Here, BirdieBirdieBirdie!

I carried up the hummingbird feeders last week so Durwood could clean them and make "birdie juice" to put in them because according to the Hummingbird Migration Map the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds were getting nearer, even though we usually don't see them until the honeysuckle's blooming and it's barely making leaves much less flowers.  What with one thing and another he didn't get it done until yesterday so this morning I got one hung out.  It was so gorgeous out that I ate my Cheerios out here, read the paper out here, and now I'm blogging out here.  I may just spend the entire day on the patio.  Except when I go to Aldi for fruit and grape jelly to get the oriole feeder up and running.

Not an hour after I hung up the feeder I heard a loud buzzing and looked up to see a hummingbird having a sip.  Of course I couldn't get the camera up and running in time to take its picture but there he was already.  !!!!!  OMG, that was the coolest thing to look up and see that tiny bird sipping away at the nectar so soon.  Yay!  Hooray!  The backyard is alive today.  There's a male English Sparrow trying to impress a little drab female with his mating dance... nope, she shut him down and he flew off.  There's a Cardinal up in the apple tree, calling away.  There are flirting chipmunks racing along the top of the retaining wall.  There's a trio of male Goldfinches doing their darnedest to impress a female who's not having any of it.  And there's one squirrel doing its best to eat all of the corn I put out yesterday.  Tsk, what a pig.  I may just spend the rest of the day out here chronicling the antics of our feathered and furry pals.  Maybe the hummingbird will come back and I can get its picture.  Or even just see it again.

You can see how much waiting room time I've been putting in lately by how big Car Knitting Warshrag #7 is getting.  I think I went overboard on the matchy-matchy this time.  Maybe next time I'll pick blind, one from the solids and one from the variegates.  That should be exciting, don't you think?

May 11--Thomas Sully, Mother and Son.  I've always hated that simpering woman and her angelic child in the painting in Aunt Tillie's upstairs hall.  My sister Clea thinks it's "so romantic."  Ugh, romantic it is not.  Romantic is a knight saving a maiden from a dragon or a boy kissing a girl under an apple tree.  Some lady with weird hair and a boy in a dress is not romantic.  I always suspected that Aunt Tillie hung the painting in the upstairs hall so she didn't have to look at it much.  Aunt Tillie is a curious woman, curious about everything, I mean.  She has traveled all over the world.  She rode horses with Cossacks, climbed mountains with Sherpas, paddled an canoe in the Orinoco River with the Yanamamo, and explored the pyramids in Egypt with an archaeologist from the British Museum.  No way does she like that sappy painting.

I've got my sprinkler going on the front yard for the grass seed I spread yesterday and I'm almost dressed.  Now that both DD and DS have called I feel safe going to Aldi for fruit and jelly.  Happy Mother's Day!
--Barbara