The Middle of the Week.........

While the temperatures keep falling, 14 degrees F. I still have a tropical scene inside the house.  The two fish were rescued a few days ago from the outside pond and the tank water that I placed them in is clearing up enough so I can snap a photo.  I buy these in the early spring as feeder fish. They are 2 inches or more in length.  Their living in an outside tank and natural surroundings outside makes them grow to be large. I think they are probably 4 inches or more in size now. They have has a good diet of mosquitoes all summer.

The tank is probably too small for them but if I make partial water changes and maintain the filtration system they should survive.  I have them sitting in front of all of the hardy geraniums.  The back lighting is a plant light that I have on the table and not on top of the fish tank. I would like to buy a fancier gold fish but then I would suffer more if I lost them.  The ones covered with a lot of fins are easier to catch by raccoons.

The female cardinal showed up yesterday at the feeder for the first time this fall.  She has pretty yellow orange markings on her chest and the nice red color on the wings. I don't know if the color goes away in the summer or not. 

As you can see she has a friend on the first floor helping himself to some free seed. I don't mind as long as the don't stay so long that they have cleared the entire floor of any seed. I will try to get some ear corn for the squirrels and feed them out front of the house.

All feeding parties seem to be limited today as the cold air must effect their eating times. I had a few at the feeder around 9:00 for the first time and they have all left now. I have two feeders hanging next to our dining room windows now and a downy came up and grabbed one seed from it while I was trying to take photos.  He was too close and left too quickly to prove the story. 

As the different birds stalk the feeder the bluejays are the biggest of the birds and really do seem to be bullies.  My wife saw two bluejays scrambling for seed yesterday and the wind was so strong that the weaker bird was blown off the feeder.  The cardinal sits in wait for them to all leave. 

I took my cans of house paint and paint brushes to the basement yesterday.  I have a couple of other paint pans to get down there but my days of outside work are done.  "As is" will be my description of the work that didn't get done.  When the weather people are telling  me that we won't be warming up to above freezing until after Thanksgiving, I decide to throw in the towel.  Again I am saying "as is."  We do have some plans to spot paint some  walls in the house.  We are not going to repaint everything but a problem area that needs to be painted in our stairway will get a new coat in the future.

We may venture out this afternoon for a short while even though it is hard to get use to the cold.  It probably will see warm after we have added a lot of snow on the ground.  I need to buy new sweatshirts to wear for this season as long sleeved shirts don't seem to be enough.  No work again today and I am good with that too.  I hope that all is well with you out there in the arctic world and also in the tropical world.   Thanks for stopping by today.