May 24, 2009

Carlo has his own feathered drama…he feeds the birds with the feeders he has everywhere…a blue one on this tree, a red one on that tree, a yellow one, an orange one. One with a roof, another with several perches. He really enjoys feeding them and all in all, they are fun to watch (as long as they are not building in the eaves of the front porch!). However, the drama is the destruction that is occurring. We thought it was the squirrels or some large bodied creature we saw moving about. We woke up this morning to empty feeders and one knocked to the ground. The culprits seem to tip them and knock the seed to the ground. All their little friends scurry about and fill their bellies until they’re fat and full!
Two nights in a row we heard animals screeching as though protecting something or fighting. It was alarming. I thought it is was happening under my bed!

Carlo needed to take parts from the broken yellow and broken blue feeders and make a new one…now we have a custom made O'Wich designed birdfeeder – let’s see how long this lasts!
I checked the back deck and the frog was gone. I wonder how many of these I’ve stepped on since they appear to be leaves. When I first seen it (when I screamed) it reminded me when the kids were small and would be afraid of something. After getting comfortable with the idea of whatever they were afraid of – they would be disappointed when it was gone or no longer afraid if it stayed…like Max, a parakeet or a trout!
And just for the record…when it comes to coffee…anything “French” is not vanilla!!!
After tasty egg sandwiches for breakfast, we got to working outside.

I was excited to find Lily of the Valley in one of the flower beds. I love the scent. Then I planted hummingbird flower seeds under the arbor and we trimmed back some trees – I had to operate on myself to remove the thorns from when I grabbed a stalk of something. We then headed down to the river to cut up the trees damaged by the beavers – while Carlo chain sawed I cleaned up the twigs and branches and put the wood in the trailer. We pulled the trailer to the third tree (by the easement) and Carlo got the ticks and other bugs off me – I love the serenity of the outdoors but from the inside!!! These little things along with the nest building buzzards frustrate me…and now I have tried ridding them by spraying air freshener and carpet cleaner…DON’T ASK! I am not throwing my hat in (yet) but this battle between me and the feathered one is getting harder!

With our trailer filled in a heaping pile, we pulled it to the wood crib – we’ll split it tomorrow – and we took a much deserved and much needed lunch break. After lunch Carlo mowed grass, I blew leaves and as easy as it sounds and as quick as I wrote it, it took about four hours for us to do all of this. We stirred up worms and ticks and mosquitoes. At 5:00 pm we decided to call it quits as we verbally went over the lengthy to-do list for tomorrow – until then, we’re gonna rest, go to dinner, and try to enjoy our vacation!
We tried Bud’s Pizza and we really liked it ~ glad we tried something new. After dinner we picked up a few things from Wal-Mart. We were back by 9:30 pm and my friend – the frog – was sprawled out on the patio door screen. I was able to snap a couple of pictures of him and then he was gone – we’ll have to look for him in the morning!