How a dead battery caused chocolate bark

 When my neighbor moved my car for the snowplow, he commented when he brought back the keys that it was a hard start.  I thought probably because I hadn't driven it in a couple of days, and the very cold nights didn't help.  However, having had 20 years of driving a Honda Civic which literally never failed to start, ever, I had no experience in this issue. Then this morning I thought I'd just pop out and run the car for a few minutes to keep the battery working, too icy to drive about.  And found it was dead as a doornail. Oh.  

Appealed to the neighbors, since the other option was a two or more hour wait for AAA. And neighbor J. said, no, no, don't bother, I'll fix it.  Just lift the lid, I mean the hood.  Which I did, having found out how to do that, never did it before up to now.  Managed that, and she came out with a gadget I'd never heard of but now need, a portable battery jumper.  No need to use a second vehicle, I've been living in the dark ages.  She attached it, started the car in about two seconds, and said you don't drive this enough.  You need to do that.  Quite right.  I let it run for a few minutes, then did a little trip around the development before bringing it back.

Other neighbor says he agrees with me I need to have one of these clever things, and he will get hold of one for me, since he knows all about them, and I'm baffled by the hundreds of models and sizes and specs.  

So, since I'd hauled them out on a freezing Saturday when they'd probably just as soon not, and they were very obliging, as always, I thought, this is a destination for that bark I still haven't made.  So I added it to the agenda for the afternoon.

 

Two layers, dark then white, and I swirled it about with the spatula to make interesting shapes. You'll notice this is rather a small amount of bark, compared to the acres I made last time.  They seem to be putting fewer chocolate chips in those bags, or something. At least they seem to decrease as they sit in the fridge.  It's a mystery.

 And, after I'd had a good time hitting the bark to break it up, it joined the baked goods, which I decided would be blueberry hot biscuits.

Speaking of food happening, I put the feeder I used to have on the patio, which was now in the way of the forthcoming fence, out front.  I moved it once because birds didn't come, and I thought it was too near the window.  Birds didn't come.  I put a lot more plants on the kitchen windowsill, so as to give them a sense of not being overlooked. Birds didn't come.  Last night because it was very cold, I closed the kitchen curtains.

 A Carolina wren scouted the joint, didn't eat, but evidently went to put out the word, because today a little bunch of juncoes, then a couple of finches, showed up and have evidently accepted that this top of the line suet block is in fact food.  It's exactly the same food they've been getting here for years.  Then later the wren showed up back on the patio, and was evidently searching for the food in the "right" place.