Deep blue sky this morning. Matches perfectly with the blue color named sky. Almost lost my bagels when I sat down in the swing. Much to Penelope’s dismay, I righted the plate before the bagels slid off. Only one wispy cloud in sight. Looks like a toddler drew it holding his white pastel stick in his little chubby fingers. Just a slight breeze…so peaceful…even the birds’ symphony is quiet. An occasional wind gust pings the wind chimes. I can hear the wind rustle the large fir trees in my great-grandmother’s yard across the street. On a really windy days, the trees sound like the mountains. The trees were planted when my mother was a little girl. Oldest brother says they’re at least 60 feet tall. Both trees have double trunks. Double trunk trees are codominant. Learned that word today. One day I’m going to find out exactly what kind of fir tree they are. Been looking for an hour at pictures of fir trees but can’t identify them yet.

There are four male brown headed cowbirds scratching and pecking under one of the bird feeders. Maybe they are scouts and will bring their flock tomorrow. Saw a big woodpecker on a suet basket earlier. There’s more female than male cardinals. Wonder where their partners are. The goldfinches are getting slim. There were only about a dozen around today. Guess they’ll be moving on soon. Was hoping they would stay till the indigo buntings come through.

Been watching a mocking bird torment a crow for 30 minutes. Don’t know why mocking birds bother crows. The crow would light on a branch and soon as he flew off the mocking bird was back chasing and trying to peck him. Mocking birds are confrontational with animals that eat baby birds. Seems like the crows would fight back but they just fly around trying to ignore the mockingbird. Mocking birds just dislike crows, I guess.

Just saw Fatty the squirrel’s cousin, Fattiest, the chipmunk. Kept hearing all this loud chewing and munching in the right corner of the porch. Knew a snake couldn’t be crunching anything and when I slid the chair out a very fat chipmunk shot out. He had love handles on both sides. Fatty is now gorging himself under the feeders. The chipmunk usually eats under the feeders, too, but today he was cleaning up the seeds that had fallen from filling the bird feeders on the porch. All my critters are chubby, including my dog! She has love handles, too.

The funniest thing happened this afternoon. I kept getting a text from a little old lady to obviously her preacher, Brother James. She’d send Bro. James a message. I’d send a message back and say, “This is Sister Lane, not Brother James, you have the wrong number.” She kept sending the text back, “Did you get my message Bro. James?” I finally I gave her my number and told her to check her number because she was texting the wrong person. I guess that worked. I haven’t heard from her again. Bless her heart!

I could just see her in my mind, a clone of Gladys Kravitz, reading glasses on a chain around her neck. Dressed in a shirt waist dress, cardigan sweater, and peaking out the window, looking for her niece, who is coming to visit, which was keeping them from visiting Bro. James tonight. Guess she drove her Abner crazy trying to text Bro. James. If this your grand maw I apologize.

My cousin and I were talking about martians and aliens last night and laughing about all the old magazine articles where people couldn’t account for periods of time and they said they had been abducted by aliens and “probed.” I remember seeing those articles in magazines. Did a little research and read about Barney and Betty Hill being abducted on a rural high in New Hampshire after visiting Niagara Falls in 1961. Kinda scary, so I’m not writing about them. When I was young, I thought if you thought about aliens, they’d feel your vibes and come and abduct you. The more I thought about them coming the more I worried. We got hysterical on the phone laughing about being abducted but it really frightened me when I was a child. Kinda frightens me now, too, so I better just hush!

“Sometimes I pretend to be normal but it gets boring so I go back to being me.” — Ain Eineziz