Happy mid week once again. It's still hot and humid and we are still waiting on rain. I'll need to water again this evening to make sure the garden is doing ok and not dying off.

I still have a bunch of frustrated blackbird. They are some nasty birds to one another when the food supply is low. I still haven't filled the feeders with bark butter bits and I'm not putting out any suet cakes now because it is too hot and they just melt and get yucky. So now they are trying to eat from the seed cylinders but the seed cylinders are in cages to keep them out and let the little birds in like wrens and finches. There have been two blackbirds fighting over this one smaller caged feeder for most of the morning, They chase one another round and round the rim pecking and squawking. The squirrels have emptied most of the feeders that they can easily reach and they had help with that last night around midnight. I was sitting here in the sunporch listening to music and I could see one feeder swinging when others were not. So I turned on the back yard flood lights and there were two furry bandits out there. The raccoons were up in the tree just outside the door. I knocked on the window and they went waddling off across the yard. I can tell all of the sunflower seed feeeders need filling today so I reckon I'll put that on my agenda. I also need to fill the new bark butter paste feeder. Since I let the other paste feeders run out and haven't put new easily attainable suet out --- the woodpeckers have "discovered" the new feeder. And --- they are the only ones who can eat from it because they have to hang on the bottom of it. I just had a Pilated woodpecker come in and scarf up a bunch of the food from it. And I need to fill the bird baths again. I'll tell ya, being a backyard Buffet and Spa manager is just constant busy stuff. I can't imagine what it would be like running a human B&B.

I'm offering up prayers for our country this morning once again. I just finished reading some of the news where some guys from Illinois went to a field where Repubican leadership folks were practicing for a bi-partisan baseball game and tried gunning them all down. What the heck is wrong with people these days?? Where is the value oof human life? Where is the process for rational thought. How have so many people just dismissed God and believe they and they alone are all that matter in this world? I don't know but for certain, here folks that do this kind of stuff can't possibly believe there is such a thing as hell; and if they do --- they certainly aren't afraid of it. I sometimes wonder if we of the church have so "over-sold" the concept of a loving and forgiving God that we have discarded the concept of accountability to God. The world has not changed; for white there is black. For every action, there is a consequence. So, this morning I urge you to pray for our nation, its leadership and our people.

I pray God grants you peace this day.