A Trapeze Act & A Lesson in Perseverance

Well, I finished off the last of the dandelion greens tonight for supper.  Yum!  It has stopped raining and things look ever so green everywhere!  Our little 'Jenny Wren' is back chattering away on top of her house, actually a house built for bluebirds but she always claims it first.  So good to hear her cheerful, twittering song again.   A lone hummingbird came by the other day and buzzed about where the feeder usually is.  Dennis saw him/her first and went looking for the feeder.  Usually if we aren't quick enough to get it out, they come up to the patio slider door and hover and stare at us, letting us know we aren't being very good hosts.  Still haven't seen but the one at the feeder which is now full and in it's proper place.

The red squirrel and the big gray one are providing us with entertainment these days.  Better than the trapeze act at the circus.  They ARE a circus !   It is a war now, a contest of wits between Dennis and the squirrels.  They were climbing up the shutter by our dining room window to get to the bird feeder. The gray is so fat he sort of runs with a waddling sway.  He visits my neighbor's bird feeders all winter.  We really want just birds at this feeder so Dennis put up a plastic coated wire from the house to the cherry tree and hung the feeder from that.  It worked for a couple days (squirrels must have been having a meeting to come up with the best way to get to it anyway),  Yesterday they were successful !  The little red squirrel would climb the cherry tree, go out on a limb, chew off any small branch obstructing his launch way and then back up and run......fly through the air and try to land in the feeder.  Watching him miss and flip over and onto the ground was kinda funny.  He immediately jumped up, shook himself and headed up the tree for another try.  This went on for a bit. (I'm getting no work done here..)  Then he finally perfected the jump and that was when Den decided he would put an obstruction between the tree and the feeder on the cord going to the house.  He found a plastic cover which came off of a 5 gallon pail and installed it on the wire.  "There... now let's see you get around that!"  NO problem thought the little red  head.  Using the same launching method which had proved so successful before, he tried it again, and again, and finally he got hold of something on that plastic cover and around and around he and the cover went!  Just like a carnival ride!  Whee!  And then reaching out, he grabbed the top of the feeder and plunked himself down, right in the seeds, right where he wanted to be! A trapeze act for sure.  Round 2 goes to the squirrel.  I finally stopped laughing long enough to get the camera and remembered it has video capability.  I got a few short videos and will post one here for you to see...and if the sound works....to hear.  All the funny noise is Dennis laughing so hard.  Hope it will go on here.  Well, I guess it didn't work !   Oh well, I do have a couple pictures but they aren't nearly as entertaining as the little video.

The launch !

Landing on the plastic cover.  Then the cover spins, fast.

Then it finally dumps him into the seeds.

I guess it does work !!  Great !

Well, so much for the circus!   A lesson in perseverance for sure.  I'll take this lesson upstairs to my sewing room and get on with the quilt I started this week.  It is coming along pretty well but if I stay away from it for long I have to stop and think...hard...when I come back to it.  Paper piecing is so precise and nice when finished but tricky, for me at least, while putting together.  I never was good with mirror image type things.  

Remember to take time to stop and enjoy all the good things God provides for us in nature. Don't hurry too much, the work will be right there waiting for you.