Bluebirds outside my window

I was making monthly visits to see my mother last year when I noticed that one of her bluebird boxes was occupied. She was in and out of hospitals for a while, and I was in and out of state. But I managed few peeks at them now and then.

Dad or a sibling seemed always to be on the lookout. Whether they were looking for danger, or searching for bugs, I wasn’t sure. But they usually saw me and my camera, and weren’t afraid to let me know it.

Dad watching from the power line.

‘I see you,’ big brother seemed to say to me.

Nearly every time I walked outside, I saw bright eyes looking at me.

Aside from all the people watching the bluebird family engaged in, they were just as busy catching bugs. Crawling bugs, flying bugs – I’m not sure how they found them all.

This older sibling checked for predators before offering the babies a tasty worm.

But some bugs proved easier to handle than others.

‘You go first.’ ‘No, YOU go first.’

This little wasp didn’t know how lucky he was.

Daddy stayed busy, but I never saw Mama.

Once you catch it, you gotta eat it.

Checkin’ on the babies.

‘You OK in there?’

An older sibling, careful to keep an eye on me.

I wanted to see the fledglings, but I had to leave, and when I got back a week later, the family had moved on.

I did manage a tiny glimpse at one of them, though.

Waiting impatiently.

 

 

 

 

Alice’s green thumb

Mom has loved flowers for as long as I can remember.

Every spring when we were young, she would take us to little flower shops up the road from the hill we lived on. We would pass by rows and rows of blooming plants, inhaling the rich scent of flowers and dark brown soil. After we brought her favorites to the house, she would dig some holes in some of her existing flowerbeds and introduce each plant to its new home, where it would thrive.

After we grew up and left, Mom’s love affair with flowers continued. She and Dad put up a chain-link fence, and she planted bushes of hibiscus all down one side. There were more flowers surrounding Dad’s free-standing shop, and her front flowerbed was always full. Last spring and summer, after giving the plot a good weeding, I camped out near the flowerbed and took pictures of hummingbirds, who were drawn to the sugar-water feeders we hung.

Mom had a yard full of ruby-throated hummingbirds last summer.

We brought Mom to live with us in North Carolina last August (under protest, she will tell you). But before we left, I took pictures of some of the flowers she had to leave. This way, she can always remember what they looked like.

There are all kinds of plants hiding in here!

These moonflowers were some of Mom’s favorites.

Alium. Or an ornamental onion, as I like to call them.

Purple is Mom’s favorite color.

Beautiful shamrocks are part of the under story of Mom’s garden.

One of Mom’s many hibiscus blooms.

A random flower in Mom’s backyard.

A wisteria bloom on Mom’s deck.

Mom’s cat Tiger trying to stalk birds on her back deck. I’m sure he misses the old house, too!