Less is more, more or less

It looks like I’ll be hand watering the new plants on our sandy hill for awhile still. We may get a few showers tonight or tomorrow but then, again, nothing for a week or so and temperatures will be in the summer range. Some of the plants are beginning to show flower buds so the watering effort has its rewards. Plus I’m outside where I can see dragonflies and butterflies like the one below.

White Admiral (Limenitis arthemis arthemis)
AKA Red-spotted Admiral

Photo by J. Harrington

The other day a male bluebird was perched on top of the front yard bluebird house. So far, that one hasn’t been attacked by a neighborhood bear, but I felt guilty at not taking down the house out front as a precautionary measure. Then I remembered that nature tends toward profligacy rather than caution in perpetuating many species. At least that’s the impression I get from my readings and observations. In any event, this morning a kingbird was perched on the front house. I need to see if anyone is actually nesting in that spot. I should also check to see who, if anyone, is nesting on top of the garage yard lights this summer. I think the kingbirds were there last year.

I’m back from a quick check. It looks like a pair of kingbirds are nesting on the garage lights. There’s a nest, but no eggs, in the front bluebird house. I’ll need to drag out a ladder to see if there are eggs in the nest over the lights and that’s an effort for another day. As long as they don’t block the movement receptor or short out the fixture, I’m only too happy to share some space.

This has been a strange summer so far, between bears destroying bluebird houses, Canada’s excessive wildfires and smoke, our local return to moderate drought conditions and unusual political events, I’m becoming more and more concerned about what the future holds, although I’m also aware that we, that’s you and I and the next one over, do a lot to create our own futures. Is it time to claim “we’re better than this!” and then walk that talk?

The Exposed Nest

Robert Frost     1874 – 1963

You were forever finding some new play. 
So when I saw you down on hands and knees 
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay, 
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end, 
I went to show you how to make it stay, 
If that was your idea, against the breeze, 
And, if you asked me, even help pretend 
To make it root again and grow afresh. 
But 'twas no make-believe with you to-day, 
Nor was the grass itself your real concern, 
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern, 
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover. 
'Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground 
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over 
(Miraculously without tasting flesh) 
And left defenseless to the heat and light. 
You wanted to restore them to their right 
Of something interposed between their sight 
And too much world at once—could means be found. 
The way the nest-full every time we stirred 
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird 
Whose coming home has been too long deferred, 
Made me ask would the mother-bird return 
And care for them in such a change of scene 
And might our meddling make her more afraid. 
That was a thing we could not wait to learn. 
We saw the risk we took in doing good, 
But dared not spare to do the best we could 
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen 
You had begun, and gave them back their shade. 
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then 
No more to tell? We turned to other things. 
I haven't any memory—have you?—
Of ever coming to the place again 
To see if the birds lived the first night through, 
And so at last to learn to use their wings. 

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