The spring has not yet sprung, the grass has not yet riz, but I know where one of the birdies is

This is a "homey" post of the type not usually associated with moi, but it's a whole heap less stressful on one's nerves than working oneself up into a permanent lather over BREXIT, Donald Trump, ISIS, China, Israel, Hillary Clinton, North Korea, Guantanamo Bay, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nancy Pelosi, Palestine, global warming, Iran, Yemen, Simon Cowell, or any other perceived threat to world peace.

Today I rise to speak of bluebirds, or, to be more accurate, of one specific bluebird.

He likes that particular chair by the door, as you can plainly see from all the poop with which he has decorated it.

He also likes to sit on our shepherd's crook to be near our blue feeder filled with dried mealworms...

...and on our other shepherd's crook to be near our green feeder filled with peanut suet.

From these perches he tries to be master of all he surveys, but he has to defend his territory against neighbors like The Mockingbirds and The House Finches and even a few robins. Mr. Bluebird also likes our birdbath but I have not yet been able to get a photo of him perched there. He is an alert little fellow and darts away to fight another day if startled.

If you are equally alert, you may also have spotted (no pun intended) the 1930 portrait of Mrs. RWP's parents on our kitchen wall as well as some of her orchid plants in bloom.

And if I were as alert as I like to think I am, I would have remembered that I already told you about the bluebirds and the blue feeder filled with dried mealworms and the green feeder filled with peanut suet a couple of weeks ago.

As the world can tend to be too much with us, we now return you to the apocalypse in progress.

I love 2 BB side your side B side the C, B side the C side, by the B U T full C, plus bluebirds

Here's a little something to tickle your fancy:

By the C, by the C,
By the B U T full C,
U N I, U N I,
O how hap P we'll B.
I love 2 BB side your side
B side the C,
B side the C side,
By the B U T full C!

That song, or something very similar, was written way back in 1914 by songwriters Harold Atteridge and Harry Carroll for the musical "For Me and My Gal."

Here is a glimpse of what it actually was like to be beside the seaside in 1914 and a few other years as well (3:11)

Okay, so it's not The Alphabet Song but it's the best I could come up with on a chilly day in February.

Speaking of a chilly day in February, Eastern bluebirds have been in our yard for the past couple of days, so Mrs. RWP and I went to Home Depot today and bought two new feeders along with a bag of peanut butter suet and a bag of mealworms to fill them up with. (If you want to try to rearrange the preceding sentence so that it doesn't end with two prepositions, be my guest.) Just so you know, mealworms are not really worms but dried beetle larvae, much in the same way that Yorkshire Pudding is not really a Yorkshire pudding. Please don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that Yorkshire Pudding is dried beetle larvae; I'm saying that mealworms are dried beetle larvae. The jury is still out on Yorkshire Pudding.

I did not take that photo. A man named Ken Thomas did in 2007 in Johnston County, North Carolina. He released it into the public domain, though, so anyone can use it without fear of recrimination from any Internet Nazis or deportation across our southern border by the Department of Homeland Security.

I did take these photographs of our two new bird feeders, however.

It was a chilly day. The wind was blowing and I was in shirtsleeves, so I didn't take pains to take time to produce good photographs. As a result, hardly anything in either photo appears to be vertical. In actuality, both of the shepherd's crooks are vertical but the two bird feeders were not. They were swaying in the breeze. Sorry, people, Ansel Adams I am not.



Let's end this somewhat disjointed (but fascinating) post by listening to Julie Andrews and watching Jane Darwell in her last role (3:49) together.