Hawk's Nest

We have a gigantic white pine towering over our house. It is about two or three stories taller the top of our big three story colonial, a giant of a tree. I love the feeling of it's sturdy hulk staking the property lines to the top of our hill. The neighbors say that there were once several big pines like that scattered on our lot. Now the only one left is that one lone giant, rooted just over the hedge on the nuns property (yes, our next door neighbors are a convent full of extremely warm sisters).

Our drive in October

Even though it is a magnificent tree it is perilously close to our house which means both that in the fall our drive is showered with a stunning carpet of golden needles in the fall and that I sit shuddering in my bed every high wind rainstorm that we get, listening to the old tree creaking and moaning right over our heads wondering if someday it will fall crashing into our roof and saw off our master bedroom or go galumphing through to the sunroom below.

Image by Tilton Lane via Flickr

When the tree guys starting coming by giving estimates to chop down the diseased hemlocks and the large straggling chokecherry we sure thought wistfully about making a call on our neighbors to discuss dismantling their giant in the bargain. That is, until we realized that the pair of red-tailed hawks we've seen wheeling over the house had mated and nested, right in the top of the great tree. I can't blame them. I'd nest there too if I was in the neighborhood. The have clearly picked carefully the biggest, most secure spot in the area and although I'm sure it is a bit chilly in a stiff wind (the tree is at the tippy top of the hill we live on top of) it has to have a regal view and feel like the best place around to bring up your young. We nested next door, clearly we thought it was a good spot too.

The king pine

The whole idea of taking the tree out will have to wait for a later date but more importantly, in the meantime we have the privilege of having a family of hawks raised up right next to us. I am pleased that I decided to go for bees instead of backyard chickens and thinking fondly of the effect on local bunny rabbits and voles that might be so unlucky as to discover our vegetable garden.

One of our hawk parents leaving the nest

 You can already hear loud cheeping when you walk down the driveway and see one of the parents swoop out of the tree, heading for the heat vents high over our hill. I haven't been able to locate the nest so far, somewhere in the heart of the tree, far from prying eyes but I keep looking, figuring one of these days I'll figure out where to look when I see the parents looping in and out. Now I need to get out, on the double, and get a pair of binoculars.

Related articles

• Hawk Cam | Live From the Nest (cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com)
• High-Rise Hawk in a Tangle (cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com)

Back in the Saddle

I am very full of heart tonight. How could I not be? Really, sitting here in the cricketing evening (yes there are crickets in our part of the small city we've moved to) listening to the wind in the maples behind our house I feel so many shades of "good" that its preposterous to be trying to enumerate really. The keyboard is just as springy as I remember, the lovely, zippy Internet so full of inspiration, friends and brilliance and the house, this lovely, dreamy house...every inch my hopes come to life. Its true that there's no bathroom on the whole first floor, and yes there's some amazing acoustic tile and faux wood paneling and heaven knows the master bedroom entry floor could hardly be creakier....but I do love it. There are wood floors, there's a fireplace, windows everywhere you turn, a clotheline pulley, an old apple tree, some glass door knobs, radiators, and all kinds of fabulous little bits that I'm still discovering.

Can you believe this cool window crank on my kitchen sink window?

And check out this cool old clock they left....am swoony over it.

A nun from next door (there are nuns next door!) stopped by to beam at the children and greet us energetically and made sure that we knew were were welcome to come over anytime. The neighbor lent us forks for our first meal at the house, we've had three plates of welcoming cookies and two deliveries of homegrown tomatoes and something like 10-12 visits with people from the surrounding houses, all grinning away and telling us to knock on their doors if we needed anything. The garbage men have been past and taken away the first load of packing paper and boxes, we've found the flour and the canned peaches and our collection of silverware although admittedly we have no silverware tray at the moment. I have cooked real food for three days running now and we're starting to think about finding some of the laundry baskets and hoping one of the dressers I keep trolling Craigslist for will materialize so we can start putting clean clothes away again and stop living out of our suitcases.

This is just about how great life is at the moment.

It is a bit absurdly chaotic still but, really...every time another neighbor rings our doorbell or we're pulling our hair out over all the boxes and we go outdoors and watch the kids tumbling around in the grass of our very own, generous lawn....I feel painfully, stunningly lucky. I can't believe this is me! I feel like I'm living in a movie script or like I've wandered into an episode from Mr. Rogers. How in the world does this sort of thing really happen to people, least of all me! I feel a little dizzy from the fabulousness.

The Big Rock in our backyard. (with a load of cousins on it)

There are so many thousands of little delicious bits about our new house to share with you all that I am sure the introduction will stretch out for some time but, tonight I especially want to share with you the lovely wood floors we uncovered when we took off the amazingly nasty blue carpet that was EVERYWHERE in many of the rooms.

The men who ripped it out for me said that that guessed it was at least 30 years old. My shots somehow look a lot more rosy than it really did.

 There were dark grey trails where the main traffic patterns had been. It was positively delirious to see the beautiful wood emerge from under all of that and watch as it became more and more alive as it was swept and then washed.

I knew it was going to be stunning.

Our tree hydrangea....so pretty!

The basement door.

Of course the rooms are mostly a jumble of boxes and assorted homeless items with the occasional bushy haired child thrown wildly in for good measure but, eventually here I will be able to do a more personal introduction to the particular spaces we're living in these days. I am already dreaming of paint!