If your thoughts run along on somewhat the same track as mine, you’ll find it difficult to choose your favorite season of the year. Well, actually, I’ve eliminated winter from the list ever since I stopped sliding down frozen hillsides wearing long boards. It’s not that I didn’t love the skiing — it has more to do with the expense involved and the lack of people my own age to do it with.
After I lost an election to repeat as Centralia’s mayor, I worked for a year or so at a place in Olympia called Olympia Bike and Ski. They hired me because Thurston County was offering to pay businesses to hire older people. As the name implies, the store sold bicycles in the summer and ski supplies in the winter. Employees had the privilege of using the newest display of ski gear at no cost. Driving to Olympia every day wasn’t my favorite thing to do, though, and I quickly succumbed to KITI’s offer of becoming the station’s news director. That ended when I was let go for not “punching” the news as if the world was ending tomorrow.
All of which has absolutely nothing to do with my favorite season of the year. Right now, it’s spring and it involves watching the small amount of gardening space I have available take life again and prepare itself for the coming summer displays of color. The 6-foot by 8-foot greenhouse that was left by the previous owner of my home has become my headquarters and will remain thus until the many seeds I’ve started in old yogurt cups have been transferred into actual garden soil.
But strange things are happening in my backyard. A bird feeder that hangs below a tree limb — and which I’ve been filling at least once a day with a large can full of bird seed — is suddenly hanging there nearly untouched. The constant chirping in various bird languages is no longer being heard. Why? I’ve abandoned several possibilities and have decided that they have all been chased away by a number of Red Winged Blackbirds who often appear at another feeder next to my living room window. My copy of “Birds of the South Puget Sound” indicates that they might be territorial around nesting time, while Wikipedia puts it much stronger than that and also indicates that there can be up to three nesting periods per season! Are they chasing the other birds away? I’m not happy about that. I enjoyed the variety of different bird calls. I liked to sit as motionless as possible underneath that tree and watch the more daring birds chow down at the feeder. Will I ever hear that chorus of chirping again?
But, sometimes, things balance out in strange ways. On a recent evening I was disturbed by a noise that interfered with my TV viewing. When I shut the TV off at about 11 p.m., I still heard the noise. It had been one of those rare warm recent days and I’d left my front door open to help cool off. I stepped out onto my porch but, with one totally deaf ear, I’m unable to locate the direction sound comes from. That doesn’t prevent me from identifying the sound, though. I hope you believe me when I say it was that wonderful springtime chirping of frogs, just as clear but certainly not as loud as in days gone by! With no known body of water nearby, some of you — maybe most of you — will think it was imagination, but I will swear I heard frogs in the spring again that night.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
