Sunning House Sparrows

We're having a beautiful sunny day.  At the base of our apartment building, we have a weeny bit of garden separated from the alley by a cinder brick wall.  The wall actually houses garbage dumpsters, and steam vents (for the in-floor heating system), and other "unsightly" functioning stuff.  Much of the top of the wall is roofed with metal sheeting painted brown.  On a cold sunny day, it soaks up the heat, and the little house sparrows come and sit on it (they fold up their legs and get as much of their body in contact with it as possible), fluffing their feathers and grooming.  They'll spend a long time there.  We have a window[1] that views this area, and we call it the cat TV.  I fling seed (actually crushed grain for making hot cereal - the pigeons gobble anything bigger) out on one of the wider parts of the wall to attract the birds.  Yes, I will continue to regularly supply seed now that I have started in the fall.

[1] - the apartment has great windows on two sides - south and west.  We get every scrap of light.

Chaucer Meme

Nicked from esmeraldus_neo  and  daibhid_c  and sloopjonb  .  Today is (probably) Geoffrey Chaucer's deathday, so come up with a quote.


And of course, what would I remember, but:

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-
Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
 

taken from the following link because, no, I have not memorized any Chaucer - pillow-boff me now.
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/gchaucer/bl-gchau-can-genpro.htm

EDIT - merciful heck - who knows why the livejournal entry page does the formatting things it does - not me.