Well, after we did all of the yard cleanup yesterday and put out some fresh thistle and lots of other fresh seed, we really started attracting tons of birds!  I guess it had gotten a little slow around the feeders.  Well, something attracted a whole flock of finches, probably nearly 20 Goldfinches alone!  There also were several Purple or House finches. I have a much more difficult time telling them apart. The goldfinches are getting very bright now.  They really stand out on the background of the trees without any leaves.  I know, I should have a lovely picture of it.  I really want a new camera with a better zoom!  It’s either that or move the feeders closer and I don’t think that that would work..

I know that I haven’t gotten into the history of this piece of property yet, that is on my list of things to do on the website, just haven’t had time.  Anyways, suffice it to say that Steve and his family and friends took what was essentially an abandoned junkyard and trash heap and turned it into a beautiful home and yard and a wonderful environment that supports many living things. Steve and I were joking that we deserve a stimulus package of our own for cleaning up this superfund site!  Anyways, while we were cleaning up the property yesterday, we started to “reclaim” a bit of land alongside the garage that has never really been cleaned up and has gotten a little overgrown.  Steve raked up all of the leaves and I joined him and started picking up some metal bits I could see in amongst the leaves.  Several hours later we had unearthed 3 trash barrels full of simple household waste! Incredible. I don’t know why people think that it is okay to just throw their trash out into the yard.  It made us so mad.  We sorted the trash out into that which was burnable, metal that can be taken in, items that can be recycled and the rest must go to the landfill.  As it worked out, we also spent last evening watching a program on PBS about all of the plastics that end up in the ocean and the damage that it is doing.  It invigorated us to keep cleaning up this area, but we are afraid that the whole hilly terrain is really buried trash!  We’ll keep working at it.  I’ll try to get outside this week and take some pictures of the area so that you can really visualize what we were working on. 

Anyways, it was really disheartening to run into that much more trash.  We have a whole trailer load of scrap metal to take in that we’ve just found partially buried around the yard. It really makes me angry to think of it.