Again Dave has given us some great photos and a story of the birds therein. click here to see them

Then return to see my Drummond Island story of God’s videos:

Drummond Island – August 2009

“Five feet – that is all? – the wall is 20 feet long.  Allen, we need to find a better solution.  I designed this house to help me enjoy my  alone time sitting right here!”

You see Allen is my best friend. He and I feed horses, ride horses, clean up after his string of horses and my one Icelandic horse called Perla twice every day.  Allen is teaching me to almost become one of the herd – think like a horse – know what they feel when the feel it.  That is the only way to enjoy and truly take care of 8 horses. But in addition to teaching me to becoming one with the horses, Allen will spend the fall and winter  rebuilding a small old Island winter house Gloria and just bought.  

Allen said, “Don’t you know you bought an old winter Island house.  Starting in November, the storms arrive – remember the Edmond Fitzgerald and the storms of November that sank her? At forty below in the dead of winter, old Island houses here on Drummond have very small windows to keep the cold on the outside.”

I said, “Old Island house or not, I plan to sit comfortable, read, sip my scotch, and feel like I am outside with the flocks, herds, gathering of social animals that come to my house to eat, to enjoy my lawn and lake front, and to prowl the shore looking for food.  That requires a big window – You got the idea?”

 I want my chair to be in  the same lightness or darkness as the outside – just as if  I am outside among the animals. You know, watching God’s video show framed by the windows in the house.

“Jim, you said what I said to Tess when we built our house. I had to convince her or was it she who convinced me – anyway we got it! You know of our sliding doors and the screened in porch. Just this month, while sitting there,  I saw dozens of red squirrels, a family of raccoons, a lone black bear, a coyote, many red headed wood peckers, and the list goes on and on …..  Every day God’s art gallery of videos is really great. So, say I, you will get the kind of room you want, even if I have to drive to Detroit to get the windows. I got the idea!”

I thanked him and remembered:  “Allen, I isolated that pudding stone we want placed in the triangle of the patio landscape in the back.”

Drummond Island – August 2020

Here are a few iphone photos from my windows – I had to reconstruct a few of them because I was not fast enough on the iPhone, but what I show you here is what I saw – as best I can reconstruct it.

A pudding stone like Allen placed in our landscape

Puddingstone is a popular name applied to a conglomerate that consists of distinctly rounded pebbles whose colors contrast sharply with the color of the finer-grained matrix surrounding them. The rounded pebbles and the sharp contrast in color gives this type of conglomerate the appearance of a raisin or Christmas pudding.

Michigan Puddingstones were created from loose gravel during the Pleistocene glacial drift from Northern Ontario spreading into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

One of the windows – or as I call them, the screens for God’s video show.

No action, but maybe you can see the pudding stones in my rock garden – Oh my, notice that the weeping cherry tree is not weeping – ’cause the deer ate all the weeping branches and left only the top cap. See, I could have used PhotoShop to put a deer standing there in the act – but I did not.

Through the window, I caught this little guy in the act – cleaning out the leaves of the landscape tree. – No PhotoShop here.

Through the window, eating food I put out – not stealing from my garden.

Through the window, I saw these 6 geese resting and preening after  a long feast on my front lawn. Have to pick up lots of lawn poop if I want to walk on the lawn to the mail box!

Through the window – what you think of this lady – on her way, I think, to my neighbors bird feeder – so down the road I go after her to try to get a good photo.

Here is what I saw – Had to reconstruct it from my a very poor iPhone photo and my memory ’cause thankfully she was more scared of me than I was of her – and off she and two cubs went to the next neighborhood feeder before I could snap a good shot.

As you swing through life, find your own window to God’s video – and say thanks for the beauty in the art of nature framed there.