It's almost my birthday!  Yep, I have a biggie coming up next week, and I'll be giving one of YOU a present--find out more on Friday (hint-it's not one of my books).  In the meantime, I'm sharing some unexpected gifts that came my way.

First, we have a purple leaf sand cherry shrub that my husband calls Big Red.  The shrub is over-my-head tall and my husband is an avid pruner.  This year I made him hold off because I was pretty sure a nest was in the tree.  I am happy to confirm that a pair of cardinals has taken up residence in Big Red!  I've never seen a cardinal nest.  Usually they build in our towering blue spruce and there's no way to see it.  The cardinal is the state bird of Ohio and several other states, so I'm honored.  I've hidden the pruning shears.  :-)  I also shooed away a cowbird yesterday.  Cowbirds never build their own nests; they lay their eggs in other birds' nests.  Then they take off and let the foster mommies raise their young.  Well, not in my backyard!

I don't know how you feel about rabbits, but as a flower gardener, I'm far past the "oh, look at the cute little bunny!" stage.  I watched three rabbits frolic and chase each other one night.  The next morning, all but the fuzzy stuff in my shade garden beneath our massive oak tree had been shorn to the ground--rabbits make a clean diagonal cut.  The one plus is that they leave the sunny stuff in the front alone, now that they are too fat to waddle around the house. 

I read a nature article in the newspaper about foxes not  long after I noticed that abundant wildlife has moved to the suburbs.  We are firmly in Suburbia, yet not far from a river and farm fields.  We've see up to twenty deer at a time!  Not in our yard, but the deer make their presence known when they nip the heads right off my lilies--deer chomp marks are raggedy.  Anyway, when I read that foxes dine on mice and RABBITS, I found myself wishing that my yard was a wild enough habitat for a fox (did I mention that a groundhog has dug himself a den beneath our woodpile?).  Despite all our wildlife sightings, I knew a fox was not likely to show up here.

So when I opened the blinds at 6:45 this morning and saw a FOX streak through the back yard from right under our window, I was absolutely overjoyed.  Go, fox, go!  Hey, foxes have to eat, too.

I've even almost forgiven the hawk that treats our neighbor's bird feeder like a fast food drive-through.  Many nights he shows up at our dinner time and hangs out in our oak tree, waiting. 

I love it!  Who do you think knew I'd been wishing for a cardinal nest and a resident fox?