Staircase completed!

Hooray! The staircase from the house down to the "front yard" has been completed. We must give credit to our builders Brian Cornwell and his son, Eric, for doing such a fantastic job. Good work, guys!

Here's a brief look at the finished project.

This view is taken from the very top of the stairs, looking down toward the road.

Trying to show as much of the staircase as I can.

I took lots of pictures, too many to post here. To see the rest of the photos, come over to my Picasa Web Album. You can look at the pictures individually, or watch a slide show (which I recommend). All the pictures are captioned so you'll know what you're looking at.

New Kids on the Block

First and foremost, since this is my first post of the year, I wish a Happy New Year 2008 to my adoring fans (the whole handful of you)!

There's nothing like the appearance of a bird new to our feeders to motivate me to take some photos. This winter has brought the Purple Finch. The first one showed up the first weekend of December, but it only passed by briefly. Same thing happened the following weekend. Then no more Purple Finches. Until this weekend. Finally, 2 of them showed up and stayed around for a while (i.e. long enough for me to get photos). Actually, I saw them most of the day yesterday, but not at all today. At any rate, I was excited to have some new visitors to the feeders, and hope they'll return and bring their friends.

Finch Fantastic (Purple Finches and Goldfinches)

Feeding Frenzy

Purple Finch

Oh, and I'm not the only one who likes to watch the birds. Now if she could just learn to count...

Midtown on bird patrol