Thursday, Thursday, what are we to do with you today. It is the last official day of autumn and it is obvious. It is a rainy chilly day and there are none of the fall colors left anywhere. In fact, were it not for the blue tarp I have covering the yard sweeper, there would be no color at all in the back yard. That is why I so look forward to seeing my cardinals show up. They read the last of the birds with color. The goldfinches have turned color until spring and the rest of our birds are either brown, black, or some mixture there of. 

This is one of those days where it seems hard to get motivated to do anything. Maybe that haas to do with the weather too. I didn’t sleep all that well last night. I woke about 0330 and never got back to a deep sleep until Ms. Kate got out of bed around 0700 when we got one of those stupid “Robo-calls’ that woke us up. She went on and got out of bed and I slept for another hour and a half. I expected that I would find her at her computer when I got out of bed but instead she was sitting in her chair in the living room still snoozing too. But, I had “work” on my mind a good part of the night, goingover worship services that are coming up and stuff like that. So, it was a toss and turn night. 

Luckily we don’t have much on our agenda for today. I need to practice my trumpet for awhile and Ms. Kate wants to go to Dollar General store to get some gift bags for putting Christmas presents in.   I think that gift bags are one of the better inventions of the 20th Century. There are people who can wrap presents like a champion but I’m not one of them. I finish wrapping a present and it looks like a blob of tape and scrap paper. Then when the first tear of the paper occurs, all of the beauty of that wrapped present is gone. At least with gift bags, people generally fold them up and re-use them. 

I have lots a nd lots of guests here today at the Backyard Buffet. For awhile I had a dozen starlings out there being rude to anything else that wanted to eat, but they have since left. Now, it is mainly cardinals and finches and woodpeckers. The titmouse and wrens kind of flit through and fly away and come back for more. I had a couple of squirrels here but they have since moved on. So at the moment, the cardinals rule the roost. 

We had a nice Christmas gathering at one of the parishioner’s house last evening for the choir. I took a crockpot full of “BBQ sausages” and most of them were eaten. Ms. Kate fixed those for me because she said that men always gravitate to them; and she was right. 

As I have sat here the starlings have returned for another round but so has the blue jay. My blue jay will give the starlings a “what-for”.. It becomes a battle of the long beaks. 

That is all for today my friends; no witicisms of sage advice, Not even a sermon. Just a prayer that you have a most wonderful day. Peace.