Rummage Sale Saturday

A handsome little male house finch.

We survived the rummage sale. Sales were not brisk but we did end up selling almost $200 worth of stuff. Unfortunately, there's still quite a lot that didn't sell. Now I have to figure out what to do with everything left over.

The weather was very cooperative. We had a few sprinkles around 7:15, then the skies cleared up and it was sunny until about 2:30. The sale was over at 3:00 and shortly after I finished taking down the signs and started putting stuff away it started raining again. Perfect timing (our prayers were answered).

There was a fine variety of nice people who showed up to visit, some of them bought stuff and some of them just took some time to visit for a while. One car drove into the driveway with a North Carolina license plate. Wow, this rummage sale had some really great advertising if people were willing to drive all the way from North Carolina!! Alas, this nice couple had really come to visit Mayo Clinic for help with the lady's medical condition. Sissy and I spent a lot of time chatting with her while Rick took the gentleman in the house to show off his hunting trophies. Turned out the man was also a deer and turkey hunter and he was amazed at how big our Minnesota whitetails were compared to the North Carolina ones.

While we were talking to the lady she mentioned that she was having some problems with getting anyone at Mayo to remove some stitches from a cut on her forehead--the result of a fall that had occurred during their trip to Minnesota. At that time, Sissy told this lady that she was an RN and would be happy to remove those stitches if the lady would agree to that. She was so happy! I grabbed a sharp little scissors from my knitting gadget bag and a tweezers and Sissy has those stitches out in about 45 seconds. They are hoping to be done at Mayo early next week and on their way back to North Carolina. We wished them the best and they were on their way to their next adventure in Minnesota. I'm sure they'll have some interesting stories to tell when they get home.

We had a nice couple also stop by from Montana. They were visiting his family in the area and taking some time to drive around on this nice Saturday and take part in the rummage sale mania.

Because it was a nice day and with breaks between customers, I had some time to watch birds a little bit. Here are some pictures of the goldfinches going through the screen guard that keeps grackles and other piggy birds from emptying my tube feeder every day. The finches especially like to pick out the sunflower hearts in this blend.

There's a female goldfinch over on the right side of the screen (partially behind the branch) getting ready to scoot through to get to the feeder.

The orioles have also discovered the mealworms in the dinnerbell feeder. I didn't get a picture of the oriole inside that feeder because just as I was focusing the camera to snap the picture, Mr. Cardinal (the self-appointed boss of the dinnerbell) chased the oriole away to the nearby oak tree. I put 50 worms in this feeder and also 50 worms in the oriole's dish with their jelly. Of course, the orioles ate all their worms right away. I think it's interesting that these bigger birds have figured out how to navigate under the cover of the dinnerbell feeder to get to the worms.

Oriole banished to the oak tree --waiting for the cardinal to leave so he can go back and eat some more worms from the dinnerbell.

That just looks like a challenging stance, doesn't it? You can almost hear him chirp, "beat it oriole, these are my worms, you can get yours from that other dish!"

Oriole's jelly and worm dish.

The cedar waxwings are gorging themselves on the remaining apple blossom petals. I didn't have the camera along when we walked out to the backyard, but we could see several up in the trees, chirping and fluttering about.

Sissy and I checked the robin nest near the garage and sure enough, 4 newly hatched babies were there. Mama Robin was very protective, so we didn't look for too long. We also checked in the bluebird nestbox and there were 6 eggs! (When I checked last Sunday night, Mrs. Bluebird wouldn't budge off the nest, so I didn't know she had laid another egg.) Wow - 6 eggs! I've never had a bluebird who laid that many. I hope all of them hatch. I should know by the middle of next week.