Purple Martin Houses Are Up

6:50

6:59

House Finch 

It's a partly cloudy morning after a dazzling few minutes of sunrise.  It's cooled off a bit, 53º, but will get up into the '70s later in the day.  There's a light southeasterly, nothing like yesterday's winds.  The southwesterly winds seem to me to be something new over the past ten years.  The wind used to usually come from the northwest but now, it seems as though it more frequently comes from the south, perhaps the result of climate change.  Who knows for sure.  I got in a good paddle, even though the wind picked up as I went, and I photographed a wood duck with its fledgling which was neat.  I also noticed that a few purple martin scouts were checking out our houses this morning, a good sign.

Kayak Morning

Wood Ducks

Dad With A Fledgling

Wood Duck Couple

Common Mergansers

We had no real plan for yesterday at least I didn't except for one task, to set up our new purple martin pole with four gourds.  So after a paddle and breakfast, I went outside and struggled as usual with putting the three pieces of the martin pole together.  I finally looked at the directions and with Evie's help, put the pieces together.  I then walked out into the water with my waders, pounded another pipe into the lake, and carefully walked the 15-foot pole with gourds out to the pipe and set it in place and voila, we had two martin houses ready for residency.  Interestingly Evie was able to get a photo of a purple martin scout yesterday, sitting on our house, deciding if it was up to snuff.

Purple Martin Houses Are In The Water

A Purple Martin Scout

A Photograph Of Martin Babies From Last Summer

I took a time out from that ordeal and drove to Mayville to Rite Aid to pick up a prescription for Evie and took a long way home, enjoying the greening of Spring.  When I returned home, Evie had my lunch ready, homemade soup, and toasted cheese sandwich.  I started a new series and cannot remember its name so it must not have been memorable.  I then turned to my novel and quickly fell asleep, an apt comment on the book, The rest of the afternoon until 4:00 was spent out in the backyard with Evie.  I basically used my hedge clippers to shape the red twigs, the lilac tree, the hydrangea tree as well as grasses.  Once again, I filled up a couple of pails with twigs and grasses, took them up the hill, only to fill them up again. Just as we were finishing, it started to rain but we wanted to finish the clean up so we stayed out even though it began to pour then sleet.  Both of us ended up drenched and I stripped and took a shower to clean up.  It rained hard for about 15 minutes soaking our porch furniture and some pillows on a bed where we had forgotten that the windows were open.

The Blue After The Storm

We did accomplish quite a bit so we decided to celebrate with a couple of manhattans and a bowl of popcorn. It was another spectacular late afternoon, the lake a deep cobalt blue and it was hard to believe that an hour ago, we were being pelted by rain and sleet,  Dinner was easy, just warming up the leftover teriyaki pork chops from Wednesday, heating up some mashed potatoes and making a salad,  We watched Jeopardy and Colbert, then a couple of disappointing episodes of the third season of Shtisel.  They should have stopped at two seasons, as Season Three is often silly and lacks the poignancy of the first two seasons.  

Squirrel Looking At Evie