Yesterday I was walking down my driveway and feeling frustrated that so much was brown from the change of seasons and the recent freeze. As I walked back up to the house I spotted about 10 goldfinches munching on the seeds of a group of particularly "ugly" brown, needing to be cut back shrubs.

I have had many, many birds in my yard lately. Even though part of my yard was decimated by Katrina, a great deal of it still has lots of trees and a pretty dense understory. Outside of my kitchen window is a thicket of French Mulberry. These are a native plant that have purple and sometimes white berries on them in the fall. (We planted this thicket, but I also have some in my backyard that came with the property.) In October of 2005, one of my best friends came to help me clean up my yard. She and her daughter along with me spent most of one morning tediously staking those French Mulberry back up after they had been smushed by fallen trees and branches.

This year throughout September, October, November and part of December I watched as many as 30 birds feast on this year's crop of berries.

I've also spotted Yellow Bellied Sapsuckers, Hairy, and Piliated Woodpeckers attacking the dead limbs and smaller dead trees that are still hanging around my yard.

This week in particular has been frustrating in the reminders of how the yard is *still* shows so much damage from Katrina and has so much work left to be done to repair it. Having a broken rib has made it impossible to even pick up the newly blown down dead branches after the storm this week. The best I can do is to kick them out of the driveway or off the paths through the garden. I want to have enough time, energy, money and patience to just Finish. The. Job. The rib pain has made me stop. And because of that I noticed the goldfinches. Now, I won't trim those shrubs until all of the seeds are gone. Now I have noticed that even dead, those shrubs are good and useful.

What an interesting revelation in this Natal Season.