It occurred to me today, probably about the time I was sat in the kitchen sink, that I am perhaps, just a tad, just a teensy weensy bit, obsessed with this bird watching lark. I had my usual set-up today. Camera mounted on a tripod in the kitchen sink pointed towards the bird feeders. At some point, I noticed a new bird, (which turned out to be a black-throated blue warbler) on the patio and realized with the large tripod in the sink I couldn't get a decent shot. So I quickly retrieved my mini-tripod and placed it on the window ledge. At this point I realized that I was having to stretch over the sink to operate the camera so it seemed (at the time) that the best thing to do was to sit in the sink, you know, feet in the sink butt perched on the edge. At one point I soaked my slippers by accidentally turning on the faucet but other than that, it worked quite well. While the shot I got of the warbler was fuzzy as all get out, I did at least get a shot of, I have to say, a very fast moving little bird. And as a bonus, I got some wonderful shots of my absolute favourite subject, the female cardinal.

and here is my favourite model, isn't she a beautiful girl?

When you realize that life, and all it means, it what is most important. Life, and the continuation of life is what is going to keep this planet, and us going for the next milennia. Death, on the other hand, is what is going to destroy us. Anyone who wanders along the aisles at garden centers and picks a product off the shelf with "cide" in the title has to remember that they are purchasing death. "cide" remember the word? You probably don't except that your memory will drag back all those other words "homicide" "infanticide" "suicide" "genocide" When you buy anything with "cide" in its description you are, not to put too fine a point on it, buying death. Oh yes, you can eradicate your weeds but have you any idea how many native plants you are also eradicating with that poison? Do you know how much of that poison is going to end up in the ground water and eventually in the water you are drinking? Never mind, you have no weeds. Oh yes, you can eradicate the japanese beetles who perhaps are eating your roses, but do you know how many bees you are also killing? Bees that are essential to our survival, bees without whom we would, not to put too fine a point on it, starve? So the next time you pick up the Seven dust at the garden center just remember what you are doing. You are introducing death into an environment (your garden) which in and of itself is supposed to be about life, not only the life of plants, but the life of the critters that inhabit them. We cannot continue to attempt to sanitize our environment to suit our selfish needs without ultimately destroying ourselves. Mother nature is as she always has been and she has sustained us from the beginning of time. It is now time for us to acknowledge that, and to realize that she knows what she is doing, we don't. It is time people, it is time to step back from the "cide" aisle and say no, I will not embrace death, I will embrace and celebrate life, ahhhh life, in all its diversity, I will embrace life, and ultimately I and all those critters around me will live, and how we will live!

Going to repost a column I wrote several years ago about my little acre of land which is my home and my sanity in all the craziness that I have to live with. And, of course, will find some phots to illustrate it.

My Little Acre and One Perfect Hour

Sometimes there are times when we need to step back, take stock, and
look at how things really are in our lives. After my house flooded and all my possessions were piled up on every available dry space I thought it was the end of life as I knew it. I remember not being able to speak without crying, the enormity of the situation just overwhelmed me, how would we recover? How could we ever get back to where we were? How could I ever replace those things that had been lost, particularly those things that could not be replaced like photographs and family heirlooms.

However, as days went by and I began to fix things I realized that things weren't all that bad. A year and a half later things have pretty much settled down to normal and this evening it came to me that everything, no matter how bad it seems at the time, has a purpose, a reason, and depending on your beliefs it is either nature or god's reason for things. When I come home in the evenings I am greeted by the smell of wisteria which grows around my front door. Despite the fact that a late frost killed most of the blooms several survived and put out their delightful scent as I enter my house. After my chores (which must be done) I spend time in my garden, weeding here, deadheading there, and generally wandering around seeing how things are growing.

Spring is of course upon us and it always delights me when I see the perennial plants coming back again in the spring, and I can spend hours puzzled sometimes seeing something coming up and not remembering even planting it. The sunflower seeds that I have planted are poking their chubby little heads above the soil and providing that I manage to remove the seed casings off the baby plants before the birds find them, then the plants themselves can grow (I chide the birds on a regular basis "if you only let this little seed alone and let the plant grow there will be hundreds of seeds to eat" it does no good).

I go out into my vegetable garden each evening and pick lettuce leaves and radish for my husbands supper (I only cut the lettuce leaves I need, leaving the plant to continue growing). Then after my gardening duties it is time to sit and play "squeaky thingy" with Buddy, my springer spaniel. As I sit in the garden, playing with my dogs, listening to the birds and watching the cats sit on the top railing of the deck catching the last rays of the evening sun I can feel that in my little acre at least, everything is right with the world. Soon the cats will move to the garage roof to follow the warmth (cats are so good at that), and soon Buddy will get tired of playing "squeaky thingy" (he is an old dog), and then all the dogs will lie on the grass and simply watch the world go by.

And I will sit, in the quiet, watching the birds gather their last meals before roosting in the numerous trees that are the forest, and the watery sunlight will begin to set behind me and then the bats will come out of their hiding places and begin to feed on the insects that are swarming in the air.

Despite what is going on around me, despite the wars and the hatred and the fear and the horrors that will greet me when I go back inside and watch the evening news, for that hour, when I sit and play "squeaky thingy" with Buddy, for that hour when I simply watch the plants and flowers grow, and for that hour when I sit and watch the beauty of nature unfold before my very eyes, for that hour, everything is right with the world, or at least my little acre of it, and that hour keeps me sane.

Perhaps that is what we all need. Just an hour a day, taking stock, counting blessings, watching nature unfold, and enjoying the absolute simplest things that could be.Tomorrow morning I will go back to the insanity of my job, of telephones ringing and clients bugging out, and my boss grouching, and the world turning into chaos, but inside me, deep inside me, in what some have
called soul, there is that hour, that precious hour and for the other 23 I can struggle on by like everyone else in world, because for that one perfect hour, everything is right with the world, or at least my little acre of it.

As I sit at my puter looking like a large pink wooley mammoth I realize that my thrifty nature sometimes gets the better of me. It is getting chilly outside this evening, but rather than turn the thermostat up from its current setting of 60 degrees I choose to don a robe (dressing gown as we say in the UK) which is thick, fluffy and pink, in order to keep warm. Of course I would go out and get some wood from the wood pile and start a fire, but you know donning the fluffy monster is so much easier, and besides, my husband is one of those "its too hot in here" types who cannot stand being too warm. Anyhoo to say that I am thrifty (a/k/a cheap) is pretty much an understatement. I was raised by a mother who was not only a child of the depression and WWII but she then had to somehow raise two daughters without the aid of any support from an absent father (he buggered off when I was five to go and shack up with his girlfriend.) So my mother knew how to stretch money, in fact my mother got incredibly creative when it comes to stretching things. For instance, she would buy a pound of minced beef (ground beef or hamburger for the US), it would start out the week as Shepards Pie or Mince and tatties, from there it would morph into a stew, from there it would become a curry and at its end it would be a soup with a few pieces of beef floating around in it. My mother was also a sock darner, (how many of them do you know?). Anyhoo blessed I am by being raised by a true cheapo I now hold the firm belief that you NEVER spend a penny more than you have to on anything. (Have you ever listened to Clark Howard - that man is brilliant) I am grateful for this because without this mind set we would never have been able to put my husband through college after he was unceremoniously discharged from the Marine Corps after 16 years of service after the Gulf War in President Clinton's infamous "budget cuts." Some examples of my "thriftiness" include drying my laundry outside. I think this is a no-brainer, I mean really, sunshine and breezes are free, it costs a fortune to run an electric dryer. Here in NC chances are that the weather will be good enough to dry four loads of laundry in a single weekend, why on earth would one spend money to do it? I also refuse to spend money on clothes or shoes etc. I run on the "used car" theory, you know the minute you drive the car off the lot you take an automatic $2,000.00 depreciation at least. Clothes are the same. So I shop at Thrift Stores (or charity shops as we call them in England). I have in my greater moments bought a brand new pair of Gap jeans, still bearing the tags on them for $2.00, a formal dress (tag price $89.99) for $20.00, shoes with a tag price of 69.99 for $5.00 and a suit that was marked $149.99 for $10.00. The thing is you can take advantage of the fact that alot of people for the most part are a) spendthrifts and b) lazy, so they spend a weekend shopping at the mall, spending money they don't have on clothes they don't need or really want, and when they get them back to the house they don't like them. Rather than take them back to exchange or return them they just throw them in the bag to go to the thrift store. I take advantage of that every time. My entire wardrobe consists of items bought in such a way. This weekend I bought a new pair of boots for $1.50 while JC Penny was advertising the same pair of boots for $29.99. I attended my husband's school prom one year in an outfit that cost me a total of $25.00, and everyone, to a person told me how wonderful I looked and "where did you get that dress?" I was almost afraid to tell them, knowing as I did that they (or their parents) had more than likely spent $300 + on their outfits for the night. Fads and toys are also a case in point. I have a heavy duty bread machine, which I use at least three or four times a week for various things. Did it cost me the $199.99 that it was supposed to? Nope it cost me $10.00 at the auction cause no doubt someone bought it and then never used it or was bought it for a present and thought that they might use it but never did. My blender cost me $2.00 at a thrift store and it works just as perfectly as a $20.00 model would have from Target. The point is that for the most part, people today spend indiscriminately, and then for the most part dispose of the things they have spent money on to the advantage of people like me which is not only thrifty it is environmentally friendly because you are simply recycling things that otherwise would find themselves in landfills. And as for the new new stuff? Well there is always e-bay. *S*

Its a funny thing, winter in Eastern North Carolina. The signs are all appearing now, the Juncos are back, and the sparrows have reappeared, they tend to migrate westward during the summer months, to breed I suppose, the goldfinch should be here any day. But no today I saw a Junco on the patio and realized, as much as I hate to admit it, that winter will soon be here. Another indicator is that my lizards are doing their "stealth move into the house trick" I leave my kitchen window open a crack to allow for steam (or smoke *LOL*) to escape when I am cooking. The lizards know this, and now spend chilly days warming themselves in the weak autumn sunshine on the window ledge. I counted seven the other day. While I was watching them my husband came in to get himself a drink and he asked me what I was doing. "Watching the lizards" I replied. "Why are they all in the kitchen?" he asked? "cause it's nice a warm in the window" I said not thinking anything of it. Then he gave me that look, you know that look, the look that clearly says "who are you and what have you done with my wife?". So it is obviously soon to be winter, if the critter behaviour is anything to go by. The butterflies have either died, hibernated or migrated, other than the odd sulpher which I see fluttering about or the lone Buckeye that I spotted on the marigolds today. The sulphers appear to be light hibernators as quite often during a warm day in the depths of winter they will emerge from their hiding spots and go on a search for food, it is incredible how the sight of such will lift a heart. The Canada geese that do not live here permanently are heading south, their distinctive honking as they fly in v-formation overhead has always been the saddest harbinger of winter for me, it is almost as if they are taking the warmth south with them. Conversely when they head north in the spring my heart soars they are a far more reliable indicator as to the arrival of spring than is my local weatherman. The dragonflies have gone, as have the preying mantids, hopefully after having laid lots of egg cases in my garden, and finally my garden spiders, having laid their gooseberry size egg cases have also died, their lives having been fulfilled by creating the next generation. It used to be, before I discovered the delightful hobby of feeding the birds, that winter was a cause for despair, and misery, and I would suffer greatly from SAD (seasonal affective disorder I think), but now I have the birds to worry about (and to photograph) a freezing winter day just means a day wrapped up in a scarf and gloves in front of an open kitchen window taking shots of my birds. It has done me the world of good. In any event on a day like today, when the temperatures are in the mid 60s and the sunshine warms everything up, the critters awake and come out to enjoy it briefly, before they snuggle back down beneath the blanket of leaves to weather out the cold. Today in my turn around the garden I found this little guy, obviously a new born from this year, enjoying the sunshine on the marigolds out front, I hope he knows well enough to find a warm spot to spend the chilly evenings.



and here's the Buckeye, yes I know its a lousy shot, but a) it was zoomed as far as I was able (it was very skittish), b) I am without any of my editing software right now (it is all on the Dell), and c) I am just grateful to have ANY shots of a butterfly in November no matter how lousy they are :)