Today there are robins everywhere! The yard is filled with 'em! A darting, scratching, red-breasted multitude, eager, animated, as perkily alive and welcome as the warm sunshine streaming through the sycamores.
Perhaps their visitation is a direct result of so glorious a wealth of late-January sunshine…or maybe the sunshine itself is here because the robins are out and about and have willed it into being through the sheer natural force of their ebullient spirit.
Who really knows the truth about such matters? But in the strong, lustrous light, their plump breasts glow a rich, fiery orange, almost the hue of some of that rusty looking gold they pull from the Black Hills of the Dakotas.
I do know they're wholeheartedly appreciated!
Immediately after New Year's, I began a necessary three-plus weeks of various eye-prep measures prior to upcoming surgery. During that time, I've been unable to see anything clearly beyond about a 4-inch focus distance. Robin throngs busily investigating the yard remained indiscernible. Even individuals on the ground directly below a window were unrecognizable as living creatures—merely moving blobs which might have been birds, squirrels, or wind-blown leaves.
Thankfully, that obligatory ordeal is over. I'll have my surgeries in February. And today, I can again see clearly…though I simply don't have sufficient words to tell you what a lovely and joyful blessing the sight of all these jaunty robins are to my weary, beauty-starved eyes.
