For the Birds

Another weather report: The high on Monday was 89 degrees. The forecast high for today is 72 – and it hasn’t bottomed out for the week. There are actually frost warnings for later in the week, with highs in the lower sixties. Come on, Mother Nature, it’s only September! I have a friend in Mexico City who is coming up to stay with us for a week in mid-October. She is hoping to see the bright fall colors. I am hoping it doesn’t snow. (Though she has never experienced a snowfall, so she might like that, too.)

Three mornings a week I go to a place called the Courage Center, which has an Olympic-size pool and offers various water exercises. I go to water aerobics for an hour starting at 6:30. I like it because I’m back home by around eight, ready to face my day. The days are shortening now, so it is barely starting to get light when I arrive. Yesterday I nearly ran over a robin who was drinking from a puddle, and when I got out of my car, the trees surrounding the parking lot were restless with robins, barking at one another and flitting from branch to branch. I’ve seen robins behaving like this in the fall – they are not local birds but a flock passing through on their way south. It seems rather early to see them, usually there has been a hard frost or even an early snowstorm to drive them to a warmer climate. I hope it doesn’t mean we’re in for an early winter.

Sometimes I wish I had studied ornithology so I’d have a better understanding of birds. Do you ever look back and feel a little wistful about your education?

If any of you are the praying type, please say one for my niece Regina, who is struggling to disentangle herself from a domestic situation.