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26 posts total
handmade ghost

I love when all the neighborhood #quorb band together.

Photo of eleven California quail milling nervously about in the rock border to my neighbor's driveway. They are so plump and round and wonderful, their bodies a wonderful slate blue with brown wings and cream-colored, quill-like detailing on their lower breasts and wings. Many of the males are in profile showing off their gorgeously dark, colorblocked faces, which are outlined in white and capped with fuzzy gold eyebrows, a white "sweatband," and a punctuation mark of feathers that curl like a Kewpie doll question out of their foreheads. A pair of females are in profile as well, though they are more grey than slate-blue, with softer brown faces and forehead punctuation that is less question than quote. They all have a constellation of tiny white specks on the backs of their necks, and they all look both bold and anxious: They startle with vulnerability at the drop of a hat, but they band together for strength and subterfuge, blending cleverly in with the rocks and scruff of the neighborhood.
6 November at 23:43 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

Does anyone need a virtual emotional support quail? Free to all (or take a quail, leave a quail).

Photo zoomed in on one of a dozen or so California quail standing amidst the grey rocks and rusty fallen leaves that border a neighbor's yard. Like all California quail, this gentleman is so appealingly round and plump you might feel like you could reach into the photo and gently scoop em up into your cupped hands for a snoogle. Eir face and throat are a velvety black, outlined in bold white with a feathery blonde unibrow that shags up from under a matching white line that crosses the forehead like a sweatband and is capped with more dark velvet and a poet's plume that curls out from the center like a pretty, slightly silly pennant. Tiny black and white stippling decorate eir plump nape and eir breast, a rich, slate grey, is likewise embroidered with a pattern of creamy speckles that appear like quills or student stitches along the flanks and as a dense pattern of bottom-heavy half-moons across the lower breast. This one is for you, your very own.
8 November at 23:39 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

I can almost see Saturday from here.

Hazily lit photo of a Northern flicker sitting upright in left-facing profile behind a climbing branch of Oregon grape that curls up around and behind em like the illumination of some woodland manuscript. The grape branches erupt upwards in a braid of woodbine from several clusters of spiky red and olive leaves, dozens of dusky blue berries like clusters of miniature grapes hanging from red stems in heavy sprays. The flicker's almond breast, covered in eyelets of black spots like a smoothed, fluttery blouse, puffs up proudly from behind the grapes, and eir black collar shows solemnly beneath eir soft grey face with its chestnut crown and brilliant red teardrop moustache. The scene is like a frontispiece to a legend of Northwest birds, the flicker looking out across the long pencil tip of eir bill at the chaparral woods which glow in a soft, shadowy canopy all around em.
26 September at 14:08 | Open on sunny.garden
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handmade ghost
handmade ghost

Figure 1: Sphinx pose
Figure 2: Child's pose

#Caturday

Collage of two horizontal photos, one atop the other, featuring my floofy grey and white cat Fell. She is lying stretched out in right-facing profile on a grey sofa, showing off her intelligent grey face, white blaze and ruff, and little white mittens. In the top picture she is sitting with her paws neatly poised in front of her and her head raised--like the statue of the Sphinx awaiting your approach for wisdom. In the bottom picture she is in a similar pose, only now her arms and paws are stretched out to the very edge of the sofa, and her face is pressed down in a little kitty kowtow, her dusky pink nose buried in her clasped arms and ears and whiskers pointing around the sides. The photos are like a pair of yoga diagrams or instructions on how to show respect. (For the nerds: The little blue toy resting on the arm of the sofa like a teardrop with big eyes is a little fidget of a slime from the Dragon Quest video game series that I knit my daughter.)
7 September at 13:21 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

Happy (estimated) sixth birthday to my cat Neverfell, whom we adopted as a tiny, sneezy, abandoned waif of pure kitten fluff. How I adore her. #Caturday

Collage of four square photos of my cat, an adorable grey and white floor of kittenlike goodness. In these photos, she is alternately stretched out across a recliner with her head upside-down and showing off white throat and ruff; gazing over her left shoulder at us from where she reclines in a window seat, her pale green eyes wide and the white blaze of her nose ending in a dusky pink snub; lounging in a fluffy grey pose of bored, indulgent attention on the arm of a blue reading pillow, one leg dropped down to show off her white socks and resting on the curl of her subtly striped and fluffy grey tail; and curled up in a matching grey cat bed, eyes half-closed and dozy, and three white-mittened paws collected like a bouquet where they stretch out in front of her.
24 August at 13:45 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

My cat Fell making her own mood board on the wall next to me. #Caturday

Black and white photo with a thin black frame showing a series of built-in white pass-through shelving on a pale wall. The shelf spaces are variously sized in a sort of Mondrian-esque assortment. On the top shelf, in a large square of space, a very fluffy grey cat is lying down, her artfully whiskered and white-blazed grey face peeking down from under it into the slightly smaller rectangle of space below, her white-mittened paws wrapping the shelf in a loose hug from each side. Pale sunlight from a further window shines through the lower of two smaller rectangles in the lower left, while the floofy grey shadow of the cat's tail curls around the lower corner of the open space below her. He downward gaze looks balanced in the edge between dreamy and about to explode into zooms.
17 August at 14:03 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

Fell found the keys to the time machine. The dinosaurs were not prepared for the absolute ferocity. #Caturday

Photo of an impressively floofy grey and white kitty lying on her side on a (possibly prehistoric) rainbow rag rug. Her front white-mittened paws are wrapped around the head of a plush green dinosaur of uncertain species (ApataDogToyous?) and she is pulling it to her mouth, which is already opened wide and baring teeth. Her dusky pink nose and whiskers are drawn back into an adorable snarl, and her little pink tongue is curling around one of the dark green spines along the ridge of the dino's back. Her eyes are wide and wild, for she hath conquered.
3 August at 14:11 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost
handmade ghost

My cat Fell channeling her inner monster movie.* #Caturday

*yawning/stretching

Black and white photo with letterbox-style framing featuring a fluffy grey cat with a white ruff and a white blaze running down her nose. She is lying on her tummy, facing right in three-quarters profile on a rumpled quilt, her left paw stretched out so far that its white mitten reaches beyond the frame. Her mouth is open in a yawn that looks more like a hiss, her fierce incisors opening and her whiskers in a wild spray around her crinkled nose. She is actually just waking up and preparing to roll over and offer her belly for snuggles, but looks instead as though she's about to tear us all apart. I love her.
20 July at 13:15 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

Here's hoping these two are too sleepy to actually be deciding to join forces for any cunning schemes this morning. #Caturday

Photo of one giant, white-bibbed, marmalade tabby and one small, white-bibbed, grey and brown tabby sitting snugged up against each other on top of the rumpled, blue quilt, navy weighted blanket, and grey "purr pad" of a bed. The two cats--Freddie and Snufkin--have their paws tucked thoughtfully under themselves and have their heads turned towards each other, their whiskers mingling as they regard each other through the sleepy slits of their eyes.
6 July at 13:48 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

And for #Caturday: A reminder from Fell to stay hydrated.

Photo of a fluffy grey and white cat sitting on a glossy black side table in 3/4 profile, her white-mittened paws planted firmly behind a colorful striped water glass,her pink-edged ears drawn back slightly in order to slim her whiskers and face so she can fit them into my glass of water. Her little pink nose under its white blaze is just under the rim of the glass, and her little pink tongue is out and lapping a dimple in the water. The glass is standing on a felt, teal coaster in the shape of a cat, so I had no business considering it mine to begin with.
29 June at 15:10 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

One of the beautiful birds that most guides categorize as "mostly nondescript": the lovely, thoughtful little flycatcher known as the Western wood-peewee.

Photo of a woodland scene--a soft focus of blue sky in differently-sized windows, each framed by a dozen arabesques of cursive pine boughs and branches and the whole vignetted by pine needle brooms. In the foreground of the scene, one thick, partially stripped branch reaches down from the top left of the picture, ending in curling, scruffily-barked branchlets that fall, mustardy-olive and russet brown, like the strange, lovely ropes of Medusa's hair. Sitting on one such ropelike branch, body facing left but looking back over eir shoulder, is a very small, grey, soft-looking bird with slightly darker wings and pale coverts. The bird--a Western wood-peewee--looks like a little felt toy; eir face is just a little fuzzy charcoal gumdrop with a lick of feather at the base of the neck and eir tiny black seed of a bill like the needle of a record player. The light is promised everywhere in the picture, but it is most noticeable where it drops down the length of the stripped branch, warming the little wood peewee's perch and casting em in a slightly winsome spotlight.
26 June at 13:38 | Open on sunny.garden
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Schluffiger Schluff

@handmade_ghost Thanks to your image description they're now at-least-once-descript.

26 June at 16:36 | Open on norden.social
Anja-in-Wonderland
reedsandstrings

@handmade_ghost Oh! I've recently fallen in love with the Eastern Wood-Peewee. I was so delighted to learn that this sweet little bird is named after its song.

26 June at 18:33 | Open on wandering.shop
handmade ghost

(Fell declined to be photographed this morning.) #Caturday

Photo of a (slightly cat-claw-bedraggled) terra cotta curtain covering a window seat with a beige wall below. Curling down from behind the curtain like a Christmas stocking and lying prettily against the wall is the floofy grey tail of my cat Fell.
22 June at 14:29 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost
handmade ghost

My cat Fell about to make the first of what I'm sure will be many important announcements today. #Caturday

Photo of a fluffy, grey and white cat (my cat Fell) sitting on the arm of a blue reading pillow in a window seat, against a background of rainbow-colored, mock stained glass leaves (the bird-deterring window decals of the bay window behind her). Fell is facing us, her grey head raised and cocked a bit to her right, pink ears catching the filtered morning light, a white blaze of fur sloping to her pink nose under which the little grey pads are gently puffed, displaying her whiskers to their best effect; her white ruff is as full as a lace collar and arrays itself along her grey legs, which end in a pair of white mittens that curve prettily and precisely over the arm of her cushion. Everything about her poise and the lift of her face, including the light green flash of her eyes, suggests she is about to speak. Whatever she says, I shall obey.
15 June at 14:22 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost
handmade ghost

Fell practicing her semaphore. #Caturday

Photo of a fluffy grey and white cat sitting in a unique and artfully contorted position at the top of some sunlit stairs on a wood(ish) floor. The wonderful little cat is facing us, her fluffy grey tail faintly tiger-striped and stretching in a long line into the foreground. Her nose is buried in the pale fluff where belly meets tail, her left leg lifted high over her head and shoulders, up towards the light at a -15 degree angle. Her right leg is stretched out to her side, flush to the floor and parallel behind her tail, furry white toes spread and catching the sunlight that picks up the pink and cocoa of her toe beans and makes them glow. Her right front paw has disappeared behind her, holding her up as she reaches her left front paw across her body, the tip of that white kitten just above the glowing toe beans, completing a semaphore letter more or less approximating "O."
25 May at 13:26 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

Black-billed magpie happy-stomping around the grassy verge of the marsh trail this weekend.

Fresh, green scene of a narrow strip of kempt & matted grass surrounded by less tended grass. Tromping merrily from right to left across this path is a gorgeous corvid bird with a glossy black head, black and white body, and long, glossy black tail that swoops up a bit at the end. The bird (a black-billed magpie) has eir left leg planted firmly in the grass while the other is lifted up and forward, talons lifted, as e takes one giant step forward. The early morning sun is bright and warm and shows off both the magpie's glossy orca markings and the splash of vivid, jaylike blue iridescence on eir folded wings.
21 May at 13:30 | Open on sunny.garden
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handmade ghost

My cat Freddie doing "The Kitty Cat Dance." #Caturday

Vertical photo, taken from above, of a very large orange and white cat lying on his back on a rainbow rag rug. His belly is ridiculously inviting, his white markings from nose to chest to lower belly patterned against his sunny orange tabby stripes like a vertical ekg readout. His head is looking up, his paws folded over at the white mittens like a mincing bunny, his legs like a pair of white socks that are about to click their heels together (if only the thick orange tail weren't in the way). If we didn't know he was lying on his back, we could imagine him dancing primly on his hind legs. He is 27 pounds of cuddly, ridiculous, fluffy marmalade.
18 May at 13:35 | Open on sunny.garden
handmade ghost

#Caturday is for birdwatching. (Fell here has spotted the silhouette of a house sparrow, who for some arcane reason is sitting there right on the other side of the window. The two have locked eyes, and neither wants to be the first to look away.)

Photo of a floofy grey and white kitten shown from behind in profile looking away from us. Her white-mittened paws are poised on the arm of a blue reading pillow in a window seat, and her whole body is lowered and tense as she stares intently at a little sparrow-shaped silhouette just discernable through a window screen and the rainbow-leafy, mock stained glass of a window decal. The two creatures are investigating each other closely.
11 May at 13:32 | Open on sunny.garden
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