New Garden

As the first warm breaths of spring arrive, I am digging in the dirt.  To me, getting my hands covered with dirt, getting dirt under my fingernails, and having my muscles ache from digging and planting is a pure delight!  It is a chance to renew the cycle of life.

This is my first growing season since we moved to town.  I have to admit having only a coupe of raised beds and some flower beds is quite a different from having a big garden, raised beds, a blackberry patch and a semblance of an orchard.  But I find that even a small area to dig and plant is sufficient for now.  Grandpa had helped me clear all of the weeds from the raised beds during the winter, so over the last few days I have added compost and peat to the heavy soil.  It will take some time to get the tilth just right, but I have time.  

The pleasure was in finding a few worms in the cool soil.  More will come as I improve the soil.  It is good black dirt that smells of the elements of earth.  I turned the soil with a spading fork and hoed the clods and raked it until it was a deep chocolate blanket.  Then came the planting.  Peas and spinach for now.  Rain is promised over the next two days, and the temperatures are warming. Year after year I am always amazed that I feed the earth, drop in a seed,  let sun and rain do their work and marvelous plants that are so good to eat appear.  How can it not be a miracle.

As I planted this morning, the blue birds were singing.  One bright male, puffed up with pride in his own song perched on the handle of my spading fork and watched me plant.  The moon is right for planting, the earth is good and the blue birds are singing.  It can't be anything but wonderful.

It Might Be Spring

Three Nests

Can you identify which 3 species have previously used this box? (Answer located at the bottom of this page.)

Photo © Sally Sims   http://nestwatch.org/learn/how-to-nestwatch/identifying-nests-and-eggs/

Rain is in the forecast, but for now the gray sky makes the perfect background for the lemony daffodils and hot pink hyacinths blooming under the oak tree. This morning I'm watching the battle of the birdhouse.  The bluebirds and the sparrows are vying for rights to the bluebird house. Both come and cling to the front of the box and go in and out.  Without a doubt, I am rooting for the bluebirds!  Last summer we had two pairs of bluebirds who frequented our yard, and I've awaited their return all winter.  Hopefully, they will be the ones to claim the house, but if not, I may have to do the dastardly deed of cleaning out the sparrow's nest to help them along.  I never like skewing the course of nature that way, but  nevertheless, I've been known to do just that.

The starlings have been a problem already this spring.  During the last big snow they swarmed the feeder.  I would look out the window to see only a carpet of black in the yard.  I resorted to my stainless steel pot lids to drive them away.  I have found that clanging two lids together makes  a deafening cacophony that will raise the dead and drive away starlings.  I'm sure the neighbors aren't happy with the noise, but the starlings are gone at least for the time being.

So feeding birds, driving away the noisy, greedy ones and cleaning out sparrow nests may put me on the wrong side of mother nature, but I am determined to fashion my small piece of nature to my own liking with daffodils and bluebirds.

Answer: From bottom to top, House Wren, Carolina Chickadee, and Eastern Bluebird built nests in this box.