Laurel Bradley, Author
  • Home
  • Books
    • A Wish in Time >
      • A Wish in Time excerpt
      • book video trailer
      • Book Club Questions
    • Crème Brûlée Upset >
      • Crème Brûlée Upset excerpt
      • book video trailer
    • For the Love of David >
      • For the Love of David excerpt
    • Scream >
      • Scream Excerpt
    • Trust No One >
      • Trust No One excerpt
  • What People Say
  • In the News
    • Awards
    • Appearances
    • Biography
  • Blog
  • Articles for Authors
    • Book Signings
    • Don't be a Newbie
    • How to Promote Your Book
    • Writing Reviews
  • Contact
  • Contest

Grackles: or four and twenty black birds

5/2/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture

The apple tree outside the kitchen window is a cloud of pale pink and white blossoms. Despite an early spring and subsequent frosts, there will be a bumper crop of apples this year. At least in my yard. But that isn’t the only thing I’m expecting to see a bumper crop of. Lately, a flock of grackles have decided that my back yard would make a great rookery. There’s a nest in the hollowed crook between two pine trees, another in a hollow branch in the apple tree, and still others in the large soft maple. 

It brings to mind the nursery rhyme about four and twenty black birds baked in a pie. Grackles are black-ish birds and you’d need at four and twenty to stuff a nice size pie, though there would be so many bones, I don’t you’d have to be starving to make them into a pie.

Which, naturally, makes me think of Little House on the Prairie where Laura Ingalls Wilder writes about Ma cooking up some of the pesky birds after they’d destroyed the oat crop and were well on their way to eating up the corn. There were only twelve in that pie as I recall. 

Interesting where the mind goes. From apples, to grackles, to pie, to famous children’s books... With this kind of concentration, it’s a wonder I get anything done. 

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Musings from my front porch.

    Archives

    November 2017
    July 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    April 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.