Bluebirds, Garbage, and SAM4

Just ten days ago I showed you four fragile naked baby bluebirds here. Now they're cute little bundles of fluffy feathers.

Click on pictures to embiggen.

Today they're two weeks old. All four are in this pile and looking healthy.

I've opened the nest box for the last time. The chicks have started to exercise their new wings and need to stay safely enclosed in the box for three or four more days. Then their parents will take them out into the real world for flying and food gathering lessons.


The male on the right was annoyed at me poking his nest and turned his back on me.

All the better to show you his cute little tail.


Destruction Picture of the Day
(Details on what is happening are here.)

Typical of SW Michigan country roads, our two nearest cross roads are a mile apart to the east and west of our house. We live closest to the east crossroad.

The tree crew started on the east end of the road and has moved on west with their noise and nasty habit of throwing their downed trees in the middle of the road.

Most of us have rigged up temporary mail boxes, but the mail lady won't come down the road because she can't get all the way through. We're driving a sixteen mile round trip to pick up our mail at the post office. This could go on for weeks.

Totally inconvenient and expensive with the current price of gas.

Yesterday the neighborhood optimistically dragged our Herbys (garbage cans)out to the road. In our hearts we knew - the garbage man wasn't coming down this way when he had a good excuse to skip us. It is the second week we've not had garbage pickup. This could become an ugly problem.


After much thought about being careful not to over commit myself, I joined the Sock a Month 4 Knit A Long.

The rules are pretty lenient. To get all possible points five pair of socks are required, one pair finished in each of the remaining months of the year.

In September I'll be knitting Bob's birthday socks. In November I'll be knitting Gail's Christmas socks. In December I'll be knitting Anne's birthday socks. That leaves August and October for some Me socks.

Finished socks are posted on the SAM4 blog. I'm looking forward to seeing all the different socks the group makes.

First month is August, so there's still plenty of time to sign up and join us.