Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2002. Mattie was seven months old. This was one of my favorite Fall photos of Mattie and me. I loved his "puppy" hat that he was wearing and the oak tree behind us has significance for us later in life. That tree supplied leaves for all the tent moth caterpillars Mattie brought home in the spring from his school playground. We would feed them and care for them long enough until they formed their cocoons, metamorphosed into moths, and released them on our deck! 


Quote of the day: Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow. ~ Edward Sandford Martin

I snapped a photo of our beautiful Christmas Cactus that is in our living room! This plant clearly is slightly off and a bit confused since it is Thanksgiving and NOT Christmas. But nonetheless, it is an amazing sight! These plants can be temperamental! I had a Christmas Cactus in the past that bloomed once and then never bloomed again, and then died! This one seems to be hardy and a real producer. It comes back every year! 

As I mentioned in last night's blog I finally got around to filling our bird feeders! Just in time, since today it began to slightly snow and the temperature seemed cold and raw! What I worried about was the new location of the feeders! Our sparrows have been used to the feeders hanging on our deck! This year I moved them to our commons area! This morning, the birds were all a flutter! They were outside my office window making a racket. They wanted to be fed. I wasn't sure how exactly to communicate to them that I understood they were frustrated with me but that the feeders were there and FILLED. They were in 'line up mode' as I call it, on the wall staring at me. Perched and waiting for me to address their needs. Then all of a sudden one of them did a fly over and caught glimpse of the new bird feeder set up..... and that was it. This bird signaled the rest, and the feeding frenzy began. They come swooping down at the feeders in packs! We have three feeders hanging from hooks. But by the end of today, all three feeders are half full! They are very hungry creatures and we go through a great deal of bird seed every two weeks! 

I am quite sure I feed the same sparrows year to year. Some sparrows can live up to 15 years. I would almost bet that some of these sparrows I started to feed around the time Mattie was an infant. After all, I began this past time, around the time Mattie was born. I was spending a lot of time at home then and it gave us something to do in the winter months and a way for us to engage with nature. Mattie loved it and then we just continued it year after year. Because we have done this for SO long, the pack continues to grow bigger with each year. I enjoyed seeing them come back today, and it is the only part of winter I like.