Household matters outdoors and in

I have now officially finished giving, mailing, shipping, loading and sending off all the various materials, supplies, equipment and so on relating to HP's last illness, and it's such a relief that now the traces of his suffering are gone, and as one nice friend said this morning, now there's room for the good memories to come back in. Too true. I am taking deeper breaths now.

I did pick out an artwork to ship as a memento each to his saintly doctor and his physio, and both have significance to them, so that feels excellent to me. I'll get them off this afternoon, but that won't be a chore, unlike most of what I've been up to lately.

Meanwhile, after all the UPS biz and PO biz and paperwork roundups, I spent a while outside with my camera watching the household goings-on of the birds. They are now quite fearless around me and just go about their business as if I were part of the furniture.

I noticed suddenly, sitting in the dish of the feeder a baby cardinal, noshing away, and just sitting quietly to rest between bites. Evidently under cover of the wrens noisy setting up of their household, the cardinals quietly had a late clutch, and here was a little male. Eventually he remembered how to climb out of the feeder and flutter to the nearest tree branch, where his father was patiently watching and waiting. The baby's tail feathers, such as they are, are coming in bright red, so I know he's a male. The female cardinal is beautiful but a muted olive color more than red.

Meanwhile, the chipmunks are having a great time playing daringly with the wrens



and being pecked firmly when they get too near the nest.



The mom this morning flew right through a houseplant on the patio table to ambush the chip, and he sort of shouted and flew through the air! even the squirrels are being firmly routed by both parents acting in unison, pecking all available tails till they flee.

Here's one parent on the fence, giving what I now realize is an alarm call, asking for backup



and the other is answering from somewhere out of sight, before coming to rout a squirrel. Then, if you look carefully, parent two can be seen, at least the rear end of parent two, climbing into the nest with food. I suppose that's why he didn't come right away, what do you want from my life, I'm slaving over babyfood over here!



This was an inspired gift, just totally transforms my day to see all this activity.

Inside the house, rather less competence reigns. It seems that I must have burned out my immersion blender when I was making all those smoothies for HP, because I plugged it in, there was a flash of lightning, and half the house went dark with a big pop. Including the fridge, sigh.

So, undaunted, I went outside to check the circuit board and tried all the likely switches that had labels such as small appliance, lights, etc, but leaving alone the two that ominously had no labels, thinking danger, danger, Will Robinson, who knows what might happen. Then I got desperate and flipped them left then right and lo, there was light. And refrigeration. And I dumped the poor old blender. Honestly, I've only had it abut 20 years and it cost me ten dollars from a store long since defunct. They just don't make good STUFF any more...I wonder if I could get my money back.

I have now replaced it with a space age gizmo which is cordless, recharges itself and I guess won't fuse the house if it burns out.



Came complete with charging stand and mixing thing and it all looks faintly clinical and a bit xrated. But never mind, I'll throw a cover over it if I have company....