snow, lovely snow

A light snow is sifting down. The juncos leave birdy tracks on the patio where they are feasting on black oil sunflower seeds. The resident chickadee pecks at the bird cake in its holder. The grey squirrel arrives to steal what it can.

The garden is settling into winter. The gardener is still washing pots inside. She had a pleasant gift this week, ten big plastic bags full of leaves. She drags them to the compost and empties several over the remaining pile and turns out one bag over the daphne bush, a tender plant still holding on to its variegated leaves.

But in the back garden all leaves are fallen. Only a few berries remain on the high bush cranberry and nothing on the mountain ash. The lamium, alive yesterday, is frozen today. In front, the mullein still blooms in the sharp wind and blowing snow. It must be the world's toughest plant. It has been blooming since August.

I should have brought the hose in earlier, thinks the gardener, struggling with a frozen 100 feet of ice.

Now is the time to plant the indoor bulbs. The amarylis have arrived at Vanderweese and other stores. Nothing is more cheery in the winter than this marvelous indoor flower. Every child in Thunder Bay should have an amarylis to plant and watch it stretch into bloom.

A Bird in the Hand

I once saw a chickadee eating from a baseball glove. The glove was on the hand of a friend. She had set up a sort of stick man and fed the birds from the glove attached to an arm stick. Later she held the glove and the chickadees gradually came.

Another friend tells me how he enticed the whiskey jacks. He put dog food on a small table outside. As many dog owners in the country are aware, whiskey jacks love pet food. My friend sat on a chair at some distance from the table. Gadually he moved the chair closer. Finally he was sitting at the table. Everything good comes in small steps. An arm on the table. An arm with an open hand with food in it. They hop right up. Now when he walks around his country property, he has to load his pockets with dog food.


The sad news is that few of us in town are lucky enough to have whiskey jacks come to our feeders. The good news is that the juncos, those weed seeding eating fiends, have arrived.