Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about Sydney the crow and how much fun I was having feeding him?  I also talked about how much the kittyboys were enjoying the CAT TV Escapades of  Sydney .  Well of course, it ended up being much more than just one crow. Of course.  Coz if you feed them, they will come.

The Grackles came right after the crow. Grackels are glossy black birds who, in the sun, show iridescent feathers that sometimes look deep purple. OOO pretty.  Then came the bunnies and a couple of squirrels.  That was pretty much it.   It wasn't much, but we were happy with it.  

Joy was totally on board.  She even offered up any old, stale, worn out bird-friendly items from her own pantry which was awesome.  Then she so generously offered something more. A bird feeder (SEE PHOTO ABOVE)  Note:  the leaves and branches on the ground in the background are from a big yard project Tim and I have been working on for a few weeks, trimming up all the greenery and oh my gosh there is SO MUCH OF IT!  But we only have 3 bins to put it in to be taken away each week so I keep refilling the bins every week and this is what's left right now.  Just in case you wondered.

Not just any kind of bird feeder you understand. This one is very fancy.  It has a camera in it!  Wow!  Joy received it as a very lovely and thoughtful gift. But alas, it really didn't lend itself to Condo Life.   Joy and Bob live, most of the time, in their high-rise condo overlooking Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It's a helluva view, let me tell ya!  But there is no place to put a bird feeder there so she re-gifted it over to us. Wow!

Tim set it up in the back yard near where I was already feeding the birds on the ground.  (There is also a dish of water for the birds that gets changed twice a day just FYI).  It took a little modifying to make the feeder stay put and stay stable enough for actual bird perchings.  Once Tim felt confident about the setup, off we went to find birdseed which was harder to find than we expected.  Finally found a small "starter" bag at Walmart and then much larger bags at the Tractor Supply Store.

I couldn't wait to get started.  As soon as we got home, I filled that feeder to the brim then I went inside and waited. And waited. And waited.  Brysco and Wyatt sat in the family room windows waiting with me.    I don't know why I thought that the instant that feeder hit the ground they birds would be flocking to it.  Flocking! LOL  Pun unintentional but apt.

So eventually I gave up waiting and set about getting other things done.  After awhile, I noticed my phone dinging at me.  Initially it was just one random ding, then more and more and holycats what's going on with my phone? 

It seems that there is an app (of course there is)  involved  which Tim loaded on our cells so that the pictures the feeder camera takes are sent to our phones.  How Cool is That?    I immediately began scrolling though the photos.  They were all of the Grackles and they were hilarious photos. Very Up Close and Personal.

Here's one just by way of example:

Too funny!  And for the first few days, that's all I saw. Various and sundry photos from the feedercam of the same bird.  But a few days later, we were in the car and just to kill a little time I checked the most recent photos from the feeder cam and oh my gosh, there was a wood pecker!  I didn't know woodpeckers at birdseed!!  Live and learn I suppose.

 From that point forward, we began to more of a variety of visitors and while the feeder/cam photos aren't perfect, they are still very fun:

But I knew there were probably other birds that weren't being captured by the feeder camera so I started spending a little more time with the kitties hanging out by the window, my real camera in hand and yup, I was correct. There were other birds, some I managed to get photos of and some I didn't. Oh plus a bunny and a squirrel just becoz:

There have been others too who have managed to avoid having their photos taken by either me or the feeder/cam brilliantly. So you'll have to take my word for it that we've also had blue jays, male cardinals and a host of others I haven't quite identified yet.  (they are so quickquick you see)  As time goes on I can only assume that the numbers and variety will continue to grow.  An exciting prospect to anticipate :)

Rather than go broke buying bird seed because the little oinkers will just continue to devour it every time I put it out, I am limiting myself to only filling the feeder twice a week.  I filled it this morning and already it's been a crazybusy birdie destination with as many as can possibly fit on the perch and the others waiting their turns on the ground and nearby shrubs and trees.  Lovely manners actually.

We are finding that there is something very lovely about watching those birds. It's fun in a quiet sort of way, it's really kind of serene and soothing, and I'm learning, without intending to, quite a lot about birds! Always a nice bonus.  The fact that the kittyboys are also greatly entertained is one of the best parts.

I still ground feed for the larger birds...there is no way that Sydney will ever fit on that tiny little perch. He is a big boy. And it turns out that some of what I put out for Sydney, the squirrels and bunnies also enjoy.  Who knew?  I do experiment a bit with that.  I'll stand in the pantry with a bag of stale potato chips and think..hmmm.. I wonder if birds would eat this?  The answer was yes.  They also like stale bread, crackers, cereal, tortillas (cut up) and cookies.  They were not fans of watermelon rind or orange peel however.  I am teachable.

Also found a source for ground bird food that isn't going to break the bank:  Dollar Stores!  There are three different ones in Venice. One is even on island which is terrific for me.  In their food and snack aisle last week, Tim and I found a box of off brand saltines for $1.25 and a large bag of pre-popped "Movie Popcorn" also for a buck twenty-five.  Not bad.  For an entire week the ground bird food has been dollar store off brand snacks that only cost me $2.50 in total.  I see another trip there in my near future.

So far I see this as a win all the way around.  The birds are being fed and watered, the kittyboys are entertained, Tim and I are enjoying their company and we are learning so very much!  It's awesome!

Have a Terrific Weekend Ya'll

It's a rainy Monday here, gloomy, dreary, wet and well, we need the rain after our long dry winter, so I won't complain (much).  It was dark and sporadically rainy yesterday as well.  And it having been Mother's Day, well, I can only hope that not a lot of folks around here had planned Mother's Day picnics!

I felt very celebrated all weekend and the weather did not impact it at all.  Even when it might have we just pivoted to Plan B!   Gotta be flexible.

It was a full weekend of celebration around here!  Wow!  In total I had an ice cream fest (3 different sorts of small batch locally made excellent flavours and of course I had to try them all), donuts (including the beauty at the top of the page that was ALMOST too pretty to eat), dinner out (ooo fancy!),  flowers (so pretty!), phone calls (love those so much) texts (also made me feel special!), brunch at a restaurant I'd never eaten at before (had avocado toast and it was fabulous) and cards that were funny and sweet and made me cry a little (which is to say, perfect cards).  Whew!  Sunday night the original plan was burgers on the grill at home but weather issues and all meant Burgers cooked inside instead!  Also excellent!

Saturday morning was relegated to yard work and we got a LOT done. Once we got cleaned up and changed, we were up and out and errands run including buying bird seed. More about that later this week.  A little teaser for you :)

It was a great get things done sort of day and I do love crossing things off the gotta-do list!  But Sunday was My Day.  It got to call all the shots.  I gave it a lot of thought. What did I really want to do yesterday?  I wasn't absolutely sure. The weather was yucky enough that while we did manage one walk without getting wet, I wasn't in the mood to risk getting soaked with an outside thing.

And as they day passed and I still wasn't coming up with a brilliant plan for what I wanted to do, I decided that perhaps I didn't really want to do anything at all. Maybe I just wanted to be a lazybutt. Perhaps I wanted (needed?) a do-nothing day!  And that is as rare as snow in July.   So, as it was my day and therefore my choice, we did little to nothing. We watched old movies and did some reading. We played with the cats and snacked. We talked and sent each other funny videos.  It was such a relaxing, no obligation whatsoever, glorious blob of a day and I squeezed every single second of enjoyment out of it that was humanly possible.  It was an Ahhhhhh day.

Sometimes doing nothing is the best sort of thing to do!!!  It was Perfect!

I hope you either felt well celebrated and appreciated, OR  made someone else feel that way on Mother's Day  this year.  I know how much I loved my day AND the people who  made it happen.

I believe I've mentioned before, (but perhaps I did not) that when Tim and I bought this house, which needed a LOT of work, that we decided to break it up into bite sized pieces.  We decided that every year we would do one and only one project.  Any sort of reno is not only very expensive but also very stressful, it's just the nature of the beast.  Our thought was that if we focused on doing only one project a year, it would feel a lot more manageable in a myriad of ways.

Some projects were very large, some were relatively small.  Several projects were the sorts of things nobody sees like electrical work or plumbing stuff. The end result is never visible but it's still of terrific importance.  There were projects that we were able to do completely ourselves, some that we had to hire out and others that were kind of a mixed bag:  us and them.

Then came that last huge project, the family room. That one was a bear. We knew it was going to be big, we knew it was going to be expensive and would take quite awhile to be completed, but of course we never could have predicted that the contractor would bail (with the $$ of course) partway through, that we would need to figure out how to finish it ourselves or that it would take so much longer and be so much more expensive than we ever anticipated.  Whew!  What a mess that was.  But somehow we muddled through, we came out the other side even  though I at some point I said something along the lines of never ever wanting to do another project again. Ever!  And I meant it when I said it.

Well that was then and this is now and this year's project has been a much smaller one. This year, we (I say we, it's been 99% Tim) tackled the courtyard.  It's not 100% finished yet but I'm so excited about what Tim already did that I'm going to go ahead and write this up as if it were.  He deserves all of the credit.  He is my hero!  I adore every single bit of it and I'm sure you will too.

The photo above says it best I suppose. This is our house.  Well the exterior of it.  It's an older photo and some of the greenery no longer exists. Lost to time due to various storms/woodpecker damage and the capricious nature of life.  But the house is still the house.  As you can see, it's basically just your basic circa 1962 light green crackerbox of a house.  The only thing that differentiates it from other houses of that era is the courtyard in front of the house.  

When we bought the house the courtyard consisted of some wobbly, faded, old adirondack chairs and a shade umbrella that was anchored by a very heavy metal base.  It worked ok right up until an unexpected gust of wind carried it off to parts unknown.  well dang!  We replaced the umbrella only for it to happen again. Rather than continue to replace the umbrella, Tim put up a sail shade.  It worked wonderfully though it only covered a small section of the courtyard.  The answer, obviously, was to get a second sailshade.  Two triangles, opposite one another makes a rectangle y'see!  Perfect.  It just needed a big post to anchor one corner. Tim took care of that!

It's so much cooler under the sailshades.  The plants and the humans are both big fans!

Next up was lights.

Our first Christmas in this house, we put up those exterior grade Command Strip hooks and boy oh boy, those things have lasted really well. It was a snap to put up and taken down the lights each year. The lights only ran along the roof line, so no big deal.  Until the first sail shade went up. Then it became a bigger dealio to take the shade down to put the lights up and then vice versa after the holidays.  I guess I got lazy because after the first time I just didn't take the lights down.  Yup, we became Those People with Christmas lights up year 'round.  Didn't bother me a bit.  Until the Christmas lights, after being up far too long, just gave out. Dang.  When we had to take the sail shades down for the next hurricane, we took down the lights too and out they went, right in the trash.

I decided that since you really cannot see the roofline with the sailshades up, I would forego Christmas lights from now on.  I would miss them, but I'd get over it.  Tim to the rescue.  He got lights :)  This time, no Christmas lights, but so called "partylights" Love it~!  AND for bonus points, he also got some dragonfly lights for my whimsical heart :)  Like I said, this guy is my hero.  They look Fabulous!
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 The next addition, to my great surprise, was a wind chime that is so perfect.  Yet more dragonflies ( my favourite) with a sweet tinkly sound that's loud enough for me to hear, yet not a gongish sort of sound.  I can see it from the kitchen windows and if the windows are open, I can hear it to. Love it!!!  I hung it by the front door :)

Soooo the project isn't quite done because there is also the other side of the courtyard which we refer to as the Future Garden.  When we moved in it had a narrow strip of over grown ornamental grasses, anemic hostas and two palm trees on life support.  We had the palm trees cut down and I tore out the rest, digging up roots endlessly or so it seemed. But now it's ready. Or almost ready.  I learned that even though we thought the "soil" had been sufficiently amended, not true.  It needs more and more and more.  What passes for soil here is actually sand which makes perfect sense. It's good for drainage but not for plants.

But we found (on sale!) some mulch and some garden soil, Tim put in a watering line and we've been visiting nurseries, making notes and coming up with a plan.  Eventually it will be ready for fragrant, colourful, butterfly, dragonfly and bee attractive shrubs and plants and then the transformation will (mostly) be complete. I am very excited about it!

See!  Isn't that a great start!

The Courtyard Project is well on its' way. We are so pleased with the results so far and I look forward to sharing the finished or nearly finished results at some point in the future :)Small Projects are the best projects!  That's my new mantra

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Well Howdy do to you. It's been a little more than a week and my eyes are a little bit better.  We'll see how this goes.

Thought I'd start off with a Photo Safari Report coz, as you can clearly see, Joy and I were out there again, tramping through forests, taking photos, and having a heck of a good time.  Yesterday's hike led us down paths we've ever never seen before, or at least it's been so doggone long that we don't remember them which is practically the same thing.  I will be calling this the Fairyland Hike for reasons you shall soon see.

The vast majority of the hike was along the river's edge.  That's the mighty Myakka River to be specific which is interesting all on it's own.  While the water was moving, it was such a slow, lazy current that the water surface was nearly a mirror. Very cool.  And we saw a few river critters as we went:

So there we are hiking along the water then to our surprise,  the trail began to curve inland and suddenly we were surrounded by wildflowers, some of them waist high! I mean surrounded! They were Everywhere!  The colour, the fragrance and that gorgeous early morning light made us feel as if we had gone through some portal to another world, a Fairyland of sorts.  There were butterflies and dragonflies, bees of all sorts,  and bird song ringing out through the dense forest growth. It was both silent and noisy at the same time.  No sounds of civilization other than our own footsteps but nature makes one heck of a racket all on it's own. It was glorious.

No photo will ever truly capture the magic of that  Fairyland but here's what I have for you:

We were cautious as we trekked along, especially along the water.  The trail is sometimes skirting rrriiiggghhhttt along the very edge of the water and while I'm sure we would survive the fall (dignity schmignity), we would for sure be very wet if we fell in and of course, you never know what's IN the water.  Well, there is this guy of course. Remember him?

And other times, we were stepping and even climbing over downed trees to say nothing of the uping and downing of small hills, bits of muckiness, unsteady precariously placed rocks,  exceptionally narrow pathways and the occasional unknown spider.  We are careful but unafraid.  A little out of breath and sweaty perhaps at times, but that doesn't stop us:

Oddly, while we heard birdsong throughout the hike, we didn't get many bird photos until we were nearly back to where we began!  Still they were worth waiting for. (along with a squirrel and a bunny)

So that's it for the Fairyland Hike, but I do have just a couple of photos that are not from this hike that I haven't shown you yet, so I'll tack them on here.

If you don't mind bearing with me, I think I'm back to posting speed.  I did have to write this up in two sessions to give my eyes a chance to rest part way through which is why this is posting so doggone late !  Sorry about that.  There may be a few more late day posts for awhile, but it feels good to be back!

Have a terrific weekend ya'll!