These short, wet days of mid-winter are a great time to continue the perpetual garden cleanup and spend time dreaming through seed catalogs. I’ve been doing my fair share of both.

On Friday we celebrated our 1st anniversary of moving into Coppertop! What a full year it’s been! We’ve proclaimed this to be the favorite home we’ve lived in, and we’ve lived in quite a few. As Hubby and I looked over the basic structure of our gardens made apparent by the bare branches and open space winter provides, we attempted to dream big “what ifs” for our second year:  What IF that bed was never extended that far originally? What would you imagine for that space? The end result was surprising to us both, and of course entails even more time in the dirt.  Fresh perspective entices us to embark on new, challenging projects.

Sadly, we lost a hen this week. I wasn’t sure I should even write about it, since it saddens my heart, but true garden journals are a record of the good and bad. One of our four Ameraucana hens passed away peacefully, from what we can tell, since there were no signs of trauma, blood, or feathers. She was lying on the bank of the stream when we found her, and now she’s pushing up daisies at Coppertop. We’re thankful for her beautiful blue eggs and the joy her comical antics brought us this past year.

Our bird feeders have been  scenes of constant activity in January, and I’m refilling them daily. The sparrows, hummingbirds, wrens, grosbeaks, jays, thrushes, woodpeckers, towhees, juncos and chickadees visit from dawn until almost dusk, rain or shine.

This morning a flock of chestnut-backed chickadees amused me with their nonstop feeding.

Sometimes they wait their turn and other times they float in to snatch the largest seeds and depart before other birds.

I’ve always been fascinated by the way they hang and swing from object to object, defying gravity.