Let’s see if I can get myself to put this knitting down a moment. That Whales Road yarn demanded to be ended in the jellyfish motif from the Monterey shawl and I really really like how it’s coming out.
Meantime, (and I found I needed to work on a more mindless project during the process), the piano is tuned, ready for my son who minored in organ performance to come home to on Friday.
My friend who tuned it today, who volunteers doing wetlands restoration work, took the time first to stop and admire quite the flock going on just outside the window. He told me about some of his and his wife’s birdwatching. He asked if I were trying to attract a specific kind with a specific seed; I told him not really, but I do avoid anything with millet because it’s the favorite of alien-species house sparrows, which actively kill off all other songbirds around them and their eggs during nesting season.
But what I didn’t say was: simply by hanging up some sunflower, I get to see so many species. But what’s so cool is that others who would never touch the stuff simply drop by to see what the fuss is about. Some of those have stayed: the nuttall’s woodpecker got joined this year by a mate and I got to watch their mating ritual, a dance between the trees and around each other up and down and around almost as if they were carrying yarn and knitting stitches into the air; today, one was pounding away at my neighbor’s clothesline right after Neil left.
The whole cycle of life, right up close at my window. As Kathy said, one could never get bored.
p.s. And if sunflower is too pricey, a small $2 wire cage with a $2.00 to $2.50 suet cake lasts several weeks to a month here. The squirrels tend to ignore the ones that don’t have peanuts mixed in.