfast selection from the compost buffet, freshly laid out for him below. There was beaksome orange peel, onion skins,  tomato trimmings, cabbage core, tea leaves, broccoli stems, eggshells, you name it, all interlayered for Crow delight, what a feast it would be-- then I blundered into the picture and he became the essence of umbrage.  

I just stood there staring at him; he just hopped there, flaring and glaring. Then he raised his head and let out another blast, whoa loud under that canopy of leaves. Crow had never confronted me directly in this way, or this close up; only a couple of meters separated us. This was a bit too near even for my taste. I stared at him some more. He tilted his head and fixed me with his blackest eye: was I gonna get the hell out of his face or what.

For me, the next move was clear. I'd been waiting a long time-- about 35 years, actually. "You talkinna me??" I said, in my best Nooyawkese. He looked dumbfounded. "You talkinna me??" louder this time, more ominous, more threatening, half a step forward, just like De Niro, except this was for real. The big crow beak hung open in dark disbelief, like he could not believe his ears; like he'd seen that movie too! And I was using that very trope, out here in the -- semiwild, which was Crow's alone! What was Crow culture, then, if this was also an element of the human... whatever?

I seemed to sense a deep rift in the crow cosmos; a psychic shock wave passed through me. Crow looked here and there to his heavens for affirmation, as though he'd just read all of Nietzsche or its corvine equivalent. He gave a little croak upward. Forget about the select breakfast buffet. Human and Crow had just had a cultural exchange. We had crossed a line; there had been a merging of artistic elements. If this got out, things would ever be the same. 

The question now was, would Crow tell the others, or would he keep this bright secret for his own? Mumbling to himself, he flew off into the upmountain forest, likely to a distant higher branch of contemplation where he could be most alone-- as though he had to think about it. I'm sure he'll keep it all to himself, like that whole thick slice of bread he got not long ago. He'll never share this historic experience with another crow; crows don't do such things. 

But humans do.     

HARDBOILED WITH FLOWERS

I was outside around dusk tending to an old potted flower as my good botanical deed for the day when I heard the noise: an odd, seemingly random, yet somehow intentional noise, an attention-getting noise, an insistent rustling in the duff among the cedar trees just upmountain--

Normally such sounds are naturally irregular, like a thrush hunting for bugs among the leaves, the hopping, leaf-scattering noise varying in incidence and intensity with the hunting action, like the wind. This noise had a slow, scattery but rhythmic incidence and always the same loudness. That never happens naturally, except perhaps with water. But this was animal. Attention getting. Huh? I kept looking to see what it was; it sounded kind of large; then on the third or fourth try I saw between the trees that it wasn't a bear or a fox or a deer or a wild pig,which don't make noises to attract humans anyway; it was only crafty Crow. Who...doesn’t... make... noise to attract humans either...

He wasn't doing anything specific, he was "as though" just sort of randomly shuffling along in the leaves, not stopping to feed as a thrush or other hardworking bird might do, no: I could read him like a dark book, he was making all that noise to see if I moved, and if it was really me, because I was near where he wanted to go, i.e., the compost pile, his favorite dining emporium in these parts, like Capone had in Chicago. Here, though you can get fruit peels and other impossible luxuries, you name it-- pineapple crowns, even, and if it was me Crow would have to wait, and who knew how long; Crow does not like waiting (Al didn’t either), let alone abandoning his reservation to another crow.

Anyway, when I turned my head and stood a bit, the better to see him, he had achieved his immediate purpose: it was me and I was there. With no longer any need to move, Crow just stood still in dark impatience. He knew it was me now, and I now knew it was him (we have our history): he was The Mighty Titan. He knew it, I knew it, he knew I knew it and so on down through the infinite maze of crow/human intermentation. So as he stared at me darkly, mulling over the fact that I had moved and so was real, I said to him in the deepening silence - in a voice to scare a crow and so gain the psychological upper hand - if there is such a thing with winged creatures - that I knew he’d done the plastic bag job and was The Mighty Titan the authorities are looking for; he should come clean, he'd feel better.

From out of the darkling forest came that icy look, you know that look, you’ve seen it a thousand times after dinner in any of the smoke-stained questioning rooms on any of that relentless crime show that replicates with all those different titles, where at some point you’re expecting repentance on the stony face of some non-beaked thug across the table from a hard-boiled detective not holding an old potted flower at twilight and saying that if the thug just confessed the detective would do his best to try for a minimal sentence, maybe just one of those electronic monitoring bracelets or something, but instead he gets that look, that icepick look that says: "You can’t hold me, you ain't got nothin'!"

And Crow was right, I had nothin. Purely circumstantial. He flew away in recidivist disdain and I went into the house with some lettuce I picked instead. As I was rinsing the leaves in the sink, Crow and his moll flew into Chez Compost for dinner, selected a nice long golden apple peel and wafted it to their reserved loveseat in the cherry tree, where they shared and squawked sweet nothings like all the innocence in the world. 

There are countless crime stories in nature too, where justice takes care of its own.

PURE LAND MOUNTAIN SUMMER DAYS: Season 10, episode 42

Headed out for the cherry tree his morning to add some kitchen garbage to the compost pile that is currently nourishing the cherry tree, the Baron, his harem and his offspring, plus the smaller herbivores (no meat added, other than occasional fish bones), who all make good use of the leavings and add their share, leveling it all out with their rooting searches (likely the occasional wild pig too, though I've never seen one there). Crows and other birds also find goodies in the pile now and then, the crows being particularly fond of the rare pineapple crown, which they pick utterly clean; watermelon rinds are also a summer favorite.

When I went out there this morning, though, my approach prompted a big WHOA!, as a cloud of semi (cicadas) burst into flight all around me. (Some time when you've got a minute in your good pants, just try frantically dodging chunky buzzing lifeforms while carrying a dodgy load of drippy compost.) The semi had been convening not at the base of the oak, the chestnut, the other cherries or the cedars, but that particular cherry tree. The compost therefore must have been of some attraction for them, though it couldn't have been as food, since semi are the ultimate fasters, being mouthless and so not taking a single bite in their entire lives (Do not try the New Semi Diet!), staying alive in this form not being their purpose, their actual lives - such as we call life - being spent underground as larvae, in which lightless phase they get to be teenagers, yearwise; the rest comes later in the aboveground semi part that we're familiar with, a sort of pre-heaven for them, a quick agenda to perpetuate the race, leaving their lifeless husks lying around afterward, in some ways like the human teen age, though without the junkfood.

As I approached, the semi hadn't yet begun their daily waaa-waaa-waaa chorus, and were silent apart from the perennial morning background music to this unsponsored reality show tacitly titled Pure Land Mountain: Summer Days (audience too low for rating), which thankfully has nevertheless had quite a long run. This familiar buzz and hum was why I approached without knowing any creature was there. There was just a low busyness all around, as at a human conference. It certainly appeared that the semi were having some sort of convention, so many of them together, and as I neared their venue they began bursting away from the base of the tree in roaring sporadic dozens, zooming past my head WHOOM! WHOOM! WHOOM! as they took off, rudely interrupted, perhaps in the midst of some kind of mating meeting, an insect orgy, my sudden presence thus causing countless coitus interrupti. I couldn't tell exactly, but that is what they live for... Sorry guys.

Next time I go that way I'll cough loudly first...

I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE

While working on words upstairs, I heard an unusually loud call from Crow, the one who loves pineapple and hangs close around here a lot、 in hopes of more. He was so loud in fact that I thought he must be close above me on the roof; then not long after I heard a hard rapping on the thick glass of one of the big living room doors downstairs (visitors from up mountain who come by the inner road sometimes knock there).

I got up, went over to the loft railing and looked down to see who it was, and there was Crow, pecking at the glass! BOOM! BOOM! He pecked a few more times and, rumblecawing the while like a mafia wingman, tilted his head to look through the window and examine the inside of the house (he knew there was an inside!) as though to see if anyone was there, then he crowed again. To me, peering down from upstairs, the tone of it sounded a lot like "I know you're in there, where's my pineapple? I saw it in the kitchen window! I know you're in there... Fork the fruit over if you know what's good for you! I know where you live!" etc.

Then he hopped up onto the table by the door to get a higher look inside - I don't think he spotted me up there peeking over the railing - then one of his goodfellas called and he flew off, rumblecawing intimations of his return.

I guess I better peel that pineapple if I know what's good for me.

KEEPING GODS HAPPY

At last the sunny cool spring day came when I could harvest my oldest compost, that has been nurturing for a good three years now, so I went out there and set to raking the two long piles into one center pile, a manageable form for bit-by-bit shoveling ad hoc onto my garden.

I was pumped, man: that rich black loamy goodness born of leaves and cuttings, kitchen leavings and wood ash topped off with occasional additions of nature's helpful organisms like a big organic hot fudge sundae would in time elegantly transform the sunrainair and my soil into rotundo potatoes and onions with silly grins, dancing lettuce, rosy-cheeked radishes, a maharajah's weight in ruby tomatoes, golden squashes galore and zucchini choruses fuggeddaboddit, so you can imagine the dimensions of my chagrin when I raked over the first side mound into the center and about a dozen huge kabutomushi larvae tumbled senselessly into the sudden light like big helpless baby aliens and just lay there silently going Huh? Wha? Huh?, slowly grabbing with their suddenly useless little arms at mere air of no purchase.

This I was not expecting. Turns out that the kabuto dynasty had really taken to that patch of compost, made a family tradition out of it even though this year there were no more used-up shiitake logs, which they had flipped for a couple years ago, so there I was just a minute ago all ready to go and now leaning ponderously on my rake realizing that there were probably a couple hundred kabutomushi gonnabes hanging out there in my compost, and no other place to put them even if I wanted to bother winkling them all out and and putting them elsewhere, so I couldn't help thinking along the lines of hey gods aren't we supposed to be sort of working hand in hand here or what, you keep throwing these off-wall problems at me how'm I gonna get this garden in shape, ok, ok, ok, I will...

So I raked it all, the whole thing, into a pile like a huge kabutomushi cake and according to the new rules I have to wait until all the larvae grow up and leave home to pursue their individual beetle careers, which maybe start in June sometime I hope yer happy, gods.

UBERVINE

A week or so ago I noticed a vigorous plant emerging from the edge of the compost pile, it was thick and vigorous, likely an opportunistic pumpkin or some kind of melon, though the leaves seem too big and the plant itself too largish for a canteloupe-type melon; watermelon maybe? In any case, I have never seen a plant that was healthier, and happier to be whatever it is.

Its seeds were thrown out with the kitchen garbage sometime during the last year, and just one of them waited patiently in the perfectly moist warmth and optimal nutrition of natural compost to make its long green sinuous statement across the top of the mouldering leaves, clinging to net here, curlicuing to pole there, bamboo stalk there, probably climb the cherry tree as well, before too long...

No sign yet of a fruiting body and not even an open flower (my butternut squash plants in the garden proper, about the same age, are already showing mini-squashes beneath nascent blossoms) on what looks like a mature plant-- it seems to grow a couple feet in length each day, reaching from its starting point at the front corner of the compost pile (contained in a square by a net, one side open) as it twines through and through and over the net, heading south toward where the most sun is-- being by nature hardy to begin with, the sole survivor from a large family of original seeds.

Also, since it's growing outside my soon-to-be-electrified garden fence, I'm curious to find out what kind of fruit the monkeys will get.

ECROWNOMICS

Late this afternoon, just after I'd dumped some kitchen garbage on the compost pile and was soon going to get the shovel to cover it up, I was out on the deck moving firewood over to the firewood holder by the big glass doors when the crow scout who's assigned to the top of the pole beside the inner road along the back of our property, and who's in charge of monitoring the general status of the Brady area, began to call loudly and repeatedly in Crow (extended translation for reader convenience; the actual Crow version is loud, brusque and devoid of grammatical niceties, sounds like nothing more than repeats of the syllable CAW! to a non-speaker): "Hey you guys Brady just dumped some what looks like good stuff over here we should go through: garbage alert garbage alert now hear this, gather round," and one by one his relatives, schoolmates, office colleagues, guys he's met in the air and who not began to gather, but since I was right out there on the deck all they could do was scan the beak-tempting delicacies from a safe treetop distance-- Is that fishbones I see? Dibs on that fishhead! Those corncobs are MINE and such like beaky droolings from up in the trees around, a prefestive confab, but soon they got impatient and started mumbling to each other about how the hell long is he going to stay out here fiddling with those dumb pieces of wood, then they began to try to softly encawrage me to go into the house, that would be best, their tone reminding me of those financial guys who a while back tried to talk me into investing in a recession-proof hedge fund, same kind of guys that just ruined the world economy, except in the present case the matter at hand was clearly garbage to begin with...

Finally the feathery salesmen gave up with the niceties and while I was hunched down gathering another armful of wood two honcho crows glided quietly down there to check it out. They were just beginning to poke about in the decadent buffet when I rose from my firewood hunch up there on the deck, arms spread wide, dropping a rumble of firewood, and went BOOYA! The duo freaked as only crows can, took off on wings outta hell, all the lesser crows following and what a ruckus, complaining something like those big firms on Wall Street that none of this was their fault, they'd done the best they could, they shouldn't be allowed to go hungry, a few hundred billion would do for starters...

I had to cease their impudence in my presence or they would have taken the place over. Crows and financiers have to be taught their place in the scheme of things, which is somewhere way below investors...

BOB BUNYAN

By now, you kind and discerning visitors to these homely efforts of mine must be growing tired of my recurrent converse about firewood, splitting it, stacking it, all its charm and solid value etc., but when you heat using only a woodstove (catalytic combustor), firewood is a big topic; and because you can only store wood for about three years (especially in this climate) before it begins to lose its firewoodiness, and I've never had a three-year supply since I've lived here - we've been burning pretty much hand to stovemouth for the last 13 years - whereas this year, golden firewood is raining on me from all around and I must strike while the axe is hot, must I not, no time even to straighten out my metaphors, I'm doing pretty much nothing else these non-office days, apart from putting maybe a few spinach seeds in the ground on my way between trees, at odd intervals blowing neighborhood kids' minds with the magnificent menagerie of my humungous compost kabutomushi larvae collection (OK kids, now get ready, I'm gonna lift this used-up shiitake log... OHMIGOD!!) (scroll down to late September for humungolarval pics - they're even bigger now!)... And dealing with firewood, bucking logs, quartering, carrying, stacking, finalsplitting and finalstacking, at the end of the day, before toppling into bed like a felled log, who can keyboard with oaken fingers?

LARVA MINING

One doesn't generally associate neatness with compost; in fact, I never do. For me, compost has always been synonymous with mess. A lovely-in-its-own-beautiful-way mess (with fermentation added, to differentiate it from my workspace). That was certainly true of my own compost pile, a chaotically ongoing accumulation of leaves, cuttings, fertilizers, kitchen garbage, wood ash, wormy chestnuts, chestnut-burr ash and various other random organic detritus of country living.

A couple of weeks ago (as chronicled below) I added some lime to the pile and raked it all to one side to sort of sit there and cure, and it was a mess the way I left it, sort of like a stormy sea of darkly vague unpleasantness. I was going to rake it all out maybe this weekend if I could find the time, good luck on that, and then at some point spread it all on the garden and make ready for next year's pile, starting with the soon-falling leaves, but before I had to do all that postponing I had a little brainstorm.

As the attentive reader will recall, I had found a number of kabutomushi larvae in the pile when I was raking it out, they seem to like it there, for its heat, softness and nutrition... I thought maybe since kids (mainly boys) paid money for the adult insects, someone might like to take a few pre-insects for their science class or something, then they'd get their beetles and I'd get my compost pile properly organized, without lifting a finger.

So on the off-chance we checked with the Haruya boys and learned that they had found a female kabutomushi in September and were now kabutomushi fanatics hoping that she'd laid some eggs and they'd get some larvae, so when we said you want some kabutomushi larvae for free they said wellberightoverknockknock. You'd think we gave them each a Ferrari, they were so joybouncy. Of course the kabutomushi is the Ferrari of insects among Japan boys, so their delight was understandable.

We got out the rake and let them have at it, imposed a larval quota, first time I ever did that, told them to leave the compost pile neat when they were finished, and when they were done digging up their quota they rearranged everything, you never saw such a neat compost pile, flat and even as a fine dark shag carpet, I'm gonna feel bad messing up that elegant area out there.

COMPOST AND CANDY

Out first thing this morning to start sectioning some firewood but first I had to dump some kitchen garbage on the compost pile but first I had to do what I'd been promising myself I'd do one of these days, decided this was the day: turn the compost pile with the rake.

So I put down the kitchen garbage bag and went and got the rake out of the toolshed but first I had to put some lime over the top of the compost heap but first I had to pull up the weeds so the coast would be clear for the lime scattering (gardening procedural discovery often runs backward) so I began pulling up all the weeds, a lot of them actually vegetables that had sprouted too late from seed in the garbage, and when that was done I went to the lime box and opened it to get the lime but first I had to go and get a trowel to scatter the lime with so I went and got it, then scattered the lime - my plan was advancing at last - then I dumped the garbage over one side of the compost plot then got the rake and began raking one half up over the other and with about the fourth rakeful I uncovered what looks every time like a panicking horse's eyeball staring up out of the earth, shining white and smooth with a dark tinge, like an alien thing suddenly there in the deep soil, it was a kabutomushi larva, head downward in the ground, smooth, round, darkish tail up, as always, about as big as a hen's egg when they get full size, shocking every time, living secretly there in the subsoil...

I dug it out with my fingers and set it aside so I wouldn't step on it or hurt it with the rake, then went on raking more gently and uncovered another one, set that aside too, then another, and another - ultimately five in all - large, heavy, pearly, slow-moving, oddly vulnerable, truly alien-looking things; was about to put them back, cover them over in darkness again and wrap it all up before sharpening the chain saw, but first ran into the house to get the camera and took a picture of the the first four larvae in my gloved hand, then the biggest one alone... (click on that picture for more detail than you might like)

At the end on the left here are those insanely popular kabutomushi larvae made out of chocolate...

Smaller than the real thing, I suspect...
The actual-size creatures would cost a fortune in fine chocolate...
The resulting beetles can be quite expensive too...

SECOND HEAVEN

The first big tsuyu rainfall washes heaven down from upmountain in the form of all the debris of winter that has gathered at the forest’s edge, the torrential flow down and off the road having such force that it rolls a rock or two the size of footballs into our section of the culvert, where they get stuck and block up all the other runoff debris that follows - leaves, rotted wood, sand, soil, other wild vegetable matter - packing it in there so densely that at the bottom of our driveway the swelling buildup often lifts off the heavy gratings and starts moving THEM down the mountain. Gets pretty unsightly if left too long, which I prefer to do until it becomes a strong reminder, so it’s usually right about now that the task hits number one on my meter-long to-do list.

Thus in the cool of this afternoon I got out the culvert shovel and a couple of big buckets, removed the gratings and got to work. I should mention that, along with all the other stuff from upmountain, the rain washes down earthworms. A lot of earthworms. So when I lifted the first shovelful into the air it looked like Medusa’s hair, only of happy earthworms. Nowhere else have I seen such a density of fat and sassy earthworms in one cubic measure of anything. They appeared to believe they were in heaven. There were little newbies and great biggies in there, all just lolling around in the absolute richness; those on the edge would just fall from the shovel and lay there, no need to panic in heaven. This is what I call the pate de foie gras of compost.

I filled about 8 buckets to overflowing (there's more for later), carried them out back and scattered them over our 4-meter square growing compost pile of leaves, kitchen and garden waste, which is already rich with worms; the new arrivals just dove in and out of the broadness of their new wealth the way dolphins cruise on top of their ocean. It was the worm’s second heaven, out there in the shade of the cherry tree, an even bigger heaven than they’d enjoyed before.

Gave me a sense of how it must feel to be a benevolent god.