Not Much Going On

I can’t say with any honesty that I spent much time noticing the outdoors this weekend. I spent Saturday in the wilds of suburbia running weekend errands and doing holiday shopping. I did take Dog with me for the ride and rewarded him for good behavior with a run at the dog park afterwards.

I spent all of Sunday working at Ski Roundtop, which is doing a booming pre-Christmas business, with perhaps the best pre-holiday skiing I’ve ever seen here in the years I’ve lived at the cabin.

In the few minutes I had to notice the outdoors, I spent it trying to de-ice my driveway, to little success. Despite ice-melt and kitty litter, it’s still pretty much a skating rink. Baby Dog skidded around the curve and slid onto her face, legs going in all directions. She seemed unfazed by that, though.

When I was working at the computer I saw an American goldfinch sitting in the tree next to the computer window. This is the first one I’ve seen in a while, and the first since I broke down and spent money for the niger seed that they like. I’ve also bought peanuts in the shell for the blue jays, and now they have become much more frequent visitors as well.

Sometimes I think I spend more money on bird seed than I do on food for me. My feeder birds like that expensive seed, the variety called Woodpecker. The same company has a variety called Chickadee, which since I have more chickadees than anything, you’d think would be the kind to get. But all the birds prefer Woodpecker. To that delicious mix of nuts and other things, I add black-oil sunflower seed, niger and peanuts in the shell. I also put out a suet bar, but it usually just sits there, and the woodpeckers eat the nuts in the mix.