Sand Hill Cranes - Here We Come

I'm excited - we leave for Omaha tomorrow morning. When I called Rowe Sanctuary on Monday, they said they were close to peaking, with 300,000 sand hill cranes there. With a warm southerly wind, the rest of the migrators will be flying in. That's about right, the man on the phone said, we kind of plan on peaking around St. Patrick's Day.

And then they stay for two to three weeks before continuing on north to their breeding grounds.

Even if it rains (which it might) the walk to any of the blinds is only five minutes and the blinds are covered.

Will give a report when I return.

Kirigami = Folding and Cutting Calendar

I departed from my custom of picking inspirational or thought-provoking daily calendars for 2011 – previous years were Book Lovers, Zen, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and, last year, Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much. (Also last year I bought The Old Farmer’s Almanac daily calendar which was odd and funny.)

I bought Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which I like. Some mornings I laugh out loud at its message. I’ve posted about this calendar before and probably will again.

And I bought a Kirigami Fold & Cut-a-Day Calendar. And I love this calendar. Its first pages had some basic instructions including a list of supplies I would need: such things as sharp scissors, a hole punch, a knife and a cutting board.

The calendar includes instructions or “cheat sheets” on the six folds I will use all year: snowflake, starburst, spider, quilt, heart and butterfly, plus instructions on basics and 3-D flowers.

Each calendar page is exactly six inches square. (Origami paper works too when I want to use the pattern for the day but I want to use a different color than what the calendar provided for that day.)  The back is a solid color: January pages were blue, February pages were red and March pages are green. The front of the page includes the day of the week, the date and the month (and the holiday if there is one but not the year). Also on the page is the design from the day before, a code for difficulty and the cutting design for the current day which I fold and cut the next day.

I actually don’t fold and cut the shapes every day. I like to save a couple days and when I have a spare hour, I go upstairs to my grandmother’s desk, turn on the light, put my glasses on, pull out my cutting board and the first calendar page I’m going to work on.



The rose, which is five days of calendar pages, is on the corner of the book shelf on the right.



I love unfolding the paper after completing the cuts – opening to a beautiful new shape and design. A few of the opened designs require more folds – so the back shows – I use two-sided Origami paper for those days.

The last four days of February were red rose petals that were to be taped together on top of the green leaves on March 1^st.

I have been taping my favorite designs onto the window panes of my sitting room. The completed rose is on the book shelf by my rocking chair.

When I was telling my dad about this calendar, he wanted one too. I ordered a 2011 calendar identical to the one I have – when it arrives I’ll ship this one along with some supplies to him in Illinois - so he can fold and cut too.

Did You Know? Saturday

From Eats, Shoots & Leaves for today:

"According to the British newspaper columnist "Beachcomber", in Elizabethan England a greengrocer happened to notice a misplaced apostrophe in a royal decree. When he pointed it out, Queen Elizabeth I immediately created the office of Apostropher Royal, to control the quality and distribution of apostrophes and deliver them in wheelbarrows to all the greengrocers of England on the second Thursday of every month (Apostrophe Thursday)."

Well, they didn't include this in the Elizabeth I movies, did they?

P.S. I missed Wednesday -

Introducing J.E.A. Journal

I have decided to retire my previous blog titled NJ Observer. The 500 words I wrote today are on NJ Observer - titled "Counting and Listing Birds."

This will be my new blog and the next post will be Wednesday, March 2. This blogging is new for me so I'm practicing as I go -