A Room with a View

I spend a lot of my time in one room of my home which I have named Connieann’s Corner although it is a room with four corners, and my name is Connie, not Connieann. Connieann’s Corner is also the name I chose for my blog on Google’s Blogger website. How Connieann came about was from a spelling error on my original Social Security card. Someone forgot the space, and so these millions of years later, on my blog, I revitalized Connieann.

The room I refer to as Connieann’s Corner is actually the third bedroom of my three bedroom home. 

It is filled with drawing and painting supplies, art in progress, books of all genres, my computer, and most important of all, a comfortable chair and a window with a view of the outside world. I sit in front of that window now. My Chromebook rests atop my drafting/drawing table and fights for my attention with birds, plants, neighborly walkers and even a squirrel. By raising my gaze I can report on the weather, the traffic and the time of day. In this stay-at-home time this window is a direct link to my sanity.

In the morning I enter Connieann’s Corner carrying my breakfast bowl of oatmeal topped with yogurt, strawberries, blueberries and a few walnuts or pecans. As I twist open the blind, it is not unusual to see cardinals, chickadees, wrens, sparrows, finches, jays and even a mourning dove eating from the feeder or drinking or splashing in the birdbath. Since the squirrel is a recent guest (I say that word loosely), he may be hanging upside down from the porch post with his nose in the feeder as well. 

The feeder and bath, a turquoise dish in a jute sling, hang from porch beams. Both are so familiar to the birds that they sit in the bushes nearby as I clean and refill. The squirrel backs up a few feet but remains in sight as though questioning my authority.

About three feet in front of my window is a six foot loropetalum bush which routinely blooms with tiny pink flowers attracting bees and butterflies. Closer to my window but still hanging from a porch beam is a red glass hummingbird feeder. I have seen many different hummies drinking and sitting on the homemade hangar. If I should go out onto the porch while they are feeding, they confront me with their buzzing noise and reluctantly fly a short distance away until I retreat back inside and they can resume drinking their sugary water cocktail.

On the ground directly under the window in the right angle made by the join of the porch to the house is a concrete birdbath. The roof valley above naturally keeps the bath filled with rainwater and no doubt is one of the reasons the squirrel and other wildlife find my porch so attractive.

When the weather is cool enough, I open the window and can better enjoy the birdsong chorus and squirrel chattering and hummie buzzing. Mopsy, my cat, loved to sit on the inside sill of the open window and stare down the lizards that traversed the porch rail. She made that little clacking noise in her throat and the anoles red-throated balloons would expand as they came on guard. She never seemed interested in the birds, somehow knowing they were beyond her reach. And the birds never minded her, hardly glancing her way. The squirrel came calling after her passing.

The most unwelcome visitor I ever saw was a lengthy black racer. 

One morning when I opened the blind, he was slithering up the porch post headed for the feeder. I am sure I gasped at the sight of him. He hung around for quite some time, basking in the sunshine, waiting for a meal, but when no birds appeared, eventually he slithered away, back to where he came from. Another unlikely sight was a hawk that swooped past my window, gliding under the porch and on to his unknown destination. I am sure I gasped that time, too. And I have seen numerous egret and ibis families strutting around the front yard with their long legs and curved necks possibly pretending to walk their kids to school.

Recently, turtles have been a popular sight with a street crossing directly in front of my house. Several cars have slowed with some stopping for the driver to exit and deliver the turtle to safety in my front yard. I read online that it was best to let them continue on their journey as they do not roam far from home.

I am grateful for the wildlife that parades in front of my window, and I try not to miss anything, but of course I do. It saddens me that it is possible and even likely that sometime in the future, there may be a silent spring as Rachel Carson predicted. I hope we will have leaders that fight for laws that protect all wildlife so that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will know the joy of watching a cardinal spray a sunlit fountain of tiny water droplets into a clear blue sky. For now, this is something Covid-19 has not changed.