Lia puts suet on a little tree outside our dining room window. Lots of visitors stopping by this spring – I don’t know my birds but they’re cool to watch.

Red bird

Red bird, too

Majestic bird

These guys, our most common guests, are jerks. Always chasing smaller birds away. Fat jerks.

Little bird

Another common jerk

Cool stripe-head bird

Neat fuzzy bird in the rain

Bonus – I just like this busy out-of-focus shot.

This weekend Joe and I visited the Poplar Grove National Cemetery, hidden away just south of the city of Petersburg. The cemetery contains more than 6,000 Civil War dead, but sadly only about 2,000 names are known. The majority of the stones just say Unknown U.S. Soldier with a few Unknown Confederates in the mix. I suppose it didn’t matter to the boys by that point.

The layout of the cemetery is unique, with concentric circles of stones rather than straight rows. All the stones were laid flat in 1933, and it’s existed quietly with few changes since. Yet it’s beautifully kept, and peaceful.