Attitude and Gratitude. Cool.

Surprise surprise - another award! Yay!
This honor came from Laurie B at The Looking Glass

and if you have not checked out her blog, I highly recommend taking a look.

She is very fabulous and very talented.

The rules for giving and receiving this award are as follows:

* Put the logo on your blog or post.
* Nominate at least 3 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!
* Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
* Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
* Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

This thoughtful award will continue onto... (drum roll please!)

Nikki at Project: Domestic Bliss

Libby at Aurora's Garden

Bella at Bella Casa

This award came at an auspicious time for me, as a positive attitude has us torn between doing two things. Both are important but we may only be able to have one or the other.

As I write this, I'm in my bedroom looking out at the old plum tree on the other side of the fence from our patio. The owner has neglected it and the weight of the plums at the end of summer has caused the branches to droop over the fence. Overripe plums have dropped onto our cement patio, leaving purple-black stains, the leaves cover everything, and we think a December wind storm will cause one of the large limbs to fall on the fence and into our tiny space. Frank's worried it could crush our little grill.

Frank wants to borrow my dad's pole trimmer to clean up some of the upper branches and cut back the tree so it doesn't lean on our fence. The tree trunk is offset and bulk -and weight- of the tree is nine feet north of where the trunk comes out of the ground. Or put another way, the trunk comes out of the ground about seven feet south of our fence. In this part of Oregon, the storm winds come from the south and we usually get huge wind storms in December.

Needless to say, we're a little concerned about the tree.

Our bedroom window, originally uploaded by passitonplates.

On the other hand, my bedroom window is eye level with the top half of the tree where the mossy branches hold daily sparrow and finch traffic. I'll have to get a bird book to i.d. all the breeds that visit, but when it's not too cold I like to open the window to hear their conversation. Sometimes a blue jay stops by and scares them away, but soon they return... little yellow birds, red-breasted finch-like birds, chickadees, and one silly bird that likes to run back and forth across the interior branches like he's on a racetrack.

Despite our concerns over the old tree, here is what I get to look at every day as I work on the computer or fold laundry:

We have lots of little yellow and red birds in the plum tree, originally uploaded by passitonplates.

We have lots of little yellow and red birds in the plum tree

Can you tell me what kind of birds these are?
And what do they eat?
(Besides plums - they love the dried up plums that didn't fall in September.)

I think this is one of the ladies, originally uploaded by passitonplates.

I think this is one of the ladies

Five visitors in the old plum tree, originally uploaded by passitonplates.

Five visitors in the old plum tree.
Can you find them? Click on the picture and it will take you to my Flickr - then hover your mouse over the picture to see where they all are.

Our solution so far? We will hang up some bird seed when we use the pole trimmer to cut back the tree. Hopefully the seed will encourage these cuties to stay so we can enjoy both the birds and peace of mind when the wind starts to blow.

Oh! I just saw one I hadn't seen before! He has a dark purple head and orange breast. Same size as the other ones, and his beak is the same wedge shape. Wow, I love that tree...

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