Mid-morning ramble

Day two of rain. The red-winged blackbirds are back--a single male appeared in my cottonwood last Monday. A friend tells me that the females should have arrived about a week before the males, but I saw nothing. If they were here, they never caught my attention. I noticed grackles yesterday morning, but have no idea if yesterday was their first day back or if they've been around awhile. I am not a grackle fan. The starlings (damn the starlings) have been relatively quiet all winter, but I can hear them imitating red-tails and blue-jays from their perch atop my chimney. Their voices are echoing down and into the house, and it's making Wakan, our cockatiel, crazy. He seems to think they are talking to him, and maybe they are.
This morning I am thinking about when the insects will start hatching.....I am probably way ahead of myself as none of this is really Spring, just her rumblings. We are bound for more snow I am sure. So, message to all the insects: Stay where you are and wait another few weeks.
Last night while musing over the books to put in my profile list, I got to thinking that two books I love, The Geography of Childhood and Merle's Door, are both better versions of books which made a lot of fuss upon their publication. Merle's Door is the book John Grogan wishes
he had written, and The Geography of Childhood is the story of why children need the woods, but before/without all those children getting to have a disorder, as in Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods. When we were kids, all those other children, the ones who stayed inside for whatever reason, ( a multitude) were just the object of pity and it never occured to any of us that they might be irreparably damaged. Although, maybe they're the ones who are now running corporations and making a billion dollars, while the rest of us are trying to figure out what the hell happened and why our checking accounts have such small balances. Here's to the woods, and everything she keeps in her pocket.