A Sentiment

God knew what He was doing when He sent a gentle breeze and brought a lovely butterfly to set my heart at ease. The happiness of your friendship and the gentleness of your words have touched my life in special ways and now I feel assured. Thank you for your loyalty and for reading everyday. I only hope you find things to make a happy day.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Pumpkins and Birds

Today the sun is shining and the ground is dusted with white. Shadows of the trees lie black on the white background. Not a branch is moving...a good day for a walk because the streets aren't icy. The birds are visiting. Three male cardinals, one female, a nuthatch, and a couple of chickadees are the first in line this morning. A couple of days ago the hawk was on my feeder right next to my window here. He didn't move, when I got up. Very brave for this bird. I think he was looking for breakfast. He visits most days. I haven't seen him feed, however. If I ever do...he will lose favor with me. The feeder is full of sparrows now...beware sparrows!
 What do you do with your leftover pumpkins? Do you throw them in the trash, compost them, or leave them for the visitors to your yard to eat? I always choose to do the latter. I find places that I can watch from the house...so I can see who is enjoying them. By the looks of the 2nd one...someone has really enjoyed this pumpkin. The 1st one is in my front garden. It has shrunk to a pile of orange. When I moved it...someone had eaten the bottom away. 
 The 2nd one has been devoured and was rolled from under a little tree towards the middle of the yard. Obviously someone bigger has been eating this one. I haven't seen any visitor to the pumpkins this year....leading me to believe that we have night visitors who love pumpkin.
This last one is a mystery...Does someone live inside of this pumpkin? Peter Peter pumpkin eater perhaps? I poked the hole with a stick...but no one was at home. It seems like a cozy place to hide in the cold weather. I'll leave this until Spring. There will be some vines from the fallen seeds, but they won't amount to much in the shady places in my yard. I would love to grow pumpkins, but we are done with the "big garden" and I have tried to do it in containers, but that wasn't a success. The kids next door planted them along the side of their house, they didn't get the water and sun that they needed, so they had spindly vines and only produced one tiny pumpkin. The kids had visions of huge pumpkins, I'm sure.
Well, I have to get on with my day. A walk sounds good to me.....better get started.
Balisha




6 comments:

Jan said...

What a great idea for your old pumpkins! I'm afraid that Thomas would probably scare off small visitors. Jx

Babajeza said...

I had visions of a huge pumpkin too. :-)

Dewena said...

Right outside my dressing room window, across the creek, in front of the wall of a rose bed, sit all the pumpkins and gourds that were in the house this fall. I loved looking at them there when they just didn't look right with the Christmas colors. They have shrunk like yours, collapsed, and look a little gross I guess. Maybe they will provide some food for the critters but I have visions of a magical pumpkin patch springing up there, without any effort on my part! We'll see.

Balisha said...

I always love to see oddities in the garden. A couple of years ago my mums across the front of the house were still purple when I put out my Christmas decorations. There they stood, in all their glory, in front of the porch decked out for Christmas....so pumpkins will be there too..all through the winter months.

Dewena...I hope that your little pumpkin patch springs up for you. Let us know if it happens.

debra @ homespun said...

My sister put a pumpkin out for the deer in November and she said they ate it all in a day !

Barbara said...

Wonder who ate the Pumpkin. We put apples out for the Blackbirds, they love them and cooked potato.