Keeping Track of Time

I got a kick out of Mary's statement in yesterday's post, where she said she had to look at her cell phone to verify that it was Wednesday. Is this a sign of old age creeping up or are we all just too busy?

Here's the first thing I see when I stagger out to the kitchen at 4:10 a.m. on workdays:

My day clock!

I took this picture at "half past Thursday" today when I got home.

I don't need to know the date, knowing the actual DAY of the week has become much more important.

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I have a nearly dead tree in my front yard. In spring of 1988, this was the first tree I planted at our new house--a clump birch from ShopKo that was 5 feet tall and cost me $12. It was a beautiful, fast growing tree and probably about 8 years ago, it started to die. I'm not going to cut it until it Mother Nature finally blows it down. (My neighbor across the street comes over at least 3 times a year and asks me when I'm going to let him cut it down.)

All of the birds love this tree. The branches are still very tall and any bird perching on it can get a wonderful view all over the yard. Yesterday evening when I was out watering flowers, the following birds were all sitting on a branch somewhere in this tree at the same time: bluebird, robin, goldfinch, cedar waxwing, house finch, chipping sparrow, and hummingbird. Now why in the world would I take a bird magnet like this down?

This evening the tree wasn't quite as busy, but I did get this grand picture of the male bluebird surveying his kingdom from the topmost branch. I will post some more stories about the benefits of dead trees in a future blog.