For the birds

We have a little birdhouse and a bird feeder out on the front fence. I don’t think that any birds have ever moved into the birdhouse, but we do get to enjoy watching the birds eat from the feeder. Maybe even more fun is watching the squirrels eat from it. The squirrels will sit up at the feeder and eat (digging around for the good stuff, I’m sure), and the quail run around on the ground under the feeder eating what the squirrels have knocked down. (And while I’m talking about quail, I saw two baby quail yesterday that were the teeny tiniest baby birds I have ever seen. And they were so fast, running behind their moma to cross the street. I have never seen a baby bird run so fast… and it was especially neat because they were so small that I almost didn’t realize they were even there. Their legs were honestly moving like Roadrunner when he’s speeding away from Wile E. Coyote-- you know, spinning in circles!)

Way back towards the end of the school year, I told the kids that I had a fun little project we could do… something I had done when I was in elementary school. We were going to make birdfeeders out of pinecones. We already had the seed, and I was going to buy a cheap jar of peanut butter. But we didn’t have any nice big sprawly pinecones. The ones in our yard are the small, tight ones. So I mentioned this project idea in May, probably. In June we went to church Family Camp up in the mountains, and I brought home seven big beautiful pinecones (one for each of us, of course!). I put them on the shelf in the garage. I just needed peanut butter and free time! Well, last night we all sat out in the driveway and (finally!) made our pinecone feeders. We hung them around the front yard in several places. We put three of them on the blue spruce. The kids were so excited to come home from church this morning and "sneak" up the street to the driveway so we could see if there were any critters munching on the food. No such luck. So tonight we got in the car and started backing out of the driveway, all the while the kids looking so see if they could spy any birds or squirrels. Nothing was out eating on them, but something had been… and it left with one of the pinecones! There at the bottom of the spruce was a lone, dangling string... Must have been one of the squirrelly squirrels!

In the back, the morning glories have totally taken over the little fence that separates the patio from the rest of the yard. They are so thick and are just going crazy. I guess they really love the heat we’ve had. They are in full bloom and are really pretty. Pinks, lavenders, and deep purples. Next year I want to throw in some seeds for those bright blue ones. I think those are cool. And hopefully we’ll have a lot of volunteer vines pop up with all the seeds we should have drop from these vines this year.

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