It's 30 degrees, windy and some snow showers and my neighbors are out with their leaf pickerupper! You won't catch me out in this kind of weather. Once my hands get cold they ache until I come inside. Unless we get a warmer spell everything will have to wait till spring here too. I enjoyed reading your responces. Thanks for adding your thoughts. Carol, hope you both get well before long. I read about your back, bummer. I guess I didn't think about aging when I started all this garden work years ago! Everything we changed was such an improvement to the garden. Fifteen years later and it has taken a toll on me, especially this past year. I think I get slower by the minute. Upkeep is about all I did this year and not a good job at that. LOL Happy Thanksgiving to all my great Hosta Friends. It's just 10 days away! Connie

What beautiful stories....thank you, kindred spirits! My own love of nature began in childhood, when my parents' 2 acres of woods and creek seemed to hold unlimited possibilities for discovery and adventure. I knew no names of things, only the richness of sensory experience.....the scarlet of Virginia Creeper in September, the trilling of Spring Peepers in March, the smell of honeysuckle in June. I loved the strangeness, the vast mystery, the invitation for exploration that the woods represented. As a teenager, I drew away from nature, absorbed in the usual teenage activities. Then in college I needed a science credit of some kind and impulsively chose Field Ecology. The choice changed my life! I learned, for the first time, the LOGIC of nature, the amazing harmony of ecological interdependency. It just blew me away that 'nature' wasn't just some hodge-podge of living things, but that each component......from rocks to soil type to plants and trees to insects to birds and mammals....each were intertwined in marvelously balanced, perpetual cycles which made sense, made more sense, in fact, than most human activities. I learned to identify the "22 natural communities of Missouri," the limestone glades and granite balds, the oak-hickory forest and the ox-bough slough. For years after I could go nowhere without drawing a companion's attention to the natural community we were passing. Then I moved away. But I came back some years later. It seems I am as hopelessly native to this region as an indigenous bird or wildflower. I could not feel at home anywhere else. Having returned here, I've made an ongoing project of identifying trees and birds, fossils and wildflowers. I'm rehabilitating my family land to (hopefully) return it to its natural state, and I've volunteered with wildlife and wild bird rescue groups. These have been very educational experiences, but the scientific aspects of nature hardly represent the full picture for me. As an artist, my aesthetics are almost entirely inspired by nature, the seasons, the textures, the colors.....these define my personal sense of soul and spirit. Alone on a walk in the woods, I experience a peace and larger perspective, profound feelings of awe, respect and gratitude. Much, much gratitude. I guess, as Frank Lloyd Wright would say, "Nature is my church." I've also been very involved in local efforts to curtail development that would destroy the last refuges of nature here, both in zoning of private land and public parks. Because if you love something, especially something that cannot defend itself, sometimes you have to fight for it. This activism has also added enormous richness to my life, for I have learned the fascinating protocols and structure of community politics, and through it met my closest friends, including my dear, sweet boyfriend, a nature lover like me. But where did I get my love of the woods? I don't know. It seems to have been there forever...

I feed 2 types of suet or lard - the plain raw beef suet in a suet cage, and a home-made mixture of rendered fat (suet or lard) with peanut butter, corn meal and flour, nuts, etc. Rendered suet stays solid at higher temperatures - I think it's in the 90s F - than unrendered suet. I do feed the raw suet year round and it doesn't melt because we don't get temps in the 90s that often, and also the suet cage is sited on the north side of a large tree trunk so it has little sun exposure. The woodpeckers love the raw suet but many other birds will nibble on it too. Many birds also love the home-made mixture, and the Bluebirds come every winter to eat nuggets. This past winter I had up to 12 bluebirds! But I feed much less of all the bird food in the summer because there are usually plenty of insects for them to eat.

I feed Safflower seed (squirrels don't like it, but most songbirds do) and homemade suet (lard, peanut butter, wheat flour, cornmeal and oatmeal) pretty much all year round. This recipe usually won't melt unless the temps get into the 90's. Sometimes I buy the fruit/nut seed mix to give the birds a treat. I take breaks on the suet to discourage the Starlings which love to hang on my "starling-proof" suet feeder. I have several very large hummingbird feeders which I keep full all summer long. I kept track of how much sugar I used last year... 128 lbs! Speaking of holes in the trees, we have one Oak which is hollow inside and just this week I noticed there are about 6 large holes almost in a straight line going up from the base of the tree. I need to get a picture of it. My husband cut part of the top off last year, but I asked him to leave the trunk for the birds. Everyone's photos are great!