Good news in the nest!

Our Eastern Bluebird pair have finally laid a beautiful blue egg! It’s gorgeous!

I just checked them, since they’ve been hanging around their box more today. They both left and went to sit on an adjacent fence. So out I trotted and found the nest NOT empty. What a joy that was. I’m pulling for them to successfully fledge the youngster that is developing, hopefully, in that egg. I also hope they’ll lay some more eggs. Last year they had three eggs at the most, but only hatched/fledged two from one clutch. The first clutch went bad due to other pesky interfering non-native birds.

Along those lines, European Starlings have been seen flying close by with nesting material. They appear to be nesting somewhere on the roof of the house next door. These birds are the most bothersome, and I’d love to be able to shoot them.

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

I just saw a female Rose-Breasted Grosbeak in our backyard and in the feeder.

It’s a first for me to see one of these birds, and therefore to see one at this property.

For birders, life-lists sitings are exciting. So, I’m excited, for me needless to say, but to let y’all know, it’s a very exciting thing for me!

She was beautiful, all decked out in her “breeding style”.

Here’s a link to enature’s topic about the bird It’s a photo of the male, nothing I can do about that. But here is a photo of a female. I searched Yahoo! and it’s just one link that came up, but a very beautiful photo!

Carpet, going, going …

We’ve moved stuff around in the house. I ripped out most of the carpet in the ‘livingroom’, the only remaining is what’s under the entertainment armoire. It’s just too big and heavy to do anything with by myself, and not worth enlisting Frank to do anything about it, unless we would be moving it all to another spot, which isn’t really do-able just yet.

This was on Saturday, by the way. We had knocked around all kinds of ideas, and my one old idea [that's been in my head, and repeated aloud quite often for a few years] came to the forefront, and was implemented.

Our livingroom no longer exists, that’s now the “dining room” and the “eat-in side of the kitchen” is now my “office/education space”. We have many things we need to do, to get it all into shape. But the overall move is done, I’m sitting with my laptop right where we used to eat all our meals. It’s rather nice. The kitchen isn’t so cramped, and the dining room is so “spacious”. Eating at the table in there is a blessing.

The main thing that remains to do, besides massive organization of stuff, is ripping out molding, painting, installing wood floor, ceramic tile, etc., then new moldings.

That’s all off in the distant future. For now, we are living on the sub-floor in many rooms. We have carpet to remove from bedrooms next. It’s not bad at all, we are doing all the work, and I love demolition work. That’s a bonus. I love install work too, and painting. This whole “project” is one that is crazy, and I love it!

A side project to this is finishing the basement. It was never finished, so we aren’t ripping it up, just need to get it fully wired and the floors, walls, ceilings covered. Frank has his office down there now. It’s a temporary setup, with the ethernet cable to hook his computer up to the router put through a hole in the wall. From my office table in the kitchen, through the wall, into that basement room to Frank’s computer. It’s a fast way to wire ;) just temporary though.

Frank’s happy, he has his computer to work with, while on the phone — alone. I have mine here, in a better spot in the kitchen. And the passage-ways won’t be so clogged up now. If you’ve never been here, you can’t imagine it all. But if you have been here, perhaps you can.

It’s a tri-level house … left to right it’s garage on a slab, kitchen/livingroom on a crawl space, then the next section is two levels — down to the basement rooms and up to the bedrooms. It makes for a major space that’s mostly meant to be a passageway, and not much space to do things with, in the way of permanently stationed furniture. Eventually, the downstairs will house our “family room” and that’s the best this house will do. I’d much rather have a dining room than a living room, if it meant having to eat in a funny kitchen, and if you have guests over for a meal, that’s where it all happens too.

No more!