Dragonflies and Dumb and Dumber Birds!

Imagine my surprise, the other day, when I opened a package expecting to find a book and also found this! Lisa, from Greenbow, and I are sharing books on gardening. She sends me one, I send her one. With this one was a note saying she had started out to make me a bookmark and got a little carried away. I am thrilled! She knows how crazy I am for anything Dragonfly. But I am not going to use it as a bookmark, I am going to frame it! And when the world discovers her talent, I can say, " Why yes, I have an early original watercolor by Lisa!"
Thank you Lisa, thank you!!
Do any of you have fireplaces? And do you get birds in them? We do. Every spring and fall, we get dumb ones who sit on top of the flue and fall down into the fireplace. We do have doors that we keep closed when not burning a fire. Thank goodness, or they would be flying through the house at all hours. Normally, when I hear one in there, I open our front door, open the fireplace doors and the bird flies out straight to the outside. Occasionally, I get a really dumb one and he flies the opposite direction and ends up at our window in the bedroom.

This time Fat Cat heard the commotion and came to see what was going on. She just sat on the bed and watched him as he tried in vain to escape to the wild blue. When I grabbed the camera, she turned to look at me as if to say "Well, do something!"

Eventually, I get them rounded up and head back the right direction. Starlings and sparrows aren't exactly the brightest crayons in the box are they?!

Now...

I won't be posting for a few days. At least not until next week some time. We are going through a family crisis of sorts. The decision has been made to place my mother-in-law in a nursing care facility on Monday. She has Alzheimer's and has been living with her daughter for a few months now. Sadly, she needs more intensive care and supervision than can be given at home. We have know for a while that she wasn't doing well, but since Thanksgiving she has deteriorated quickly. This disease, also, took my grandmother from me years before her death. It is an insidious disease that robs one's dignity! It puts families into turmoil and feelings of helplessness and guilt abound. Thankfully, there are more resources available now to help both victims...the loved one and the family.