i could almost hear the vibration, tremolo i think is the word. Ray would hum in that gravely voice, low and rhythmic. I still remember him sitting with Sarah on his shoulder, her cheek next to his. You see, a number of times Maureen and i would go out for the evening, we would take Sarah when she was between one and two over to Taft Street in Lemon Grove to the house of which Ray designed, engineered, oversaw the building of, and then did most of the interior work on himself. Yet the thing i always remember about the French-Irish, Boston-born, Wyoming-raised, self-made man, was his humming. All of them display how much he enjoyed life. I loved the way Ray loved his daughters, his son, and his family. Within an hour, they were back in the garage. They would argue…hmmm, discuss the problem, go out to the garage refrigerator and get a beer, stand there and talk for a half-hour, seldom about the work, and go back in and resume the tile job. Ray would present his plan, and Jimmy Jewell would point out something in the plan wouldn’t work. The two of them re-tiled the kitchen floor in our first house. My father shot from the hip, starting a project with an idea in mind, adjusting when in mid-stream he realized his original idea needed to be modified to work better, finding a tool he didn’t have was needed and either stopping to go get the tool or, more likely, figuring out a way to get it done without the tool. Everything was planned out, drawn on engineering plans, all preparations complete, including tools, supplies, safety checks, etc., etc. Watching Ray and my father work together was something magical. This was because he would go early and have SOS (okay, who besides military folks, especially Navy folks, knows what SOS is?) for two dollars. This was not because of the golf, mind you. Ray loved to play golf with my friends and me, especially when it was at Miramar, Admiral Baker, or North Island. And yes, to be perfectly honest, we drank a lot together. We argued about the best route to get where we were going. We did projects together, we played golf together. And i was from the South.īut soon, Ray and i had our own thing, not just in-laws, but best friends. His daughter was…no, is a beautiful, sophisticated young woman. He seemed to be pleased, but i wasn’t really sure about what he thought about me. Yesterday, Ray Boggs (what a lovely Irish name) would have been ninety-nine years old. The little avian friends will find blooming treats even in the largest and most populous cities such as Detroit, Ann Arbor, or Grand Rapids.I just had too much going on to pay my proper respects, so i delayed it until today, which i thought was appropriate because it was St. In the long perspective, cultivating hummingbird flowers and shrubs is an excellent alternative to artificial nectar in bright feeders. Hummers' favorite plants include fuchsias, petunias, begonias, impatiens, geraniums, honeysuckle, and butterfly bushes. Make sure that two weeks have passed since your last sighting before you stop topping up the bird feeder. Hummers leave in late August and early September, but you may want to leave your feeders 1/3 full for a few more weeks just in case any straggler pays a late visit to your garden. ![]() Keep an eye on your feeding sites to clean and refill them in time to prevent mold. In May, the basin can be half full, and later when the season swells, you can pour more sugar water. Make a sweet nectar-like drink of granulated sugar dissolved in water (ratio 1:4) and fill the feeder to 1/3 capacity. When to put out hummingbird feeder in MichiganĪlthough the majority arrive in May, you may hang feeders in your yard as early as mid-April to assist the earliest arrivals with food supplies. Nature blessed them with appropriate superpowers, including a rapid wingbeat (the remarkable 80 flaps per second) and heart rate (1,250 beats per minute when active). The hummingbird migration to Michigan is incredible-the tiny critters weigh only 0.1 oz (3 g) but can fly for 1,500 mi (2,400 km), including a 20-hour non-stop flight above the Gulf of Mexico. Again, males arrive first and establish their feeding territories. The native ruby-throats come back to Michigan in the first week of May. Males leave before females and juveniles, leaving them with more food stocks. Some migrators stop at the Gulf Coast of the US and winter in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. This time of year is when hummers are most active, fattening up in a feeding frenzy before they are off for warmer Mexican and Central American climates. Ruby-throated hummingbirds migrate from Michigan between late August and early September.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |