The Plague Diaries: Day 70 Birds, Bees and the Groundhog, but not in that order

I couldn't find Tom all day. He vanished. I knew he was around somewhere because. Quarantine. And also because I was included on a chat. I'm sitting there minding my own business trying to work from home and then there's a string of bing-bing-bings. Texts hitting me from all directions. Tom and my mom can text all day about the New York Times Spelling Bee game.

Tom & Mom play Spelling Bee
In the New York Times App

About lunch time I spy Tom out on the deck. He's sitting there as quiet and still as a National Geographic wildlife photographer. A National Geographic Wildlife photographer playing Spelling Bee. He had his big camera and his phone in silent mode. Obviously. He's professional like that.

Tom likes to keep an eye on the groundhog as much as the groundhog likes to keep an eye on Tom.

The fat groundhog who likes to dig up the lawn.

The fambo goes way back with groundhogs. Here's a pic of my mother holding a groundhog. It's name was Davy Crockett:

Mom with a groundhog
named Davy Crockett

Davey Crockett was a rescue. As a baby, it would lie on the living room floor and eat all the fringe off the bottom of the sofa. This is a widely known family legend. My grandma was a saint.

So Tom is outside with the groundhog but he's mostly interested in the birds. This is not a passive pursuit. At this point, we're spending possibly like a hundred dollars a week on bird seed. There's so many birds in the backyard it's a full-on turf war. We don't need an alarm clock anymore. Birds are up to big stuff at 6:30AM. Most of it is incredibly loud and uptempo. 

These new-fangled bird feeders keep out the squirrels, but Tom wanted to get two more. Because it's normal to have four bird feeders.

One of the new feeders he decided to stick to the window of our house so we can watch bird shenanigans with as little effort as possible. To keep out the squirrels... I could write a whole other post about the squirrels but will not do so because everyone knows squirrels are stealthy as fuck ... So to keep out the squirrels Tom put hot chili suet in the new feeder. Seems that birds don't mind a little spicy, but squirrels are more Appelbees kinds of eaters.

Here's one of Tom's snaps. He has entitled this photo, "The Artistic One."

My final report of note: there are two big wasp type bees  buzzing around, stuck inside the plastic dome I have covering my arugula plants out front. I cannot harvest the arugula due to the angry look in their eyes. I do not believe they are murder hornets, as I've told everyone who has inquired.