Trusting

This lovely little family strolled through our yard this morning, helping themselves to seeds and to the breadcrumbs we scattered underneath the bird feeder.

There seem to be many more wild turkeys around here in the past couple of years; that always makes me wonder what conditions have shifted. Fewer foxes and coyotes?

And what was especially charming, in their own turkey-lurkey way, was that when I opened the front door to take these pictures they just froze and stared at me. I sometimes hesitate to make the run to get my camera when we have interesting wild life in the yard because I figure that by the time I get the camera and then open the door, the visitors will scatter. But these 4 were taking their time, and clearly their first instinct in reaction to some danger is to freeze and see if their camouflage will protect them. Makes sense since they don't have flight or speed on their side.

We did, for the record, attempt to get some raking done yesterday...
...but it was so windy that we gave up after having only done a small area and figured it made sense to let the wind do whatever rearranging it was going to do and then to put our own hands to it after things settled down (maybe today?).

So the boys did their own kind of quasi-American Gothic for me, and then Ken wanted to return the favor--

See how Dean doesn't look that tall when he stands next to Ken, but then he's my height when he stands next to me and thereby makes me look short? Sigh.