You want a piece of pie?

Mom and I went to Julian today to pick up a bag of Nyjer seed for the goldfinch in the neighborhood.  They love that stuff.  At times there will be a number of them fighting over the rights to it.  It’s expensive stuff though and there was a time when the poor goldfinch were on rations.  We figured we would splurge though and pick up a bag of it.  Dad loved to watch the goldfinch and other types of birds having little bird parties over a mixture of seed treats.

The store that they would buy the thistle seed from in Julian is a store that is all about the birds.  If you want to know about birds or want to find the right feeder for bird of this area, then it is the store for you.  I did find it odd to see a cat as the house pet in this store.  I don’t typically think of a cat as being a friend in the bird world, but I suppose stranger things can happen.  Heck we spend a lot of time chasing the neighborhood ‘outdoor’ cats away from the birds in the backyard.  Those dang cats lay in wait on the fence.  Every now and then we will find a mess of feathers that tells us the dang cats were successful.  Sometimes neighbors will boast about how their cats bring lifeless playthings back home with a nonchalantness that suggests they are proud of their little feline friends for killing a wild animal 🙁  I would rather they kept their cats inside and enjoyed their companionship in a manner that didn’t threaten the local wildlife.

The ride there and back was wonderful.  The wind was blowing like crazy most of the way up there, but I still liked the ride and the time spent with mom.  We chit-chatted about all sorts of insignificant things like how neat the prairie grass looked waving back and forth in the wind.  Mom discovered that her weight-loss has left her without a tush and that we should have brought something more comfortable for her to sit upon during the long drive.  She had to shift around quite a bit during our trek.

When in Rome, you do as the Romans.  The same applies for Julian and in Julian they do PIE.  So we were forced to have a slice of pie at Mom’s Pie Shop.  They had several types of pies available for the choosing.  We both decided on an Apple Boysenberry Flaky pie and it was delicious.  Mom’s Pie Shop is a cute little place with mostly picnic type tables and benches to sit on.  It isn’t a very big place, with most of the room being taken up by the area meant for constructing their delectable desserts.  Against one wall is a pot belly stove/oven that had a ‘Caution: Hot’ sign on it, but I wondered if that was just decoration or if they actually used it.  I didn’t ask.

There was a group of people taking up one of the picnic tables and a mess of hiking backpacks on the ground near the register.  I figured that those packs must have belonged to that group of people.  Later we overheard their conversation that indicated they were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  PCT follows mountain ranges from the Mexico/California border up through British Columbia, Canada.  I have no idea how much of that trail they were planning to hike, but that does not sound much fun to me.  I suppose I shouldn’t be so quick to poo poo something like that and perhaps when I was this groups’ age I might have considered something that crazy, but these days I would rather not walk for days in the mountains.

Well, I think that sums up the day.  We shall see what fun stuff tomorrow brings!