amy went down to feed the swans and texted me that she felt like laura ingalls wilder. understandable, except for the texting part of course.
this morning i was gonna sleep in, spend a little quality time sitting around…and instead i was up before seven, and by seven i was down at the dock feeding the swans. i was scared i’d fall in the lake because it’s so icy, but it wasn’t so bad down there then.
yesterday when i was in my seminar it snowed in the afternoon before it all turned to sleet, and there were huge flakes, said kevin. he took a couple pictures, but it’s hard to do justice to giant flakes of snow.
i went down and fed the swans, but then i realized it looked so lovely that i went back up to get my camera.
this is how it looked at seven this morning. not so bad, except for the very hard layer of ice on the deck and in the yard near the house.
the trees were especially pretty and glistening. they’d have been even lovelier if the sun had been shining, but we probably won’t see any of that for another month or so.
of course, since i came back, the swans did, too, expecting a second breakfast.
and they were bitterly disappointed when it wasn’t forthcoming.
i took this picture and the photos for today’s banner so you can see what it was like this morning. it’s already completely different, but i don’t know when i’ll be out taking any more pictures any time soon.
the squirrel was desperate to get at the corn inside the chimney of the bird house/feeder.
that was before the blizzard started…here’s how the poor little guy looked about an hour ago, with his friend the blue jay.
there wasn’t such a crowd of birds an hour ago.
i tried to capture the blowing snow, but it didn’t work out so well. now if i went out there, it would be very dramatic…the problem is that the swans need to be fed one more time. it’s not gonna be a fun thing.
there are tons of birds out on the deck now – at least seven cardinals, a bunch of little bitty…i don’t know, little bitty birds. starlings? i don’t know what they’re called. some brown ones and some grey ones. plus a woodpecker every once in a while. the birds are having a terrible time flying because it’s so insanely windy out there.
the bird seed is getting all covered up and i need to put more out…the thought seems a little bit dreadful.
amy and i were both so happy that we didn’t have to leave the house today, but then i started thinking that if there is two feet of snow, the power could go out, and we don’t have many taper candles and it would be kind of dark in here. so we went to wal-mart together and it wasn’t so bad, then. now would be a different story.
maybe i’ll go put out more food when the birds leave – they must be finding some seed under the snow or there wouldn’t be so many of them hanging around.
ok then,
mrs. blizzard of ’11 hughes.
Hello Grace, The little charcoal gray tuxedo birds are Juncos, winter residents that normally live farther north. The little brown birds are either white throated sparrows or house sparrows I could not see that much in the picture. It is sad to see you feed Mute Swans, the invasive swan that kills other birds and destroys wetlands. Not your fault of course these things are not well known.
thanks for the comment, rhetta! i’m guessing the sparrows are white-throated ones because of their…white throats. hmm, i’ve never heard that about mute swans. i understand what you’re saying, but i also know that, well, i haven’t seen these guys killing other birds, and we don’t have any wetlands. and also, really, probably plenty of the birds we feed aren’t very “good” birds; the blue jays seem to harass other birds, sometimes a big group of big birds will swoop in and chase away everybody else, plus of course there are the squirrels and the raccoons, i know that deer come in at night and eat up all the remains of food, and we certainly have way too many deer. …but i love all the animals and hate to think of them being cold AND hungry.