November 19, 2008

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 who
m 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

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


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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5 comments:

  1. Hey Pam! Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and giving me such an awesome award! I have a couple that I need to post of the blog, I get so behind!! hehe I really am honored!!

    I cant wait to take a better look over your blog. I feel like I know you already, and we have so much in common! Your hubby is a chef? Thats awesome! I have a Culinary Degree as well, but I work full time as a graphic designer...something else we have in common! :)

    anyway, feel free to stop by the blog anytime! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Nikki, well I net we have a lot in common! You have a CA degree and work as a graphic designer. My hubby has a CS degree and is a chef; I was studying to be a graphic designer at a respected midwestern university... until I told my adviser that I wanted to learn computer graphics (this was in 1989, mind you) and she said "That computer thing is a fad and we're not going to waste the money on it."

    I know, I know. {{cringe!}} right?
    So I dropped out because I wasn't going to waste my money on them any longer.

    Anyhoo, I love reading your blog - not to put a cliche in here, but it's right up my alley.

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  3. Hi Pam! Whoo what a dillema! I'd opt for the neighbor taking care of his OWN tree and you getting bird feeders! (wink) You have gold finch and purple house finch in the pictures here. (I think) That's what we call them here anyhoo. Feel free to send me bird pics. Hubby and I are pretty good at ID. I actually captured a Black and White Warbler this summer (on camera) and had to send it to my fav Audobon expert up north. It's a blast doing bird ID! (okay, so I live on a farm, it's fun for me anyhoo)
    Hugs, you deserved the award richly. With gratitude, Laurie B.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Laurie - thanks for the bird tips. So the red breasted one may be a purple house finch? Or is that the purple one with the orange-y breast? It's raining today so I don't think they'll be out, but I'm sure I'll see more of them in a few days, as we're supposed to switch back from rain to more fog. (Huh. There's a chickadee in there right now. Go! It's raining! Oh. He's heading toward the seed bell I hung in there yesterday.)

    Frank thinks there is some sort of large mouse or some other kind of rodent in the tree, too. He saw it crawling across the branches at 3am one morning when he got up for work; again last night it crawled across the top of the fence.

    As for the neighbors, the tree is in an empty 1-acre field behind their house, and I think if we knocked at their door to talk plum tree they may meet us on the front porch with a shotgun. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, but the houses along the street they live on are all different flavors of scary run-down shacks, across the street from several machine shops, a questionable-looking auto repair, and work trailer sales. I'll have to post a picture... When I tell people where I live, they say, "You live THERE?" but then they enter the driveway for the apt/condos and exclaim, "Oh, I never knew this was back here! This is really nice!" Yeah. Quiet, clean, well-maintained, nice neighbors... and a plum tree full of birds!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh wow, look at those pretty little birds, how precious!!! Would be nice if the neighbor took care of that though, eh?

    Thanks so much for the lovely award, you're so sweet to think of me!!!

    I hope you are having a nice weekend:)

    Bella

    ReplyDelete

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