Small Robin Adventure

Walking the "back forty", usually with my small canine friends in tow, is usually a minor excursion into the wild-- just a meander through the wooded area behind our house. Yesterday morning we were rounding the curve of the foot path when I noticed an anxious fluttering happening near the tarp covering a woodpile back there. I could see immediately that a bird was caught in something and knew the dogs would go wild. So I turned around before they noticed the excitement and hitched them up on the lawn.

Grabbing a nail clipper and a handy pair of shears from inside, I returned to the flapping scene, telling myself to be very calm and reassuring so as not to further panic the bird. A young male robin tangled in a fibrous shred of the blue tarp wrapped around his leg flapped even more as I approached and another bird I had not noticed flew up from the green undergrowth nearby.

I used both hands to cap the terrified bird from above, folding his wings against his body and murmuring softly to him. He quieted and I was able to see how the stringy tarp shreds were wrapped tightly around his right foot. It took a few minutes to carefully clip with the shears close to the scrawny foot to release the fibers. I had to work the stuff loose, cut close, and finally the foot was free. I put the bird down right side up and opened my hand. He flew off fast and that was that.

Later I heard the robins as I worked the back flower garden. Wish I could know what they were saying.

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The Morning Constitutional : Compost, and Tools with Unction

As usual, we walked out to see the "green babies" -- this morning it was under a broken cloud cover so bits of sun sneaked through here and there. The sunflower is opening up gradually with its tortured looking green frame and bright yellow petals beginning to poke through the opening. I told it: "you're going to be BIG." My husband chuckled.

When we got to the woods the really tall trees rained on us-- drops from the nearly tropical canopy a hundred feet overhead. Yes, they were rain drops, and not fall out from passing birds. You can smell the Atlantic Ocean on days like this-- the air moving in from the northeast bringing moisture-laden air inland.

We are in for a cool spell- a good relief from the heat and humidity of the past weeks. I am trying to remind myself that it will be a good time bake a bunch of bread for the freezer so I won't have to when it gets hot again.

We are clearing the floor of the woods to give the trees a break. They have suffered over the years with overgrowth of honeysuckle, Virginia Creeper, Poison Ivy, pricker bushes, and litter of a hundred hundred storms. Gradually we claim the territory back for the big trees. We will have to get our tree man in to cut down some leaners and dead trees still standing. He is always a great show, with his cherry picker and his branch eating machine and his chain saw -- like a rock band in the middle of a Quaker meetinghouse. He graciously piles long sections of hardwood where my husband can get at it easily to do his sawing and splitting for the little woodstove that heats up our winters.

There's a spot our clearing has uncovered that exposes a young family's back yard to us, and our woods activities to them. We always talk about the many waist-high hollies that have proliferated on the forest floor, and the small evergreens. They are just the right size to transplant over to that border spot where they will serve as a friendly screen between that family and us.

Messily, in the lovely woods, there stands my compost-sorting rig. Only a green thumb could love it. I have an old picture frame covered with hardware cloth, and then another one covered with coarser chicken wire.
I dig into my year-old compost mound and throw the "good stuff" onto my set of sieves, allowing a shower of lovely moist treasure to pile up underneath. I shake it some and rub it with the small shovel that used to be my mother's special tool. Then I dump the stuff that won't fit through into a place where it will moulder a bit longer before I visit it again. I am sure the neighbors will be happy to be screened off from that! And I have my moist dark pile of magic for my veggies and flowers. Leaf mold, vegetable peelings, garden trimmings, even dog clippings, all fertile and sweet and full of new purpose.

Tools: They really have an unction, some of them. I have my father's cultivator tool with the long handle. It dates from the days of the Victory Gardens of WWII! And my Mom's small shovel-- never idle for long over the many years it has been in service. Good sweat on those handles!

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