Part of the joy of gardening is the beauty of wildlife drawn to a well planned garden. I love birds. When I was a child, I kept a bird-watching journal and enjoyed identifying birds and their habitats. A long time ago, I abandoned the written journal, but mentally, I have a record of birds in the yard and when their seasons are.
We’ve just begun the month of “Maybruary” as a friend put it. It’s a very cold start to May. Everything blooming is about two weeks behind a typical year. For that reason, I ignore what the scenery looks like and pay close attention to the calendar and on April 20th, I put my feeders out for both hummingbirds and orioles.
I’m glad I did since many of my flowers that hummingbirds rely upon are weeks behind schedule. The ruby-throated hummingbirds arrived last week and found their feeder right away.
The orioles arrived yesterday with their brilliant orange and black markings! I’m so excited at seeing these two beauties.
I’ve found three keys to keeping hummingbirds and orioles in my yard:
- Put the feeders out early before the birds arrive. When hummingbirds and orioles find available food, they’ll make your yard their home for feeding and maybe breeding.
- Do not use soap of any kind to clean their feeders. Bleach and water mixed will disinfect the feeder without leaving a soap taste that birds hate. I always rinse it very well but am reassured by knowing that any bleach traces left behind are not harmful to birds because of the way bleach chemically disappears in the sugar solution.
- While commercial nectar solutions exist, I find that the color of the feeders catches the attention well enough that birds are happy with fresh “nectar” solution made with one part sugar to four parts boiling water. I boil the water to make the sugar easier to dissolve. Then I let it cool before putting it in the disinfected feeders.
While I’m sad that the juncos (snowbirds) have left for the season and the cedar waxwings have been passing through, I know that the arrival of the migratory indigo buntings, scarlet tanagers, and rose breasted grosbeaks will be shortly. The calendar says Yes, even if it seems we’re in Maybruary. So I have seed ready for the birds that are seed eaters. And I trust God to provide insects for the insect eaters. And guess what? As I’m writing, the first rose breasted grosbeak of the season just arrived at my feeder. How wonderful! I am privileged to play a small part of God’s plan for feeding the birds.
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26
Real world gardening involves everything being beautiful its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). 
Even in the midst of dreary days, perennial features such as the cheerful yellow forsythia, “Cardinal” red-twig dogwood, and King Alfred daffodils lift one’s spirits.
And look at the beautiful range of colors of emerging growth of turtlehead (Chelone obliqua), Astilbe ‘Fanal’, and hostas—all of which tolerate standing water for short periods. Good thing, since in every real world garden a little rain must fall. This particular garden is always among the last to be worked because it is a low spot in our yard. I find that working our higher front yard to the lowest back is always helpful since that’s how things aren’t worked when it’s too wet. Working the soil when it’s wet ruins the structure. Mulching when it’s raining causes the ground to retain the soggy conditions longer. It’s important with conditions like these to research carefully what plants will survive in such Out of Eden locations.
My bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are budding and my native cranesbill geranium (Geranium maculatum) won’t be outdone. Also in my woodland garden are lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) and sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) which are not native but escaped cultivation and are real showstoppers. I like that phrase: escaped cultivation. Makes them seem like garden rebels…or too beautiful to be held captive.
O’Reilly, this means you. While in the camera’s eye, you have the ability to persuade many people and convince them that “the spin stops here.” When you enter the realm of theology, we no longer call it spin. To the extent you are misinformed and try to play pastor-prophet-priest in your bully pulpit, you need to know the consequences of displaying such ignorance: it’s called deception. Lies. Dangerous. Infectious.
Top Ten Things I Wish Every Jew Knew About Christians (Summary Version)
With the tomb empty—as Jesus foretold—the sacrifice was accepted. Forgiveness of our sins was made possible, once for all. Now what is left for us is to give thanks to the Lord, saying “He is good; his love endures forever.” To kneel before our Maker in humble worship. To know that He is God in heaven and that the Risen Christ is God’s glory revealed.
The encouragement that we get from this is that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. There is nothing we can do to right our wrongs. There is nothing we can do about our imperfections. There is no way we can be perfectly obedient. There is no way we’ll resist every temptation. There is no way that we will speak truthfully all the time no matter how hard we try. And there is no opposition we will face that compares to what Jesus experienced. For us, it is impossible to lay our lives down for our fellow man as Jesus did. So we can stand with hearts of gratitude knowing it is for our benefit that Jesus did it all and could say, “It is finished.” It was all for our benefit. Now what remains is for us to recieve the gift of grace that He made possible by finishing the work of God.
One of the common human sensations is thirst. When Jesus quotes Psalm 69:21 as being fulfilled, there is a sense that He was reassuring us of His humanity. He was identifying with our humanity through a very human need: thirst.
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”– which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46