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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Birds and such

It's funny how much we can change. I used to be frightened of birds although I have always envied them because they can fly and I can't. Now one of my greatest pleasures is watching the birds and perhaps even more listening to their constant chatter in my secret garden.I'm not sure why birds used to scare me. Perhaps it was seeing the movie with the same name at a tender age. When we first bought the house I still live in 23 years later, I discovered there was a time of year when the birds didn't like me on my deck. That was the old deck with the now removed holly bushes which gave way to a bigger deck which is now in need of an overhaul its self. During the fall early in the morning the birds would come frighteningly close as if to scare me off my deck. That hasn't happened in years but at the time it scared me.The big turning point for me with the birds was when one got stuck in the old cage that enclosed leaves breaking down for mulch. I had to free the bird. It scared me to do it but I wasn't cruel enough to leave it. After that I had a different feeling about the birds. For a while I spent more on bird food than people food. A friend who I let stay in my house for a while started the massive feeding and built the bird houses. Through the years I've shifted over to providing a habitat which gives them plenty of food without all the feeders which attract the cats to stalk at certain areas. The only time I put out food is when everything is iced over or snowed over. I still have as many birds that hang out here but they can hide better and aren't in central locations when they eat.
When I went through my initial empty nest phase when my daughter went to college in 2003, I started a long and still unfinished project. That project was going over my old journals and pulling out what I wanted to keep and shredding the rest. I found that the only parts I wanted to keep for the most part were my wildlife and garden notes. All the anxt and irritation was gone with a poof of the shredder.

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