Our car is still being held hostage by the garage in Virginia where it is getting the engine fixed, and probably will be until about Thursday, so we are spending some quality time with my cousin Ann, and Bruce, who live 250 miles south of where our car is, in North Carolina. We are glad to be here, since otherwise we would be in a motel for the ten days it is taking and we are also having a nice visit and vacation that we would not otherwise have had. The above picture is of one of the many birds on their back porch this morning...I am thinking a baby cardinal because of its fuzziness.

What about this one? It does not have the tuft of a cardinal...might it be a tananger, or maybe a purple finch, or something else? I could not match it definitively in the bird book that is here, so please help me out.

Have done only a little writing (but in my head, not on paper) since becoming stranded--a poem about a butterfly that I am going to write down today. I also think I will be able to work on my WIP today, too...we are having a quiet stay-at-home day for the first time since we arrived. No golf, no shopping, no going to visit an old classmate. So I am off to work on writing.