All my creative pursuits.
The lambs and their mams are out in the fields around us. I’m grateful we live outside of the city and can still walk the country roads for exercise and fresh air. Here are some of the little ones living right in our neighbor hood. And after that a shot of the gorgeous sunsets we’ve been enjoying lately. Best wishes from County Galway. ❤️
I love all four seasons, but this time of year has to be my favorite. I have all the windows open overnight so that I wake in the morning to the sound of the birds singing. Our current house is technically in the suburbs but it’s nestled in the woods on a narrow, lonely road. I’ve always said it’s the best of both worlds —five minutes from civilization but it feels like you’re in the country. The birdsong is deafening at sunrise. For me —not generally a morning person— it’s the only kind of wake up call I can tolerate.
I’ve drawn the birds to our yard with feeders —hummingbird feeders in the summer, thistle and black oil sunflower seed in the colder months. I have wild raspberry bushes growing along the perimeter of the woods which I’ve left uncultivated so the birds and deer can have the berries. I’ve enjoyed watching them discreetly from the windows and snapping photos with the zoom lens. Bright red cardinals against the blinding white of snow, goldfinches and purple finches competing for seeds, three kinds of woodpeckers mistaking the house siding for wood [and sounding like a machine gun at 5 AM!] bluebirds, and once an indigo bunting. It was a rare and unexpected treat to have a mass of starlings gather on the front lawn before rising as one in murmuration.
That’s just a sample of the varieties that populate my little patch of earth. With the melting of snow come the robins —those early harbingers of spring. But I always know the season is in full swing when the Baltimore Orioles arrive. Their distinct song is a two-toned warble and one of the most beautiful natural sounds on earth. Yesterday, I heard my oriole in the morning —summer is just around the corner.
I’m leaving behind my Audubon Society Guide to North American Birds. But I promise that the first book I buy in my new home will be a Guide to the Birds of Ireland. And a new feeder will go up in the garden at my little house in Headford.
Header image thanks to Hinterland
The theme is “Out like a lamb’ this time around to say goodbye to March and welcome April with its showers which hopefully bring May flowers.
When I was a child, we lived in very rural, northeastern Pennsylvania on 80 acres of isolated land. We always used to tease my father that he was a frustrated farmer because he wanted to keep animals and grow crops despite working as an attorney during the week. The result was that we had a pair of ponies, a dozen ducks to live on the pond, a couple of worn out apple trees and three fields of hay which the real farmers would cut in the late summer for use on their real farms. The final members of our menagerie were a small flock of sheep. In the spring, we’d shear them for wool and one of the teachers from my elementary school would spin it into yarn and knit sweaters and socks and hats and mittens with it. Nice memories. Anyway, for the challenge this week, here is my ‘lamb’:
Meg Sorick, Author/Artist 