Seed Saving with my Sunflowers

I had to take these puppies off the front porch,  where they were drying,  because Slip and Buffy found them.

4 Mammoth sunflower heads drying on the front porch wood rack

When I finally screened them all out and left the screen out for them to dry a bit more, the chickadees found them!

I can't win but at least all the birds are happy!

Our three trees

I have discovered a problem with working full time. My problem is that I have no time to blog, so I end up over 5 months after a particular event and I am slowly getting to blog about it. Like this fine example: I had three different Christmas trees this year. Yes three different trips out to find our perfect trees. I lie, one was a rescue mission after a slight trim to the bottom turned out perfect Christmas tree























into a pathetic Charlie Brown version that had to live on the porch.

















  
Our third and  smallest tree is proudly referred to as the bird tree.

We try to do it every year, but many years we don't have the time and skip it. I am really happy we did it again this year. It adds a springtime contemplation to my dining room. 

Our bird tree

This is our bird tree.

We don't put it up every year, but when we do it stays up for a while. SP got most this collection while he was living in Idaho. It's a nice addition to our dining room that looks out over our bird feeding array.






































It's snowing pretty hard right now, but there is a chickadee sitting on the feeder all the way to the left. Chick a dee dee dee...

Poor Bluejay

This poor beautiful bird flew into my car as I was driving to pick up Baby from preschool. It swooped out of the trees and dove right into my bumper, and had I not known better as I tried to avoid it, one might have thought it was committing Harri Kari. I knew it was a big bird but I thought it was a crow. I wasn't even positive I had actually killed it until I returned home from preschool and saw this beautiful bird in the road. I picked it up and brought it home so that the children could see it up close. Those stripes and bars are BEAUTIFUL! I called the cat over to show him the gift I brought him, since he is so wonderful at leaving me the heads and tails of his prizes at my door step. I was not surprised when Huckyman denied the gift, for it was already dead. So I left it right here where it laid as an experiment to the wonderful food chain I live among. Low and behold, this morning - no sign nor mark was left. Not one beautiful blue feather was left, which made me a bit sad because I wanted one. However, I was left a gift - an oh so obvious sign from an elusive, wily coyote - it's scat.
You are welcome you wild howling fiery beast!

A gift from the cat

He is SUCH a hunter.

This fall in particular!

Are there more rodents this fall?

More birds on the ground?

Every day there is a new present.