Let's hear it for the man!

One evening last week at the end of an unusually long, dry, sunny spell for a NW Oregon winter, Rick rototilled as much of the garden as he had daylight to do it. Friday he brought home a bunch of starts and some seeds, and yesterday - at least two months earlier than ever possible before - he started our garden! We have lettuces, cabbage, and Walla Walla onions (starts); radishes, carrots and peas (seeds). The rhubarb he planted earlier is looking good, too. With the cost of everything, included food, going up at an alarming pace, I feel very blessed to be able to grow some of our own food. Now if we just had enough acreage to grow our own hay!

Several blogs I follow have featured the wild birds of their areas - often cardinals and bluejays, which we don't have here. I have decided to try my best with my little digital camera to "capture" some of our local wild birds for you. We have a bird feeder on our deck, and enjoy watching the birds eat their meals as we eat ours. But most keep their distance if I venture out with a camera - except for a few. This is one of our smallest visitors, a little chestnut-backed chickadee (we also see the standard black-capped variety).
And this is one of my favorites, the red-breasted nuthatch.They zip in, grab a black-oil sunflower seed, and zip out - often when humans are quite close.

That's it for now at . . .