Country Life: the bitter and the sweet

Giving Baby a bath

I came home from a lovely visit with friends to find our dining room window had been attacked: a little hole punched into the outer glass of the double pane, cracking the whole window in a star pattern.

Clearly a bird was the culprit. John and I guessed that a robin (since they've done this before) had seen his reflection in the glass and took it for a rival. The window company can't come out until August, so we have to look at this ugly duct tape for most of the summer!

But the sweet: the next day, who should stroll through our woods but a mama deer and her baby! The fawn couldn't be very old, since its little legs seemed a bit wobbly, and Mama bathed her little one by licking it from tip to toe. 

Bird brainwave: kill the window

They apparently felt safe and secure enough to stay in sight for a couple of hours--happily, the neighborhood mountain lion isn't in the vicinity: it's been sighted a few miles down the main road. 

Watching the two of them, I could forgive that stupid country bird for what will likely cost several hundred dollars to fix the window.

More of the sweet: I picked out first strawberries last night--8 nice big ones! (We ate them too fast to take a photo.) Their tips weren't yet red, and could have used another 2 days of ripening. But I figured, eat them now or let the slugs, voles or mice find them!