Connie's Corner

Birds and grass

I am up early this morning with the window open and watching the birds at the feeder. There is a family of cardinals living in the bush at the corner of the front porch just below the feeder. I think they are the guarders of the realm. The bush (shrub) is called variegated ligustrum and is one of those needing lots of pruning or it would grow wildly huge. Even with pruning it is only about a foot below the hanging feeder. A few minutes ago out of its smoothly pruned greenish-white surface, a brilliant redbird popped through and gave me my version of eye-candy. It's nice and cool with the sun just beginning to rise and burn off the fog, my favorite time of the day.

Now I'm sipping coffee and wondering if the grass will have time to dry before our daily thunderstorm. Yesterday I managed to mow the front yard, but showers drove me back into the garage after one swipe around the backyard. I can still smell the cut grass as I sit here with a slight cool breeze drifting in. Oh oh, here is a cute little black-capped chickadee at the feeder. In the last few days I have seen doves sitting on the porch railing waiting for smaller birds to slosh out seeds onto the porch floor so they can swoop down to nibble. And there have been lots of purple finch, now there's a cardinal and its new little one. She's feeding it seeds. It's a magical movie, free for watching.

Mopsy is always begging for pieces of grass or dandelion leaves to eat whenever I go outside and come back in. Sometimes I grow the stuff they call catgrass for her, but she chomps away and it's gone in no time. Recently, I saw something on pinterest that gave me an idea. It was a pin of an eaten down romaine stalk placed in a squat glass (I use juice glasses) with about an inch of water in the bottom. The pinner says 'grow you own lettuce'. So I looked up the safety of romaine for kitties and found it is the perfect greenery for cats. Mopsy now has her own window garden, three little glasses with romaine at different stages of growth. It is unbelievable how fast it grows. You can practically see it. And Mopsy crunches away at the tender tops whenever she wants to.

Happy Sunday and....

until next time...c