Our Enchanted Forest

Michigan tends to be bi-polar. The weather is different from year to year, day to day, and even hour to hour. I remember years throughout my life when it was warm when we went trick-or-treating on Halloween night while other years it rained, sleeted, or snowed.

I was sure that we had permanently moved from warm to cold weather, from t-shirts to coats.

I was wrong.

For several days we’ve had blue skies and temperatures in the 70s. Today the temperature reached 80 degrees! I put aside my coat and returned to T-shirts. I would have opened all the windows today, but yesterday EJ took out the screens and I washed the windows.

EJ turned off the furnace when the weather warmed up again. I wonder if this means that our Autumn game of “How long can we last until we turn on the furnace” is back on? Do we ignore the days we had the furnace on or subtract them? Hmmm.

The trees took so long to change into their Autumn colors that I was beginning to think that the colors would be muted. However, they have finally burst into vivid color. Our enchanted forest tends to become so orange, gold, and yellow during this season that it feels as if the air itself has turned golden. I think we are at or just past the peak autumn color. The sky is sometimes filled with leaves flying off the trees. The trees are becoming more bare and I can see deeper into the forest. Friday we drove to the farm store for a few items. Our drive was so beautiful that we called it our “color tour.” I wanted to share of photo of the beauty, but a photo doesn’t do it justice.

For the last few years, EJ and I have bought several turkeys in November when they are on sale. We cook one for Thanksgiving and freeze the others to cook throughout the year. Eric cooked one of our turkeys on Friday and today I made 6 1/2 homemade turkey potpies. The half is because I didn’t have enough filling for a complete pie so I made a circle of dough, put the filling on it, and folded half the dough over it into a pastie shape.

I continue to feed my flock of wild birds every day, which fills me with delight and makes me feel as if I live in a truly magical place. Mostly the chickadees eat from my hand. Occasionally a nuthatch lands for a seed. They are getting bolder but are still nervous. The tufted titmice would obviously like to take seeds but so far they are too shy. I’ve seen blue jays hop into nearby trees as if they are watching me. I wonder if they will ever take seeds from my hand?

Each day my encounter with the birds is slightly different. Some days I have to wait for quite a while before a chickadee lands. Other times I barely get out the door before they are swooping around. Some days there are long pauses between bird landings while other times they come one after another. The birds are most active in the morning; it takes more patience to lure them in the early evening. This morning 14 birds took seeds from my hand and this evening 4 came. Last Thursday evening, one little chickadee returned 26 times for seeds. He ate some of the seeds, but I watched him bury others in my herb garden. I didn’t know that chickadees hid a cache of seeds.

When I was 16-years-old, I saw a neighbor woman hand-feeding peanut butter crackers to squirrels. I didn’t know her well so I never asked her how to do it, but I figured out how to train the squirrels to eat from my hand. It was cool. EJ sometimes goes to a discount store before work. I think it’s a store that sells items pulled off regular store shelves because they are outdated or not selling. The stock often changes. I told him that if he sees crackers to buy some so I can start feeding the squirrels.

Our forest is becoming more enchanted every day.