Whereas we’re nonetheless cramped by unpacked packing containers right here and there, it has been the climate that has been most irritating and miserable. Colorado Springs boasts over 300 days of sunshine per yr. Right here, in just a little greater than two weeks, we’ve had two full days of solar. In any other case, it has been overcast, dreary, usually raining, and unseasonably cool. Yesterday it barely made it over 60° F. Heidi insists it’s heat and humid, I say it’s cool and damp. On the times when it has been dry, my allergic reactions to grasses and spring bushes have made my temper simply as depressing because the cloudy and moist days.
Regardless of the inclement climate, we’ve been exploring our property and conserving an inventory of the animals we discover. Whereas unloading the U-haul, Heidi tallied 13 species of birds. I flip the porch gentle on at evening, and on two events deployed a blacklight, and lots of bugs have revealed themselves. Our accounting now numbers over 190 taxa (something from phylum to species, relying on our familiarity with a given organism).
Up to now, our residence appears to be spider metropolis and weevil central. We seem to have a resident Japanese Grey Squirrel inhabiting the large oak tree within the entrance yard; and American Robin and Mourning Dove usually bask on the wires over the storage and again yard. Reluctantly, we mowed what passes for our lawns, however saved the chopping degree as excessive as we might, leaving the herbaceous vegetation alongside the fence line within the again as intact as doable. We’ve Floor Ivy, clover, dandelion, and even some violets rising among the many grass and leaf litter.
Leavenworth is a fairly quaint city, the residential neighborhoods being virtually actually the All-American communities one thinks of within the “fly-over” states, however nobody has been overly welcoming, not to mention ringing the doorbell with pies and different meals in hand. I think about that the persevering with pandemic has one thing to do with the abortion of conventional greetings and choices, however I additionally suspect a rising pall of suspicion and mistrust that has at all times been there, however is now pervasive and….regular. Is everybody on the block speaking about us on the Nextdoor app, speculating about why I’m prowling round with a digicam, and stretching a sheet and a UV gentle off the entrance porch?
Driving round in the midst of selecting up gadgets for our family, and operating errands to ascertain our residency within the civic sense, it’s obvious that the cities of Leavenworth and Lansing, and the county of Leavenworth, have a great deal of untamed greenspace among the many agricultural fields and industrial enterprise districts. It is going to be fascinating to discover, supplied the climate improves.
I used to be telling a buddy again in Colorado Springs, one of many few folks we noticed instantly earlier than we left, that I really feel cheated by the pandemic yr. I had a whole twelve months the place I noticed virtually nobody exterior of my partner, and now I’m being swept away with out having a lot in the best way of significant parting encounters.
Right here I’m now, understanding nobody however my in-laws, and having met a few Heidi’s highschool classmates briefly, two years in the past. Being a sudden stranger is tough, of us. I’m prone to retreat to the consolation and familiarity of the insect world the place I truly acknowledge some previous mates.
UPDATE: Regarding my well being, my respiratory points have virtually utterly resolved themselves. The trigger was apparently a extreme allergy I developed to our pet fowl, a budgerigar (“budgie”). My spouse’s mother and father visited us in Colorado about three weeks earlier than we moved, and we despatched the fowl away with them. My signs of coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath vanished virtually instantly. I’ll sincerely miss the candy tweeting of our “boy named Sue,” however am grateful to be sleeping soundly, in our mattress as an alternative of a chair, without having of an inhaler.
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