Keeping the bird feeders full

If I don't keep my bird feeders filled with fresh seed, the birds go elsewhere to eat. And so it is with the blog as well. Not that I'm blogging for attention or that I recognize that I have any regular readers, but my visitor count doesn't increase if I don't post. Last week I didn't post anything and had very few visitors.

I did keep my bird feeders filled, so don't worry about our feathered friends. I had finches (gold and purple), chickadees, titmice, and Carolina wrens galore.

Speaking of bird feeders, I was working with one yesterday afternoon when Dora waddled across the yard, armed with a couple of dolls and her twirler (what she calls her baton), flip-flops on her feet, and a ziplock bag of Lifesavers clutched in her hand. She was supposed to be laying down with Zelda for a nap; Zelda fell asleep first, and when Dora heard me outside she bolted with her treasures toward freedom.

After finishing up my work, I sat with her in the grass at the back of our yard overlooking the wooded hollow behind our house. The trees were filled with birds waiting for me to leave the vicinity of the feeders; the tiny creek gurgled in the bottom, sunlight reflecting off its rock-lined bed. "Can we go in the woods?" Dora asked.

"Sure," I replied. "Go and get your tennis shoes." (I didn't really say "tennis shoes." What we call them is more like "tinnyshoes," but I didn't think you would understand that term. You would probably understand the term "sneakers," but we sure as heck don't call them that.)

She returned with an armload of shoes and socks and two walking sticks dragging behind her. I shod her and we tumbled down the hill toward the bottom.

Dora is such a paradox. She dresses with earrings, lipstick, plastic high heels, and frou-frou skirts to go outside and hunt bugs. She never passes a mud puddle that she doesn't stamp her feet in (or bury her arms up to the wrists). She is my nature girl, the antithesis of big brother Lovett, my techno-savvy pop-culture walking-Wikipedia, who, had I to guess, was probably running through some intergalactic thingamabob looking for some whozeewhatzis to slice with a light saber.

We romped in the bottom until the sun went below the edge of the hollow above us. It cooled off quickly, but she didn't want to climb home. We balanced on hurricane-downed tree trunks, overturned rocks looking for crawdads, watched the geese and airplanes fly overhead, got our shoes and hands muddy. We fell down, grabbed briars with our pants legs, thumbed our noses at gravity.

A good Sunday afternoon.