CE Wills

     Hey, everyone. A week or so ago, I bought the movie called The Revenant with Leo DiCaprio starring as Hugh Glass. Hugh is a scout, back in the days when the western United States was still inhabited by trappers, the Indians who hated them and a few settlers. We're talking about the days when rifles were single shot affairs and powder and ball were the technology of the wilderness.        Hugh was a 'squaw man'. He was a white man who had lived with the Indians, taken an Indian wife and had a son who was half Indian. Since my grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee, I find this movie particularly capable of stirring me up.      I didn't go to see this movie at the theater. I had the feeling that it was long and boring, thanks to the reviews. I was pleasantly surprised when it was an excellent show. I love wilderness shows. I love survival shows. I love tales from the old west. (Have written several) I love revenge storie...

   Hey, everyone. I feel good today. It is a breezy, sunny day at the green retreat. I have some Japanese Cherry trees in bloom. I also have some Dogwoods in bloom. The dogwoods are a white variety only. I wish I had planted some pink ones, back in the day.      I was at Lowe's the other day and found several things remarkable. In the center isle as I walked in I saw skids of insect spray and weed-killer. One was $21 a bottle and the other was $31 a bottle. I just cruised on past both of them. What was the old saying? Charge what the traffic will bear. They keep going up on things and making things thinner, cheaper, lower quality.      Everyone here in America wants their lawn to look like Augusta National. When I was young, things like grass seed was sold in huge paper bags for a dollar or so. Now they want to sell it for $20 or more for a one pound bag. How about Scott's fertilizer? It is so high, I'm amazed. The other day I go...

     Hey, everyone. My wife and I, like millions of people, enjoy feeding birds. You can make or buy a feeder, sprinkle in some bird seed, or fruit, or bread crumbs and watch as birds come to snack. Some are attracted to the crowd of other birds, as their nature is to follow a leader. On a cold winter day, the birds stand out against the snow and you can get some cool photos of colorful plumage to show your friends. I know folks who have photos blown up and decorate their homes with these pictures. Others may blog about the richly colored cardinals or even participate in the scientific studies of migratory habits.     Heck, you don't even have to have a feeder. Just sprinkle food on the ground. Of course, ants and other undesirables might invite themselves to supper. Squirrels are the worst interlopers. I have seen these voracious rascals chew through a plastic bucket to get at the bird seed inside. Sort of like a hacker. Ha, ha. They will walk a support...

     Hey, everyone. It is a cold , rainy day at the green retreat. The temperature is in the mid-thirties and there is snow in the mountains just west of me. I always hated this weather when I had to get out and work in it. If it had been colder, the precipitation would have been snow and though inconvenient for traveling, at least I wasn't soaked. Now I don't have to get out in it. But, after all those years, I have become somewhat ambivalent about the weather. I went for a drive and walked a track in the rain. I would have preferred to walk in the woods, but no one was walking but me, which is how I like it. Therefore it was a fine day for a walk on the track.       Though I wasn't walking in the woods, I did see some wildlife during the drive. The first was a woodchuck. He was running up the road on this old, narrow, country lane. His fur seemed very light-colored and I thought, perhaps, that he had tinted it, just a little. I wanted to...

   Hey, everyone. I have been enjoying an app called Louvre HD . This app has a collection of the famous museum's paintings and again I marvel at the ability to carry so many of the old masters' works in the palm of my hand. I thank the app's creators for this app.      The above painting is split into three pieces, not because it is that way on the app, because it isn't. Rather, I wanted to enlarge it, take screen shots and talk about it. As usual, I was meditating on the painting, just trying to get into the artist's head a bit.     The artist is, or was, one Francois Boucher who died in the 18th century. He liked to do landscapes and pastoral pictures and I enjoy them very much. This one is entitled The Shepherd's Presents or The Nest. It is derived from the collection of Louis XV.      If you can enlarge the part in which the people are, you'll see that the man is pointing to something in the lady's lap. It...

    Hey, everyone. I have had an interesting day, here at the author's green retreat. My heating and air unit was visited by a frog. I am not sure how long the little guy has been around, but he was inside the grill for the fan box. One day he would be on the left and the next day he would be on the right. My wife opined that he was one of those frogs who like to live on the edge. He thought that it would be cool to ride the air coming off the blades, like a skydiver floating in a wind-tunnel. This is certainly a worthy hypothesis but I had another thought about the long-legged rascal.       I decided to name him Thespian, King of Frogs. I figured that he was trying to find a better land for his people to live in. He saw that the moisture from the unit's condensate line would provide clean water. There would be a few bugs drawn to the water, which would provide some nutrition. There was the added plus in the fact that no cat could reach a frog that wa...

    Hey, everyone. I was just sitting on the porch, drinking my morning coffee. This is one of my favorite rituals. I noticed one of the local cardinals, a female, was alighting on one of the massive blooms of a Crepe Myrtle tree in my yard. When she did, blossoms went everywhere, cascading downward onto my lawn. Then she went to another bloom with a like result. Then another, and another. Soon it became apparent that she was purposely deflowering my tree on some sort of bird vendetta.     As you know, I recently had a cardinal family next to my chair, snug in their nest. They had the baby birds there and the whole domestic scene. Cool. They survived their infancy just fine and moved to other quarters recently. We got along great because I kept the cat away from them. During their residency, I did a blog about the rascals and mentioned that the lady cardinal was more drab in her mode of dress than the male.      It seems obvious to t...

  Hey, everyone. You may remember that I had a Cardinal building a nest about a foot or two from where I sit on my porch. She had two eggs in it. This morning as I drank coffee I heard an abundance of tiny chirping noises. Sure enough, the baby birds have come forth into the world and seem abundantly happy about it. They have no feathers. Good thing it was a hot day. Of course, unless she is hunting food, the mother bird sits with them and keeps them warm.      It is hard to be in a bad mood while you listen to baby birds cheeping. It is a feeling like "Hey, the world must be okay after all, or those little rascals wouldn't make all that cute noise. Hopefully, they'll keep it quiet if a cat comes around. Cats are a bit cruel at times and could care less about cuteness.      Hey, maybe Facebook could put the sound of baby birds cheeping on their site and measure the happiness response of their victims customers. Ha, ha. Bizarre to experi...

    Hey, everyone. I have a certain chair that I normally sit in when I am on the front porch. My butt is talented enough so that it can sit in any chair 'but' it prefers this one particular chair. I sit there and prop my feet up on the porch rail and it is quite comfortable.      A week or so ago I noticed that a bird, a lady cardinal, was flying back and forth into the bush next to me. I am not speaking of the college basketball team (Stanford), but a real female cardinal. Seriously, the bird has built a nest within 2 feet of my chair and has done it while I was sitting there. I mean, this ****** bird has all the woods around here, all the trees, and it chooses to build so close to me that it could count the hairs on my head. I reflected on this bizarre behavior over the course of the day and came up with several intriguing scenarios. Before I list them, let me say that the nest has two small eggs in it. 1) The bird has monitored me closely and ...

     Hey, everyone. It is a peaceful Sunday morning at the green retreat. I awoke at 5 A.M. and just lay in bed and thought about stuff. I thought about things I'd always wanted to do and some of those items on that list which I have actually accomplished.     These days, they have a term for everything and Bucket List is a term which is thrown around. It comes from the Jack Nicholson movie, I suppose. I found that movie sad and depressing but the subject is intriguing.      It's funny. As one goes through this life, their list undergoes transformation. You may accomplish 50% of your list. About another 40% you lose interest in doing because you decide it was stupid, or a waste of time or too much money involved, or it was just too much of a hassle.      Let's face it. I am in my sixties and I have some physical things that limit the contents of my bucket. Ha, ha. I just had a mental picture of a guy walkin...

    Hey, everyone. Glad you could stop by the author's green retreat. Nice sunset, don't you think?     I watched the final of the Aussie Open yesterday and got a big kick out of it. Let me tell you some thoughts on this rather bizarre match between Stanislav Wawrinka and Rafael Nadal. As you know, I love Nadal. I like his intensity and his bull dog tenacity, his effort. I like Wawrinka too. I like the tatt on his forearm about failure and effort.      Before this match started they were being filmed coming down the tunnel and I guess Rafa stopped and let Stan wait on him, with Stan carrying that heavy equipment bag. Gamesmanship? Only Rafa knows. I watched Wawrinka drop his bag and there was a look of irritation on his face...and the eye of the tiger.     I thought to myself. You might want to forget that this guy has never taken a set from Nadal, let alone beaten the Spaniard. Sure enough, Wawrinka beat Nadal, but w...

   Hey, everyone. This morning I heard a loud thump at my house. It sounded like something had hit the house. Later, when I walked onto the front porch I saw something that looked like a misshapen leaf, lying under the porch swing. When I walked down to look at it I saw that it was a dead bird, a cardinal. It was a female cardinal and you might wish to know how I figured that out. No, not like that.     Actually, a male cardinal is the pretty one, being a nice, scarlet red in color. The female doesn't have to strut around and be fetching, I suppose. At any rate, this was a female.      So, this lady cardinal, flew from goodness knows where, perhaps St. Louis, to fly into my window and break her neck. Odd. Suicide in birds is something that I find perplexing. I think it may have started with the Angry Birds craze. When word got around the avian community that some birds were making millions of dollars by being flung from a sling shot and ...

    Hey, everyone. It is Sunday morning in the States. It is 60 degrees and overcast, with rain yesterday and last night plus the threat of more to come. The robins don't seem to care. There are dozens of them in some of my trees, flitting through the bushes and... just now flying headlong into my study's window. Ha, ha. I have seen birds literally break their necks like that. It brings to mind the bizarre Hitchcock movie called The Birds , in which our fine feathered friends get tired of human-related problems and start attacking people.      Nothing like that with these birds. They are mild and well-behaved, other than their odd toilet habits. This morning being so unseasonably warm, I carried my coffee to the front porch and watched ...life happening.     I have several Bradford Pears in the front yard. They are the trees that have become popular for their white blooms in the spring. Their pears stay tiny and unsuitable for human ...

    Hey, happy humans around the globe. The weekend is winding down as we speak. I tore down an engine yesterday, just to see what was inside. It took me several hours but it was not as dangerous as my mission in the missile silo of Call of Duty.       I watched a bit of football today and as I watched my Falcons I became convinced of the veracity of my previous claims. The team needs help on the offensive line and a really dominant pass rusher. Still, they should have beat the Saints. It was, however, just ... Joss that they lost. Joss is a Chinese term that indicates fate, inevitability, luck, fortune or a combination of the above. It is a way of life, an attitude, that keeps one from railing at life, or God or tragedy. Yes, I finished re-reading Noble House tonight. That's what prompted me to use the word. It is a novel of Hong Kong, China and the far east. It is like the best steak that you ever ate, except it is a book. I thought about h...

Hey, everyone. What are y'all doing up so late? It's three o'clock in the morning here. I have been playing Plants vs. Zombies 2 for hours, today. It is a cool game, for sure. I made it to the Pirate level. I have a new weapon for my arsenal of plants. It is a fire-breathing snap dragon. When you feed it plant food, it rises up on its wings and sprays fire over three rows, reducing zombies to black embers. It feels mighty satisfying when you trigger it off. There is a peg-leg zombie. He has a parrot that carries him around. The parrot will snatch your guys off the board, which is counterproductive for you.     There are other zombies who roll barrels toward your lines. They have Long John Silver hats and the pirate do-rags on their heads. It is most amusing.     Don't think I haven't done anything else today. Nooooooo. I went out with Carley and ate mass quantities of food. We went to Outback Steak House. She ate some Pork Tenderloin, so tender that sh...

     Hey, everyone. I promised to tell you what happened to Carson Napier in the room of the seven doors in Burroughs great novel called Lost On Venus . Well, when he awoke with the snakes all over the room, he sought refuge on top of the table. One very large and very scary snake went up there after him. In his extremity, Carson just fled to one of the seven doors and opened it. The corridor was empty, briefly, and his hopes rose. Then he heard a savage roar and a tharban, a great predator cat, came at him. Luckily he had wedged the chair in the door and was able to return to the room he had just quit. The huge snake and the tharban start killing each other. The snake wins and returns to kill Carson. Carson climbs up the rope with which he was meant to hang himself. He pulls the rope up to prevent the snake from coming after him; when he reaches a rafter far above. Then he walks a narrow beam to reach a landing and effect his escape. Just as he is about to leave t...

    Hey, everyone. Carley and I went to town today to see the latest Jason Statham thriller, Parker. This is a terrific action movie and I'd have to give it 4.5 stars out of 5. Frankly, I've seen some bad reviews for it, but not everyone likes action films. Don't let yourself be cheated out of seeing this pulse-pounder.     Jason Statham stars as Parker, a big-time criminal with an iron code of ethics which he won't transgress. Like, he only steals from people who can afford to lose something, he does what he says and he doesn't harm the innocent. His boss, (played by Nick Nolte) sends him out on a heist with a group of criminals who are not as professional as Parker. They get a man killed, then abscond with the money, leaving Parker, himself, dying by the road-side in Ohio.      Unfortunately for them, Parker survives, and it is part of his creed that he give payback. He finds out that the wicked gang has a big steal arranged in We...

    Hello. My name is Tom and I am a turkey. I live here at the green retreat and C.E. Wills asked me if I'd be his guest blogger today. When I asked him what I should talk about, he replied, "Anything you want. Tell the folks what you are thankful for."      Well! There is so much that I am thankful for. We turkeys are not a particularly religious crowd, but I'll give it a try. 1) I am thankful for the green retreat. I love to walk the forest paths and peck at things. The hills give a nice echo to my gobbles and there is always the hope that a female turkey will show up. There are acorns and hickory nuts galore. Most importantly, C.E. doesn't allow hunting on the green retreat, so I feel safe. 2) I am thankful that it is a sunny, warm day. Makes me want to spread my brilliant plumage and fly for a short distance. I am thankful for the cool sound I make as I fly. It is a whirring, rushing sound that inspires awe, especially if a bunch of us turkeys ...

    Hey, everyone. As Sunday night becomes Monday I reflect back on the weekend. It has been okay. I watched a little football, played a few games on the Padster and hung around with my wife. We watched some movies. I like old westerns and tonight I watched part of an old Randolf Scott offering called The Nevadan . I was surprised because it wasn't that good. Usually I really enjoy all of Mr. Scott's films. It was in color, which is odd for his flicks. I gave up on it about the half-way point.      Carley has played a bunch of a game called Word Jewels 2 . She played 101 levels of this game. Can you believe it? It has a board with letters arranged in a honeycomb. the red colored letters can be strung into words, disposing of the letters. You only have a certain number of moves until you lose. She enjoys it so much that she only mumbles occasionally, which means it's a 5 star game. It is either free or 99 cents, I forget.     What did...

    Hey, everyone. Back in the day, when people didn't spend much money on Christmas ornaments, we made our own. In the fall, dogwood trees produce these little berries that are very colorful. Carley was saying that she used to take a needle and thread and put the red things on a string, then use it as garland on a tree. Colorful, natural and 'green'.     I'm CE Wills.