Warning: the “recipe” for this post isn’t really a recipe and I don’t even have a picture of it. It’s just an excuse to say hello. I haven’t really cooked all month. Mark and I were in Charleston for a week, then he went to Boston for a week for work and came home deathly ill. He’s been home almost two weeks and still isn’t fully better, but at least he’s no longer cycling between being delirious and comatose. The only things he has wanted the whole time he’s been sick are wonton soup and kimchi. Frankly, I’m a little wonton soup- and kimchi-ed out but he’s STILL requesting it. Some nights I fix myself something different because I can’t eat wonton soup six nights a week. But here’s the recipe for making Mark a little happier when he’s sick; it’s actually extremely easy to do:

Wonton Soup
frozen vegan wontons (the Asian grocery stores have many varieties of vegetable wontons that are vegan-friendly, but read the labels)
as much water as you desire broth
vegan “chicken” bouillon – enough for the amount of water you are using
a couple splashes of rice vinegar
a few drops of chili sesame oil
maybe a little soy sauce
if you feel like it, miso

Bring the water to a boil and add the bouillon, vinegar, oil, and soy sauce if you are using it. If you are using miso, scoop some broth out before it comes to a boil and whisk the miso into it, then set it aside. Add the frozen wontons and cook until they are warmed through. If using, stir the miso into the soup. It’s also a great idea to add a lot of grated ginger to the broth, especially if you are serving the sick. Top with sliced scallions if you have them available. And I like to add sriracha to my bowl.

Serve with copious amounts of kimchi. Rather than making kimchi, I bought some. Mark was nothing but grateful to me during his illness, except for telling me I didn’t buy ENOUGH kimchi the first time. But that’s okay, kimchi is really good for fighting germs, so I just went and bought him more.

Yes, I realize this is a ridiculous “recipe” to give you after weeks of radio silence, but believe me, that’s what’s been going on culinary-wise in my house for the last two weeks.

Aside from taking care of Mark when necessary, I have been EMBRACING SPRING. I probably say this every April, but OH MY GOD I have NEVER been so glad to see spring. Last winter was cold, snowy, and STUPID. There is probably some truth to the fact that I’m more glad this year, even over other snowy years, because I feel like I just appreciate life in general more and more all the time. Not that I ever didn’t appreciate life, because I’ve led a happy life, but I don’t know; I seem to actually take the time to be thankful for things more than I did when I was younger. And to that end I’ve spent nearly every day of spring so far in a park, hiking and taking pictures. It feels weird to be sitting inside right now at 5:53, in fact, because I’m usually outside gallivanting around at this time. (I gave myself until 6 to write a post before going out so I’d better hurry up…).

I have felt neglectful of the blog, though. Not that I had any recipes to post, but I still felt as if I wasn’t doing something important to me. SO, I’m going to try to post much more often, BUT until the farmers market starts (next weekend, FINALLY!) and provides me cooking inspiration and/or until the weather turns less AWESOME than its been and I’m not pulled outside like a magnet every night after work until after dark, I’m probably just going to have pictures for you, and they probably won’t be food related. But so as not to be super annoying, I’ll just do one a day. Maybe two…we’ll see how good my self control is. So to start off, I present a few pictures of something that gives folks in this area super spring fever (other than the DC cherry blossoms): Virginia bluebells. The gorgeous usually-blue plant lives in marshy floodplains and is one of the first things to bloom every spring. They peak for a week or so and then they are gone, but while they are around, if you find a place where they are abundant, it’s like being in a wonderland. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. I’ve been bluebell stalking in several places this year, some of them new to me. I’m letting myself post a few more than one picture today just because I’ve been gone a while (and also I can’t help myself when it comes to bluebells).

The pictures tonight are from two parks. The first ones are from Riverbend Park, which I just discovered a few weeks ago (when looking for prominent bluebell locations) and have since fallen in love with. Riverbend has everything: the Potomac River, the Potomac Heritage Trail, woodland trails, a meadow trail, BLUEBELLS, it’s free, AND you can hike into Great Falls National Park, which is lovely, but kinda pricey and the parking lot is often full on really nice days so it’s cool to “sneak” in for free. It’s only about 1.5 miles from Riverbend Visitor Center to Great Falls Visitor Center! I’ve been to Riverbend several times in the last few weeks and love it. And it’s especially great when the bluebells are blooming!

My favorite bluebell spot in previous years has always been Bull Run Regional Park, and even though Bull Run was a near fiasco when I went for my first visit of the year a couple of weeks ago (the trail was so muddy and slick I nearly fell about a hundred times, AND they are doing some water main work that disrupts the bluebell trail in two places and is ugly and constructiony), I have to say that when I returned for the bluebells, it won my heart again. Bull Run is THE best place to see bluebells. If you are local and go nowhere else to see them, go there. I might prefer other parks for other reasons, but for bluebells, Bull Run is #1. There are just ACRES of them. My tip: on the bluebell trail (from the entrance across from the water park), once you get to the water, head left off the trail. There is a very narrow path through the dense bluebells for a while (though it eventually stops), and if you keep going, you’ll find yourself completely surrounded by bluebells for as far as the eye can see. And you won’t run into everyone and their brother walking their dog and taking cellphone pictures while you are off the official path. After enjoying the blue solitude, head back to the trail and finish the loop – it’s all lovely (minus that construction), but there’s nothing like being totally immersed in a carpet of blue.

Okay, I NEED TO GO OUTSIDE now. I will be back, hopefully tomorrow, with another picture or two…although I can’t promise it won’t have bluebells in it.

Let’s just get this out of the way up front: the dish I made last week that I hoped to feature in a triumphant return to food blogging after several weeks of inactivity turned out to be okay, but not blog-worthy. I am sorry. However, I can’t resist making a quick post about our day today.

For a bit of a back story, in a stroke of genius I gave Mark binoculars for Christmas. Ostensibly they are for our trip to Tanzania (it’s an expensive trip so I’ve pledged to buy nothing but items we need for it until it happens, other than, of course, food), but I had another motive as well, which was to encourage him to start going to parks with me again. He got bored of going with me because I’m always stopping to take pictures of things he usually can’t even see. My plan worked; if anything too well. Now I’M the one impatiently waiting for HIM to catch up when we go to parks! Mark loves his binoculars so much he took this picture of himself to illustrate how he programs now:

Today after raccooning, I stopped by Mark’s office (Mark works from home, so stopping by his office meant walking down the hall of our house), where I found him looking suspiciously like he was working, on a Sunday. This exchange happened:

RENAE: Are you working?
MARK: Yes, but I’m not too happy about it.
RENAE: Do you have time to go out for a little while? Do you want to go binocularing?
MARK: [thinks for a moment, then…] Yes, yes I do. Let me find my shoes.

Then we had to decide where to go. We narrowed it down to Mason Neck State Park and/or National Wildlife Refuge (they are adjacent to each other), or Occoquan Bay NWR. I said that at Occoquan we’d probably see a larger variety of birds and if we were lucky perhaps turkeys or a fox, but that at Mason Neck we stood a fair chance of seeing an eagle. Although the odds were better of seeing a large number of more varied animals at Occoquan, seeing an eagle kind of trumps everything else. Nonetheless, Occoquan is closer so we ended up going there. I spied some turkeys soon after our arrival:

Walking along I was explaining to Mark that Occoquan Bay NWR is home to one or two nesting pairs of bald eagles but that I’d only ever seen a single eagle in all my many trips there. Mark said, “I want to see an eagle today.” I said, “well, it’s possible but I really don’t want you to get your hopes up because you’re probably not going to.” To which he responded, “oh, I’m getting my hopes up!”

If that conversation sounds familiar, it’s because we had the EXACT same exchange back in April: Mark said he wanted to see an eagle at Mason Neck and I said, “don’t get your hopes up,” and Mark replied, “my hopes are up,” and damn if we didn’t see an eagle two minutes later.

Guess what happened two minutes – I’m not exaggerating! – after Mark said he was getting his hopes up about seeing an eagle today? He scanned around with his binoculars and announced, “Yep, I see an eagle.” Now, like a lot of people, Mark has “see an eagle-itis”. I don’t know why it is, but there is some either human or American tendency to think that everything you see in the sky is an eagle. The raptor rehabber I work with has numerous stories of calls he’s gotten about eagles that have turned out to be anything from red shouldered hawks (which are much, much smaller than eagles and look nothing like them) to PIGEONS. He receives dozens of calls about injured eagles annually and I think in his many years of rehab only one has actually been an eagle. People think they see eagles ALL THE TIME when they do not. Mark, too, has many times claimed to be looking at an eagle when what he was really seeing was something else, so naturally I didn’t believe him…I mean, I’d JUST told him he probably wasn’t going to. Except I DID then see something white-headed in the direction he was pointing his binoculars. I aimed my telephoto lens at it AND DAMN IF IT WASN’T A BALD EAGLE.

HOW DOES HE DO IT???

Now, none of the pictures in this post are my best; in fact, they’re pretty crappy, but I’m sharing them anyway because, well, I’m obsessed with raptors. The eagle was pretty far away from me and like an idiot I’d left my tripod at home so I had to handhold my big lens, which can make it difficult to get sharp pictures. But here is the eagle flying from one tree to another nearby tree:

And where he landed:

After gawking at him for quite some time, we eventually continued on our way through the refuge, heading over towards the bay. As soon as we got to the water, I looked out to a small island and saw a dark shape at the top of a tree. A dark shape with a white head. Looking through my lens again I announced, “uhhhhhhhhh….eagle!”

So then we spent many more minutes admiring and photographing THAT eagle. Eventually we decided to move on, when Mark looked back for some reason or another. NOW GUESS WHAT:

I’m assuming this is a mated pair, although since they are in the middle of a narrow bay between two wildlife refuges, I don’t know in which one they reside.

Maybe this makes me strange, but in my opinion, seeing three eagles is the definition of “great day”! I think I’m going to coin an alternative to the phrase “red-letter day”: “three-eagle day”! Not only that, I got to share my three-eagle day with Mark. And not only that, but the setting sun threw beautiful colors over the bay at the same time (the island in this picture is the one the two eagles were on):

It was quite dark by the time we managed to make it out of the refuge. This is the last of the setting sun over Marumsco Creek:

In quick non-food, non-wildlife news, I took Heidi to her new home yesterday morning and although she was nervous and scared, she was totally happy to have her new companion person pet her – she even ate treats out of her hand! – and I feel really good that I made the right decision. I do miss her and feel bad that she probably feels like I abandoned her, but I saw signs yesterday that it’ll actually take her less time to adapt to her new home than I worried it might. I truly think she will be much happier there. Gomez and Torticia have been in extra high spirits since yesterday so I suppose they are happier too.

I shall be spending the upcoming days hoping a food post comes to me…if only because I have a backlog of raptor pictures to foist upon you!

I exist!

I have far more non-food-related news going on in my life right now than new recipes, so I return with a non-recipe post…but only because I am actually planning a recipe post later this week. Several people have asked about the cat situation, particularly since last time I alluded to the fact we had four cats. Which, for a couple of months, we did. So for you cat lovers, here’s a cat-only update. For those of you uninterested in cats, come back soon for some food.

So, back when I was furloughed in October, I was in the sunroom when Gomez and Torticia suddenly sounded an alert: someone was at the back door! Mezzie and Tish race to the door whenever any other living thing shows up outside the sliding glass door: bird, squirrel, raccoon, skunk, fox…you name it. But that day the cause of their excitement was another cat. And not just any cat, this gorgeous fluffy black cat, and she was pressing herself against the door as if she desperately wanted in, although the weather was quite nice out at the time. Gently kicking Mez and Tish out of the way, I opened the door, only to have the kitty run off a few yards. However, to my surprise, when I called to her she came running up to me and let me pet her. In fact, she let me pick her up. I fell for her immediately. I INSTANTLY loved this cat. She rubbed noses with me! I went back inside to get her some food and to call Mark to come look at her. She scarfed down a large can of food like she hadn’t eaten for days and by the time she was done Mark was in love with her too.

It took me several weeks to bring Heidi in when she was living in our yard, but I took this cat up to the animal hospital to be scanned for a microchip within a couple of hours. For one thing, she was a black cat and it was nearing Halloween. For another thing, I loved her and I was secretly hoping no one claimed her. She was negative for a chip and I SWEAR I made a good faith attempt to find her owners, checking in with the animal shelter and Craigslist, etc., but when no one claimed her in a week or so, Mark and I called her a Halloween miracle from the Great Pumpkin and we christened her Wednesday to fit in with Gomez and Torticia (conveniently, I also found her on a Wednesday).

I took Wednesday to our vet and told him we’d adopted a fourth cat. I was convinced he was going to think I was some crazy cat thief because Torticia is a tortie and Gomez is all-black, and the first cat I found in my yard was another tortie, and now the second cat I’d found in the yard was all-black. I mean, what at the chances that the TWO cats that show up in my yard within a few months of each other would be another tortie and another all-black cat?? Both the new cats were like tiny versions of Mezzie and Tortellini! I thought he’d think I was starting a bizarre collection. He insisted he just thought I was a good person to care about strays so much, gave her some shots, and collected some blood to run the standard new-cat tests.

Two days later I sprang to answer his call because Wednesday was going crazy being locked up in a room by herself and I was desperate to get the all-clear to let her mingle with other cats and have full run of the house. Only it wasn’t to be: the test results were positive for feline leukemia. I cried my eyes out when I got off the phone with him, because feline leukemia is pretty much an early death sentence. Unlike feline HIV patients who can often live many years with no symptoms of their disease, most leukemia patients die within 3-5 years. And since it’s contagious to other cats, Wednesday would have to go to a home where she could be the only cat. It’s REALLY hard to find someone who is willing to adopt such a cat. Honestly I don’t know that I would choose to do so. You can’t have any other cats (unless they too are FLV+), you have to live knowing they will very likely have a short life, and you’re probably looking at at lot of vet bills near the end of their life. I thought immediately of my friend Melissa, though, who lost her cat KK the prior year (KK was an orange tabby, like my cat Tigger that those of you who have been reading for years may remember, and like Tigger, KK was from Ocean City, MD: Melissa and I adopted them about the same time when we were in college together) and through my tears sent her an emotional email. I figured she’d probably be mad at me for asking her such a ridiculous question (“Hey, I know you are busy raising three young kids and working but how would you like to adopt a cat that’s going to get sick and die in a few years????”), so when she didn’t respond right away, I totally understood and began the arduous task of reaching out to EVERY cat charity I could find and asking for help. Very few did anything to help me, although I did finally find one place near Charlottesville that has a FLV room and would accept Wednesday if I agreed to sponsor her – essentially donate money monthly towards her vet bills and upkeep – which I kept on reserve as a last resort as I preferred to find her an actual home.

But then it turned out Melissa wasn’t purposely avoiding me because she didn’t want to have to say no to me – she just hadn’t checked her email in a few days. AND she thought she may be feeling called to agree to it! After a lot of research on Melissa’s part and a family vote, Melissa’s family agreed to adopt Wednesday. I was so, so, so, so happy! Because not only was Wednesday going to a great home with someone I trust implicitly, I’d be able to see her whenever I wanted! Plus, I was tired of going to Melissa’s house and not getting to see KK or any other cats. Wednesday has been at Melissa’s for over a month and is adjusting well to her three kids. This story has a happy ending!!

Wednesday is super difficult to take pictures of because she’s so dark and fast: if you level a camera at her, she’s immediately in your face, wanting attention. These are the crappy pictures I took for Melissa while she was still deciding; they do nothing to express the beauty of Wednesday, who is very tiny but very silky, very black, very, very pretty, and super personable.

This picture is absurd, but I wanted to capture her gorgeous tail.

I love this cat. And I love Melissa and her family for adopting her!

Now, another story, which is a little less dramatic, but like the first starts out sad then gets happy: Heidi.

Little Heidi. I told you how I came to adopt her this summer in this post, but unfortunately, during the whole Wednesday debacle it was becoming obvious it just wasn’t going to work out with her. I love Heidi: she’s very sweet and loyal and eager to show me how grateful she is I took her in. Seriously, I can read it in her eyes. The problem is Torticia has HATED Heidi since the day I let Heidi out of quarantine following HER blood test results (which were, thankfully, all negative). Mezzie, on the other hand, was super friendly with Heidi and tried to befriend her. Heidi, however, went on the defensive following Torticia’s rancor and struck out indiscriminately at both cats. After a few months, I don’t know if Mezzie got tired of his friendly overtures being rebuffed or if Torticia finally convinced him to join the dark side, but eventually Mezzie started hassling Heidi as well. With the two of them ganged up on the poor girl, I realized I couldn’t make the relationship work, so I turned to the SPCA, from whom I adopted Mez and Tish. SPCA NOVA is awesome to work with and they responded immediately with help. They posted Heidi on their website and promised to get Heidi into a safe foster home as soon as one was available.

Imagine my surprise when a week later no foster homes had opened up, but two different people wanted to adopt her! I liked both applicants tremendously but of course only one could adopt her. This Saturday morning Heidi will be moving to her new home with a very nice woman who was looking for a quiet, gentle kitty to love after her ex-husband took the cat he entered the relationship with. I feel really good about this. I know Heidi will be much happier in her new home and I think Heidi will be an excellent companion for her.

My sweet girl, I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the home you deserve, but I hope you know I’m giving you up so you can have a better life!

AND NOW LOOK AT THESE BULLIES!

Seriously, though, when they aren’t giving me headaches by hassling Heidi, Gomez and Torticia remain the most absolutely wonderful cats ever. And frankly, I’m looking forward to being back down to two cats. Four was too many, especially since there were three distinct “groups” to whom I had to pay separate attention. When I work with the raccoons and the raptors, I have to divide my time up between many animals, and I like that because I am exposed to so many different needs and personalities and I learn a lot. But at home, I really just want two awesome best feline friends with whom I have the strongest relationship possible. And a lot of the time I’m not home. So when I get home, I just want to see their two smiling little faces greeting me and not feel stressed out that I need to spend quality time with half the cat population of Virginia.

Yeah, they LOOK lazy, but they are MEANIE PANTS.

LET’S ALL HOPE NO MORE STRAY CATS TAKE UP RESIDENCE IN MY YARD.

Finally, in non-cat-related news, big excitement on the horizon!! Mark and I are going on safari in Tanzania for our 10th wedding anniversary in October! And Smucky and his girlfriend are going with us! It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done and I am beside myself! I am mentioning it here because, well, it’s pretty much the only thing I think of these days, but also because I’m soliciting advice. Our tour organizer knows we are vegan and has assured me it won’t be a problem, and I’ve actually seen the words “vegan-friendly” on the websites of some of the camps and lodges we’ll be staying in (can you imagine that?! The times we live in!), so I’m not super worried about starving, but I am a little worried about being hungry from time to time. We’ll be on some long drives and I get really, really bad headaches – and turn into a total monster – if I don’t eat when I’m hungry. Usually when I travel long distances, I load up on energy bars for the journey, and usually my destination is a city or at least someplace I can find a bag of chips or something if I’m really desperate. But what do I do when I’m in the Serengeti and there’s no vegan snacks around for miles? Because we will be taking tiny planes from camp to camp in Africa, there is a 12 kg luggage weight limit, most of which I’ll be devoting to camera equipment, and furthermore, we have to use soft-sided luggage like duffle bags. Basically I’m planning to take a very small carry-on bag for my clothes and toiletries – just enough clothes for 3 days or so (laundry service is provided in the camps). I won’t have space for a 2-week supply of energy bars, and besides which, it’ll be hot: a lot of them get melty and gross in the heat. Are there any of you out there who, even if you haven’t been on safari, are maybe avid backpackers and have suggestions for highly portable, filling snacks, or other not-starving-while-traveling tips? So far all I can think of is nuts, but I’m not even sure how much room I’ll have for those…and how I’ll keep Mark from eating all of them on the first day. (That boy loves nuts!)

And now I’m off to make dinner…a dinner that I hope to be able to post as a recipe here.

Sigh, October. It’s my favorite month and it contains all sort of fun events and celebrations, but it’s always so busy! Because my birthday fell on a Saturday this year, I decided we needed to go away for the weekend to celebrate both our birthdays (Mark’s is just a few days after mine). Mark wanted to go to the Blue Ridge mountains, but because the fall colors are so spectacular there, everything in that area books like a year in advance. I’ve been wanting to go to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge for a while, so we booked a B&B on Chincoteague Island. There was a while there during the furlough when I thought the weekend was going to be ruined (as all national parks and refuges were closed), but fortunately the government reopened the day before we were scheduled to leave.

Chincoteague Island and NWR are located just south of the Maryland/Virginia border; in fact, although we live in Virginia, most of our drive was in Maryland. Although like many people from the Baltimore area I spent lots of adolescent summers in Maryland’s Ocean City and Delaware’s Rehobeth Beach, I’d never made it to nearby Assateague Island or Chincoteague right below it, each home to a herd of wild ponies. When I started getting into wildlife photography, however, it became a required destination.

We stayed at Miss Molly’s Inn, famed location where Misty of Chincoteague was written. Miss Molly’s is charming, the host, Sam, was funny and very friendly (I barely saw his wife), and they were happy to accommodate our vegan diets. The entire island is small enough that you can pretty much walk the whole thing, but the inn is conveniently located on the main road with most of the shops and restaurants. We stayed in the room off the upper deck. The room itself was kind of tiny, but check out our awesome deck!

A small chilled bottle of complimentary Prosecco and a birthday card awaited us, which I thought was sweet. We drank red wine and Prosecco …

…watching the sunset from the deck. Lovely!

There was a harvest moon that first evening, and once it got dark enough, I noticed an arc of light circling it, with two rainbow patches to the left and right of it. I’ve seen that happen with the sun before and knew it was called sun dogs, and though I don’t recall seeing such a thing around the moon, I decided what we were seeing were moon dogs. Turns out I was right: moon dogs exist. It’s kind of hard to discern from the picture – it’s somewhat difficult to photograph without burning out the moon – but it was really neat in reality.

Chincoteague is not much of a hot vegan destination, although you won’t starve there. It’s mostly seafood, though all the seafood places serve pasta. I sort of hate getting pasta marinara out, though, because it’s something I can make deliciously at home in my sleep. There is a single Vietnamese (the only Asian place, I believe) restaurant on the island, Saigon Village, but fortunately it was two blocks from Miss Molly’s and had plenty of vegan-friendly options. We ate outside on the porch which was nicer than the brightly lit interior, although it was getting a bit nippy, and we soon regretted not just getting take-out and eating on our deck with some wine. Nonetheless, it was a good meal.

Mark ordered a spicy noodle dish with tofu. The waitress asked him how hot he wanted it on a scale of 10 out of 10 and tried warning him against it when he said “10”. However, she gave in when he said he grows and eats raw ghost peppers. Mark was subsequently suitably impressed with the spiciness of the noodles. In fact, it took him longer to eat his food than it did me mine, and that’s UNHEARD of because I’m a notoriously slow eater and he’s really fast. However, the noodles weren’t so hot that they had no flavor and I was quite happy to eat more than a few forkfuls.

I ordered barbecued tofu, which was pretty yummy. Loved the grill marks.

And that’s all the food pictures I remembered to take! (And Mark had to remind me to take those!) The other night we ordered pizza delivery. The pizza from Famous Pizza wasn’t the most amazing pizza I’ve ever had in my life, but they were very friendly, didn’t sound at all surprised I didn’t want cheese, and it arrived a few minutes before they said it would, even on a Saturday night.

I was disappointed Poseidon’s Pantry was closed the entire weekend we were there, but Sea Star Cafe had several sandwiches and vegan wraps to choose from and we had a nice lunch shielded from a light rain under an umbrella at one of their tables. (There are no eat-in tables.)

Saturday morning we headed out to the wildlife refuge and were rewarded with ponies! They were pretty far away – hard to see without my 400mm lens – and it was misting most of the morning, so my pictures aren’t super sharp, but wild horses are exciting nonetheless.

Wanna know what I look like when I’m photographing wildlife?

We saw the Assateague lighthouse …

… and climbed to the top.

I almost didn’t recognize this great blue heron when I first saw him, until he turned his head slightly. Until then he was almost 2-dimensional – herons look a bit weird straight-on!

We saw a LOT of great blue herons.

If you look closely in this picture, you can just barely make out a bunch of birds OTHER than the heron, hiding!

I believe this is an immature double crested cormorant. They are funny.

They reminded me of something out of Disney when posed like this for some reason.

Another…

Great egrets are a big thing in Chincoteague, after the ponies.

Assateague National Seashore is part of Chincoteague NWR. Mark was sad that due to weather conditions he was unable to get an on-sand permit for his Jeep.

But not so sad he couldn’t delight in the treasures he found.

Sunday we visited NASA’s Wallops facility.

We also stopped by Blackwater NWR, which was just a few miles out of our way. Lots more herons! How mean does this one look?

All in all, it was a very lovely weekend! And now…Halloween party time.

Well, it appears I am allergic to jellyfish because my ankles look much worse today, 9 days later, than they did when I last posted. The evening after I wrote that post, blisters began to form, and since then it’s just been getting redder and spreading. Actually, today is the first day that I woke up and decided my one really bad ankle might actually feel (and look) a tiny bit better than it did the day before, so hopefully this thing is turning around, especially since no doctors will address the swelling I still have from the original running injury until the jellyfish sting that is on top of the swelling has healed. Le sigh.

Yeah, so, there’s that. Basically I’ve taken up the very uncharacteristic non-animal-rights-friendly stance that all jellyfish need to die. Perhaps my jellyfish hatred will relax a bit once I’m healed, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up with a permanent tentacle scar wrapped around my left ankle.

But enough of that – I really do think it’s finally starting to get better. So how about I tell you something useful? Homemade dish soap and dishwasher detergent! I’ve taken to making all of my detergents (including laundry detergent). Yeah, it’s better because I know what’s in them and it’s cheaper, but to be honest the biggest reason I do it is because I hated lugging those things home from the grocery store all the time. And I also hated running out of them and not having any on hand. It’s much easier, to me, to just keep boxes of Borax and washing soda on hand and mix up a batch of whatever I need whenever I need it. They’re so easy to make it takes less time than buying them at the store. Plus I really hate packaging and try to cut down on it whenever I can, and making your own detergents definitely helps there.

I copied both my dish and dishwasher detergents from others on the internet. Both of the recipes I found work so well I haven’t found a need to tweak them, so I totally want to give full credit to the bloggers who created and tested them. I’m sure perfecting these recipes took a lot of trial and error and I’m grateful they went through the trouble so I don’t have to! Here they are:

Dish Soap
From Frugally Sustainable – I have tripled the amounts in the original recipe because that’s how much I make at a time.

4 1/2 cups near-boiling water
1 1/2 cups liquid castille soap
3 Tbsp washing soda
3 Tbsp grated bar soap (any kind is fine; the original recipe says this is optional to provide extra thickening, but I always do it)
3 Tbsp distilled white vinegar
1/2 tsp tea tree oil (optional, but I always use it)
essential oil(s) for fragrance (optional)

Heat the water until it’s very hot. I have an electric kettle that was specifically made for tea (though I use it for soooo much more, LOVE the electric kettle!) and I usually set it mid-way between “green tea” and “black tea”, which is probably around 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature doesn’t matter much – you just want it hot enough to melt the grated soap and washing soda.

Place all of the ingredients in a large bowl (I use my 8-cup Pyrex measuring cup because it has a pouring spout, which is very handy when transferring the soap to containers) …

… saving the hot water for last. Whisk until the bar soap has melted completely and the mixture is uniform.

Let cool to room temperature, whisking occasionally, then transfer to a container with a pump or squirt top. I usually add lavender essential oil to mine, but if someone could tell me how to make it smell like the original Palmolive scent, I WOULD LOVE THEM. Someone once bought a container of Palmolive for the kitchen sink at work and I used it and the smell immediately invoked a long-forgotten memory of washing dishes at my grandmother’s house when I was very little. I had no idea she had used Palmolive until I smelled it that day, but one whiff and I was instantly transported to her kitchen, playing in suds. (I’ve heard smell is actually the most powerful trigger of memories and I believe it after that.) It was a very happy memory because my grandmother was totally awesome and I miss her, and I don’t want to actually buy Palmolive, but sometimes I kinda want to just to think of her every time I do the dishes.

Oh, and of course I keep mine in a vintage mason jar. But you knew that, right?

My tripled version of the recipe makes more than my quart mason jar can hold, so I keep the remainder in an old juice jar and store it under the sink.

The dishwasher detergent is even easier!

Dishwasher Detergent
From One Good Thing by Jillee

1 cup Borax
1 cup washing soda
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup citric acid

Mix together. Use 1 to 2 tablespoons of detergent per load of dishes. The original recipe recommends also adding no more than 3 drops of liquid dish soap to the detergent compartment and I usually do this. I also add a couple of good splashes of distilled white vinegar to the bottom of the dishwasher, also as recommended by Jillee, although I’ve always done this and recommend you do it regardless of what detergent you use.

Of course it’s in a mason jar, though this one isn’t vintage. I did write the recipe on it so I wouldn’t have to look it up on the internet every time though!

While we are coming clean in this post, here’s a bonus craft that’s fun and easy for all ages!

Introducing……
Smark Towels!

So, the genesis of these reSMARKable towels (wow, I need to get out more) is thus: Smark is fairly trainable, but sometimes he needs a little help. He’s usually in charge of doing the dishes because I almost always cook, but I used to not let him touch my cast iron or my wok because he wanted to scrub the seasoning off it. I managed to teach him how to clean woks and cast iron (though I still catch him with that dish soap…), and he was very good about immediately drying them after washing, except he always grabbed one of my good tea towels to do so and pretty soon all of my lovely tea towels were grubby and drab from pot drying and various spills. Which wasn’t entirely his fault because with paper towels being verboten in my kitchen, he didn’t have much of an alternative. So I made him these paper towel alternatives, which I conceived of specifically for messy jobs that might stain nice towels, but which have a multitude of uses. Smark goes through several a day!

These are soooo easy. Every time I have a sewing tutorial on here I tell you it’s really easy or I wouldn’t have been able to make it myself because I’m hopeless with a sewing machine, but seriously, this is THE easiest. Just get yourself a bunch of birdseye cotton, which is used to make fabric diapers, cut it to whatever size you want (I like 14″ squares), and finish the edges. Since my main sewing machine is a straight stitch machine (the wonderful Singer 15-91, which I LOVE), all I did was stitch a straight line 1/4″ from the edge and I’m allowing it to fray to that stitching. Honestly, that’s pretty raggedy looking, so you may prefer to use a zig-zag stitch to finish the edges if you have a zig-zag machine. You could also roll the edges over twice and stitch down to finish, but I couldn’t be bothered with that.

Smark uses these all the time, as do I. I put a little pail under the sink where I stash soiled Smark towels until I’m ready to do a load of laundry. Then I treated myself to a couple new sets of cute tea towels. 🙂

In other Smark news, he’s a master of growing peppers. Although I wish he’d branch out and grow other veggies (as I have a black thumb, myself), I’ll take what I can get. We’re starting to be inundated with peppers! Who has suggestions for these adorable tiny sweet peppers???

The ghost peppers are so incredibly hot there is no way I could use a whole one in any one dish so we’re preserving them in vinegar. This container is disproportionately large because it only has 3 peppers in it right now and I expect many more.

I’m overrun with these “super chilis”, which impart the perfect amount of heat in everything from soups to cucumber salads, but mostly I’ve been drying them. I won’t have to buy crushed red chili flakes this year…

And in cooking news, I’ve become obsessed with canning! I’ll probably do a post on it, although I just started so I’m no authority and I doubt I’ll do a tutorial. Except maybe I will do one on canning tomatoes because I’ve already canned 60 pounds of them… Tinned tomatoes are one of the few canned goods I buy, but I buy TONS of them. I’m so excited to be canning my own because it’s cheaper, there’s no wasted packaging, the tomatoes are local, and dang it, it’s fun! I came home from the ER (don’t worry, I wasn’t having a medical emergency, just got bad medical advice from a stupid doctor) at 10:30 p.m. a couple of weeks ago and immediately canned 18 jars of tomatoes despite Mark’s pleas for me to get off my feet and rest. And let me tell you, I felt much better about life once those tomatoes were canned!

Finally, here are some more pictures from our trip to Charleston last week. These are all infrared.

I really do plan to start posting recipes more frequently so I feel guilty making a non-recipe post today, but as it turns out, I have a cold and I simply don’t have the energy to cook anything interesting, let alone photograph and write about it. However, I did just return from a beautiful weekend in the mountains with Mark and I have some pictures, so that’ll have to suffice for today.

As a surprise for me, Mark made reservations at a B&B in the Shenandoah Valley – about a 2 1/2 hour drive from our home in Northern Virginia – and we spent the weekend taking in the sights. Although we stayed in one of their three cottages, which typically do not include breakfast, Fox Hill is vegan-friendly and were able to fit us in for breakfast one morning, where we enjoyed bagels, fruit, and vegan French toast. And I loved the ability to make our dinners in our full kitchen.

Fox Hill grows corn; here is a picture of the back of the B&B from the cornfield:

Mark is always striving to get so far away from city lights that we can see the stars without light pollution. Despite clouds, we had a great view of the stars, although Mark was disappointed we could hear traffic noises from I-81.

We spent much of Saturday driving around the northern part of Blue Ridge Parkway.

Yankee Falls is visible right from the parkway.

Nearby, Pig enjoyed his own little Pig-size falls.

Typical view from the parkway:

Mark enjoyed taking his Jeep down some of the logging and narrow local gravel roads, that seem to go for miles, through dense forest, passing nothing but the occasional abandoned camp site. Here is a creek we found in the middle of nowhere.

And okay, here is the real reason I wanted to do a post! I PHOTOGRAPHED AN OWL! This is a barred owl and I was so excited because a few weeks ago my aunt sent me a picture of a barred owl that my uncle had taken at their cabin in West Virginia and I was very jealous because by nature, owls are REALLY hard to see in trees and as they are nocturnal, you rarely see them flying around, so my hopes of ever being able to photograph a wild owl were pretty low. Then what did we see flying into a tree less than a month later, off some non-road in the George Washington National Forest? A barred owl! He was sooo cute, all hunched down trying as hard to see us through the leaves as we were trying to see him!

Back at Fox Hill, we went back out after dark to take more star pictures, but found the sky completely covered in clouds, with non-stop lightning brightening the sky….which was perhaps even more fun to photograph than the stars.

I don’t like doing a lot of processing with my pictures. For one thing, I don’t like the look of overly processed photographs, and for another, I don’t have the time or patience to spend hours behind a computer working on an image, and for yet another, I’ve had no success getting Photoshop to run on Linux. If I absolutely need to, I can use gimp to do Photoshoppy things, but I’m embarrassingly ignorant on how to use it and all the photography books and sites I read are Photoshop-oriented. However, it’s very rare I don’t make some minor change to a photograph such as adjusting the white balance or exposure, or in the case of wildlife pictures, usually cropping, so I usually spend a minute or two on each photo in Aftershot Pro. I was surprised therefore to see the pictures of a Christmas tree farm I took near Vesuvius, Virginia, looked perfect right off the camera. All I did was convert these from RAW to JPG.

I guess it was the lighting from the storm clouds or something; something about this scene just captivated me.

Sunday afternoon we got back on Blue Ridge Parkway, heading north towards home this time. Blue Ridge Parkway turns into Skyline Drive at Shenandoah National Park, which after its full 105 miles deposited us near Route 66 in Front Royal about an hour from home. This drive took considerably longer than I-81 but is of course magnitudes more beautiful and we stopped at a high percentage of overlooks.

Another first: I see and photograph does and fawns frequently, including in our own yard. So this mother and two children in Shenandoah were, while lovely, not that special.

But….I don’t think I’ve ever photographed a buck before!

Finally, here’s an overlook near the northern end of Skyline Drive.

All in all, an absolutely perfect weekend – minus the cold I seem to have come down with. And now I’m going to curl up with a book and feel sorry for myself until my throat stops this stupid tickling. I have another post I want to do this week, so hopefully I’ll be feeling better soon.

I’m going to dispense with all pretense of food for this post. This is a very non-vegan post in that it’s all about very non-vegan beings: birds of prey, or raptors. I love them! I’m just fascinated by raptors. So when I somehow stumbled over the Capitol Photography Center website while looking for something completely non-related and found an upcoming “raptor photo safari”, I was all over it. This happened this past Saturday and let me tell you, it ended up being such a fabulous day. It was one of those days where you don’t win the lottery or anything obviously fantastic like that, but at the end of the day you look back and realize, “I did everything I love today!”.

I think there are a couple different schools of thought when it comes to wildlife photography: one feels that it’s easier and safer to photograph captive animals, and also more interesting in that you have access to many animals you’d never see otherwise, while the other feels that there’s no challenge in captive animal photography. I am more a member of the latter school, although most of that is because I don’t believe animals should be in captivity in the first place. I don’t go to zoos, which rules out nearly all of my chances of seeing captive animals…I’m the rare specimen for whom it’s easier to find wild animals than it is captive animals! Well, other than captive raccoons, but all of our raccoons eventually become wild. I was interested in this particular photo safari, however, because it was held at a nature center where they presented several different raptors for us to photograph in a natural setting, which would allow me to get much closer to them than is generally possible. All of the animals are “education animals”, which are injured animals that have been rehabbed but are non-releasable for various reasons. I don’t have a problem with education animals being held in captivity. It’s either that or euthanasia for them and all the ones I have met have been well loved and cared for. I go to a lot of trainings and the like where I see education animals, but mostly they are being held by handlers and we are indoors – doesn’t make for fabulous pictures. So this was a really cool opportunity. They do it a few times a year (the next one will be on my birthday – October 19!); if you live in the DC/Baltimore area and that sounds interesting to you, I recommend it.

How about some pictures, you say? Well, of course. The first bird to come out was a barred owl. I think they said this was a male, because he was pretty small and I know that like many raptors, male owls are smaller than female owls.

Next up was one of my favorite owls, the Great Horned. I got a picture of the handler bringing him out because I WANT THAT TO BE MY JOB. Actually, I’ve been giving serious consideration to volunteering with a raptor group here, in which case, it MIGHT one day be my job! (Where by “job” I mean another thing I do that involves getting pooped on with no pay.)

You can see the jesses in this picture – the leather straps that tether the bird in place. He had enough mobility to hop around, but not enough to fly away.

This is why I love Great Horned owls – their EYES! Torticia makes this exact face at me all the time; I’ve always told her she looks like an owl when she does it.

Next was a red-shouldered hawk. This one is missing an eye. We also saw a red-tailed hawk, which is similar but larger, but I don’t seem to have uploaded a picture of that one.

I must say, Mark is more perceptive than I sometimes give him credit for. He was looking at my pictures later and when he saw the next one, he said, “this eagle doesn’t look…all there.” I don’t know how he can tell from the picture, but this bald eagle is brain damaged.

Brain damage or not, he was majestic. Eagles are just special, man. Another thing about Mark is he and I think alike, which is scary. He saw the next one and said, “he’s strutting!”, without knowing I had named this file, simply, “strutting”.

I want to hold an eagle.

I’d never seen a golden eagle in person. This one had been shot on the Maryland Eastern Shore. WHO SHOOTS AN EAGLE??? What is WRONG with people? Every time I think of whoever it was who shot this animal, all I can do is comfort myself by thinking of whoever it was who found the injured animal and took it to safety, and the person who meticulously removed all of the buckshot from its wing and performed surgery on it, and the people who care for it every day. That’s one bad person and many good people. The world is a good place, right?

The instructor told us he had requested the Eastern screech owl for the “cute” factor. He’s so tiny!! Smaller than my cats!

The handler didn’t say the peregrine falcon was her favorite animal, but she was clearly very attached to and proud of him. He’s 15 years old and has been all over the country, including a stint at Dollywood teaching other rehabbed peregrines how to be peregrines. I didn’t know that was even a thing that Dollywood did.

That was all of the animals. We had about 15 minutes with each one. The instructor was there to give tips and help with your camera or photography if you needed it. I would definitely do it again, although I admit that although I got some great shots, I didn’t quite feel the same indescribable joy that I do when I get a picture of something new when I’m out in nature. So later in the day I decided it was far too nice out to do my daily walk on the treadmill and instead headed to Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, my default park. I was only going with the intent to walk for exercise, so although I grabbed my small mirrorless camera just in case, I wasn’t expecting to take many pictures. I wasn’t finished going through and editing the more than 1,200 pictures (!!!) I’d taken on the photo safari! Well, five minutes into my walk, what should walk across my path but a wild turkey! This was amazing because I’ve seen them there before but I’ve never been able to get a picture because they are very shy and very fast. Usually you just hear them rustling about and never actually see them. So getting a picture of one has been a goal of mine. When you least expect things…

No, it’s not nearly as good a picture as any of the ones above, but it was in a way more fulfilling. I continued walking and eventually came upon a tree full of vultures. And found my camera battery was dead! As was the spare! I was so mad! So I practically ran 1/2 mile back to my car to get my “big” camera, which is a LOT better at telephoto shots anyway, then trotted back to the vulture tree, and they were all still patiently waiting for me. (Okay, they were probably patiently waiting for dinner and not the paparazzi.)

Two turkey and one black vulture:

One turkey and one black vulture:

Black vulture being a vulture:

Vulture flying into the setting sun:

Driving home from the refuge, I realized what a great day it had been, other than the waking up at 5 a.m. part. I was presented with a bunch of raptors to photograph as I pleased; the weather could only be described as “perfection”; because the photo safari was in Maryland, I got to spend hours driving my beloved convertible on a perfect spring day; I spent a couple of hours relaxing and editing pictures in my favorite chair; I went to my favorite park at sunset and got a picture of an animal I’ve been trying to photograph for a long time, and I got great shots of lots of vultures. AND I was exhausted when I got home – the best kind of exhausted – and Mark surprised me by making dinner. That, my friends, is my idea of a GREAT day! And guess what – my next post WILL have a recipe.

I HAVE BEEN SO BUSY. I’ve been working a lot of hours over the last month or so; food has unfortunately taken a backseat. I should be able to relax after a big software release in the next week or two, just in time for wildlife baby season to really get started and take up all my free time. Fortunately the farmers market will be opening in a few weeks, which is certain to be inspiring. In the meantime, I don’t have a recipe tonight, but I did get some eagle and osprey pictures yesterday so I thought I’d share.

Saturday night I asked Mark what he wanted to do the following day and he said, “see an eagle.” As far as I know, the best chances of seeing a bald eagle in this area are Mason Neck State Park, so I suggested we go there, although on the drive there the next day, I encouraged Mark not to get his hopes up, because that’s how it is with wildlife. He insisted he was keeping his hopes up because we WOULD see an eagle. So we got to the park and headed for the lookout point where we saw an eagle about this time last year. At first we saw only omnipresent turkey vultures, but within three minutes of our arrival, Mark’s eagle arrived.

I guess there’d been no need for the “don’t get your hopes up” speech.

,
Although I see them with some regularity these days, eagles never fail to instill a sense of awe in me. I know that as a product of the ’80s I abuse the word “awesome” but bald eagles truly are awesome in every sense of the word.

After landing (on the exact same branch we saw him or a friend last year), he sat there for a good long time and preened. He’s all convoluted in this shot!

After watching the eagle for a while we decided to head to the other side of Belmont Bay to see if they’d cleaned up Occoquan Bay NWR of all the accumulated trash the day before as their website had promised. (They had, thankfully!) This time of year you are guaranteed to see a lot of nesting ospreys at Occoquan; no worries about dashed hoped there. This one is returning to the nest with half of a fish plucked from the bay.

And this one is working on his nest.

We also saw tons of painted turtles sunning on one of the first truly nice days of the year.

Ordinarily I’d have tried to look this bird up in one of my books, but I just didn’t have time, so I’m not sure what it is, but I thought it was cute.

In non-wildlife news, we went to see the physicist Brian Greene speak in McLean a couple of weekends ago. Which is relevant to this blog because he’s a long-time vegan!

I had him sign one of my books, and Pig got himself involved. Brian said it was very nice meeting me and my pig!

Finally, Torticia.

Very good friends of mine moved to Nashville for work-related reasons a few months ago. I’d have gotten down there to see them sometime anyway, but when Nick Cave’s 2013 tour was announced, getting tickets for the Nashville show at the historic Ryman Auditorium was inevitable – my friend V and I always see Nick together: in DC, LA, or Tennessee!

Other than a brief sojourn through the very edge last summer en route to southwestern North Carolina, I’d never been in Tennessee before. I picked my weekend judiciously: Friday and Saturday temperatures were near 80. Heading south in the US is always a bit of a risk for a vegan; I have preconceived notions of endless barbecue pits, bacon-wrapped cheeseburgers, and gallon jars of mayonnaise. I am very pleasantly surprised to be able to tell you that Nashville is actually very vegan-friendly! The food situation was not at all what I imagined.

My first impression of Nashville was that it is very tiny. I flew in from Dulles on a tiny little commuter plane and arrived in tiny little Nashville International, where I strolled to my rental car on foot. Other than Charleston, which also has a teensy airport, I’m used to huge, sprawling airports – like Dulles – with shuttles, trains, multiple terminals, and miles upon miles of walking. Every time I visit the South I’m also immediately impressed by how friendly everyone is. People are nice in the South. Up here in the Midatlantic and north, people are BORED OF YOU and not afraid to let you know it.

I collected my car and headed to V and C’s house to rouse them from their 9 a.m. slumber. V immediately slipped into hostess mode and we were off to see the sights of Nashville. Which really aren’t that many as it’s a very tiny town. One of the more interesting and unexpected was … the Parthenon?!

Yes, that’s right. Nashville is home to the world’s only full-scale replica of the Parthenon, which I was told by the attendant is even better than the real Parthenon because it represents the Parthenon in its glory, not ruins. I have to admit, the top floor with its immense statue of Athena – created to look exactly as it would have looked in ancient Greece – was pretty interesting. To give you a sense of scale, here is me in front of Athena.

Another fun thing to do was the farmers market. The market comprises a flea market, food court, farmer stalls, and a garden center. V and C bought a bunch of plants to start a garden. And I’m wearing a hat C bought at the flea market.

Nashville’s greatest attraction, however, is Didi Mao! Didi Mao is the 6-month-old kitten belonging to V and C and she’s super, super, super awesome! She looks like Gomez and acts like Torticia. She’s very friendly and playful and we hit it off instantly. LOVE Didi Mao.

So, the food. When she first got there, V promised me there was plenty for me to eat, and although I would never accuse her of lying to me (except about bloody marys, boat drinks, Prosecco, hammocks, and guacamole), I wasn’t really expecting to, you know, see the word “vegan” right on menus. BUT IT’S THERE! Nashville knows what vegans are! Nashville seems to HAVE vegans! (Nashville also has really good beer, by the way.) After a long, adventurous day, we decided to settle in Friday night with a box of wine and what V claimed was the “best pizza in the world”. We got carry-out from Five Points Pizza, which not only has a vegan pizza on the menu, but will make any other pizza vegan with Daiya cheese. And V was right, the pizza was GREAT. Definitely one of the best I’ve had, and I love me some pizza. It may have been better than my pizza!

Nashville even has a few completely vegetarian restaurants. The Wild Cow is almost entirely vegan and really great. It’s one of those rare restaurants where I’m actually overwhelmed by the menu because I have too many choices. I ended up getting the Buffalo grinder, which is tempeh or tofu smothered in Buffalo sauce, with shaved carrots, pickles, and vegan ranch. I had a side of garlicky kale, which was perfect. I forgot to take a picture until after I’d eaten half the sandwich. I’m looking forward to returning here the next time I visit V, and I think she is too.

Across the street from the Wild Cow is Rosepepper, a Mexican restaurant, which we visited Sunday afternoon before I headed back home. I was pleasantly surprised to see a vegan burrito on the menu and it was HUMONGOUS, but I’m afraid it was also rather bland. It consisted of steamed carrots and cauliflower, a few black beans, and rice, and really could have used some spice.

And what about the main attraction – aside from Didi Mao (oh, and that minx V, of course) – of the weekend? Nick Cave was amazing!! Of course. He always is. I’ve seen a LOT of shows over the years and there are some performers who just have an incredible stage presence and can really rock a live show…and many more who can’t. Nick Cave is one of the best live performers I’ve ever seen. And the Bad Seeds are really tight.

I generally hate seated shows, and the Ryman, being the former home of the Grand Ole Opry, has rather church-like pews, but it didn’t seem as bad as most seated shows, and in fact, most people stood most of the time. You were also allowed to take drinks into the venue, which I’ve found is sometimes not the case in the more theater-like venues, such as the Strathmore, where yes, I’m going to see Nick in tomorrow night…

Nashville isn’t a city I’d have gone out of my way to visit, but you have to like a city that identifies so closely with music, and it’s super-easy to get around (there’s no traffic!), there’s a lot of beer, and it’s surprisingly vegan-friendly. I’m looking forward to visiting V, C, and Didi Mao again soon, so SOMEONE HAD BETTER GET THAT HAMMOCK HUNG.

No food today, sorry. I do, however, have a request, and then some raptor tales and pictures. First, it’s been a while, so here is a raccoon! This is Sophie and she’s super sweet.

I don’t think I’ve put a name to the wildlife sanctuary where I volunteer and take all the pictures of raccoons I’m always treating you to or boring you with, depending on your perspective. It’s Dogue Hollow Wildlife Sanctuary and you can also find us on Facebook where we post a lot of pictures. I’ve been occasionally asked by readers how they can give me something to thank me for my recipes or pictures or something I’ve sent them. I don’t want or need anything. I keep this blog because I enjoy doing it and because this is my only contact with the vegan community. Mark and I are able to pay our server costs without a struggle and I’ll never subject you to advertising. But while I don’t need anything, Dogue Hollow does, and although I’d be uncomfortable asking for donations in my capacity as a blogger, in my capacity as a Dogue Hollow board member, I’m kind of obligated to make my first feeble fundraising attempt.

We have two very large projects we desperately need to do as soon as possible at Dogue Hollow: we need to build a new nursery for baby raccoons, which will require about $6,000, and we need to install a generator, which will require about $14,000. Dogue Hollow was hit hard by the derecho last July: we were without power or water for 5 days in the 100+ degree heat. Had the storm hit a few weeks earlier when the babies were younger, we’d almost have certainly have lost some of them; we were very lucky they all survived, but it was a terrible strain on our resources. It is VERY hard to keep nearly 50 baby animals alive without running water for cleaning or electricity to refrigerate formula and medicine. The weather around here is only getting weirder and we are likely to lose power for multiple days during any bad storm. Hence the need for the generator. Our first priority is the new nursery, which we need because we’ve been taking in more and more baby raccoons every year and we simply no longer have room to house them. If we don’t have more room, we run the risk of having to refuse raccoons simply for lack of space.

These needs put our operating costs very much over our normal annual budget, and we usually scrape by as it is. So we’re trying to ramp up fundraising right now…though none of us are fundraising experts. (By the way, if you are and you want to volunteer, let me know! And also if you live in Northern Virginia and want to volunteer in some other capacity, let me know.) We’ve opened a special savings account specifically for these two projects and kicked it off with two very generous donations totaling $3,500. I don’t expect most donations to be anywhere near that large, but they put us more than halfway to getting the new nursery, which means smaller donations of even $10 will go a long way to getting us the rest of the way there. So if you’ve ever wanted to thank me for anything, or if you like my raccoons stories and pictures, or if you just want to help wildlife, please consider making a donation, however small. You can do so either via Paypal on our website or by sending a check. You don’t have to, but if you’d like, you can mention with your donation that Renae sent you – I don’t get anything but gratitude from the other board members, but it helps us to know how people heard about us.

This just in! After discussing this with Mark, I can offer anyone who makes a donation of $20 or more a free custom drawing by Mark. Mark is an amazing artist. He could seriously have a second career drawing comics. The only restriction is you must request something “fanciful” that leaves him room for creative interpretation: for example, a raccoon eating a sandwich, not Batman. He’s also very good at aliens, monsters, and the like. This is a picture he drew for me last Christmas.

If you’d like to receive a drawing from Mark, you’ll have to let me know personally as Mark isn’t making this offer to Dogue Hollow in general, so email me at renae@ineluctable.org if you are interested.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, I have some other random wildlife pictures. Last weekend I trekked out to Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Part of my mission was to play with my new camera, a micro 4/3 I got for traveling, which I LOVED for our Charleston trip. Unfortunately, it’s really not the camera for birds in flight and within 10 minutes of arriving at the refuge I was mad I hadn’t brought my dSLR because there was a bald eagle soaring over my head. This was the best picture I could get and I was lucky for it:

That turned out not to be the only eagle I saw last week. I later saw one standing on the side of a busy parkway, which kind of freaked me out because you just don’t expect to see a bald eagle on the side of the road when you’re whizzing by at 60 mph in crazy suburbia Northern Virginia. So I had mixed feelings about that: I’m always in awe when I see them, but I hate seeing any animal near a road.

Back to OBNWR, though. I go there regularly, usually better camera-equipped. Other than the eagle, not much else was going on, although it was a gorgeous day. Mostly I just took landscapes, which was okay because I hadn’t really been there in the middle of winter before so it was a new perspective. My two micro 4/3 cameras (one is the infrared-converted one) were fine for that:

After two eagle sightings in one week, I was all hopped up for more raptor photography. A friend had given me a heads’ up on some places that are good for seeing hawks, so on the frigid day that was yesterday, I dragged Mark around two counties trying to get some hawk pictures. I saw nary a hawk. I DID see a Canadian snow goose flying upside down, however:

Apparently this maneuver is called whiffling and if is something they will sometimes do if they need to slow themselves down very quickly for a landing. I think it looks very silly!

After two parks and an exploratory drive, we’d seen zero hawks and we were freezing. We drove back home and parked in our driveway. I gathered my cameras and was hopping out of the Jeep when Mark said, “There is a huge bird sitting on the fence!” And there was a Cooper’s hawk, sitting 20 feet from my front door!

That was pretty amazing because I’ve never seen anything like that in our suburban yard. We get a lot of songbirds, doves, and corvids, but I’ve never seen a raptor. And I happened to have my camera IN MY HANDS! With the 400mm telephoto lens on it and everything! What are the chances?! AND I was dejected at the time because I’d failed to find any hawks after looking for them all day! (Moreover, just the day before I’d expressed jealousy when my mom said she saw a kestrel at her house.) I’m sure there’s some sort of moral here about what you’re looking for being right under your nose, although I hope Mark doesn’t think we’re just hanging out in the backyard next time I want him to go wildlife stalking with me…

Unfortunately, I have a feeling this hawk was menu planning on my fence – he was 10 feet from my bird feeding station and probably hoping for a snack of songbirds. This kind of upsets me because I want the birds I feed to feel safe. But at the same time, LOOK AT HIM! He’s awesome!

That’s it for now. Thank you for indulging me with this post. I promise I’m hardly ever going to make any mention of money for raccoons and I’ll keep posting pictures of them no matter what because people seem to like it. It’s just I’ve been tasked with trying to think of any source possible of animal lovers and it dawned on me that the audience of a vegan blog is probably a good source of animal lovers. Thank you for being really, really great readers whether or not you are able to donate. I have to tell you, I don’t really visit a lot of forums or anything like that because I get really depressed by the negative vibe of many of them, plus I’m very shy – bizarrely even more shy online than in real life – but everyone who comments here, and the writers of all the other vegan blogs I read, are so nice and supportive and wonderful; it restores my often-flagging faith in humanity and truly means a lot to me. I feel like I should be donating to you guys, not the opposite.