Hummmmm

Twice today I was lucky enough to see a Hummingbird at the feeder. The first time both pictures were too blurry.  There was just a blackish blur on the side of the feeder. But the second time I snapped about eight pictures and five of them are good enough to keep. Not perfect but you can tell it's a Hummingbird. I love that their wings beat so fast that they're just a blur of color. I put fresh nectar in today so maybe that's why he visited twice. I figure the female's sitting on a nest somewhere but will be along once the eggs hatch.

 

The Sparrows had a fine time at the square green feeder. No squirrels were in there so they could flit back and forth and enjoy their snacks.

 

And this pair of House Finches enjoyed the refilled grape jelly dish. They came back multiple times, always together, to dip their beaks in the grape-y goodness. 

 

After lunch and my morning Zoom with cda, I went to the birdseed store and bought more suet nuggets. It didn't take long for the Sparrows and Squirrels to discover the refilled feeder and take full advantage of it. This squirrel kept looking toward the house as if it could see me watching it. While I was out there I cleaned out the birdbath. Oh, it was really gross. Green, stinky water full of slime and bird poop. Yuk.

 

I spent some time scheduling more Substack posts. I'm running out of finished short stories so I have to get busy, quit focusing exclusively on my novel manuscript, and write more short stories. Maybe I'll page through another prompt notebook or two tomorrow when the cleaner is here. I noticed that I've posted 69 times on Substack since I joined. Most of them stories. See? I told you I had a lot of them piled up with no place to go.

 

There's something growing out of the top of my bouquet of carnations from DS. I don't know what it is. It kind of looks like another flower but these are cut flowers so why is something growing? Weird.

 

And the Christmas cactus buds are getting bigger. This one looks like it's
ready to pop any day now and it's a lot brighter and more vivid than the usual pink flowers.

 

These other two buds are smaller and pinker, and I noticed on the left of the picture I can see a couple more little nubbins of buds making an appearance.

 

I didn't draw again today. I spent too much time writing and thinking about writing and posting about writing. I'll try to get to it tomorrow. I feel guilty when I don't draw every day, like I'm letting OJ down.

--Barbara