Seasons Greetings!

I promise that THIS is the time of the year that we receive the best season’s greetings.  In the first place, every bird (including the duck that walked her babies across six lanes of traffic on Southwest Parkway today) has an attitude!  The doves have been giving us a hard time since yesterday when the bird feeders ran out of seeds.  So this afternoon we made a trip to Atwood’s to pick up more bird seed.  The neighbor’s cats came to sample the stale bread I threw out for the ducks, but otherwise the feast was on among the winged critters that discovered the replenished feeders.

 

My parents were the recipients of a few radishes picked from among the zinnias this morning.  Our flower/garden is a little bit strange, but mostly it has its shape from the flow of laundry water that took all the zinnia seeds to one end of the hill and left the radish seeds willy nilly wherever they sprouted.  Then there is the dill weed that just tantalizes me every time I touch it.  The taste is wonderful and just calls for more lettuce, tomato, or just about anything green.  The rest of the flowers in the yard are somewhat more organized.  Pots of squash and some kind of strange purple bean fill one big liquid cow feed tub.  Other tubs contain roses or mint or cucumbers.  The tubs just seemed more sensible since my time is divided between several other little jobs around this place.

 

Fang dared to let me drive his tractor yesterday.  I ran the top into a tree branch; I ran over a tree, but managed to back up before I ruined anything.  Then I ran the front loader into a telephone pole.  Fang swears the phone company people called and said to keep me out of the telephone poles as it was making their customers stutter!  Then I found a nice hole out between some trees and dropped one wheel off in it.  Fang just sat there and watched and shook his head.  Unbelievable!  Years ago he would have shouted at me.  Maybe all that work we did together on the tractor made a difference to him….or not.

 

When we finally finished all the mowing of the lots between us and the highway, the land looked so very nice.  If it were not for all the uneven ground and the danged holes, the land would be nice for playing on or just for walking.  One stone we dug out and dropped in a hole was a two foot block of concrete.  At least I didn’t run over that one!   But Ray Charles could have seen that chunk of rock!  Eventually the land will look half way decent and be level enough to mow a bit more easily.  And maybe eventually I will learn to drive the tractor with the front-end loader on it and the finishing mower on the back.  Meanwhile, we can sit outside on the porch bench and listen to the birds sing and watch the cats and squirrels run around on the mown grass.  Yeppers, this is the season for greetings in green and song.