Backyard Blessing

It's been a while since I sat outside on my patio. It's as messy and weather-worn as I've seen it, plants in disarray, weeds everywhere, dried leaves from as long ago as November still stuck behind the trellis. I know from experience now that I don't have the same spry energy that I used to to get out there on my hands and knees and make it right. That will have to wait for when I can afford a helper.

Ignoring the mess--a big deal for an anal-compulsive with an aversion to grit--I felt compelled to sit out there, to be silent and observant and let the day come to me.

I've noticed in the last several weeks that there are at least two pair of birds vying to make a nest of their own in the protected overhang of the patio eaves. Yesterday, sitting without any purpose except to finish Pete Dexter's wonderful new novel, "Spooner" and to get a vitamin D fix and tan my legs, the birds were very active, hopping about on the copper frame I had built to be a camellia bush support. The sun was hot but the air velvet, life was peaceful and full of promise and out of nowhere came the loud whirring of a hummingbird, chasing the other bird couples off the copper.

What's this, I wondered? Then I spotted it. A tiny perfect cylinder of a nest, all soft and cushioned, nestled in the crook of one of the branches of my Fuji persimmon tree. It was the hummingbird's nest and she was letting the others know to stay away. Through the afternoon I watched as the pairs of birds flew up into the palm tree, way up above the roof, keeping a respectful distance from the hummingbird. And in between the whirring and aerial mapping of her territory, the mother nestled tight into her nest, sitting with patient vigilance atop her eggs, alert to interlopers minding her time and her own business.

Ah, the cycle of life, I thought. When mothers serve notice to the world that they are doing their job, as best they can even when it doesn't always work out. Babies die or are eaten. They falter somehow or never learn how to survive. In the best cases, they thrive. All their mothers can do is to get them to a place as close to leaving and thriving as they can...and then let them go.

I have no clue if birds love their children, not in any sense that humans do. But the job is the same in either case. Feed the life you bear, nurture it until maturity, let them go. So, Happy Mother's Day to Gaia and all those who helped to sustain me, much as a mother would have. I'm sure like those eggs in the nest in my tree, we are grateful for the blessing.