seeds

My sweet peas have finished their blooming season but left behind many seeds in anticipation of next seasons blooms.

Mockingbirds are My Favorite

The other day, I was wasting some time, casually flipping through a book "Attracting Birds to Your Backyard." The page that caught my eye was "What to do if you find a baby bird." The book told me not to worry that a mother bird might reject a nest that smells like human - it's just an old wive's tale. If it's obviously too young to be out the nest, it said, pick that bird up and put it back in.

Wouldn't you know it, today I found a baby bird in my back yard. The purplish kind, with no real feathers, tightly shut eyes, and wide open mouth. I thought it was dead, laying in the sun under our avocado tree. I looked closer and it was breathing. What to do?! What to do?! Then I remembered the common-sense advice: "Look around for a nest." And there it was, about 10 feet up in the avocado tree. I picked up that little bird, climbed a ladder, and tucked it back into the nest next to his sleeping baby brother.

I couldn't even tell what kind of bird it was. But when I came back with my camera, I saw a grown-up mockingbird with a bright red berry in its mouth swoop into the tree, then heard two little peeping voices.