The Big Sit! Chet Baker Style

Chet Baker, watching for new birds in the towertop, wearing his Official Midwest Birding Symposium bandanner that Jen made him.

As much of the Northeast tries to stagger back from a freak Halloween snowstorm, I find myself wanting to go back. Back to mid-October, back to September, back to June. I don’t really want to go into gray November.  And we don’t even have snow on the ground here in Ohio. I send my sympathy out to those who’ve had an especially early autumn. Our cold, dreary weather came early, too. But we have power. My Connecticut and Massachusetts sisters don't. And I'm thinking of them and sending them strength.

 So I’m going back just a couple of weeks to the Big Sit, held at our place on October 9, to remember the friends and the foliage, the fun and the bugs and the birds.

It’s an excuse, that’s what it is, to stand all day up in the tower, to invite friends to come and help watch, to share good food and fellowship. It’s not just about birds, though birds make it wonderful. 

Bill of the Birds has been blogging about the Sit. Here's where I reveal my true nature: Birder, dilettante, bugster, social butterfly. I love the Sit for all the reasons he does, and maybe in a few different directions, too.

I think my favorite part is going up to the tower early and hanging out with Bill and maybe Jim and Jason and just watching the light come up on the land.

The colors come shivering out of the night and the sky brightens and it is, unbelievably, a beautiful day, a high predicted in the 80's. Amazing. Seems like it should rain, we've invited people over to be outside all day, after all. Excuse me. I'm already tired of winter and it isn't even here.

And we hang over the tower wall and watch some of our favorite people come up the walk.

It's Mimi and Bob Scott!

and Mimi has a picanick baskit and in that basket is a shrimp quiche that is to die for and just the thing for a sunny cool morning in the tower with friends. No surprise there. Bob Scott doesn't tell anybody but it is his birthday, and I think he had a darn good one even though he didn't get a cake or a rousing chorus of that Awful Song, because he didn't TELL ANYBODY.

Mimi gets along beautifully with Jim and all our friends most of whom she's never met, again no surprise, and of course they are all over Chet Baker who is sitting holding court on his own personal dogthrone in the corner, accepting caresses and kisses.

Jim loves the Pied Mountain Boar, as he refers to Chet.

And the Pied Mountain Boar loves him.

There is a lot of love going around. What a fun day it was.

The Bacon has the most fun of anybody. Imagine if you could just sit there and have people come up to you and massage your scalp and back and kiss you on the nose just because they love you for being you. That's what it's like being Chet Baker.

It would not be bad coming back as a Boston Terrier.