I speak of tires and birds and other things...

Well... ya gotta laugh, cuz cryin' won't help. This is what happened on our drive into town from the lake this morning.

Details: driving along with an appreciable shake to the truck occurring. As we're talking about bringing the vehicle to the tire shop and getting a second tire replaced (we'd had one replaced a few weeks ago, when it blew out), we both felt it blow out. L looked in the rear view mirrors both inside and outside and said, "I think we have damage to the truck" as he pulled onto the shoulder. And yup, he was not exaggerating. The first tire blowout had been with an inside tire, but this was an outside tire and a strip of the tire cap about 4 feet in length, had obviously pounded the beejeezus out of the fiberglass fender as it was peeling itself off the tire.

<<< Oh, btw, this is what it should look like with fender intact.

We decided to replace the weather-beaten old bird feeder (one that holds seeds for the songbirds in our area) a few weeks ago. Then weeks went on without any birds appearing and the seeds remained at the same level, so we thought we had waited too long to hang it. However, THIS week we spotted some birds using it. A pair of yellow-feathered birds have been there intermittently - I think they are goldfinches, and this morning's chow-hound was a beautiful bird with red-orange on its head and down its back. I have just been Google-ing this bird and believe it is a purple finch -- which are NOT purple, btw, but have a significant red coloring very much like the one I saw at our feeder.