Wordless Wednesday: "There's beauty all around me in every living thing ..."

I just never get tired of seeing them in the trees around our house. When everything else is going wrong, I'm reminded of the miracle of simple beauty.

Visit Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday: Pretty boy

I tried to get the female, but she wasn't brave enough to pose for me.




Visit Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday, Cardinal again

Visit Wordless Wednesday

Redbirds and reminiscing

Last week I meant to post a follow up to my Wordless Wednesday post, the photograph of the cardinal in my back yard. Busy-ness and life seemed to get in the way, so I thought I'd add a little postscript now.

Cardinals are my favorite birds, hands down. I can thank my family for that, mostly my daddy. Although I am a south Florida native, the rest of my family was born in West-by-God Virginia. (If you're from that neck of the woods you know exactly what I mean, and if you aren't? That's okay, it mostly matters to those aforementioned neck-of-the woods folks.)

The cardinal is the West Virginia state bird, and growing up I always knew that. We had a huge ficus tree in our back yard, big enough that the shade covered most of the grass. For those of you up north, the ficus trees are those spindly looking things that you find in large decorative pots, usually in hotel lobbies. The first time I saw one of those in my University up in DeKalb, Illinois, I laughed. It seemed so absurd that the climbing tree of my childhood had been reduced to this caricature of nature. I wanted to set it free, to send it out into the world to seek its true potential! Go! Run free!!!

But I digress.

Our backyard ficus tree was home to what I perceived to be hundreds of birds. My daddy's favorites were the family of cardinals. He made sure I saw the 'redbirds' every time they came to the feeder, and I knew that the female was more of a subdued, muted brown. Daddy Redbird was a sight to behold. Vivid, stunning red, with a call that I will always recognize.

Our feeder was not as stunning, however. It was a beat up old aluminum pan whose handle was long gone, its shine had disappeared years before. As I look back, I think it might have been from one of mama's first sets of cookware. Daddy filled it religiously and became extremely put out if the pigeons showed up; or the squirrels. The feeder was a temptation to them both, as he left it in easy access in the center of our ceramic picnic table. (I think it was more fun for him to complain and puff up protectively than it would have been to simply move it.)

I grew up, married, and moved away. My dad passed on, and eventually the tree had to be cut down. Mama passed away 14 years later and my sister and I sold the house. Just before mama died, we bought our current home. It's on a spacious corner lot, and the lot just behind us has never been developed. It's full of Australian pine trees. In hurricane season we fear for our roof, their trunks are so soft. But the trade off? The trade off is that I now have my own redbirds. They visit my patio, they perch in my trees, and they visit my feeder.

My daughter is carrying on the tradition of listening for them, for helping keep the feeder full and ready. The pigeons of my childhood are nowadays extremely fat, well fed mourning doves, but at least my feeder has not attracted the squirrels. Yet.

I can hear them outside now, time to go fill the feeder.

Wordless Wednesday, Cardinal

_{click for larger image}

Visit Wordless Wednesday