Mother Nature keeps us entertained | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Kathy Manos Penn is a native of the “Big Apple,” who settled in the “Peach City” – Atlanta. A former English teacher now happily retired from a corporate career in communications, she writes a weekly column for the Dunwoody Crier. Read her blogs and purchase her book, “The Ink Penn: Celebrating the Magic in the Everyday” on her website theinkpenn.com.

    We've had heat; we've had rain, and the pollen is finally gone. With or without rain, late spring and early summer are the times we enjoy our screened porch-that is, once we've cleaned it up.

    This year, that chore seemed a bigger pain than it's been before. We dreaded moving furniture, and cleaning the screens, the eaves, and the slanted ceiling. It was an all-consuming two-day event. Even with all that time invested, I finally gave in and hired someone to spend two hours on the eaves and the ceiling and help me lay down the outdoor rug. Phew!

    Next year, I plan to hire someone from the get-go and conserve my energy for more fun activities. It's all done now, though, and we've been enjoying coffee out there in the mornings and dinner in the evenings.

    The bird and squirrel activity has been highly entertaining this year. We've had the usual suspects at the feeders and checking out the several birdhouses we have: Cardinals, Carolina wrens and chickadees, goldfinches, house finches, bluebirds, the occasional dark-eyed junko, and even a towhee. The hummingbirds have arrived, and they flit between the two feeders on the side and back porches.

    As usual, we've started the spring with ants trying to take over the hummingbird feeders until we remember to put petroleum jelly on the shepherd's hooks where they hang. That tends to stop their march. When the hard rains washed one hook clean, and they invaded again, my husband threatened to put up tiny No Trespassing signs. I can't wait to see those.

    I've even seen an owl this year, sitting right across from my kitchen window. If my "Common Birds of Atlanta" book is right, it must have been an Eastern Screech Owl, and it seemed huge. Just this week, I heard a distinctive screech. Though my bird book describes the owls as singing in a "descending trill," what I heard was not at all a song.

    Now for the squirrels. The bird feeder right outside our living room window, positioned so I can see it from my recliner, has been safe from the squirrels for years. When the strong winds we experienced in early spring knocked it down several times, we had to figure out a different plan for it. I could still see it, but the squirrels could also leap to it from our wood pile. My husband found a solution on youtube, where else? He purchased a slinky and slid it down the shepherd's hook. The squirrels tried hard but couldn't get past it, so that bird feeder is once again squirrel-proof.

    Ah, but then he moved a windchime near the backyard feeder that's suspended from a wire hung between two trees. The wind chime was just close enough that the squirrels could launch themselves from it to the feeder. Boy were they happy. We laughed hysterically when we moved the chime, and they tried leaping to the feeder from a nearby bush. Honestly, they looked like circus clowns coming out of a cannon as, one after the other, they attempted the leap. That furious activity lasted for about an hour before they wised up. I can just imagine them meeting in the treetops to map out their next plan of attack.

    Who knows what entertainment Mother Nature will send our way next? Picture me patiently sitting on the porch waiting for the next act.

    Look for Kathy's new book "Lord Banjo the Royal Pooch" due out in late August and find her collection of columns, "The Ink Penn: Celebrating the Magic in the Everyday," on Amazon. Contact her at inkpenn119@gmail.com.