Greensboro Birds

Since Josh and I moved to this little town just outside of Greensboro, he asked if I would keep the name of my website, or would I change it to reflect our new locale? Google Page Rank aside, it didn’t take me long to decide that the name will remain as is. We’re not far from “town,” as we call Greensboro—a holdover from my rural Wisconsin youth when a trip to town was a big deal, although in that case, “town” encompassed precisely 1,038 people according to the sign at the town border. Even when we lived in Brooklyn, “going into town” meant I was taking the subway to Manhattan (incidentally, “Manhattan” is a word New Yorkers rarely utter). If I were to tell you the name of our town, you’d ask, “Hmm, what’s that near?” And I’d answer Greensboro. It’s like if you live in Fontana or even Sherman Oaks—you tell people you live in Los Angeles.

These are a couple more pics from my first timeout with the birds last night. The male cardinal at the top spent a lot of time doing acrobatic maneuvers to reach what he determined were the perfect leaves to eat (or to feed his young male fledgling that was constantly chipping and flapping nearby). The young Northern Mockingbird above is one of several that I see outside my office window; they like the berries that are at perfect levels of ripeness in the brush.

This is Josh’s new shed, which was delivered yesterday on a flatbed truck. It’s surprising how not level the spot is that we picked. It’s weird to see this little building out there without any other infrastructure, but we’re having a fence installed and we’ll also plant butterfly bushes, lantana, and stuff around it to make it fit in better (and attract cool butterflies). But do you see how dry it is here? We had exactly three drops of rain yesterday—the first in weeks. I’m not planting much till this drought’s over.