a nest in an unlikely place and other doings

Believe it or not I do proofread my posts before I publish and still they escape me. Last post, it should have been ‘garden’ soil not ‘green’ and spring grasses and ‘weeds’ not ‘winds’. Besides the spring grasses and weeds these warmer days have also brought the fire ants back up to the surface. Oh joy.

The other day I walked into my studio room/office and startled a wren in the house and out it flew through the open door to the little backyard. This is not an unusual occurrence in the spring when I have the door open and no screen as they are curious little birds and they like to build nests in places like the garage and barn. The last day or two I’ve noticed some dried plant material on my desk and the floor, not a whole lot and I thought maybe it had come in on Cat. Yesterday morning I happened to look up at the light fixture above me to see this…

I climbed up on the desktop to get a better look. 

Wouldn’t it be cool if she did lay eggs and hatch some babies except, you know, it’s indoors and access to the outside is limited and then there’s a resident cat who would be happy to pounce on the little fledglings. 

I finally got out there Friday and started working on two of the garden plots. Didn’t get the all the weeds out of the bigger one but got three fourths done. I saw that one of my clumps of narcissus finally decided to bloom. 

I was going to spend the rest of the day doing what I really want to do which is work on the current mobile but that didn’t happen, only spent about a half hour and then it was more outside work; fertilize and water all the pots, use an organic poison on the fire ant mounds and water that in, walk the dog, feed the outside cats, and fix dinner which was a sort of cheaters cabbage roll casserole. I already had ground beef, onion, celery, garlic in the freezer left over from stuffed bell peppers so I chopped some cabbage and sautéed it, added in the meat mixture and some of my tomato sauce from last year, put it all in a baking dish, covered it with leftover mozzarella and baked it for about 20 minutes.

Yesterday morning after breakfast I went across the street and worked on cutting back stuff for about an hour and so another big pile to be moved to the burn pile. Spent the rest of the day finishing the armature for the bigger mobile and trying to arrange the crystals to get a balance in weight and shape. Harder than it seems as I spent hours moving them around from spot to spot and finally had to make two adjustments to the armature, replacing one of the arms completely and adding an extension to one end. 

Still not completely happy with it so I imagine I’ll be futzing around with it again today and since it turned cold again last night, currently in the 40s, I won’t be distracted by the outdoors. Maybe. It’s a pretty day, cloudless blue sky and it will warm up. At the very least I should gather up some of the piles and if not get them to the burn pile at least get them in the back of the truck.