Tuesday, May 16, 2017

A Cold in May

My tonsils are whimpering, and my Eustachian tubes are irritable. It is a minor miracle that I am breathing through one nostril. Zivah is camped out in the guestroom with similar symptoms, though her coughing is more frequent than mine.

I might come across as a less-than-dramatic person, but the truth is, there is plenty of that going on inside my mind.

Dramatic Me: WOE IS ME!
Logical Me: Shut up. You aren't even close to being near death.
Dramatic Me: The snot!!! It runneth like a river from my nose!
Logical Me: Stop exaggerating.
Dramatic Me: Oh, who will save me from this misery!
Logical Me: Are you borrowing from the Apostle Paul, or Dr. Seuss?
Dramatic Me: I need to write poems about the agony of having a cold in spring. begins coming up with other words that rhyme with snot
Logical Me: debates with self whether it would be wiser to work through the cold or sit on the couch and rest
Me Me: listens to all the inward banter and decides it would be okay to ignore major housework and sit on the couch to write a little

I bought a new hummingbird feeder. The one the birds liked best grew mold in the inverted bottle that was impossible to clean out. The new feeder sports a wider mouth and little slits instead of  holes that are supposed to keep the wasps and other bugs out of it. I'm happy with the ease of cleaning but am not sure the birds like drinking through the slits.

Our second female duck is sitting on a pile of eggs. She just recently moved her nest right in front of the door, and while the other mama would run out in fright when I came in to check on things, this mama stays and hisses like a mad cat about to claw you to pieces. We will soon be overrun with ducks. If anyone in the Middle Tennessee area wants a few, let me know.

I started digging the Bermuda grass out of the garden a couple weeks ago, but as things tend to go around here, I still haven't finished, and the tomato plants Mark gave me are hanging on to life while they wait for transplantation. Guess there won't be much of a garden this year. I did manage to spray the fruit trees yesterday.

The gold finches are back. I should take a break to research whether they are migratory birds, but I am assuming so, since I never see them over the winter months. They have a habit of hanging out on the driveway in the mornings. When we leave for school, we scare them up, and their droopy flights always catch my attention. It's as if they are too heavy to stay aloft and start diving toward the ground. Then a few hard flaps, and they swoop back up, only to drop again.