I Know Why I Love My Humming Birds!

In the 60’s there was a song by Seals and Croft that was surprisingly popular. A couple of quotes from the song: “Hummingbird don’t fly away, fly away. I just love you, love you, love you, I don’t even know the reason why.”
I can relate to the joy and delight in hummingbirds that the song inspires (although that wasn’t the intention of the song) But I do love the sweet and lovely hummingbirds who return from the south each spring to entertain and add a delightful beauty to my days. This spring, it took a long time to finally have my first sighting, and I was beginning to think I wouldn’t see any this year. But then one morning, I saw a lone male, and the next day a female came to the feeder. I was relieved, and happy that they are choosing to honor me with their presence again this summer. I especially love later in the season, when a few more hummingbirds will try to get it on the feeder action. The first female to show up early is always very protective of “her” feeders. No one ever bothers the male at the feeders, but the females will dart out of the spruce tree and put on a dazzling aeronautical display of ascending and descending at rapid speeds, curving a twisting with all their stunts on on display. I put out more feeders as the summer progresses, but it doesn’t matter. They still fight over them. I often see videos online of dozens of hummingbirds feeding together at feeders, and I wonder why my hummingbirds can’t behave like that. But, I don’t mind. My birds are certainly way more entertaining, even if I usually only get about four or five regulars. If I had a big “Charm” of hummingbirds, (which is the name for a big group) I wouldn’t get anything done all summer besides making nectar, cleaning feeders, and refilling feeders. My small Charm is just right for me!

So now that I’m actively seeing hummingbirds, it’s game on, with my homemade nectar and bottle brush and tiny little “feeding portal” brushes, along with reminders on the calendar to refresh feeders at least every three days. The hotter it gets, the more important that job becomes. I try to keep my feeders mostly in shade, but the daggone sun moves around all day! 🙄 Sometimes I’ll wrap the feeders in packing paper, to keep the sunlight off of them. My favorite feeding location is right by our living room picture window. It’s always in the shade, and the birds are so used to my cats, they’re not bothered at all when the cats watch them eat. Honestly, I don’t think my cats know that these are birds. They think they’re giant bugs, so they just hunker down and freeze, staring in amazement.

Earlier in my Hummingbird feeder career, I had a bird crash into my window. I thought for sure she was dead, because she didn’t move for a very long time. My daughter and I were praying for her to recover, calling on St. Francis. Then, suddenly, she popped up and flew off. I was so happy! I also learned to attach things to the window, to prevent that from ever happening again.

This spring, I kept forgetting to do that, but today, a female flew up to the window looking for her “friends.” I am so amazed by these birds. They don’t live all that long, maybe 4 years, but once they find a summer hide-away, with good food, they come back year after year, and they develop habits, such as always nesting in the same tree, going to their “usual” feeders, and visiting their familiar habitat. Part of my window display is 3 “sun-catcher” birds on hangers. Today, when the female was at the window, I could tell she was looking for those “birds,” because she always stops at each one. And I have this feeling that the mama teaches her offspring all of her tricks, because, without fail, the next round will do the same things!

As soon as I saw my little “Ruby” looking for the birds, I raced down to the garage to get all the items for my window display. So now, finally, everything is in place, and I’m ready for a summer of fun and safe interaction with my lovely friends. And, before we know it, it will be time to pack everything back up and say good bye again, until I get my annual email reminder next spring, saying, “The hummingbirds are on their way!” I’m so blessed to have this experience in the rhythm of my life, and look forward to (hopefully) many more years of it ahead!

I Was Wrong about the Spring Season

Please forgive me spring. I complained because I thought you abandoned us too early. I need to be careful what I say, because spring came back, with a vengeance. It was hot, and then it was not. It was dry, with the air filling up with pollen, and then it was severe weather, with serious warnings of tornados and large hail. Somehow, we always seem to miss the worst of it. I think it’s because we live in a low spot of our neighborhood. But we always heed the warnings. For the first time ever, my husband decided to tape cardboard to our car windows, to protect our windshields. Also, for the first time, our neighborhood was mentioned by name, by Ryan Hall, Y’all. If you haven’t experienced this self-made and amazingly awesome meteorologist, you need to look him up on YouTube. He honestly saves lives, by providing a live feed during dangerous weather outbreaks. He mentions towns, cities, cross-roads, telling you if you are near these landmarks, you need to get to your “safe place.” So yeah, this time, as we were hunkering down, he said, “Mt. Airy, you’re in the path.” I felt kind of like Mike Wizowski, because we were suddenly a little bit famous, but it wasn’t a good thing. We could have been unrecognizable, just like Mike

Luckily, the storms passed over us, dropping some rain, but really not that much. They moved to the north-east, looking for flat farmland (as tornados often do) and they touched down in Morrow and Lebanon, very near our local NOAA Center. A few days later, the temps started going down, and we had some extended colder temps and then the craziest rainfall we’ve ever seen on our street. Standing water in the road, while rivers of water gushed from both directions into the storm sewer.

There was a day, not so very long ago, when this would have been a terrible thing for us, except that we were one of the first properties on our street to prove that our prevailing basement floods, with toilet waterfalls, was not our fault (thanks to my husband’s research and all the pictures he took of the floods, and the surcharged sewer line in front of our house.) Heavy rain often comes at night, so we would be in the basement, at first shop-vacking squeegeeing, and dumping the shopvac outside. It went on for so long, that hubby actually put a “dam” around our floor drain, with a pipe running out through our walk-out garage. But we still had to sweep, out there with our next door neighbors doing the same thing, guiding the rain and sewage outside. It was very stressful, especially for my husband. He had a mild case of PTSD from those 3 years of hell. Finally, the sewer dept put in a new “cleanout,” closer to our house. Prior to that, they had checked a cleanout further up the road, and the float was never up, making them claim it was’t their problem. The next time we flooded, I told my husband to mention a new cleanout, which I had witnessed being installed. Hubby went out, told the workers, and turned around giving me a high-five, as I watched from the house. We were ecstatic with this first proof that the problem wasn’t with our property or plumbing. We still had to jump through some hoops, though. We had to hire someone to come in to clean and take a video or our line feeding into the sewer line. After that we were signed up for preventative measures. Some kind of flood blocking device that does it’s job! Now when it rains, we just pray that the electricity doesn’t go out, while I go searching for tiny aliens. (And I will never complain again about a lack of spring weather!)

Friday is Grocery Day (The perfect day for suffering (😉)

Grocery shopping has come and gone for another week. This morning I also needed gas, so I checked out Gas Buddy, and found that gas was 3.26 at Sam’s Club, and 3.43 at Kroger. Hubby uses the “gas points” from Kroger, since he drives a truck, and he had already used up our April points. I have a small sedan, better gas milage, so I get leftover points, if there are any, or I go elsewhere. I saved 17¢ per gallon on nearly 10 gallons today (and not out of the way at all, with my morning errands.)

On the way back home, I swung into Kroger (who wants to acquire another grocery giant to “imprison” us even more with all of their schemes and “offerings.”) I really wish we still had a small town IGA nearby!

Anyway, I had scoured the sales flyer and downloaded any applicable electronic coupons, and got what was on my list for this week. I felt like I had a smaller list this week, only one small meat purchase, and I shopped for bargains, but the self check-out ended up with a shocking total of $150 and some change. WHAT? How can this be?! Well, I did buy some flea and tick treatment for our dog, and even though I buy the store brand, it’s still a bit pricy, and I bought some chocolates for our table guests at a fundraising gala this evening for The Chesterton Academy of St. Joseph, in Dayton Ohio (of which one on my s-i-l’s is the headmaster. Chocolate is getting very expensive, but, as the table host, I like to have some extra sweets for my guests. And beans were on sale. I’m still eating a lot of beans for continued health improvement, so I stocked up. I bought bread, and crackers, and some cheese and the cheapest shampoo I could find, and still, $150? Yikes! As I finished packing my cart, I remembered a coupon that I had thrown away, that morning, thinking I wouldn’t spend enough to use it. It was a Best customer coupon, which would have saved me $14 if I spent $150 or more. I actually went home, dug that out of the trash, smoothed it out a little, and drove back to the store (about a 5 minute drive) and went to customer service to cash that in. That made me feel just the tiniest bit better…one, small “win.” We really need help with the out-of-control inflation in this country, and our president is too busy writing off student loans. My girls paid off their student loans, so don’t blame me!

And, of course, it’s not just food. Clothing, energy costs, property tax…oh my gosh did that ever go up this year! Luckily my husband found some information in an AARP magazine, about how seniors could lower their property taxes, and he succeeded in doing that. Clothing? My husband and I (especially my husband!) wear the same articles of clothing year after year! I sometimes add a new shirt or sweater from the thrift store (only when such items are on sale!). But hubby is all proud of himself for his patchwork repair of one of his favorite pair of pants (for which he used various colors of iron-on patches that I had purchased. It was the smallest patch assortment that I could find, and had several colors that I would never use. Now, he’s a kind of an “Old Testament” Joseph, with the technicolor dreamcoat, but he’s got dreampants instead, and all of the colors are inside (and the patches didn’t go to waste!) Ha, ha!

And, our reluctance to buy new clothes also means that we are careful about what we eat, and how much we eat. There’s nothing like digging out the seasonal clothes and finding out that they still all fit me! Now, with my Intermittent fasting habit well-ingrained after a few months, I seem to be dropping pounds without even trying, so I’m definitely sticking with that plan for good health, (and also the spiritual gifts of fasting!).

At any rate, we’re all doing whatever we can to pinch our pennies, just hoping and praying that our economy strengthens before too much longer, That costly wars and rioting doesn’t push world economies to the brink, so that we can continue to afford the necessities of life, without having to dip into our retirement savings prematurely!

A “Shrinking Spring”

It used to be, here in The USA, that we had a long and noticeable spring. We had lots of spring showers, of course, and the budding of trees and daffodils and other plants waking from the winter. We saw fawns resting by trees (as Mama deer went foraging). We had several weeks of cool weather, keeping the trees from budding before they should, without the danger of a surprise frost. And the bugs stayed mostly inactive until the end of April.

Now we have a spring season that awakens way too soon. Temperatures soar, and we might have 70°’s for a couple of days, luring out the anxious flowering bush buds, and the tender flower shoots from underground, and then, a few days later comes the threat of a heavy frost. I’ve had to cover my Viburnum bush for three spring seasons in a row, often more than once, and also protect my flower garden. The Viburnum is going to be too big for me to cover next spring, so I’m not sure what I’ll do. Just last year, in mid-April, we had a couple of inches of snow!

This (so-called) spring week I decided to get some serious spring cleaning done, but found out that I had “missed the window.” I was so hot and sweaty by the time I got done, it might as well have been the “Dog days” of August. And now, here we are, still in the first week of May, and the daily temps are forecasted to be in the upper 70’s to 80’s for this week. I must admit that I’m glad we aren’t in the major “tornado Ally part of our country (although there was a tornado that touched down in our state a couple of months ago, which devastated a summer community hotspot at a place called Indian Lake. Luckily, it happened so early in the spring that no one was occupying any of the summer cabins, many of which were left in ruins.

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve had a severe outbreak of tornados in the plain states. There were very few deaths, but neighborhoods were wiped out, houses torn apart, some houses “picked up” and moved several feet off of their foundation. This old world seems to be telling us something, but nobody really knows exactly why these terrible outbreaks of severe weather keep happening. I personally think it’s just the natural warming and cooling cycles that have been around since God first made the earth, and I also think that original sin unleashed evil forces with potentially devastating effects that we cannot measure. Humans are out of balance, hurting and killing each other, many people being exploited by human trafficking. We have crooked politicians and other world leaders whose hearts are filled with hatred and anger, as they grab all the power they can get, at the cost of many lives. If you don’t think that sinful actions can affect the balance of earthly cycles, then you have no idea of what evil can truly bring about. If there was a sudden shift of focus, with humans turning back to God, I believe we would see positive change. What have we got to lose? I say let’s all give it a try! And on that note, here is the prayer for the nine month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, which thousands of people have signed up for. Cardinal Burke sends out a monthly reflection, and in between, we pray this lovely prayer daily, in our homes, with our families. Please join us if you can!