It’s hard to believe that in a week, we’ll be into the start of September. The year is whipping by me — especially summer! We got through our hurricane, which by the time it got here was just a windy rainstorm. I went out and picked up a lot of twigs and leaves from the deck. No branches came down. Good thing we cut off that one branch that was definitely going to come down on the deck.
I was too impatient to do the whole filling feeders and deck cleaning this morning, but they have plenty of food in the flat feeder. We’re getting low in feed and I need a week for new money to arrive before I go buy more. We’ve got the price down to about $48/month, but I have to be sensible about how often I feed them. I can’t fill the feeders every time they run low. There’s plenty to eat in the woods and although they like my stuff better, there are plenty of acorns and other seeds for birds, squirrels, and even the little chipmunks.
Since this is an oak woods, it’s acorn time. Every few years, our trees produce giant acorns as opposed to regular acorns. The giant acorns are about the size of walnuts and they dent the cars when they fall on them. There is some a cycle, but it seems to be about every third year, giant acorns come hurtling from the tall trees.
Squirrels? Listen up! There are millions of acorns out there. Go grab them. Store them for winter!
The squirrels have gotten lazy. It’s my fault. The birds too, but not nearly as bad as the squirrels. Have they lost their taste for quality acorns?
Can you parallel park (if you drive)? If you don’t drive, can you still skip?
When we lived in Boston, I got really good at parallel parking. Since we left the city, parking has been so easy I have lost my technique. Hope I never have to move back!
As for skipping, nope. Sometimes I forget what I can’t do and try to do it anyway. I am quickly reminded that I have well-defined limits.
Do you prefer early morning or late evening? Or something in between?
Evening, if you please, although I’m very fond of afternoons. Just not early morning. I am grouchy before noon.
Do you like avocados?
Yes. Especially just split with a bit of lemon juice and a hint of salt. Yum!
Is mind or matter more real?
It depends what I’m doing. If I’m trying to figure out if I have enough money to get through the month, mind matters. If I’m writing a story, I am pointed to…
Wait a minute. This doesn’t make sense. If the choice was mental versus imaginative, but mind over matter? Matter is, for example, my computer — and that’s where the calculator is. So I need my mind to figure out the numbers, but I need the calculator to put the numbers in place and see the result. I think this needs some rewording. I don’t think you can’t really separate these things. Whatever you are thinking has to be made real using some kind of tool, be it a computer or a hedge clipper. You think, then you do. Maybe back when someone made this “saying,” the world was much more divided between mind and matter — but these days? There’s rarely a clear line.
Are people in this current generation less or more sensitive than people from past generations?
To be fair, I’m not all that much in touch with a lot of young people. My granddaughter is a sensible young woman and I don’t think she is overly sensitive at this point in her life. She was when she was much younger, but we were ALL more sensitive when we were very young. Mostly, we grow out of it.
As for the rest of the generations? I really don’t know. I could take a guess, but it would only be a guess. I don’t like to assume that what I read on social media or the news summarizes the reality of a generation.
If you’d summarized my generation when we were all in our 20s, you’d have gotten a very different answer than you’d get now. Times change. We change with the times and with our individual experiences. And anyway, no generation is all alike. Really, the only thing you could say about my generation that was universally true was that there were a lot of us.
Gratitude
To my friends who offered to let us stay with them should the lights go out and stay out for any length of time. That was a very generous offer! Fortunately, we didn’t need the help but it was great to get the offer. It made me feel a lot better!
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Categories: #Birds, #Photography, #Squirrel, #SYW, Anecdote, Humor, questions, Share My World, Wildlife
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
We have so many chipmunks in our yard eating everything..but also crows are always hanging onto garbage bins . They are are busy.
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We have crows but for some reason, they never visit us. I think ours are fish crows and they aren’t big on seeds. This is a watershed river valley. One day we had a full mob — maybe a few hundred crows show up at one time. They were probably chasing a raven, but it was wild! They left and never came back.
I’ve seen two chipmunks, but I think the red squirrels have them on the run. The red squirrels are small, but they are TOUGH.
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Once in a while we see a Raven..so huge.Happy Wednesday.
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Supposed we get both, but I’ve never actually SEEN a raven, even though I know they live around here. For reasons no one knows, crows HATE ravens and mob up to attack them. They will also attack hawks. It’s that whole mobbing thing. They really can’t hurt the bigger birds, but they annoy them so much they leave.
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If you give stuff to any creature, it gets lazy. I have experienced this same with feeding the birds. So much so that the birds took to lying around in the garden waiting to be fed! Your Q&A was interesting. My sons are fairly sensitive, but they are teenagers to that is to be expected.
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The birds do hang around waiting for food. Sometimes, they get really loud and I wake up to a bunch of annoyed birds demanding breakfast. Yesterday, since we were still getting heavy rains from the storm, I put out some food, but not the cage feeders. It was too wet. I did get up this morning and gave them food. I give them less than I used to. I fill the feeders, but if they empty them out quickly, I don’t refill them. They NEED to remember how to find food, especially in the summer.
I think we are all overly sensitive, especially in our middle teens — and some right into their 20s. I also think it’s absolutely normal. They are testing out the world and seeing how well they manage. It takes some time to develop a thicker skin and realize that you are not on everyone else’s mind — and not everything that’s said is about YOU.
Some people never get it.
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It takes some time to develop a thicker skin and realize that you are not on everyone else’s mind — and not everything that’s said is about YOU. This is exactly right and it does take a long time before we appreciate this fact. It’s rather an ego blow isn’t it? SMILE
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First it was an ego hit — but then, it was a relief. I finally realized they didn’t care about me at all. They were interested in themselves, NOT me. I got over the ego bomb and realized no one was watching me. It was great. I also learned to keep my head down!
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All very good learning points.
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Thank you so much Marilyn for Sharing Your World. I really look forward to your SYW posts, because I know I’ll see some amazing photography of beautiful birds, squirrels and chipmunks and critters O my. Maybe you can get a picture of one of those gigantic acorns? That sounds like a LOT of food, especially for that tiny girl squirrel. I suppose it is easier to climb a bit and get a feast, than spend half the day trying to crack open a giant nut, but food is food. Maybe they’ll hoard those things for the winter? You give such sensible answers it’s a pleasure to read them! I think ‘our’ generation (Baby Boomers Boo-YAH) had better ‘far seeing’ skills than they do now (from what I’ve observed, I don’t know any young people very well). You guys in the 60s saw a better world and you actually did stuff to try to improve the one we got. My generation (the 70s) mostly sat on their ass and smoked pot and wondered where the Fritos were… (not me of course. The sitting on my ass part is true enough though). It’s kinda slid down hill ever since IMHO. I hope your car remains dent free from the gigantic nut windfall! 🙂 Have a great week!
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I’m not sure how far I saw way back then. Honestly, I never even IMAGINED I would be old. I also never imagined my health crashing as it did — and so suddenly. But learning to NOT be so sensitive was definitely age-related. It was probably work that made the difference. Well, work and any number of crappy relationships with both guys and girl friends. One of the most important lessons was that everyone was NOT looking at me and everything they said wasn’t about me. In fact, other than me, my son, husband, and close friends, pretty much nobody was paying much attention to me. Except my boss, maybe — which was never a good thing.
The birds and squirrels get lazy. The hang around waiting to be fed. It’s why sometimes, I let the feeders go empty and leave them empty for a while. In the winter, I don’t do that because there is no food, but this time of year, the woods are full of food. They need to remember how to find it. We have a lot of seed and berry-yielding vines and weeds which, when they bother to fly anywhere but our deck, they find and enjoy. But they DO get lazy.
Don’t let those delicate squirrels fool you. They have sharp teeth and can chew through a high tension power cable in a few minutes, so I’m pretty sure they can take care of acorns. The thing is that the acorns are probably better for them than seeds. I really don’t mind feeding them, but I worry that they forget how to forage.
We all went through various stages when we were growing into adults. I was never much for hanging around getting stoned. I worked full-time from right after my son was born until I was too sick to keep working, so any dope smoking I did was more along the lines of having a drink in the evening between work and sleep and getting up to do the whole thing again. In between there was cooking dinner, doing laundry, house cleaning, child rearing though I wasn’t much of a disciplinarian (I’m still not). I’m still doing all of that — except the working for money part. I wouldn’t mind if they would just keep sending paychecks, but NOT require I work, but so far, no one has made a decent offer 😀
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