Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

 

As I walked through my dining room today, I looked out the windows and saw this beautiful creature. A first for me. So I snapped some photos then set to work researching to see if I could find what it likely is. My best guess at this point is it's a juvenile Summer Tanager. I've never had such colorful birds at my feeders. Ever. The color just takes my breath away.

I'm trying to work, really work, but the action at the bird feeders is incredibly distracting. The biting cold and snow have the birds eating constantly, which is fine by me. I love just sitting here watching them. But I'm not getting any work completed. Perhaps I should wait until this evening, after dark, to start work. The third pic I took last Sunday. I walked over to the hill to snap a few photos. There were people sledding. I stood and listened to them laugh and whoop as they whooshed down the hill under the blood moon.

Just two weeks left for the semester. I'm kind of feeling I didn't give this semester the best of me, but the students seem to be okay. I'm not sure I ever really left sabbatical mind to return to teaching mind. I went through the motions of teaching but only enough to fulfill the very basic requirements. My thoughts were constantly on my own writing, and new ideas kept pestering me. I couldn't ignore them. Recently I received three rejections in one week. That was definitely a downer. Especially when I see all the So-and-So's poem will be published in What's-It-Called review every time I log into the site where I post my work for critique. Seems like everyone else is getting published. I can't help but wonder why I'm not. I was really tempted to just call it quits after the third rejection. I wallowed in my misery for a good day or so. Then I decided if I'm really serious about this whole publishing thing, I have to keep trudging on. It's real...

An interesting aspect of living in this house with its one wall of large windows is the number of birds that fly into the glass. About a week or so ago, I was here at my computer and Angel Baby was sitting on the couch looking through some videos before heading off to class. I heard a very loud thunk and thought maybe he had dropped his phone. After a few seconds, Angel Baby called out, "Ummm, Mom, a bird just smacked against the window and there's a huge hawk sitting on top of the bird feeder." I dashed to the living room, wanting to see the hawk, but it was gone by the time I got there. The little bird, though, was crumpled on the deck. I went out to check on the bird. It was still breathing, very quickly, and its beaked opened then closed as if it was gasping for breath. I cradled it in my hands for some time then took it over to the edge of the yard and set it down in a bed of fallen leaves. For the next 45 minutes, I checked on it to be sure it was hanging in there...