Love Those Birds and Blooms
May 7, 2008 by Ingrid Schlueter
It is finally spring in Wisconsin. We had three completely gorgeous days beginning on Sunday, and even today, while a mix of clouds and sun, the air is mild and sweet coming in my window as I write.
My husband and I have established a recent tradition on Sunday afternoons of going for a walk somewhere. Just us. The lakefront is beautiful, so are neighborhoods in Whitefish Bay, Shorewood and other areas we like where the ground isn’t so hilly as where we are. (I simply can’t do those hills.) This time we chose the suburb where we used to live, Wauwatosa. There’s an area off Glenview Avenue where the houses were built in the teens and 20’s. Big front porches with swings are prevalent in these comfortable family homes, with sidewalks where little people gather on their tricycles, and everywhere was the sight of flowers and birds and insects busily going about their business. It was a lovely, slow amble, and especially enjoyed after our longer than normal winter.
Last evening I sat down in my rocker to enjoy the breeze coming in our patio screen door, and I picked up another of my favorite Reiman Publication magazines, Birds and Blooms. This month’s issue features an exquisite Eastern Bluebird on the cover. It got even better from there. This magazine takes your breath away with the reader-taken photographs of hummingbirds and bluebirds and Baltimore orioles, and woodpeckers and Bob Whites. I like the little homey, family anecdotes sprinkled in there as well. Then there are the photographs of flowers: Pink columbine, lily-of-the-valley, jack-in-the-pulpits and saucer magnolias, hydangeas, dwarf irises and phlox, to name a few. My favorite photo is the one with the brown rabbit peering between vincas. Another great photo is a reader with multiple hummingbirds landing on her bright red shirt as she held out a container of the sweet liquid these birds love. What a feeling it must have been to have had those delicate little beauties hovering around you and landing on your shoulder!
Reading Birds and Blooms is a trip into God’s magnificent creation. It’s all good and lovely and true in this magazine with virtually no advertising and mostly reader contributions. Reiman publishers have put out so many wonderful magazines that I keep adding one more to my subscription list. It’s cheaper than a vacation, and it is restorative to leave the difficulties and squalor of all that is wrong in our world to spend time admiring the world God created! The subscriptions are very inexpensive, by the way. And no, I was not paid for this post! 
I was happy to discover this magazine, from your post! Can’t wait for my first issue, and the email newsletter was fun to read, as well.
This sort of “restorative” is badly needed, in my view, given the glut of negatives we face in the general culture. I need, personally, to focus more on the good, less on the distressing/evil.
On a side note, here in rural NW IL, I had some wonderful bird visitors this week: black and white warblers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, western meadowlarks, goldfinches, chipping sparrows, and the glorious barn swallows with their acrobatics! Good bird week for us. Plus the apples are all blooming, the early garden is growing. Oh…if only we could keep our minds more on our daily blessings, which are so numerous, rather than the evils which seem to surround us..
The simplicity of the country is one of the major reasons that I love visiting my “Uncle” Chris, “Aunt” Audrey (the sister of one of my aunts by marriage) & their boys out on the farm. It’s like a totally different world, one of simplicity, charm, reverence for the Lord Jesus Christ & they have something about them that makes you feel you’ve went back in time about 80 years. I think fondly of the days passed there on their old farm in western Illinois: my mother & I helping with the chores, picnics on the big wraparound porch, watching the cows, pigs & chickens, playing outside with the boys & the farm fresh milk. Aunt Audrey’s the proud home-schooling mom of 4 boys & she got her lifelong dream to marry a farmer & have cows. They (my aunt & uncle & the 3 younger boys) recently moved to a much larger farm near Rochester, New York, where they’ll be doing beef, sheep & chickens & I had the privelege of taking the train to see them over my spring break at their new place. So, the spring always makes me think of my dear Uncle Chris doing planting.