I really enjoy staying in my little apartment (despite being deprived of a TV or Internet), especially because I have a great view to the green and brown woods behind the complex. I've set up a bird feeder on the large picture window in the back and on the window in the dining room area, which the birds found pretty quickly.
Along with the nuthatches and titmice (which are a treat since we have not seen a single one of the latter in our city home since we moved there three years ago), I see a blood-red cardinal with no feathers on his head that looks like a small vulture. I wonder what has caused him to lose his beautiful head feathers and, cheerleader of underdogs that I am, I like to think that the feeder helps him out in some way.
The birds are not the only ones enjoying the seed, of course. I have discovered that the squirrels up north are a lot peskier and carifrescas than the ones here in the city. This one figured out how to jump on the feeder and sits placidly to dine while the birds loudly complain that she's gorging herself on their food. On this occasion, I banged on the window, yelled at the squirrel and made a ruckus (which usually works to make them scurry off) but she just looked back at me with a beady-eye challenge that conveyed it would take a heck of a lot more to get her off the free food.
I took some pictures of the apartment for my mami, so she can see where I've been spending my weekdays, and here's two of them. In one, Rusty peers anxiously out of the kitchen door to make sure his mami isn't leaving him behind in this strange place.
In the second, the miramelindas do well in their green planter on the window ledge in front of the kitchen sink. I'm really glad I took that picture because by the next day the flowers were all dead. Something had dug them up and/or tried to eat them from within. I'm not sure who the culprit is yet, but I've also found out that granddaddy longlegs like to live in potted plants. I'll have to find a spider expert who can tell me whether that has anything to do with it.
This week, I evicted four granddaddy longlegs and two brown furry centipedes from the apartment. Eeew! Dr. S said: "Welcome to living near the woods." And my husband saw a moth that sounded like a shrieking monkey, which he said was as big as a hummingbird. It was flying around at night. Augh!
While I really like the now-homey apartment, made even homier by Dr. S, who has shared her mother's beautiful handmade curtains and her nice furniture, and while I enjoy being able to have Dr. S over for a slice of her world-famous key lime pie, or being invited to a spur-of-the-moment feast of grilled hamburgers at the house of a venerable professor, or having a student over for a good chat, I have mixed feelings about being so close to nature...
In any case, with nature near or far, it's officially summer and my plan is to enjoy every single one of its upcoming 99 days.
¡Bienvenido sea el verano!
1 comment:
I'm so glad you posted this picture of the squirrel. I always think they look like sharks! I think it's the undercut jaw.
I'm glad you're enjoying the curtains, too.
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