Birdies!

It was so cold today. The birdbath glacier was back in spades. I went out to top it up and then took a picture. You could still see the ice through the fresh water but less than an hour later here's what it looked like. Ice had spread across the top of the new water bending toward the heater. I don't think it got out of the single digits today or, if it did, it topped out at 10 degrees. Filling the birdbath was the only time I went out, except for poking my head out to check for mail.

Despite the cold there were lots of birds today. First up was the Red-bellied Woodpecker. It landed on the round feeder a couple times and used its long beak to peck at the seeds that the shorter-beaked birds can't reach. It looked rather smug.

Then the Downy Woodpecker arrived on the suet cakes. It had to work very hard to get anything to eat. I'm sure that the suet is rock hard. Later on I heard some metallic pounding out there and looked to see the Red-bellied back on the suet cakes just pecking away making the whole feeder shake.

I was surprised to see two Goldfinches on the finch feeder. They haven't been around for weeks. I looked at them for a long time trying to figure out how long it'll be before their feathers start to change to the bright yellow of summer. The closest I could come was months.

Today's watercolor subject was Allium. I'm not thrilled with the way whatever that open flower is supposed to be but I like the allium heads.

After supper I drew today's gratitude journal page. I'm always grateful for chocolate ice cream. And sunshine.

Also after supper I sat down and finished the hand of Alpaca Mitten #4. Tomorrow I'll do the thumb and then I'll need a new project. I dug out some bulky and super bulky white alpaca. I'll find a hat pattern I can make with one of them.

In the morning I came in here to get dressed and instead I sat down at the laptop and wrote a whole new chapter of the manuscript. It's not very long but it needs to be a separate thing, I think. I've got a whisper of an idea of something more I can write on it. Maybe tomorrow after I meet with KM to talk about keywords. I looked up the categories I have my books listed in on Publisher Rocket and discovered that many of them are what are called "ghost" categories which means that they're not a place that Amazon recognizes as categories. I don't understand that because Amazon gives you only so many things to choose from. You can't just type in any old thing. Maybe they changed their minds on some of the old ones. I also went on ACX to see my audiobook royalties for 2024 so I can put them on my taxes if there are any. I sold 15 audiobooks last year! I'm amazed! Also thrilled.

--Barbara