WAY-BACK WEDNESDAY ~~ OUR LITTLE HOUSE ~~ PARTING SHOT

WAY-BACK WEDNESDAY

Tomorrow is Throwback Thursday, a day when you are supposed to share pictures from your past. Since I do my blog on Wednesdays, that doesn't work for me. So I am dubbing today as Way-Back Wednesday. Yes, friends, it is time to take a little walk down memory lane. Lately I have been transferring old pictures from disks back onto the desktop computer so I can add them to Google Photos. This is one way to make sure I have the pictures in case picture CD disks go the way of the 8-track tape (meaning become obsolete). I thought it might be fun to share some of these pictures on the blog. And seeing as how I didn't go anywhere this week to take any new pictures, now was a good time to do it. So fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a ride back to 2004-2005 (a couple of years before I became a southerner in the Northwest).

OUR LITTLE HOUSE

I know you've heard me refer to our "little house in Lumberton." Little is definitely the operative word here because it was less than 1000 square feet. It was totally a fixer-upper when we bought it, but it had so much charm and was perfect for just the two of us and our kitty. We enlisted the help of a couple of our friends in getting it fixed up (huge thank-you to Mike and Scott). We had so many good times there, enjoying our yard and having parties with our potluck group. We loved our little house so much that we would have brought it with us in the move to Yakima if we could have.

Our little house

THE YARD

The picture above shows what our house looked like right before we moved. Linda had transformed our yard from a barren, hard-pack dirt wasteland into a beautiful "sanctuary" for birds and other critters. I used to love to sit outside and watch the birds in the summer...while the sweat just poured off of me. But it was worth it as I have so many memories of watching the birds court, eat, drink, and play in our back yard.

The back flowerbed

We eventually put in a walkway around the flowerbed

Another flowerbed in the back yard

The picture above shows a rose bush at the top right. We had transplanted that rose bush from my parents' house on 14th street. My mother loved her roses, and I am so glad we were able to bring cuttings from that same rose bush with us to Yakima. We now have two rose bushes from those cuttings, and they are full of beautiful roses every year.

Linda talking to me as I sit
outside in the heat & mosquitos

THE CRITTERS

We had so many beautiful songbirds come to our yard in Lumberton. I didn't realize how much I would miss them when we moved. I remember one day counting 21 different bird species in our yard over the course of the day. I loved them all, but I do believe my favorites were the cardinals. They would visit our feeders constantly, and they even brought their young ones to our yard because they knew it was safe. We did not have an outside cat then, and we had a fence around the entire back yard. We rarely had a visit from any stray cats so our birds were relatively safe. We had squirrels, too. Lots of them. They would bring their babies to our yard as well. Our house was surrounded by three huge, very old oak trees and the squirrels would scamper up and down them all day. Sometimes we would sit in our back room (in the air conditioning) and watch the squirrels and birds outside while we had our drinkiepoo.

Cardinal Love

One day Linda called me at work and told me that our back yard had been invaded by a flock of cedar waxwings. She managed to get several pictures of them before they moved on. I was so sad that I wasn't there to see them! They are such beautiful birds with their face masks and colorful wing tips.

Cedar Waxwings
We sometimes see these birds in Yakima

I had an ongoing battle with the squirrels to try and prevent them from eating our birdseed from the feeders. We had them destroy several plastic feeders until we got wise and purchased metal ones. We didn't mind feeding them, but they would park themselves on a feeder and prevent the birds from getting any seed. I'm sure they would have eaten us out of house and home if we had let them. So we looked around and found a "squirrel-proof" feeder, bought it and hung it on our fence.  The birds were happy, as you can see in the picture below. The perch on the feeder would go down if a squirrel (or really heavy bird) got on it, closing up the opening to the seed.

However, it wasn't long before one devious little squirrel figured out how to outsmart the "squirrel-proof" feeder. He would hook his little foot on the top of the feeder and hang upside down so that his little mouth was right at the opening to the seed. He didn't even have to touch the perch, so it didn't close up. I was determined that he wasn't going to outwit me, so I devised a shield to go around the feeder. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. He was soon relegated to foraging around on the ground for seed.

Here he is, scoping out the situation

He thinks he knows a way around it

Now, to implement his plan

Curses, foiled again!!
(Shields at maximum)

The birds did not seem to mind the shield around the feeder, as you can see a Tufted Titmouse on it in the picture above. I know for a fact that the squirrels hated it, though!  He tried his best to get around it, but he fell off every time. It was only about a yard off the ground, so he didn't get hurt. We felt sorry for the little fellow, so we got a ground feeder for the squirrels and the larger birds, like the Mourning Doves.

Male Rose-breasted Grosbeak

He's happy now!  A feeder
all to himself

In addition to birds and squirrels in our yard, we also had visits from the Easter bunny. This little cutie showed up one day and we were delighted...until she started eating our plants! The last straw was when she completely ate Linda's Obedient Plant all the way down to the ground. There was nothing left of it. We finally managed to get her out of our yard using the water hose. We hated to do it, but she would have eaten every plant back there if we hadn't run her off. By the way, we named her Stella.

Stella, the Easter bunny

PARTING SHOT

Summer Girl was so determined to make it into the blog this week that she enlisted Linda's help to get an up-to-date selfie.

Reclaiming her rightful spot

That's all for this week, friends. I hope you all enjoyed our trip down memory lane for a change. Tune in again next week when I hope we get back to how things are going around here.