Ramona Grasslands and San Jacinto Wildlife Area

As our frantic work on the house and cleaning up the yard and working on the chicken coop finally calmed down, we carved out some time to go down to San Diego to see Jackie. Terry had left Christian a tract of land in Oregon that he had wanted to build a house on. For one reason or another, it had never progressed very far. It didn't help that Jackie never intended to or wanted to move there. Anyway, Terry and Jackie had told us about it on one of the last times we went down to visit him. They had been seeing a lawyer about arranging a living will or trust.

However, I guess the lawyer had stated that she could not handle the transfer of land outside of California but Terry and Jackie did not make any efforts to put anything in place to facilitate this transfer.  The easiest thing they could have done would have been to have someone right up and file a Deed Upon Death. 

Fast forward to after Terry has passed away and Jackie is giving us information about the tract of land there but the land is still in their name. She throws up her hands and doesn't want to do anything about it but she wants us to take it off her hands so that she won't be responsible for the property tax that will be due later this year. She makes some snide remarks about us getting a lawyer to get it done because her lawyer did everything she could already and it's not her problem anymore because she is out of money since Terry's second wife is getting all his retirement money and his first wife seems to have the life insurance in her name...none of which is our problem/fault.

I tried to be sympathetic and did think that the situation was not great for her but she really made it difficult to sympathize with her. I had spent a month researching and looking into how we could work things out for her. After spending all this time doing the work, she finally says that she is going to get a lawyer involved to get it done instead. I was a bit exasperated with this since this is what she should have done in the first place instead of wasting my time researching this myself. Then she goes back and forth about sticking with the my plan to just sign a QuitClaim Deed then making an appointment with a lawyer once again. Several of the lawyers didn't want to take the work for some reason so I just ended up working up the Deed myself, only to find out that there were complications with it. Apparently the name on the original Warranty Deed doesn't really match her official identification because she never wanted to take Terry's name. 

Anyway, we had to go down to see her, so we tried to make it a day by taking Emily to the Ramona Grasslands.

We didn't go in very far and didn't see any new birds, but we got some really great views of the American Kestrel which were very abundant that day. A Western Meadowlark spent a lot of time singing it's heart out on a rock. There were still a good amount of wildflowers around. At some point, we had to leave as Jackie was expecting us.

We had a short visit with her but in the end, we got nothing accomplished. We can't do anything to hurry this along or help her as they all pertain to issues on her end. She is going to talk to a family lawyer about all the things that have come up about this. We'll see if anything happens. I'm pretty sick of the whole thing. Jackie keeps going back and forth from being helpful to not. She swings between moods and at times, you can't even have a conversation with her without her jumping down your throat. I can call her out on it and she'll apologize and then it will happen again down the line. This has been going on since Terry started having health problems but I think she has always been this way. We have usually just tried not to deal with her very much and she has done the same for the most part.

On our way home, we were so exasperated and frustrated that we stopped by the San Jacinto Wildlife Area for more birding therapy. 

I was excited to see a Wood Duck there. We also saw a Bullock's Oriole and an American Goldfinch. I was super excited about the Goldfinch as we only get Lesser Goldfinches here.

We finally called it a day and headed home because we were all hungry. It's a lucky thing that I was able to pack some lunch for us or we would never have made it through the day. It was a pretty long one.

May

We spent most of our extra time going through our old building supplies and putting a chicken coop for the chickens who are growing a lot. The chickens were still mostly sleeping in a box in the garage but they are quickly outgrowing that arrangement. During the day, we have another bigger box they go in that is set up as their "play pen."

In order to get the chickens to be comfortable in their new home, we had to put the box they had been sleeping in into the coop so that they had familiar surroundings. We will remove it as they get more comfortable and as the weather warms up. It will be a work in progress for some time to come.

It is still Spring, although some days feel like Summer. But the birds have been migrating so we have lost some of the birds that have been hanging about for a while. A lot of the sparrows and the juncos seemed to have moved on except a house sparrow family that set up house in an old woodpecker cavity in the neighbors tree. I miss the Lark Sparrows most of all. We did get some new birds that came through for a little while though. We had some Black-headed Grosbeaks that stopped by to feed at our feeders for a short time. That was pretty exciting.

The ever skittish Hooded Orioles have stuck around so far, much to the annoyance of our hummingbirds. But I was excited to find a Western Warbling Vireo come by. 

Even with all the sparrows gone, there is no shortage of birds around. Often, if I look out my window, I can spot at least a dozen house finches milling around the seed feeder and I keep increasing the amount of nectar I put out for the hummingbirds but they seem to drain it faster and faster. I used to only have one feeder outside my kitchen window and it would take 3 or 4 days for them to empty it. I did not fill it completely so that it would not sit there too long and ferment or anything. When they started to drain faster, I filled the bottle more...which turned into two partially filled bottles...which turned into two completely full bottles. Now they drain both bottles in a day or two at the most...with the help of the Orioles, of course.

They are still territorial, but the Anna's Hummingbird that guards the front, can't do anything when the Oriole's come in. They still chase each other away at the second feeder but more of them manage to get along enough to get drinks there, especially at the end of the day. Unfortunately, a couple of bees want in on the free nectar as well sometimes. 

While we were out working on the chicken coop one weekend, there was a ruckus because a crow had invaded the area of a couple of Kestrels. I'm not sure if it raided their nest to steal their eggs or kill their young, or just because it was in their tree. It was too far to see any details. But the Kestrels were squawking and dive bombing the crow for quite some time before it finally left.

We continue every week to work on clearing out our yard...hopefully enough that the fire department doesn't complain about our property. I don't know when they will be going around or if they have already done so. With summer around the corner and fire season already in full swing, I would think that they have better things to do, but who knows.

I am also upgrading our little bird bath and trying out a solar fountain. If it turns out well, I will definitely want to work on this more in the future.

Mother's Day

A week after my mother's brief, but somewhat traumatic stay at the hospital, was Mother's Day weekend. Emily still came home at the beginning of the weekend. The last day to get our online home inspection done was that Saturday. You have to do it using some third party app on your phone, so we told Emily to do it for us. She had trouble getting the app to work on Christian's older phone so we had to do it again on mine. It still didn't work, but this time it was saying that our link was expired, which isn't true. The paperwork clearly said that we had until that day to do it. She had to call them to get them to fix it manually for us, giving them information on our home that we were told that we shouldn't give them because now this third party company has our address and video footage of the inside and outside of our home! Anyway, the whole thing was a nightmare and a half. 

While Emily was still mucking around with the phone trying to get it to work, Christian was exhausted and went in to get a nap. When we were finally done, we decided to go out. One of the questions on the inspection was to ask if we had live stock. We didn't, but the chickens that Emily wanted came back to mind. We decided to go to the feed store to look at the chicks again. We found a nice little feed store that had all kinds of chicks. I decided to just get the chicks for Emily for all her help. They would let us get only two chicks but they recommended an extra one in case something happened to one of them. They are very social birds and one typically does not survive very well without a friend, so in the end, we ended up with three chicks!

They are so cute and surprisingly cuddly. We didn't have a coop for them yet, so they are basically in a box at this point. 

The next day was Mother's Day and my sister planned a "high tea" for her. Emily made little cucumber sandwiches. I made scones, clotted cream and shortbread cookies.

My sister made salmon finger sandwiches and had fresh fruit. Christopher made us a matcha latte. Jared had made some dumplings with my mom and they had some leftover stuffing, so after lunch, she set us back up to work on making the rest.

We actually brought the chicks with us, since they are small and portable right now. Everyone got to play with them.

My mom is mostly feeling better but she still seems to have a low grade constant headache. They had adjusted her medication and it helps but doesn't really solve the problem, so we will see. She doesn't want to bother with any extreme measures that might fix the problem because of her age. There is a lot of risk in all of the possibilities anyway so everyone is keeping an eye on her for now. She still doesn't have a lot of energy but I think it is better than before and she has more of an appetite and is eating normally again...well, at least what is normal for her.

We took the opportunity to do some group pictures with my mom while so many of us are in town. We are only missing Caitlyn and Collin. Caitlyn, of course is still up at school finishing her last semester and Collin skipped out on us to study for his finals or something...but it didn't stop him from getting together with his cousins for Korean BBQ on Friday night! Caitlyn didn't want to be left out so she drew herself into the group photo. Wendy wanted us to photoshop them in but I liked Caitlyn's version so much,  I added Collin in as well!