Beaujolais Nouveau (what the hell is wrong with me?)

I do not like Beaujolais Nouveau.  I want to like it.  Every year at the end of November I buy a bottle, excited by the knowledge that I’m participating in a worldwide ritual of fun and festivity—imbibing in the first Beaujolais of the season.  I chill my bottle of wine, while reading descriptions of the current season’s crop, things like, a refreshing complexity of black currant, blueberry, blackberry, black cherry and kirsch, intermingled with violet, cocoa, coffee, pepper, licorice and warm spices.  I then pop the cork, take a mouthful, and I hate it.  Blackberries my ass.  I just absolutely can’t develop a taste for it, and as I know it’s the most “accessible” red wine out there, I think red wine will forever be alien to me.  Sorry, Georges DuBoeuf, you’ve lost me for another year, but don’t worry… by next November I’ll again be convinced that I’m going to like it, and I’ll buy another bottle.

By the way, if any enterprising music artist out there wants to take my title, “Beaujolais Nouveau (what the hell is wrong with me?)” and make it into a catchy dance tune that I can listen to on XM Radio, I’ll only charge you a nominal licensing fee.

Beaujolais Nouveau isn’t the only thing to have arrived in Las Vegas—winter seems to be here, too.  I’ve spent most of the past week trying to “winterize” the yard, before it becomes too cold, windy, and uncomfortable to work out there.  I finished the assembly of the Rubbermaid Big Max shed (more or less… one section of ground isn’t level, so one section of roof is less than perfect), I put all the umbrellas and pool gear away, I reset the pool’s solar timers to run in the middle of the night to prevent freezing, and today I wrapped burlap around the four new Queen palms we planted this year.  The temperatures in the daytime are still around 55 or 60 degrees, but at night we’re starting to see temps of 35, with wind chill to 25.  It will warm back up again during the daytime, but I’m still worried that even a few hours of below-freezing temps could harm the palms.  I didn’t wrap the jacaranda, so it’s on its own, but it’s also planted in an area which gets morning sun.  The palms won’t have sunlight until midday, so better safe than sorry.  The palms look sort of festive in their burlap-with-green-ties wrapping… I’m tempted to stick some red bows on and call it a Christmas decoration.

I can’t remember if I wrote about hanging a bird feeder.  Last year our neighbours gave us a bird feeder and pole for Christmas, but the pole was quite short and flimsy, and the spring top on the feeder broke after just a few uses.  A couple of months ago, I bought a really sturdy bird feeder pole, and I set it in the ground properly, using concrete.  I then bought an inexpensive cedar bird feeder, and since hanging the feeder the birds have been eating us out of house and home.  We mostly just get house finches, sparrows, and mourning doves, despite the fact I put out exciting treats like suet, but the birds seem appreciative.  They leave lots of poop around as a show of gratitude.  Now I remember—I didn’t post about hanging the feeder, because that would have entailed posting about our trip to Walmart, which sort of embarrasses me.  I really dislike Walmart, and we usually avoid it at all costs, but our neighbour gave us a $25 gift certificate, so we used it to buy the bird feeder.  I can’t exactly explain what bugs me about Walmart, except that it seems so Stepford-ish.  The store near us has big displays of Mormon books near their entryway, and I find that creepy.  I’m also creeped out by the fact that everything in their store is so insanely cheap that I know there must be evil afoot.  The super-duper large box of Honeycomb cereal was only $2.50—that’s not possible.  That’s a $6 box of cereal at Vons.  I just don’t care for the store and we’ve always chosen to shop at Target instead, but now that they’re both being weird about “Happy Holidays” and Plan B and allowing pharmacists to not fill prescriptions, well, it’s time to move back to San Francisco or something.  Anyway, I hung up a bird feeder, and the birds are happy, and they eat a couple of quarts of seed every day.  Here’s a photo of it, as taken from our back patio.  You can barely see it behind the jacaranda, so I circled it:

image

Speaking of birds, I walked to the mailbox last night in the early evening (after dark), and as I was returning to the house I could see a little shadow on the sidewalk.  Sitting just in front of our Queen palms was the neighbourhood mascot, the burrowing owl.  He’s been around here off and on for the past few years, and every time I assume that development has finally pushed him away, he reappears.  He’s a tiny little thing, and I think he was snacking on crickets last night.  He hung around for a long time—long enough for me to run into the house to get Flippy to come out and see him, too, but not long enough for me to get the camera.  I hope he likes our desert landscaping in the front yard, and will feel free to visit again.

I’m about half a dozen book review behind, so that’s what I’ll be doing for blog entries for the next little bit… bear with me.  After I’m done, I’ll write about the Kuranda beds which are now in our downstairs family room.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 12/03 at 07:10 PM

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  1. Oh, you’d have been so excited at school a few weeks ago.  The fourth graders did a science project where they disected owl sacks (or whatever they’re called, those things that owls spit up after they’ve eaten) The kids found it facinating to get to open them up and look for bones and such.  It really was rather interesting.  I never did anything that fun when I was in 4th grade.

    Posted by Kate  on  12/05  at  03:37 PM

  2. We decided to get a bird feeder for the yard last spring.  It is one of those cedar numbers with the two slots for suet on either end.  I filled it up with both seed and suet and hung it out in the yard.  Before long, tons of birds were visiting - red-winged black birds, sparrows, etc.  I was positively stunned at how much seed that they ate.  It makes me wonder what the birds were eating before the feeder was there.

    Posted by Expat  on  12/07  at  11:36 AM

  3. You’re right, Kate… I would have enjoyed owl sacks smile I went to a pretty progressive elementary school in Toronto and we did cool Canadian stuff, like going to tap trees to make maple syrup, but we didn’t get owl sacks.

    And Expat, I can’t get the birds to pay any attention to suet.  I guess it’s just the type of birds around here or something, but they’ve ignored it completely.  I’m all out of wild bird seed right now, so tomorrow the feeder will be filled with parrot mix (I had to take our parrots off seed because of some liver/cholesterol issues, so I’ve got about 20 lbs. of it still sitting in a bucket).  We’ll see how the birds feel about dried chile peppers.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  12/07  at  09:32 PM

  4. It could be that the birds are not the type to enjoy suet, or maybe they are not fond of the flavour of it.  I have had success with both the orange and the pepper flavoured suet.  It does not disappear as quickly as the seed, but it does disappear quick enough.

    I should do some research on cholesterol issues and birds.  I am kind of worried about one of our guys as he looks like he has some extra weigh on his keel.  I wonder if that is due to his primarily seed diet?  What are you feeding the birds now that they have been cut back on their seed?  Mostly fruit and veggies?  I had never even considered that birds could have high cholesterol, but it makes sense.  Those sunflower seeds can not be good for them and those seem to be there favourite.

    Posted by Expat  on  12/08  at  04:02 AM

  5. "Their” not “there”.

    UGH! red face

    Posted by Expat  on  12/08  at  04:03 AM

  6. Expat, we found out about cholesterol trouble the hard way.  Our parrotlet, Bubbe, had problems with an over-grown beak for about a year, and then she suddenly died of liver problems.  Apparently the over-grown beak was a clue.  Then our pionus, Pepe, started to over-grow his beak as well, which he’d never done in his first 12 years of life.  His beak started to grow long, and his feathers were turning yellow (from dark green and blue).  We took him to the vet, and x-rays showed that his liver was very enlarged.  When the vet drew blood, she came in to show it to us because it was yellowish and thick—she said his cholesterol readings were subsequently off the chart.  We were told to take him off ALL seed, so as a precaution, we just took all the birds off it.  They only received seed as perhaps 20% of their diet, so it wasn’t too hard to cut it out.  I replaced their daily seed treat with Cheerios and they’re all happy.  Pepe needs to go back for blood work, and his beak is still growing, but it’s slowed down substantially and his feather colouration is more normal now.

    Our birds all eat the same thing, just in varying amounts.  They have one-third pellet food, and on top of that I put two-thirds hot food (brown rice, pasta, beans, mixed veggies, and fruit).  They all eat it without complaint.  I give the larger birds a dish of plain pellets for all-day snacking, as well.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  12/08  at  01:51 PM

  7. Goodness!  Some of those symptoms really worry me. 

    I noticed a few days ago that one of our birds was changing colour from green to yellow.  I had never seen that before, but stocked it up to old age.  I wonder if she is having cholesterol issues?  She is the pickiest eater and will choose to eat only sunflower seeds (I had taken to giving her only a small ration of sunflower seeds with her regular food, but now she is skinny because she refuses to eat anything else!).  I think that I will pick up a bag of pellets and slowly start switching her to that.  Hopefully she will take to it!

    Thanks for the advice.  Hopefully I can get this sorted out (if that is what it is!).

    Posted by Expat  on  12/09  at  07:27 AM

  8. We’ve had some sunflower addicts, too, but have slowly managed to convert everyone to pellets + fresh food.  You might want to see if you can get your picky eater to sample some meatless baby foods, like squash, apricots, sweet potato, etc.  Some birds like the “just like Mom used to regurgitate” texture, and if they do, you can use baby food to put on top of the pellets to soften them (the pellets and the birds with attitude).  Another treat for our fussy/underweight eaters is baby bird food.  It’s a powder you mix with warm water.  Keno the cockatoo loves to be spoon-fed this stuff, and it’s helpful for when she’s on the slim side.

    On last thing… there’s a supplement you can put in food/water to help the liver recover—it’s called Aloe Detox, and you can buy it at most health food stores.  If you do a search for “aloe detox parrots” you’ll find some articles about it.  It’s a safe additive to help clear the liver of toxins and to help it if it’s overworked, which it is in the case of high fat diets.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann (aka Mudpuppy)  on  12/09  at  08:53 AM
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