Thomas Brooks sat at the kitchen table by the window, drinking his coffee and gazing at the winter wonderland below. It was a very cold winter morning. Snow had fallen overnight and covered the landscape like a white blanket. He had finished his breakfast of eggs over easy, toast, grits and sausage. The birds had fed earlier, and the squirrels were poaching at the suet feeders and working on the ears of dried corn mounted on the holders. Thomas Brooks had risen early on this day, as was his custom. He first went down to the studio and turned the heater on. It would take an hour or so to heat up the room. He then went back upstairs, filled the porcelain kettle with water, placed it on the eye of the stove and turned it on. He washed out the coffee press and went upstairs to the bathroom. He shaved, went into his bedroom and made the bed. Thomas Brooks made his bed every morning, even when he and Allene were traveling and staying in hotels. She poked fun at him about it, but it went all the way back to his childhood. It was simply something that he did.
Thomas then went back to the kitchen and added three spoons of coffee from the big can to the press. He poured the boiling water from the kettle into the press. He put the lid on the press, went back upstairs and showered. He dried off, brushed his teeth, took his meds and dressed. He went back down to the kitchen again, pushed the handle down on the press and poured the deliciously steaming strong coffee into his big silver Yeti. He added sugar and half and half to the coffee, washed out the press, then went upstairs to tell Allene good morning before heading down to the studio.
“Wake me up if it snowed, so I can get up and see it,” she said as he kissed her on the cheek. Thomas Brooks had not even thought about snow. They had said on the news the night before there was a possibility, but it would be pretty much limited to the North Georgia mountains. He looked out the window on the front door and saw that the overpaid television prognosticators were once again wrong. The ground was covered in white and the snow was coming down. He walked to the top of the stairs and said, “Yeah, it’s coming down pretty good.” Allene jumped up, ran to the front door and opened it. They peered through the solid glass storm door at the blanket on the ground and the flakes falling through the limbs of the big tree in the front yard. Allene jumped up and down and hugged Thomas tightly. “Wow, look at that!” she squealed happily. “It did snow!”
They then went downstairs and looked at the virgin powder in the back yard and on the deck, the patio table and the chairs. “Don’t walk on it,” Allene said to Thomas. “It’s too beautiful.” She then went back upstairs and he went into the studio to work for a couple of hours until sunup.
After the sun rose around seven a.m., he came out of the studio. He put on his heavy gloves, skull cap and thick Navy pea coat. He put four packages of suet into his coat pockets, then pulled two ears of dried corn out of the plastic container and stuck them in his pockets as well. He then picked up the container of bird seed and went outside. He hated walking on the undisturbed snow, but it was going to happen sooner or later. Might as well be now. Thomas walked to the front of the house and filled the two feeders outside his studio window. He then went onto the back deck and filled the big red feeder that hung outside of Allene’s office window. Next he walked into the yard, filled the two feeders which hung on a crook, then the small, white wooden feeder with columns and a roof that was mounted on one of the big trees. The nuthatches loved this feeder and would scurry down the tree, grab a sunflower seed and scurry back up.
He filled the two metal feeders, both of which both opened from a lid on the top and were mounted on metal poles. He put seed in the open gazebo feeder and then screwed the ears of corn onto the squirrel seats that were fastened to the other big tree. He placed the suet into the holders that hung on several hooks. There was a woodpecker blend, a berry blend, a nutty treat and a hot suet that the birds loved and the squirrels hated. The woodpeckers loved the suet, and Thomas Brooks was all too happy to oblige. He figured the more he could keep them off of the house, the better.
He then filled the big green feeder, which hung on a wooden cross in the middle of the yard. There was a “See Rock City” birdhouse mounted on the top of the cross, which housed a family of Carolina wrens. He only filled the feeder about halfway, which would be good for a week. The feeder was a “Yankee Flipper”, whose perch spun and was activated by the weight of a squirrel. One of the persistent little rodents would jump, grab onto the perch and spin before flying off. Some would hang on for dear life before being launched and landing on the ground below, where they would sit for several minutes in a daze. It was an expensive feeder, but worth the price in sheer entertainment value alone.
Thomas Brooks then climbed the steps onto the back porch and unhooked the nylon rope from the cleat mounted on the wall. The nylon rope was hooked to a small red feeder and ran through a pulley mounted outside the kitchen window. He lowered the feeder to the deck rail, filled it, then raised it back into position and secured the rope on the cleat.
He then went to the back door and shook the snow off of his shoes. He stepped inside and took off his coat, gloves and cap, then went upstairs and made breakfast for he and Allene. The birds began to come in flocks. About twenty mourning doves flew in and perched on the fence rail before coming into the yard and feeding on the ground below the big flipper feeder. The Carolina wrens came to the red feeder outside of the window in droves. Unlike the hummingbirds in the summer, the wrens got along fine and would feed in numbers without bickering and fighting.
The cardinals, beautiful in red and gold against the white backdrop of winter snow, flew to and fro from the suet feeders, the gazebo and the big flipper. The woodpeckers came to the suet, and the blackbirds, sporting their orange and white stripes on their shoulders, ate from the feeders and the spillage on the ground. They fed for about an hour or so, when suddenly a paradigm in the earth shifted and the birds flew away all at once. They would be back to feed in the afternoon. It was a very cold winter, so the feeders would all be empty within a couple of days. Thomas bought the seed, suet and corn in bulk. Allene teased him that he spent more feeding the birds than he did feeding the two of them.
Thomas Brooks finished his coffee and felt warm and happy. He then went back down into the studio. The Carolina wrens were at the feeders outside his studio window. He sat down at the easel and went back to work. It was a very cold winter, indeed.