I am listening

God was talking to me Sunday. He talks to me everyday but some days I hear him more than others. And that is my own fault. I am guilty of not always taking the time to listen.

I woke up to my usual routine. Around 6:00 I went out to "do" the birds. Doing the birds consists of feeding them, putting out fresh water, etc. It's one of my favorite parts of the day.... listening to and watching the birds start their day.

And if I have time I grab the most comfortable lawn chair I can find along with my camera and my binoculars and kick back to enjoy the sights. It was a good "birding" morning. I saw two new species that I had never seen before. A catbird and a common flicker.
Soon it was time to head to church. I still had my birds on my mind.

The scripture reading Sunday was Matthew 6:24-34 I always read the scripture text before we get to that part in the service so I can be thinking about it and prepare myself.
6:25 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?

6:26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they are?

6:27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? 6:28 And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.

6:29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

6:30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 6:31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'

6:32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you are need them.
6:33-34 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

This is how I feel when I am out with my birds. God is talking to me and I am listening....

Happy Memorial Day

Craig and I ran into town and watched the kids in the Memorial Day Parade. You couldn't have asked for a better day. It was only about 15 minutes long but very enjoyable.
Drum Major Jordan.Caleb on the Mr. and Miss Hartford float (Caleb far left).

Zoe the Protector

"What do you mean I have to get away from the bird garden?"
"I'm protecting it from the squirrels!!"

Annual Plant Swap

Today was one of my favorite things. It was my Mother's annual plant swap. This is where all her gardening friends get together and bring perennials to swap and share with each other. People bring cars and truck loads full of plants that they have abundance of to share. My whole yard is full of wonderful plants that I have gotten through the years at the swap.
Mom started this about 5 years ago and it continues to grow. It's great fun to see what new plants are going to be there and to talk to all the other gardeners.

Today I came home with 4 hostas, 3 forsythia bushes, a honeysuckle vine, 3 ferns, a dark maple tree sapling, and ornamental grasses. I love it.....
As soon as I got home I planted my hostas and ferns in my new bird sanctuary garden. Last time I posted a photo of my new bird garden I didn't have any plants in it yet. Slowly but surely it is starting to look better. Mom had already given me a bunch of hostas a few weeks ago. And I have tall ornamental grass planted all along the back.

If you are looking for me you usually can find me in a chair with the binoculars out by my bird garden. Tonight I enjoyed watching a towhee hop around.

W.O.F.

Some of my blogging friends have been showing their hens and chicks this last week. Which reminded me of my hens and chicks planter. I decided to showcase it for weird object Friday. I've had this for about 6 years and somehow it keeps growing. I do think this year that I need to give it some new soil. She is made of pieces of metal welded together.

Happy happy Friday Everyone!!!

A man, his beer and his dog

Craig made a fire tonight and asked if anyone wanted to come and sit outside with him. He didn't get any takers. Tonight was the final "American Idol" and the rest of us were all glued to the TV. But I did peak outside at one point and this is what I saw. A man, his beer and his dog. I couldn't resist grabbing the camera. I love this photo. Both Craig and Zoe have the exact same look on their face.
Craig was enjoying Zoe's company as much as he would have any human.

Zoe only got a taste.

The masked bandits

I know most people have issues with squirrels when it comes to feeding the birds. I have learned to live with the squirrels. They basically are leaving my hanging feeders alone but feast on my ground feeders. I only see them a few times a day. Sometimes I shoo them away but for the most part I have decided that they are harmless. And they certainly don't seem to be bothering the birds. They eat side by side.

Anyway, I have a bigger issue. Raccoons!! At least I'm blaming it on raccoons. They are tearing up my bird feeders. It all started some weeks ago when I discovered my hanging feeders tipped over and all the seed on the ground in the morning. OK, now I put my seed feeders into the shed about 9:00 PM and put them back out at 6:00 AM.

This morning was the worst yet.... First off I looked out the window and one of my sugar feeders is on the ground and the others are empty with muddy paw prints all over them. My suet feeders are riped off and I find them way out back by the woods. My gourd bird house is on the ground all muddy too. I had a small wheel barrel that I had cleaned up spilled seed and empty sunflower shells that I hadn't disposed of yet. It looked like someone put a bomb in it... all over the lawn.

So now what do I do? Put away every single suet, seed and sugar water feeder every night? I guess so if I don't want to pull my hair out every morning.

It's a good thing that I enjoy going out and "doing the birds" in the morning.

Painting the House

We are in the process of painting the exterior of the house. Our goal is to have it all done by Caleb's graduation open house on June 7th. I was feeling overwhelmed last week but we had a very productive weekend and I'm feeling good about it again. I would say that we are 2/3 of the way done.
I'm grateful that Craig does the high stuff up on the ladder.

During breaks I go and visit with my birds for a bit.

And the Orioles are here to stay!! At least they have been for over 3 weeks now. We see the male and female many times each day. I have even gotten to know their calls. When I hear them I go running to the back door and they are always there to give me a spectacular show. I talked to the lady at the "Wild Birds Unlimited" store and I told her about my Orioles. She said that if we have tall mature oak or maple trees that they are probably nesting in our trees. We have huge maple trees in our yard so I suspect she is right. I put oranges out for them every day too. But they have to share the oranges with the Red Bellied Woodpeckers. They love them too.

Jordan's track season....

Jordan is in her final week of track season. It was a slow start for her. But things have turned around for her and she is pleased with the outcome.
Yesterday was regional championships. Although she did not quality for the finals she did receive a PR (personal record) for her 100 hurdles.

It used to make me so nervous watching her jump the hurdles. Now I love it!!

I can always tell if she feels good about the run. She either has a smile on her face (like in this photo) or she is doesn't.

Fun with the Blue Birds

Things are going really well with Josh and Ty staying with us. Both of the boys have been a pleasure to have around. One thing that Ty and I have in common is our love for photography. Last night Ty and I were bored so we decided to drive over to my parents house for some photo ops. The Blue Birds did not disappointment us. My Dad actually has the Blue Birds trained. It is his goal to have them eating out of his hands by the end of summer. I believe he will. He made this bell and every time he goes out with meal worms he rings the bell. Mr. and Mrs. Blue Bird immediately come flying to the feeder for the worms. They let us stand within 10 feet of them. This is the meal worm feeder that my Dad made them. He constructed it so other birds wouldn't steal their worms. Both the Momma and the Daddy bird get worms out of the feeder (see the worms hanging from their beaks) and then they fly over to the nesting box and take the worms into the box for the babies. Ty and I thought we could hear the baby birds chirping away. I suspect soon we will see little heads peaking out the opening.

My Dad is so proud of his Blue Birds. He told me that he's paying about $7 a week for meal worms. It's worth every penny.

Here is Momma Blue Bird. She's so sweet.

This photo is compliments of Ty.

Update on Zoe

Zoe is better!!

We don't think that Zoe slept at all last night. We gave her 3 sedatives within a matter of hours hoping that she would sleep. We felt terrible putting her in her crate the way she was pacing. About 2:00 she woke us up crying. Craig took her outside and then brought her into our room. She was still doing the head jerking thing but it seemed to be less. We also noticed that she was staggering and easily tripping over objects. She would let me hold her for 2 or 3 minutes which was an improvement. We put her back in her crate and then she woke us up about 6:00 crying again. I got up and took her outside. She raced out the door chasing Seadra back to the woods. I was so happy to see that as she wouldn't go 10 feet from the back door yesterday. And she was approaching me on her own wanting attention from me. She would let me pet her and comfort her. She sat on my lap for a few minutes. If you watched her close you could see the head bobbing but is was subtle.

I can't tell you what a relief today is. We put her in her crate when we went to church and for the first time she laid down to sleep. And when we got home it is like we have Zo-Zo back again. Right now she is relaxed, laying next to Seadra in the lazy chair and chewing on a nylabone. Yesterday we were losing hope. Being a nurse it's totally confusing me that a dog can be having such severe neurological symptoms and today be almost normal.

There are 2 forms of Pug Dog Encephalitis. One being slow progression where between episode the dog can be normal for weeks at a time before showing symptoms again. That would make sense but for now we are only going to think positive thoughts and hope that this was a freak thing.

Thanks for your good thoughts, we'll keep you posted.

And happy Mother's Day!!

Zoe

Our Zo-Zo is sick. We made a weekend emergency visit to the vet this afternoon. We, including the vet, are not sure what is wrong with her. She is having neurological symptoms. About an hour after we got up this morning we noticed that she was acting nervous. Which for Zoe is out of the ordinary to begin with. Nothing ever bothers Zoe. Then we noticed that she wouldn't come to us and she wouldn't let us pick her up. She increasing became more anxious as the day went on. She's been panting and running in circles all day. About noon we noticed that she was jerking her head from side to side involuntary. That's when we called the vet. The vet was out of town so by the time he was able to meet us at the office it was 4:00. Now she was bobbing her head up and down as well as jerking it from side to side. And she was walking backwards.

The vet doesn't know what to think. Her heart rate is good, no GI issues, no fever... He gave her a shot of Valium to relax her. After the shot she laid down for all of 1 minute still bobbing her head. Then she was right back to pacing and panting. He gave her a shot of steroids and put her on antibiotics. We are trying to cover all the bases. He sent us home with sedatives but we can't tell if they are working. They may be as she will sit still for 3 or 4 minutes at a time but she will not lay down at all. And if you talk to her she goes right back to frantically running around. Poor Zoe has been going non-stop all day. She physically can't relax. And the head jerking and bobbing does not stop. It is so hard to look at her. We want to cuddle and hold her but she will not let us. She isn't mean or aggressive to us she just is too frantic to settle down with us. She wags her tail and gets happy when we sweet talk to her but if we approach her she darts away. It is breaking our hearts. We are scared to death that Zoe has a condition called "Pug Dog Encephalitis". The vet admits that she is showing symptoms but there are no test for this. So right now we are playing the wait and see game. Please send prayers for our Zo-Zo.....

My new bird feeder

OK, here is yet another bird post. But really this one is about my new bird feeder.
One of my favorite things to do is go to antique stores and flea markets. We have some great antique malls in our area. Anyway, as much of a bird nut as I have turned into I am always looking for something or some gadget to make a bird feeder out of.

I was pretty proud of this one. It's an old sink strainer. I put the end of it in Craig's vise and bent it up. Then I drilled a hole in it and attached it to the tree with a screw. It's perfect and the birds found it right away. Now I have a unique feeder that I paid all of $2 for. And as an added bonus I got to have fun digging around the antique store looking around.

My new best friend

I am happy to report that my new best friend Mr. Oriole has been around for 5 days in a row.
I was so fearful that he was only making a brief appearance and for all I know he may still be on his way but I am thrilled to have seen him this long. I've even seen Mrs. Oriole with him twice.

I've had several people tell me that they usually only migrate through this area but then I had someone tell me today that they had them nesting around here before.

I'm doing everything I can to entice him to stay. I put oranges out and I see evidence of pecking on them. And I also bought an oriole feeder which he loves. But his favorite is the hummingbird feeder.

He loves the bird bath too. It's so fun to watch him fly all over the yard. I hope he stays!!

We are so thankful......

Yesterday afternoon we went to the cottage to do some spring cleaning. I left a few minutes before Craig. As Craig was leaving he heard the fire sirens going off. What was going on? But it was soon forgotten as you never think it's someone you know. As we were returning home late afternoon we got word from Caleb that Huffman's house had burned. My heart stopped. Caleb was already there and we rushed over. I was relieved to see Josh and the whole family outside. For those of you that don't know Josh he is our son's best friend. At times Josh is like a member of our family. And we all know the rest of the family well too.

Josh was the only one home and he was sound asleep from being up all night at the after prom party. The fire started in his closet from an electrical malfunction. There were no smoke detectors in the house because they had recently been taken down for a major remodeling project and had not been put back up yet. Josh's mother returned home from grocery shopping to find the house full of smoke and woke Josh up just in time to get him outside before the house was fully engulfed. If she had returned home 5 minutes later..... we are trying not to think about that. We are thanking God!!!

Josh and Ty are staying with us for an undetermined amount of time. Craig and I are trying to set up beds and dressers for them. The few clothes that Ty and Josh managed to round up are so penetrated with smoke that I have had to wash them 5 or 6 times to get the smell out. Many people are bringing clothes over for them and today Josh did go clothes shopping with his Dad.

We are trying to make this transition smooth for them and we don't want them to feel like they are burdening us. Tonight Josh made the comment that he feels like the whole community is being so supportive. That's one nice thing about living in a small town.

Caleb and Josh

Parade and Prom

It was cloudy and cool for the parade but the rain held off until we were leaving. Jordan is in the center wearing all black. The rain also held off long enough for us parents to have a photo shoot with the prom kids. They all met at our house. Grandpa let Caleb drive the Mustang. That's one of his highlights.
The guys....(Caleb far left)

Josh and Caleb
The gang