I am a couple of weeks late for Mother’s Day, but here’s some timeless if not timely advice for those of you who are mothers, or who have mothers, or who know of someone who is or has a mother. Read on

Dear Sir: I am deeply sorry to inform you that the holidays in your home did not, as you say in your paper, “self-cater.” That is not a word; and indeed were it a word, it would signify reflexivity, i.e. that a thing had catered itself: which a day, even a holiday such as Christmas, cannot do. What you mean is that your mother did all the cooking for your family on Christmas Day. If unable to find a suitably felicitous manner of conveying such simple fact, perhaps in future you might consider painting or dance as a means of expressing yourself? If, however, you are absolutely compelled to invent new words, please at least do your poor readers the courtesy of using them correctly. Sincerely, etc.

When I talk about listening to baseball on the radio I am aware that I sound as though I had crawled, grizzled and frayed but otherwise intact, from a time capsule in which I had been interred, cryogenically comatose, since 1948. I don’t often bother pretending otherwise. But I don’t listen to radio because I’m old-fashioned (I’m using internet radio and a Macbook) or because I think it’s romantic or am unaware that one can now get live streaming video over the internet. I admit I’m cheap — a subscription to every broadcast of every game played costs me twenty bucks a season, and may be the only incredible deal still available from any major professional sports league — but it isn’t about the money either. I prefer the radio. Really. Read on

Four deer are nosing through the pine straw for acorns the squirrels might have missed, barely shimmering against the background of russet-brown and dappled snow. Where have they been all week? I expected to see them out in the snow, but maybe some instinct tells them to stay hidden when the ground is pure white. What do they do, then? Huddle in the deep woods? Stare dumbly at the white stuff, trying to remember where they’ve seen it before? Sit by the fire, the bucks watching basketball on TV and the does working on their knitting? Grumble to each other that the weather is proof that global warming is just a liberal conspiracy to take everybody’s SUVs? Which would be a good thing for deer, because the small cars can more easily dodge them, but being only ruminants they are easily swayed by cable news reports?

I imagine up north they just suck it up. Like everybody else.

One evening a few weeks ago I filled the front-yard birdfeeder, which had sat empty several days while I didn’t quite get around to fixing it. I put the feed scoop away in the shed, and by the time I had walked the hundred yards there and back to the front porch, a female cardinal had found the fresh seed. After eating a few morsels she sat and chirped — crowing over her prize? But the chirping was short and came at intervals, and in half a minute another cardinal arrived, and the first flew off into a bush at the side of the house. This second cardinal was a juvenile, its feathers gray but tinged with red and a bit rough as they are when they molt their first summer, halfway from fledgling camouflage to male plumage. While he ate, the first bird, perched in the bush a few yards from me, continued her rhythmic chirping another minute before she flew into the woods. Then a second juvenile male, who had been perched near the feeder, took his turn, and the first flew away.

There is so much chaos and competition at the birdfeeder that it took me a few minutes to recognize what was going on. The first bird was the mother, chirping to alert her fledged but still not-quite independent boys that the feeder had been filled — and then continuing the alarm to remind them to get to the safety of the woods when they were finished eating. Time for dinner, finish your homework, and don’t forget to buckle up. I’m not sure I would have expected cardinals to parent that actively for that long, but then I’m not sure I’d thought about it. The orderly taking of turns, too, surprised me — if they were going to cooperate, there are two sides to the feeder; why not each one take a side? Is sibling rivalry a dry run for competition over mates and territory?

While I was contemplating all this, a neighbor started shooting off his gun, and that was the end of Happy Front Yard Nature Time. But consider the silver lining: if my hominid neighbors were more impressive, I might not feel the need to make the yard a wildlife habitat. It’s all in how you look at things.