It is a brilliant blue, bright and sunny morning that greets me this morning. It is 30° too which is also a blessing. The world was covered with a thin frost layer when I first came out here to the sunporch, but as the sun rises, it appears to melt rather quickly. All in all I would say it is a "heavenly" start to the day. Thank you God. Days like this are spirit mending days after weeks of cloudy and gloomy and bitter cold.

Many of my feeders are empty again. I need to go get at least one 50# bag of sunflower seed since the can is half empty. I have a flock of starlings that have arrived and they are as bad, if not worse, than the squirrels; of which I also have four of at the moment gobbling up the food. But, the starlings fight and fuss with one another; they clean out suet feeders and bark butter feeders in a heartbeat. At one point this morning, I had four starlings fighting over a single 4"X4" suet feeder. It is now half gone. The good thought is that these guys come in every year like this and then they tend to move on. The squirrels on the other hand are just resident free-loaders that never go away.

The neighborhood is noisy this morning. It is trash pick up day so those trucks are coming through, picking up the cans with their "robo-arms" and shakng out all the contents. Somewhere down the street I hear a wood chipper going already this morning so somebody is having trees trimmed or cut down today. I see Ms. Margret from the house behind us is out picking up some twigs as she walks her little Miniature Pincher. She is probably ten years older than me and has a sour disposition about most things. But, she has been widowed as long as I have known her and lives alone with the exception of her little dog. Her last dog died, maybe six years ago, and it broke her heart. So a fellow across the street from her had a new litter of these "mini-pins" and gave her one. I call her Ms. Margret when I see her and she calls me Mr. Heumann; and I don't think she has ever said a word to my wife in the fourteen years we have lived here. Isn't that strange?

The question today is; what to do today? It is my "day off" and is a beautiful day. We need to take advantage of it. I guess I'll go pour another cup of coffee and see if Ms. Kate has an agenda for today. It is really too cold to do much outside because the ground is frozen solid. I did get all of my limbs and branches picked up yesterday and put in the garbage cans for today's haul away.

So, another week has pretty much ended. God has filled my life with abundance of blessings and joy. I hope your week has been as good. Have a blessed weekend.