Putting it together

We put the bird feeders back out yesterday (we pulled everything in from the yard so the storm wouldn't blow them around), and the birds have literally flocked to our backyard. We usually get quite a few, but today there seemed to always be a dozen or more cardinals, blue jays, and other birds coming and going. Perhaps other folks haven't gotten their feeders back out yet. Perhaps the storm somehow messed with their other food supplies. Regardless, we got to enjoy their presence today. We also saw many hummingbirds, and that one dollar hummingbird feeder that I hung up with an old wire hanger ("usually you have to go to a trailer park to see something that classy," commented the Big Guy) has proved well worth the buck. The hummingbirds would even rest on top of the tomato cage, cleaning beneath their wings with their pointy beaks, and I'm not sure I'd ever seen a hummingbird at rest before.

I spent most of the day at the kitchen table, entranced by the jigsaw puzzle started by the Big Guy and his friend while they were waiting out the storm. I get so pulled in to jigsaw puzzles, driven to put in just one more piece as I get to know the variations in color and texture. I love how the more time you spend with a puzzle the better you get to know it, the more easily you can look at a piece and know exactly where it goes. And yet there is always the elusive piece, the one you look for seemingly a million times and can't find, but should be so obvious. And then, there it is. Jigsaw puzzles seem like the perfect metaphor for so many things in life.

Finally, after dinner, I unloaded the minivan and began putting back the pieces of our life that I deemed worth trying to save: scrapbooks, old love letters, a heart shaped locket with black and white photos of my grandparents. Pieces of our lives, rich with color and texture, just like the jigsaw puzzle.