Waste Not, Want Not

After watching the noisy, invasive parakeets in the Plaza de la Merced in Málaga, it's nice to be home watching our own noisy, invasive parakeets in our garden! Noisy, invasive parakeets really are a worldwide phenomenon. They sure do love our suet balls. That one on top is trying to lift the lid to get into the feeder!

Seriously, it's great to be home. I love putting down the bags, unpacking everything, doing the laundry and getting organized. That's what I did yesterday, in addition to finally catching up on most blogs and responding to some comments.

I made lunch with some ingredients in the fridge that survived our weeklong absence, but only barely. We had some broccoli in there that was looking a bit pale, and a head of baby gem lettuce that "expired" on Jan. 14! (I say "expired" in quotes because why does lettuce need an expiration date?) The outer leaves were looking pretty sad, so I threw those away, but the inner ones looked fine and I washed them up and ate them. Waste not, want not!

(Every time I hear that phrase, I think of a scene in the TV miniseries "Backstairs at the White House," which I watched as a kid. One of the presidents -- Wilson or Coolidge, I can't remember -- arrives at the White House and begins turning off lights. "Waste not, want not," he says. Something tells me that is not a lesson Donald Trump will have learned.)

Here's some of the promised footage from the garden cam, showing our bird feeders. As I said yesterday, I wanted to see whether rodents were getting to the seed, and they're not -- at least not in the feeders. But the birds are messy eaters, particularly the great tits, which fling seeds hither and yon with wild abandon. In addition to great tits, which have black heads, white faces and yellowish bodies, you'll see smaller blue tits, which have blue heads and bright yellow bodies. You can also hear the roofers talking as they work on the house next door.

Today we have a professional development day at work. I think there's some kind of meeting to get us all on the same page and then some planned tutorials or other activities. This may be my last professional development day, come to think of it!