During the recent cold snap things have been pretty quiet here. Everyone seems to be laying low and keeping warm at home.
Roger, a next-door neighbor, has been working on shingling his camp and at first the blackflies were as thick as thieves. Now he is back to sweatshirts and jackets to ward off the cold.
I have recently had a letter from Clayton Varney, former resident of Island Falls now living in Texas, and he misses the quiet living in The County and the gathering (and eating) of the fiddleheads that abound up here every spring.
I have been doing a lot of mowing as the grass in my backyard has grown rapidly since the last rain, but now it has been much cooler and the the other day I was wearing my sweatshirt, a jacket and gloves while out riding around on my mower.
I have had plenty of birds, too, at my feeders and have been kept busy running with the sunflower seeds for them. I still have the cardinals every day. One lonely red-breasted grosbeak arrives every so often.
The other day I was some surprised when I saw a small little chipmunk up in the cedar tree, trying his darndest to get some of the sunflower seeds out of a hanging feeder. He made a flying leap towards it several times, but fell with a thump each time. I took pity on him and ran out to put some seeds in the stationary feeder that he could get into and they were soon gone.
When (and if) it gets warmer my collection of wildlife will die down and then maybe the deer will return to graze and bring their fawns with them, and my neighbors and I will have fun watching them all.
