I haven’t done a “Wayback Wednesday” in quite a while. This is when I post some pictures from way back in the past. It is a theme that comes in handy when I don’t have many current pictures to share (and still no video because, you know, Apple). So without further ado, here are a few pictures from long ago.
If you’ve been a reader of this blog for very long, you’ve probably read about our little house back in Lumberton, North Carolina. I thought it might be a good idea to post a picture of it so you would know what I’m talking about. When we bought this house it had hard-pack dirt in the front yard (people had been parking their cars there) and the only plants were boxwood bushes on either side of the front porch and a humongous pine tree that was probably 100 feet tall. This picture below shows pretty much how our front yard looked when we left.
We loved this little house and we would have brought it with us if we could have. Of course, we love our house in Yakima because it has a second bathroom and a guest bedroom (plus a lot of other things our little Lumberton house was lacking), but as far as charm goes, this little house above was loaded with it.
The architect of all this beautifulness in our yard was Linda. She spent hours upon hours planting all kinds of bushes, plants, and trees. Then she mowed the grass, raked leaves, hauled pine straw for mulch, and did whatever it took to transform our yard into the sanctuary it became. I helped a little, but the bulk of the labor on this transformation was provided by her.
I took a lot of bird pictures on our little digital camera we got after we moved here. It was an inexpensive camera and we got it when digital cameras first became popular. The resolution on the pictures isn’t all that good, but at least I do have some pictures of my birdie friends from the East.
My favorite bird from back in North Carolina is the Cardinal. It is the state bird for NC, as well as for many other states. We had a lot of them come to our back yard, where we put out our feeders. During the spring the Cardinal parents would bring their babies to our yard to teach them how to eat at a bird feeder. They were so cute to watch! During molting season, I think they would come to our yard so they wouldn’t be seen by all the other birds…it had to be embarrassing to lose all your head feathers!
The bird in the picture below is a baby Mourning Dove. They have to be the sweetest birds ever to exist. They move around the yard making their soft cooing sounds, which are very comforting. They aren’t belligerent at all and get out of the way of other birds that are. We usually saw them in our back yard every day. Even though there are Mourning Doves in Yakima, for some reason we rarely see them in our yard.
I always called our back yard a sanctuary, because that’s exactly what it was to all the little creatures that came to visit. We didn’t have an outdoor cat back then, our back yard was totally fenced in so dogs and other riffraff couldn’t get inside, and the birds, squirrels, and bunnies felt safe there. There was ample food, water, and shelter for them at all times.
Squirrels…we had tons of them. They would also bring their babies and I would spend hours sitting outside just watching them and the birds…in the heat and humidity with sweat dripping off of me. Linda usually stayed inside because the mosquitos thought she was a buffet and they flocked to her whenever she was outside. I told her that they really liked her Southern California blood!
There was one little squirrel that was my nemesis. He and I had a contest to see who could outwit the other. It all started when he (or one of his little buddies) ate one of our bird feeders. I mean, they literally ate the feeder. It was plastic and didn’t last long up against their sharp little teeth. So we got a couple of “squirrel proof” feeders. They would always come up with some way to get into the feeder anyway. At first I got a small feeder and suspended it from a tree branch, high enough up so the squirrels couldn’t jump on it from the ground. Well, this one little guy would climb up onto the roof of our storage shed, back up to get a running start, and leap onto the feeder. Then he’d just park himself there for however long it took him to empty the feeder. Realizing that tactic wasn’t going to work, I then got a long piece of PVC pipe (probably 10 feet long) and buried one end in the ground and attached the small feeder to the other end of the pipe. So it was way up in the air like a flag pole. That little rascal shinnied up that pole like nobody’s business and slowly but surely the pole bent over until it was almost touching the ground. Another failure! Well, I wasn’t about to be outsmarted by a pesky little squirrel. My next wild idea was to take a hopper feeder we already had hanging on the fence and devise some kind of shield to keep him off of it. This little guy could hang upside down from the top of that feeder and eat to his heart’s content. I got some sheet metal and fashioned a sort of “baffle” around the outside of the feeder so he couldn’t get onto it. Success! He tried his best, but he could not figure out a way to thwart my contraption. It looked like a hot-mess of a feeder, but I had won the contest!
This is a picture of the little fellow below, sitting on the hopper feeder before I fixed it so he couldn’t get into it. I felt sorry for the little guy, though, so we got a ground feeder that we put out for the squirrels so they would have their own feeder. Some of the ground-feeding birds went to it as well. The birds were happy, the squirrels were happy, and I was happy! When I have more time, I am going to search through my old picture CD’s and see if I can find any pictures of the hopper feeder with the “baffle”.
RECIPE OF THE WEEK
I haven’t posted a link to a favorite recipe lately, but I made this granola yesterday and I just have to share it with somebody…anybody. It is so good you won’t believe it. And if you say you don’t like granola (that’s what I said), that just means you have never tried this one. It is from the A Cup of Sugar, A Pinch of Salt website (click for link <here>), and is for Coconut Almond & Honey Granola. Believe me, you will not be sorry if you make this. Well, I take that back, you might be sorry if you try to eat it all at one time because it definitely is addictive. Go to the link and check it out anyway, if only to drool over the picture. Here are my pictures below of this wonderful stuff. It made two quart jars full.
PARTING SHOT
Summer Girl is so busy sleeping these days that I can’t get her to pose for a picture. So I have to just take one, and she winds up looking like a black blob on the bedspread. I guess they can’t all be a glamour shot like she had last week.
Join me every Wednesday (barring any unforeseen circumstances) for more from the Southerner in the Northwest.
Southerner in the Northwest 
What a charming house indeed! And I forgot homemade granola was a thing! It’s been years and years but now I want to make some!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Do it, but you have to have control to not eat it all at once! LOL
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember the sweet mourning doves in the South. Here we have a pair of California ring-necked doves, white, quite large, almost the size of the pigeons that strut along the Seattle waterfront.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We have whole flocks of them, the Eurasian Ring-Collared Dove, which is a non-native species. I suspect they have displaced the Mourning Doves to some extent.
LikeLike
I often get recipes from Cup of Sugar. Or at least read them thoroughly! Yes, odd lady here. I like to read a recipe book. (need to find that old Betty Crocker one….) That is the most adorable house EVER! I’d totally live in it. But, yes, more than one bathroom is lovely. So miss that convenience. Your squirrel war made me giggle! Great work!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks so much, Kris! I love looking at recipes and I collect tons of them on my recipe app, most of which I will never make. I’ve made quite a few recipes from CSPS and they all turn out great.
LikeLike
The only frustration I have with online recipes is .OK, there are two! lol 1. The recipe is always at the END and I often don’t really want all the fluff. Although, sometimes if the fluff is actual help, that is good. The other thing, I so much prefer cookbooks with stains and more than one recipe per page!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Totally understand, lots of people prefer written books. I know what ya mean about all the fluff before the recipe, and I appreciate the blogs who give you a “jump to recipe” button. But I do read the fluff sometimes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
After I read the recipe, I sometimes go back and read. But, if it talks about how wonderful the recipe is and that it is to die for. Nope, just the recipe!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I chuckled as I read about your efforts to keep the squirrels 🐿 out of the bird feeders; very entertaining and clever too!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I found a pic of the baffle ai made to go around the feeder, so it will be in next week’s blog. It was fun battling with that little squirrel!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge near the NC Stateline. We are having a bit of spring and it seems to have brought out our mourning doves and finches which have joined my cardinals that never left.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aww, I miss all those beautiful birds so much!
LikeLike