Sunday, January 18, 2015

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2004. Mattie was almost two years old and as you can see..... fully on! He loved playing with boxes. He always made me laugh because he was surrounded by toys and even though he loved his Legos and trains, he somehow always found his way back to cardboard boxes. They really engaged him and kept his attention and stimulated his imagination.  He would round them up from all over our home and then he would start creating and playing with them.  

Quote of the day: Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking. ~ Bernard Baruch

Today was one of those cold, grey, and raining days in Washington, DC. In essence, not my kind of day. Peter and I worked on several Foundation items. While I was sitting at my desk, staring out the window, I could see the birds buzzing about our feeders. So I grabbed my camera to snap a few photos. Fortunately my camera has a wonderful zoom lens otherwise we could never see these details. Clearly we are feeding a significant sparrow population in DC! We have been feeding this population for over a decade now! I am quite sure it is the same group of birds since sparrows can live a long time! They seem to know us and they know exactly where to come each year for food. 

For years we would feed them from the hooks on our deck. Many of these sparrows still fly into our deck area and perch on these hooks. They have gotten used to their new feeding location this year, but old habits are hard to break. 

Several of my neighbors upstairs love our garden in the summer time and look forward to seeing what we will do each year. But many of them also look forward to us feeding the birds in the wintertime. This weekend, I bumped into one of these neighbors in the elevator. Peter never met her. I only told him about her. Any case, she was all aglow about the NEW feeding location and Peter was just absorbing this transaction and conversation! I know it is hard to imagine that birds could bring such joy to a few of us. But they do! When you live in the city and it is the winter, watching the birds connects us to life and I am happy that those above me appreciate this. Feeding and caring for the birds is also an effort and labor of love. On any given week, one of both of us is lugging 80 pounds of bird seed home for these feathered friends to eat. It is hard to believe they could go through SO MUCH seed, but they do. I am sure people appreciate nature for different reasons, but I have come to see a great commonality for those of us who lost children to cancer. Many of us seek out nature, feeling connected to it, and being a part of it. For me, the birds are my winter refuge.