Randomness

And my final post for the day.........

When I got home from Montana, the babies were gone, however, the birds were still coming back at night.  I decided to give them a few days and then take the nest down.  When I looked out this morning, I saw this (and I was not amused by the situation--I figured I missed my chance and a new family was moving in)

After they took off, I got the camera and ladder out to take a picture so that I could see if there were eggs (again), but I got lucky and the nest is empty (the new family was probably scoping out the accommodations and they must not have been to their liking).

And the nest is now gone.  I don't know what these birds use as glue, but it took a bit to get the nest loose.  After cleaning all of the gunk off, the "glue" has stained the paint.  I'll have to figure something out to get rid of it.  And now we have this:

During one of J's visits, we planted some peppers and basil.  When I got home, my basil had been growing like a weed. 

I decided to make pesto without the pine nuts.  It went from this:

To this:

And here are a few of the peppers:

Because I won't use them up quickly, I decided to dry them:

They should be done in the morning.  The jalapeno plants still have a lot of peppers on them, so if drying them works, that will be what I do with the rest.

Funny thing, while I've been typing this post, the mom and dad have come back and are now in the spot where the nest was.  Neither appears to be moving. I hope they don't decide to build another house.  I was able to snap a picture, but you can't see them very well.  I opened the door to scare them away, but I can see that didn't quite work.  It would be my luck that they have a new nest built by morning.