Today has been another beautiful day with the winter blue sky I love. Ate my bagel on the porch this morning and watched the birds on the feeders. So happy to have perky pansies in my cement urns. Have missed my flowers so much! Oldest brother came by for his daily visit. We sat in the swings but Mother Nature started blowing her wind so we retreated to the lady den. Just don’t remember our corner of the world last year being so windy. Be nice to have these cool breezes in the summer time when we’re sweating in our vegetable gardens. As the sun sets and the night gently falls, the birds find their roosts and I only hear a few hoots from the owls.

Saw a new bird visitor in the yard today, a cedar waxwing. They don’t visit the feeders usually but a small flock were hiding and fluttering in the small magnolias by the feeders. I need to have my yard professionally pruned and have all the small magnolias and bushes taken out around the oak tree. It’s a mess but the birds love it. It’s a great place to rest and hide. Cedar waxwings are berry eaters. Very pretty little birds. They are pale brown and gray and sport the Lone Ranger little black mask on their face. They have a crest and their bellies are lemon yellow. If you look closely you can see red spots on their wings when they fly. They have pert expressions. You’ll see them in small flocks. I counted 16 birds when they flew away. Cedar waxwings pass through here every year and eat the berries off the large holly trees in the neighborhood. They swarm around the trees like bees. It’s really interesting to watch them. It’s like a bird tornado and once all the berries are eaten, away they go. They used to come to our yard in Alexander City and eat the purple berries off the Chinese privet bushes. They’d strip them clean!

I listen to music from my Echo Dot each night while composing my ponders. I ask Alexa to play music from the 1970s. I have never enjoyed anything more than this technological genius! So many wonderful memories buzz around in my brain while I’m writing, triggered by music from my high school and college years. I can’t imagine life without music. All the beautiful music of movie sound tracks. Think of the movie Jaws and how those two bass notes were so climactic. I admire anyone who can play the piano well. One of my friends is a talented pianist and composes beautiful music. He wrote a piece years ago dedicated to a friend. He captured her so perfectly in the music. While I listened to him playing the composition I could clearly see her. I am amazed by his talent. I just can’t imagine how the magic works with composers. Such a gift.

I took piano lessons when I was a child. Wasn’t very good at it. Never got my left hand to really get in sync with my right hand. Thank goodness my parents let me quit those lessons. My oldest two children took piano lessons for several years. But like me they played their yearly recital music well but didn’t set the piano world on fire either. In the fifth grade, I discovered the trumpet. Loved it and was a pretty good trumpet player. Joined the high school band in the sixth grade and enjoyed every minute of my band years. Sat first chair first in the concert band for a couple of years. Went to All State band. Played my trumpet once or twice in college and years later my oldest son started his band years with my trumpet. Now my youngest grandson is playing my trumpet and excelling in his first year of band. My brothers had to bale a lot of hay one summer to pay for that trumpet. My oldest grandson is doing well in band, too, playing French horn the last two years. Said he wanted to learn the French horn because “he loved a challenge.” I’m so happy they’re learning to play a musical instrument. Whether or not they continue in the band program at school, once they learn to read music and learn their instruments, they’ll have those skills the rest of their lives.

Always make me mad we can’t watch the band shows at halftime during college football games. Band students put so many hours into memorizing the music and learning all their marching parts in the show. Takes hours and hours and blood, sweat, and tears to create the halftime magic. When I wrote about people who inspired me I should have included Ronald Hyche, my band director at Handley High School. Every year he took a group of teenagers and whipped them into a marching and concert phenomenon. We worked so hard, sweating in the heat of summer, practice after practice, but with his determination and motivation, he always made us a winning combination. Not many high school bands can excel in both marching and concert seasons. But we did and brought home the trophies to prove it.

Read in my wondering mode that “students who participate in music courses exercise more of their brain than in any courses they take in school!” So many life lessons were learned during my band years. We learned how to work as a team, learned how to cooperate together, and learned that determination and hard work increase your chances of achieving success. We learned self discipline and goal setting skills. I also learned that if you carry your coffee cup like we marched across the field in the band you won’t spill a drop.

Thanks, Mr. Hyche!