Moss and Ivy

I just took these pictures from my balcony that is off of my "art room". It's the moss that intrigues me. Living in a rain forested area certainly is richly green all winter, unless we get a sprinkling of snow, of which we have had precious little this year. I've seen one small spray of snowflakes that didn't even stick.

I feed birds and squirrels in my basalt based yard. There is one little squirrel in a feeder right now. Normally there are at least a half dozen of them out and about.

The hummingbirds get fed close to the kitchen window. There is a family with a baby wherein I saw the mother coaxing it along as it cried. Have you ever heard a hummer cry? So cute! It makes a popping sound rather like when you do that thing with your tongue to the roof of your mouth, and then the little darling hummingbird winces a sad little cry. The mother was hovering about 10 feet into the sky. Baby is so happy in this yard, and it has its own feeder, because it alone uses the one in the middle.

The ivy takes over the yard, and now in the state of Oregon we're being implored to remove it as it is dangerous to our forests, but as my yard is not part of the forest, I allow for some of it to remain.

Incidentally, all of those bird houses were made long ago by the wonderful Ludmil Marcov of Willow Nest Farm.