Applewood Annie, bless your heart for remembering me. I'm still around, though since I lost my DH last summer my time for checking in on GW has not been the same. Used to be that I popped in every single day - sometimes more than once, but I've no time for that any more, and not so much time for my gardens either I'm sad to say. I've tried to make a promise to myself to photograph the gardens more this year, even if only to help me some day remember the beauty I created around a home I no longer can view as being the place I'll stay the rest of my life, sigh. Sorry to hear about your health problems. What a terrible time you have had! I hope you have some beautiful roses anyway this year - and better days ahead. It's fun to see so many people pop in, but sad when I see the names of some very wonderful people I met here over the last 12 years and now so many of them are lost to us all. That's the nature of this way of relating to people. We only see a small window on someone's life and they can close it and turn their backs at any time, leaving us in the dark as to what happened. That's the trouble; never having the end of the stories...

I’m so glad to read all the conversation about everone’s thoughts and experiences in each of your own neck of the woods. In the several weeks since my last post, I have slowly noticed changes around my feeders. We now have about a dozen bluebirds who are daily visitors. They began coming even before the recent arctic weather we’ve been experiencing here in the NE lately. Same for the woodpeckers - downy, hairy, and red bellied, and cardinals. Before the cold blast, we had more chickadees than we do now. We had less than a handful of goldfinches, but now their numbers are ever so slowly creeping up. Not too many nuthatches or titmice, but a few that frequent daily. A couple of squirrels have returned. Interestingly, my husband has a friend who feeds squirrels exclusively and his friend said the population of those that are regulars at his house nearly all but disappeared! Also, last week we heard about a gentleman in his 90’s in our town who has fed the birds for over 40 years! He experienced the same mass feeding frenzy near summer’s end that I did, then the complete drop off of any birds to be seen at all. He says he’s never experienced this in all his years of bird feeding that he recalls. We were going through nearly 2x’s the amount of seed than normal, to all of a sudden having seed sit out and basically spoil because it was hardly even touched for weeks on end. With the frigid temperatures, I have noticed an increase in the hawks eyeing our feeder birds. They have been unable to find food in the woods and areas they normally frequent due to a tremendous amount of snow and have, unfortunately, captured some of our unsuspecting feathered friends. They are quite bold, and hard to scare off, which is also unusual. And yes, we also have some feeder birds that seem unbothered by my presence at the feeders while filling them, and don’t fly away til I’m nearly on top of them! This year has certainly been a very interesting year in the local bird world!

Hi vgkg.. No, nothing was disturbed. But all 3 of the potted tomatoes have cages around them, so a bird could sit on some of that, to get the worms. I wonder......I don't think hummers would be interested, but my hummer feeder is about 15' away from the tomatoes and downy woodpeckers frequent it. So maybe they got them? It's all very strange. Even the tiniest cats are gone. I miss them.....

caflowerluver, I haven't looked lately for noodles - or pasta - but I learned to make egg noodles by hand when a small child and can whip up a batch pretty quick, so a darth of those wouldn't present a problem for me. In Omaha, Nebraska, in the 50s, we had: noodles; spaghetti; macaroni (for salads); potatoes; and rice; that was it ! I remember a recipe that called for Acini de Pepe when living in Wisconsin in the 70s. I had to hunt for such a pasta in more than a few stores to find it. (Such a wild thing. ) Probably had to go to Old Italy in Milwaukee to find it. My German/American Mother occasionally made potato dumplings that were heavenly tasting and shapped like a long, skinny, breakfast sausage. Never did learn to make those because she always made those when alone. My DD lived in Berwyn - suburb of Chicago - in the 90's . The Italian/American neighbors always called what they put on their pasta "gravy".