Winning bird picture

Since many of my blogging buddies also follow Joan at The Retirement Chronicles, you might know that I enter her photo contest every month -- unless the month gets away from me and I forget, or unless I simply have nothing worth submitting. A year ago last May I won for "Landscapes" and in July's contest this year, I won bragging rights for this picture, with the theme "Birds," along with a cute little widget to display on my sidebar. And you can check out this link to see all the other July entries.

It actually amazed me how happy I was when Joan told me that I'd won. The thing is, the possibility of winning isn't what motivates me to enter, but to see what other people submit and how my pictures stack up next to others. Usually I can predict the eventual winner and I thought I had a pretty good chance this month. Say hello to my little Rufous hummingbird who enjoys the penstemon in the little flower box on my front porch. I think he's the same one who visits often, but there's no way to know for sure. Only a few times have I had more than one hummer at a time visit the flowers.

I'm deep into Jodi Picoult's book House Rules and stayed up way too late last night reading. If you haven't discovered her yet, she takes a controversial issue and covers it from the point of view of all the characters in the story. This one is about Asperger's Syndrome. It keeps reminding me of a wonderful book I read long ago, written from the point of view of a child with autism, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. I just loved that book, too.

It's early in the morning here on the west coast and I woke up early, even though I went to sleep later than usual, so I am able to get this post done before I leave on the bus for my daily routine. I only have a few more minutes before I dash out the door, and the bus waits for no one. Talk to you soon!
:-)