Yes, There’s a Garden Under All These Weeds

The summer gardening season began well enough. I had no major projects to see to, and my goal was simply to keep up with the weeding and watering so that my garden didn’t look abandoned by fall. As you read in my previous post, I got about 6 weeds pulled up in June when we found out that we were going to have a baby.

After that, the garden was on its own for the summer. Not that I didn’t want to work in it. It’s just that for about 4 months, Teresa was sick and absolutely drained of energy, to the point that all she could do after work was lie on the sofa until time to go to bed. Normally we split the housework about 60/40 (you can guess who does the 60) but when it was 1/99, that left no time for gardening, or blogging for that matter.

So, fast-forward to November. The leaves are mostly off the trees, the juncos, white-throated sparrows, and yellow-rumped warblers have already made it to my yard, and what used to be the spare bedroom is getting full of baby stuff. We are having a boy, and we’re going to name him Patrick. (Francis, of course, is the patron saint of birds and animals; Fiacre the patron saint of gardeners, but I thought those names might provoke fistfights. And Teresa and my mother both vetoed Roy Dean, which was the favorite of Carolina fans at church, who wanted to name the baby in honor of the two greatest basketball coaches who ever lived.)

I actually got a little work done this fall–moved some Shasta Daisies, planted a couple of cotoneasters in the front bed–but it’s raining now and I can’t get pictures.

Thanks for all the good wishes everyone. I’ll try to write some more before another three months have passed.

Didn’t See This Coming

Back in June, when our niece was born, I observed that while she was very cute, I personally had no interest in obtaining firsthand knowledge of childbirth, diaper changing, or the many other aspects of being a parent. Even as I clicked “Publish,” I had a vague sense that I was painting a really big target on my back…

Three weeks after I penned those words, I was out pulling weeds in my flowerbed when Teresa emerged from the house, holding what appeared to be a thermometer.

“David, come here a minute,” she said.

I assumed that she had a fever. My first thought was that perhaps she had contracted the swine flu. Being the caring husband that I am, my second thought was, I sure hope she didn’t give it to me.

“You’d better sit down,” she said, handing me the thermometer.

How high was this fever? I wondered.

The thermometer was not like any I had ever seen. Where there should have been numbers, there was a word. I tapped the thermometer against my palm but could not get the reading anywhere close to 98.6. It kept showing this:

To say that we were shocked would be an understatement. A baby wasn’t on either of our lists of future plans, so we’ve spent the last few months getting used to the idea of being parents. (And to think that I recently turned down a cat from my friend Sandra because our one feline, Casey, is such a big responsibility!)

Fortunately, we have a backyard that, by the time our child is about five, will look somewhat like my grandfather’s where I played as a child, with dense thickets of shrubbery that magically transform into jungles or mountain ranges or the Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts. Down the street is a patch of woods with a creek running through it, just begging to be explored. Beside the woods is a large field that has plenty of room for a left-handed pull hitter (male or female), and if we have a boy, to learn to run post routes, slants, and flanker screens. (Those are baseball and football terms, in case you’re not a fan.)

Teresa says that in 2020, when people ask how many kids she has, she’s going to reply, “Two. One’s 10 and the other is 51.”

Baby Bluebirds Day 9

Baby Bluebirds Day 9

Baby Bluebirds Day 7 & 8

Three strong, healthy babies are growing by the day. I assume the fourth one died shortly after hatching.

Hungry Babies Day 7

By Day 7, their eyes are beginning to open, and they have their voices. I can hear them cheeping for food all the way across the yard.

Baby Bluebirds Day 8

Bluebird Watch

Baby Bluebirds Day 5

A Bluebird’s Life–First Thunderstorm

Baby Bluebirds Day 4

At 4 days old, the babies eyes are still closed, but their bodies are noticeably bigger than when they hatched. The parents have been diligently bringing food, and the male is extremely protective of the nest. Earlier in the summer, he was fairly tolerant of me checking the box, but now he comes screaming through the air directly at my head, at speeds that would be the envy of any Quidditch player at Hogwarts.

The babies experienced their first thunderstorms last night and today. Nearly two inches of rain fell, breaking a drought of nearly a month with no rain.

Four Babies

Baby Bluebirds Day 3

The father perches on the fence, ready to defend the nest...

...while the mother brings tiny insects to feed to her babies.

Bluebird Hatching

This morning’s check of the bluebird box revealed that a third baby hatched either yesterday afternoon or this morning, and the fourth is pecking its way out of the shell as I write this.

Baby Bluebirds Day 2

Look closely at the egg, and you can see the chipped-out place. Baby birds have an "egg tooth" attached to their upper mandible, which allows them to chisel their way out of the egg. The egg tooth disappears a few days after hatching. How cool is that?!

Babies!!!

The last time I wrote, parts of Greensboro had just been deluged with 8 inches of rain in less than an hour. That was seven weeks ago. I think we’ve gotten a quarter inch since then.

Anyway, I’m not here to complain about the drought, but to celebrate the arrival of two new baby bluebirds, just hatched today.

Baby Bluebirds Day 1

2009 has been an adventurous year for my bluebirds. Let me catch you up on what has transpired.

The first nesting, back in April, was unsuccessful. And it was my fault. I’ve had my bluebird box mounted directly on my fence for years, and yes, I’ve known that raccoons have no trouble climbing a fence. I work at Wild Birds Unlimited, so you would think that I, of all people, would have had a properly mounted bluebird box.

But no.

I went out one morning to find bits of nesting material hanging out of the opening, two eggs missing and the others broken, and claw marks all over the door. I couldn’t begrudge the raccoon for doing what God made him to do, which is eat bird eggs, but I could damn well make it impossible for him to get to my bluebirds. So, I went down to WBU to buy a pole and baffle.

Bill and Barbara, of course, would not hear of me buying a full price setup, and insisted that I take some used hardware which would work just as well. (Note to Barbara–I put some $$ in the cash register anyway!)

So I waited and hoped for a second nesting. I was not disappointed. It was a different pair of bluebirds, recognizable by a unique white streak on the male’s chest, and they laid five eggs. One cracked in the nest, one baby mysteriously disappeared–don’t ask me how–and another, well, I think he died in the nest. Let me tell you that story:

The babies were about ready to fledge, so I hadn’t checked the box in a few days. I noticed flies going in and out, and thought that this could not be a good sign, so I cautiously opened the door and smelled dead flesh. I think, and I am not positive, but I think I saw a dead baby along with two live ones.

Knowing that if I left the dead baby in there, the maggots and flies would likely kill the surviving ones, I went inside for some rubber gloves for the grisly task ahead. I returned to the box, carefully removed the nest and set it on the ground, and lifted one of the frightened baby birds out of the nest.

No corpse. And no smell.

So I replaced the nest, much to the relief of the father bluebird, who had been diving at my head throughout the process, and returned to the house. On my way, several yards from the bluebird box, I passed a dead baby bluebird on the ground that I swear had not been there 10 minutes ago. The only thing I can figure is that the parents removed it while I was inside. I know that is unusual and unlikely, but I can’t come up with a better explanation.

After all of that, the two babies fledged a few days later, and one of them at least grew into a teenager. I frequently saw him at the feeder with his parents.

Then one day I heard a thud at the storm door. I looked out and saw a bluebird flopping pitifully on the front stoop. It was the baby. My baby. The one I had checked on daily since he was an egg.

“Don’t you dare die on me like this,” I thought, hurrying out to help the creature.

He struggled to an upright position, and sat there with his beak open. “At least his neck’s not broken,” I thought. “Maybe he’s just stunned.”

Sometimes birds who crash into windows are just woozy, and will be ok after a few minutes to an hour if they are kept safe from predators while they are recovering. Predators like Kinsey, my neighbor’s cat.

My other neighbor, Tyler, was playing on his skateboard, so I summoned him over to guard the bird while I went for a container. When I returned and went to pick up the bird, he fluttered upward toward the roof. Tyler and I cheered him on, but he couldn’t quite make it, and fell back to the ground.

The little bird tried a second time, and made it to the roof. A bright blue streak flew past him, his father, and the baby bird flew off after him.

I’ve seen the young bluebird at the feeder since then, so he seems to have recovered. I named him Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived.

Can’t wait to see what happens with these babies…

Lost Dog

The tiny Chihuahua was obviously lost. She was running down the middle of Gracewood Drive, tail between her legs, oblivious to the cars driving too fast for the curving residential street. I stopped my car and called her, but she ran in the opposite direction. Motorists stared at the spectacle: a man pursuing a diminutive dog who had no intention of going with him.

An Asian woman, recognizing the problem, stopped her minivan, got out, and shooed the canine into a yard. A skinny young man smoking a cigarette got up from where he had been seated on the front steps and tried to corral the dog. Nobody wanted to pick her up. (Speaking for myself, some of the meanest dogs I’ve known have been small ones; I guess big dogs don’t have anything to prove.) Finally, we cornered the animal so that the only place she could flee to was into the open rear door of my Civic.

“I’ll take her home with me,” I said, and pointed out my street, in case anyone came looking for her.

The dog whimpered pitifully during the two-block drive to my house, and refused to get out of the car. Even my beef stew left over from lunch couldn’t coax her out. (I worry a little when an animal that licks its butt refuses to eat something I cooked.)

So I left her in the car while I went to eat supper. Meanwhile, a violent thunderstorm churned its way through Greensboro with thunder and lightning and torrential rains, and I knew there was no way the dog was going to get out in that.

I had a tutoring session to go to, and so there was no choice but to take my new charge with me. I drove through the deluge thinking that I needed a pair of outboard motors on the back of my car to navigate the river that flowed down West Market Street.

We made it to my student’s apartment, the Chihuahua and I, where I left her in the car with instructions to behave. I checked on her through the window a couple of times and saw her curled up asleep in the passenger seat, and wondered what, exactly, I was going to do with a tiny dog.

I stopped at Harris Teeter to pick up some dog food. She barked at me as I got back in the car, and seemed to be gaining a little confidence. When we arrived home, she bounded out of the car and followed me around the yard, her tail up in the air.

“She thinks she belongs to you,” Teresa said.

She also thought she was going inside. The rain began to fall again and the little creature began scratching at the back door. She was obviously a house dog–she knew how doors operated, but inside our house is a cat who, to put it mildly, would not take kindly to having her home invaded by a DOG. She would be in therapy for years.

And of course the dog had no intention of escaping the rain by going inside a trashcan turned on its side, even with a plate of food and a towel inside. So the only option was back to the car.

She wagged her tail and climbed in my lap.

“You can’t live in the car for the rest of your life, you know,” I told her. She licked my hand.

Just then, a pair of headlights appeared at the end of my street, moving slowly. Very slowly. A young girl’s voice called out from the open window.

“I think someone is looking for you,” I said to the dog.

I stepped into the street as the minivan approached. “Y’all looking for a dog?” I asked.

“Yes! A Chihuahua”

“I’ve got her in my car.”

I opened the door and the dog bounced up, dancing and wagging her tail. The girl scooped her up and kissed her. “I’ve been so worried about you,” she said.

The girl extended her hand in a very grown-up fashion. “Thank you so much for caring for her,” she said.

It was my pleasure.